I came across some people that said that Christians (Catholic Church, Orthodox Church, Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist...) do not believe that Christ could have sinned and failed in his mission on earth. Well then how could he be 'tempted in the desert?' Where does this idea come from?

Jesus was capable of being tempted and sinning. He added that ability when He became human. As God, before His incarnation, He was incapable of being tempted and sinning. Theoretically, therefore, Jesus could have sinned. In reality, though, He didn't. There was never any doubt in God's mind about it. He knew Jesus was going to succeed in His mission. That's an advantage of foreknowledge. If God had foreseen Jesus failing, He would not have consented to the plan of salvation. For that matter, He would not have consented to creating FMAs. Their options were 1) create FMAs and deal with the GC, or 2) not create them and not deal with the GC.

This is completely untrue. God is not selfish like we are.









These statements don't make sense if we accept the idea that God would not have given Christ if a risk were involved.

Tom, it's not matter of selfishness. If God had foreseen FMAs sinning and Jesus failing to redeem them, it would have been cruel to go through with it. He would have had to wipe out everyone. The reason God created FMAs is precisely because He knew Jesus would succeed at redeeming them.

God foresaw the *possibility* of FMA's sinning, as well as the *possibility* of Christ's failure. That God foresaw the possibility of Christ's failure is made clear by such statement as

1.God permitted Christ to meet life's peril in Satan's dominion at the risk of failure and eternal loss.
2.All heaven was imperiled.

Clearly if things were as you are suggesting, heaven was never in any peril.

In regards to your point that it would have been cruel for God to have created FMA's if He knew Christ would fail, by the same token it would have been cruel for God to have created FMA's in the first place, if He knew they would sin.

In particular, why possible reason could there have been for God to have created Lucifer knowing he would become Satan? If the future were fixed, as per your concept, God would have simply created a covering cherub whom He foresaw wouldn't sin.

Tom, if God did not know with absolute certainty Jesus would succeed, why, then, did He communicate throughout the Bible that Jesus would succeed. Not once in the Bible does it even hint at the possibility of Jesus failing. Obviously Ellen's insight does not contradict the Bible.

Not once does the Bible even hint that Nineveh wouldn't be destroyed. Yet it wasn't, because the Ninevites repented.

Prophecy is conditional when free will is involved. That's always the case. This is explicitly explained in Jeremiah 18.



Indeed it doesn't! The Bible no more teaches that Jesus could not have sinned than Ellen White does. Indeed, Ellen White could hardly have made it any more clear.

FMA's ??
Females, males and animals?
Fish, mammals, angels?
Federal Management Agency?
First Mission Agreement?
Financial Management Analysis?

Well, it took awhile but I finally came to the conclusion it supposed to stand for -- free moral agents?

There's a big difference between
1)Christ could have sinned. (Yes, He could have!) and
2)The foreknowledge of God that Christ won't sin even though the battle would be severe.

When the prophet Daniel says concerning the dream in chapter 2--

---"the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure."--
He's not speaking of "conditional" promises.
(it is sure, it is certain) IT WILL HAPPEN as predicted.

"the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: ... and it shall stand for ever."

How could God reveal this to Daniel as "sure, certain" if it was just a "probablity"?



Foreknowledge and "fixed" isn't the same thing.

By creating beings that could reason and choose, sooner or later one of them would choose to rebel. Yes, God knew it would be Lucifer, but had He not created Lucifer, some other free moral being would have done it.
There was only one way to win the love and loyality of all and insure that sin would never again raise it's ugly head in the endless future ages and that was by allowing sin to show itself for what it was and for God to reveal His unselfish love in redeeming mankind from sin.

Yes! "FMA" = "Free Moral Agent." MM invented this TLA (three letter acronym), which is quite useful.



"Could have" can mean to different things. One is "theoretically, but not in actuality." Another is, "in actuality." According to the first idea, yes, Christ could have sinned, but not under the second, unless you wish to allow for the possibility that something God has foreseen is certain to happen won't.



This means that Daniel correctly told what the dream was and correctly interpreted it. It doesn't mean the prophecy wasn't conditional. Israel could have accepted Christ. Jeremiah 18 explains the principle.



That's not what was said, nor what was meant.



Because God foresaw it happening. That doesn't mean it might not have happened. God didn't make it happen. Men with free will made it happen. Again, Jer. 18 explains the principle. I'll quote it at the end of the post.




Yes, of course, but God can only foreknow the future as fixed if it really is fixed, because God foresees things as they are, not as they are not.



Only if there was something wrong with the way God created them. For example, consider Gabriel. Would he have rebelled if he were the only creature created? Suppose there were two created just like him. Or a billion. Would one of them have rebelled?

There's absolutely nothing in inspiration which suggests that by creating beings that could reason and choose, sooner or later of one them would choose to rebel. You are asserting, in other words, that sin was inevitable, once God chose to create free will beings. What inspiration says is that sin is a mystery for which no explanation can be given, and if one could be given, it would cease to be sin. Yet here an explanation is being given for it!: "Sooner or later one of them would choose to rebel."



There's no reason to think this is so. It's not so. Some other being *might* have done it, but perhaps no other being would have done it. There's certainly no reason a being should do it. There's no rational reason that perfectly created beings, who loved God and were created to love God and be loved by Him, should use their free will to choose to rebel. Why would they? Just because they could? That doesn't follow. If it did, then if God created only one being, say Gabriel, you could just as well argue that Gabriel would have eventually rebelled.



Another way, assuming the future were fixed (which assuming God foreknows a fixed future does assume) would have been for God simply not to have created beings He foresaw would sin. That wouldn't have impinged upon their freedom any, since they didn't exist, nor upon the beings that would exist, since sin doesn't increase freedom, but decreases it.

Here's the principle I mentioned from Jer. 18



The Israelites were arguing, like you are suggesting, that since Jeremiah had prophesied of Israel's doom, there was nothing that could be done about it, as it must happen, since it's prophecy. But Jeremiah explained (or rather, God explained, through Jeremiah) that this wasn't the case. If the nation upon whom God had foretold evil turned its way, the evil which God had foreseen need not occur. Similarly, in Jer. 18, God explains that if God foretells a blessing, the blessing is conditional upon obedience.