Re: Blind religion vs. obvious Truth.

Yes, some good scriptures there. You said:

'Free will and God's control of all things go together. Free will in no way rules God though. One of the best examples we have of this is the crucifixion of Christ. God accomplished exactly what he set out to accomplish from the foundation of the world with the crucifixion of His son. Yet those that killed him acted in their free will. They wanted to kill Jesus.'

Yes I agree with you for the most part. The free will of God's children and the plan and workings of God go together, but I just don't think that this necessarily means God controls all things. Yes, when God sent Jesus to the Earth, He knew He would be crucified by evil people. He knew the minds of those people and their evil intent and He placed His Son there to be crucified. But I don't think that God placed those malicious thoughts and actions of the people in their own minds. I think that came from the forces of Satan and those people using their free will incorrectly, and God knowing their hearts and actions, used them to accomplish His purposes and I believe this is typically, the way that God works. If God really controlled everything, there would be no free will because He would place all thoughts and intentions directly into every person.

Romans 9 is an interesting scripture, and does seem to say God can create evil people just to be destroyed and He can create good people to be glorified. But it can't just all be God creating good people to be uplifted and bad people to be destroyed, otherwise there is no point to all of existence. We see that bad people can use their free will to ask for the God's mercy and He grants it to Him. God could force someone to come to Him and ask for mercy if He wanted to. But I don't think that is the way God works. I mean the whole mission of Christ and the writings of the apostles are all there so that we can use our free will to receive God's mercy. If God is the one causing us to ask for mercy and it is not our own free will, then none of the scriptures or life as we know it makes any sense.

I don't know, generally I do agree that God guides most events and things that happen. It is just when you say God controls everything that I can't agree with completely. Because if God controlled everything, He would also control our thoughts and desires and would nullify any free will that we possessed. If He controlled everything, He wouldn't need to use scriptures and prophets. He would just control our minds to make us repent. I don't know, I still don't think any of these scriptures say conclusively that God controls every single thing that happens on this Earth.

How I look at it and how it seems to make sense to me from the scriptures, is God allows all people to use their free will and those that repent and receive God's mercy are uplifted and those that don't come to Him receive their deserved punishment, not because He wants to punish them but because it is a direct result of their sinful nature and their refusal to receive God's grace. When there are atrocities and catastrophes, that is a result of the sinful nature of man using their free will incorrectly and rejecting God's grace. Anyone that receives God's grace will live in bliss and peace forever, anyone that doesn't will live in suffering in this world and beyond. I also think God can and does use suffering and misery that is a result of sin to draw people away from sin and to Him, and that is why there is suffering and misery, due to the sinful state of man.