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| The doctrine of Predestination (Romans 8:30) |
Updated: 2026-09-18
Predestination is something that means something different to humans than it does for God in the context of the Bible, and it needs to be aligned. When you hear about this you'll say like - that doesn't sound fair, does it? The thought behind it tempts to think like God just picks out or plans for a person He chooses for that person to be one of His and be glorified. And in that sense it would not be fair. But it is not just like that at all.
The Bible does talk about predestination several times. Like in Romans 8:28-30:
28 And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. 29 For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. 30 Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.
We have take into account that God knew you before you were. Meaning before you even existed, God knew you. That is something huh? The Bible says also, that God saw the beginning and the end. This should trigger you to think that God saw all of history and the future before it was/is.
Thus God not only not knew you before you were, but He already know what you did and are about to do. It is just that we are still in the time living it - living our lives and decisions, but for God it already happened.
So God everything already happened from beginning to end, and He was there to witness all of it. In this context He already knew whom He would accept into His kingdom, and that is why God can say that He "predestined" people to be in His realm. The choices these people made in their lives was for God reason to allow them to be reborn and be glorified because they'd be in the image of Jesus Christ.
That is how I see predestination in the full picture.
See also Ephesians 1:3-11:
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, 5 having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, 6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.
7 In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace 8 which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, 9 having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, 10 that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth—in Him. 11 In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, 12 that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory.
So, before the foundation of the world, God knew His people, those whom He would choose, those whom He would adopt into His Kingdom, those whom He would form into the image of Christ for His glory.
Why is this fair? Because you cannot blame God for what He already knew. But, it is you who still has to makes your choices, you still have free will. So, don't wait, repent. Because Christ's return is near. Amen.
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| Love and Courage go Hand in Hand |
Updated: 2026-09-18
For people to understand Christian evangelicals for why they do what they do I write this for especially non-Christians to understand. Because in many cases some crowds are very hostile towards people who evangelize. And really it is because the crowd doesn't understand what really is going on. So let me explain.
No evangelical can make you believe
All an evangelical is meant to do is relay God's message to people, to tell them the good news. The good news is that there is hope for redemption of all what you did wrong for all of your life. So that is what it is about. And the context of the good news, is what we call the Gospel.
But like the prophets in the old days, nobody has the power to make you believe in God because it is a condition of the heart, not the mind. Many people don't want to know about God and those people mostly do not stop and listen what an evangelical has to say. Others for some reason get mad or even hostile to the evangelical which is really unjustified if you read on.
But no matter what is being said there are only few that hear the calling, and the rest does not believe and has no interest. Because a hardened heart does not want to know the Gospel.
Learned to Love
So, Christians are commanded by our Lord to love their neighbors like they love themselves. Because He has made all there is, and He made it for all of which some are good and most are evil in His eyes. But loving they neighbor is a very difficult command, but we are to love you. And there more reason for this. Every soul is born into this world with a biological mother and father, but with a spiritual father as well. He is called Satan. The Gospel is there to have a person reborn of the spiritual father called God the Father.
God the Father gave all free will to choose, which spiritual father you will belong to. But of course that has consequences. If you are of your father the devil, you'll end up in hell. And if you are spiritually reborn, because you repented, belonging to God the Father, you'll end up in heaven.
So, an evangelical like any other (real) Christian see where you end up. It is very simple, those who deny Jesus Christ will not end up good. And because the powers of darkness and the temptations of the world have clouded you and hardened your heart to some degree, there is a whole spiritual fortress of walls surrounding you, to not hear, or not want to hear the Truth.
That is what a Christian sees, and it is a painful sight, looking at someone and knowing what will be of him. That is also our love, that we want to tell you the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The only Gospel. And if you don't hear or don't want to hear, because we know it is confronting sometimes, then show a little love back to the evangelical because he knows what people think about Jesus, about Christianity. He could be shout at, ridiculed, humiliated and in some cases even attacked. Yet he stands there for you, to save you. Because he himself has nothing to gain in this world by doing that. He stands there because he was commanded by God to do so and show love for those who do not love God.
The Bible says that spreading the Word is like a farmer throwing seed on the ground. He waters it a little and then goes to bed. There is nothing he can do. But if ground is good, a miracle happens, the seed grows into a plant. That is what the evangelical does. In this analogy the ground is the heart. And the one who hears the Word with a good heart the Wonder of Grace may fall upon that person. Because just like the seed growing, that is God's work. You did control your own biological birth, neither do you control your spiritual rebirth. You'll only receive grace by God's will, not by yours. God sees if there are still things standing between Him and you.
The evangelical
My point in all this is, because it is confronting to most people; in essence Christians are saying, watch out for yourselves, your path leads to hell. And that is right in a sensitive spot with most people because they find themselves really good. That is why some are getting angry and say all sort of nasty things to evangelicals. Kind of confirms the path, but they don't see that. But it takes real courage, because I haven't done any of this evangelical stuff, and love for people to stand out there and preach the Gospel. So next if you see an evangelical preaching, be nice....
Jesus did not come to bring peace to this world
The world is in the hands of the dark powers and we get from birth only set of moral values that are prone to be eliminated (hardened hearts) - making a person more evil. There is war going on in your head if you try to do God's will, which is the only good there is. But there is no war when doing bad stuff but excitement. That is how you start-moral set will be destroyed. That is why good parenting is so essential. And to know what is good, you need an all knowing righteous and loving God, and He shows it in the Bible.
Many young believers are in war with themselves. Much more then ever. This is the work of the Holy Spirit that is makes attentive to the will of God. The balance of the constant war in your head will be much more won by God the Father versus the Devil, because heart will be changed.
The world will never, never be at peace, but Christians receive the un-explainable inner peace of Christ. That is why we stay happy in the Lord even when hell breaks loose here on earth. Amen.
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| The answer to Evil in the World |
Updated: 2026-09-13
Whenever you talk about only true living God who is holy and loving with non-believers, most of them determine that God does not exist because of all the evil there is in the world. Because if He would exists, He would intervene. Most even forget how evil they are themselves in the Eyes of God, but non-believers mostly don't see that because they consider themselves to be good. Me and my wife were once on holiday in France in the beautiful beach town of Noir Moutier and we met an older couple, and the lady of this couple has once been an army nurse, while the husband was a retired commander of a British aircraft carrier.
Exactly the same response came from her on the account that God cannot exist because there is so much evil in the world, and that she had seen of a lot of suffering as a nurse because of it.
Nevertheless, the God of the Bible is viewed by non-believers as such or as a God to be portrayed as evil, which is actually to the God of the Bible blasphemy. Seculars, liberals, non-believers do not expect an answer back to the question of "God and evil in the world" because it is also a challenge to most Christians who do not know what to say about this subject. But reading the Bible you already should come up with some answers.
I could also narrow it down with this video of John MacArthur at 2007 Ligonier Conference pastoring the sermon: The Problem of Evil. It is a little more than an hour. John does a very good job here in explaining why there is evil. I think rather there is not "The Problem of Evil" - but as there is a good answer to it, how we going to explain this in short? This might be the real problem as most walk away from lengthy explanations. As Christians we are in the prime directive of saving people who actually want to hear, so I will make an effort, at the end to write the answer in short.
What I will not do is going through John's different theodicies that are also in the video, I'll keep it as general as I can without digging too deep. Otherwise if you are interested, follow the video link above.
The central question will be: How can God be loving and allow massive evil to dominate the world?
John MacArthur used what he called a flow to what is known to the Christian and what is reality:
- Evil exists.
- God Exists.
- God allowed evil to exist.
1. Evil exists
Evil exists, this is a mere fact. But there are few things to understand first about God and the origin of evil:
- The Bible, in which God reveals Himself for His Glory, is not the author of evil neither the approver of evil. God is Holy and Good. He is the only Sovereign, He is in full of control of everything and God is omnipresent and righteous among other of His Holy character properties.
- Evil originated from heaven, as God created the Angels, and some of them began to rebel against God. Pride was the first sin of Lucifer because he was proud of all his accomplishments and self-pride does not give God glory, but yourself. And God created Lucifer, back then also nicknamed the morning star, so God should get the Glory for everything. And self-pride also invoked jealousy, Lucifer became jealous of God and God's glory. Lucifer wanted the glory for himself.
See how much pride there is in society today. The fallen are even parading their shame and showing self-pride. The beginning of self-pride was the root evil. And see what you get from it. All of which show's no pride to God. And God is the only One to be proud of because God is good. Understand that God made you and everything around you what you can see, and what you cannot see. Nothing, but nothing you have is earned. All what you see, feel, have eat, hear etc... all of it was given by God, the Word and the Holy Spirit - all of Whom are God. So God is the only One is to be praised for anything and everything, for nothing is or exists without Him. And God owns all that exists and is Sovereign over all that exists.
So, proud of yourself? Really!
John MacArthur gave a list of several kinds of evil:
- Natural evil
- Moral evil
- Supernatural evil
- Eternal evil
Natural evil is all the evil that comes with the fall, every thing is breaking down, there are dangerous bacteria and viruses, really bad weather, droughts, famines etc. The increasing frequency of natural disasters we experience nowadays was already predicted in Matthew 24 on the big sermon of the mount. Lots of earthquakes, disasters etc in the end-time. According to what we know and of the passing of years the signs the end-time is now in full progress. Important of this sermon is that everything bad will increase in frequency - and will get worse and worse.
Moral evil is something the devil does not need to exploit because that is sin of the flesh, man is quite capable to sin morally which involves transgressions, wickedness of all sorts and sin. And God has seen that not one human is good, not one, see Romans 3:12.
Supernatural evil is the devil's work and his demons. This works in a way of we cannot see but only notice. The devil can put ideas in your head and then you have to choose. If you choose the devil idea's you will be sinning. Then there are events that are described in the book of Job. Here you see that God allowed Satan to go after Job's family to show that Job will not turn his back on God when misfortune hits him. God ordained it, but Satan was not allowed to decide what to do for himself. In the end Job never knew why it all happened (, see Job 38-42,) and he did not question the Creator.
Blame
- God was surprised when evil came into play
- God has no power over evil or He choose not to interfere with evil
- God has limited power
- God has limited knowledge
- God is a learning God, He does not know what happens next, He learns more as time progresses...
All of this is mumbo-jumbo. If these so-called evangelicals would care to read the Bible - then they'd know they all of these are countered by the Word.
God saw the beginning and the end of creation, read Isaiah 46:8-11. What does that mean exactly? That means in my humble interpretation that He Who Is and always was and Who is forever, all powerful and timeless, could see the beginning and the end of creation before creation itself. The Bible says that God knew you before you were (Jeremiah 1:5, Psalm 139:13-16, Ephesians 1:1-6). That should give you a big hint. So, God has already been through everything seen everything, knows every outcome, knows what we are going to do and knows before hand what He is going to do. But we are still experiencing everything in this thing He created for us: space-time. Strange huh? And in the Ephesians reference above you'll see a doctrine that is because of this reason not well understood: the Doctrine of Election. If God says Himself that He know you before you were, and saw the end of the beginning, that means to me that He knows everything before it happens. That is why God knows before hand who He will accept to His Kingdom and who will not be accepted. So, can He say He elected people from the foundation of the world before they were? Yes of course! It is that simple, but yet hard to grasp for us that God is way ahead while we are in the middle of it.
Make no mistake, just because God has seen every outcome and does His will in the mean time, does not mean that you are not responsible for your actions. Because those are the choices you made, or about to make. God just has seen it already, but your actions, your thoughts, the choices are still yours.
So what shall we say about evil? God is not the author of evil. The human heart is. And before creation, Satan was (then Lucifer). Through Lucifer and Adam and Eve death came into existence knowing good and evil. But death was not the end of creation. It was the merely curse of sin. Because the wages of sin is death. And God foresaw all of this. But God saw also the beginning and the end knowing not all will perish, and therefore God setup a redemption plan where He Himself will bring salvation to the world for whomever believes in Him. And He came as the Messiah, as Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, the Word, He Who has spoken everything into existence. Without the Word, Jesus Christ, nothing is made.
The highest gift of all for all is free will. And, boy, do we mostly choose for other things then for God. And that is why there is so much evil in the world. Because people are evil by birth and we are of the devil - as the Bible says. Only when you repent, when you choose God to be your Father, only then you will see how evil you were yourself and how evil the world is. For real Christians it is a struggle every day as we are confronted by the Father and Jesus through the Holy Spirit.
2 God Exists
3 God willed evil to exist
1 Chronicles 29:10-14 David's Prayer:
10 David praised the Lord in the presence of the whole assembly, saying, “Praise be to you, Lord, the God of our father Israel, from everlasting to everlasting.
11 Yours, Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours. Yours, Lord, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all.
12 Wealth and honor come from you; you are the ruler of all things. In your hands are strength and power to exalt and give strength to all.
13 Now, our God, we give you thanks, and praise your glorious name.
The Short Answer
For closure A Prayer
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| SHORTS: Forrest Gump - Satan is as Satan does |
Date: 2026-08-09
Forrest Gump
In 1994 the movie Forrest Gump was released and I watched it back then I thought it was a beautiful movie. It kind a hurt to see if Forrest was called stupid in that movie. But then he'd say: Stupid is as stupid does. And that cought me. Because here we talk personality. Not a flattering one but personalities are formed from the heart, I think. The Bible says of what the heart is full of the mouth speaks. And also people's deeds are conforming to what the heart is like.
Like a greedy heart, tries to buy all kinds of stuff, or steals.
So in the light of religion, we have the evil one, who is all evil. And Satan and his demons puts evil ideas in the minds of everyone to keep them from getting saved. If a secular gets killed he cannot be saved anymore. Then the score, as it were, is for Satan. So he's a murderer, a liar, an adolitrer, a thief, a deceiver... all the evil you can think of is of him. He puts the ideas in the minds of people.
While in fact the Bible clearly says the Law of God, which is good, knowing also good and evil, is written in the hearts of men. That means that everyone knows good and evil for a fair extend. We have free will but the devil tempts you in doing the things that are his. He cannot make you do things that are his. He tempts you in all kinds of ways.
I think that no one can deny that good and evil is rooted in the hearts of all of mankind. But that is just a sense of the first kind. The better sense is having the Holy Spirit to indwell you because He will battle Satan for you if you choose the path of Jesus in every decision you make. Call upon the Name of the Lord and all demons will flee from you. There is a Spiritual battle going on and people have no idea, because you can't see it, hear it or smell it. But it is in your thoughts, your mind. That is being battled over almost constantly. Because if the mind is turned often enough the heart follows.
Evil of the flesh
There is evil and evil. There is some evil that Satan does not really have to battle over, and that is evil of the flesh. We are made of flesh and we can sin from the flesh. Like eating and drinking too much is a sin, it is gluttony. Then there are sexual sins etc.
That is why all of man is in emnity with God, because we were built this way and we have Satan and his demons indwelling everyone to do sin. No one can say, I have never sinned or never done any evil. Therefore we are doomed from the start. The Bible says if you have not repented, read also "have the Holy Spirit indwell you", you are of your father the devil. The point here is, you cannot change to a good person according to God without Godly help. As God is the opposite of the world. So any good you think you did or how good you think you are because of your works means nothing to God - because you are not familiar of what is Godly-good.
The curse of the law is, if you do not repent you will be judged by the law. And all your sins will accumulate to an everlasting punishment. So if you want to be adopted by The Father who made you. You have to choose Him. And by rebirth you'll be forgiven by the Grace of God and renewed over time and then The Father is your Father.
Evil is as evil does
So if we come to the equation Satan is as Satan does - and Satan == evil, then evil is as evil does.
And that totally personifies Satan. Then how is it even possible to say that in some religions, and we know which, you can lie, rape, be a child molester, abuse women and murder etc in the name of your god - and call it "good". It goes even against the simplest rules of the Law written in the hearts of men.
This is blasphemic to the real Living God, because you are not good and your father is still Satan. And Satan knows his verdict already, but the same is for all his followers. I would recommend to take a good look at good and evil before you go on believing what you are believing.
Even worse are people who don't even know what they believe. They just say that they are of some religion but if you confront them with aspects of their religion they become violent or angry like they are being insulted, but you just point out to their own scriptures. But these people just don't look any further to look for the only and True Living God. Just because you are born into some religion does not make you less guilty for not questioning your belief.
Measure your belief at least to what is wrong or right. You may not know of all what is sinful, but at least you have sense of good and evil. Abusing women is wrong, and the God of Abraham says that we are to love our women, then know what kind of doctrine you are dealing with. All of which is not of God is of demons, so its a devine doctrine or a doctrine of demons.
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