What you are proposing would seem to violate this:
2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.
And yet men do perish in their sins.
God cannot will anything in vain.
You cannot or should not deny a scripture that speaks so plainly of one thing even though on the face of it ,it contradicts another.
Tell me :
When Adam and Eve ate of that tree.
WHO's will did they do?
God's?
or the serpents?
Yet in doing the will of the serpent did they not die?
Yet as you point out Gods will cannot be thwarted nor is it in vain.
But that is not because he is bigger than all and can therefore compell all into submission. Thats not Gods way.
For" His strength is made perfect in weakness"
God revealed His eternal will when he said "Lest ye die...."
His will therefore was man should live and not die.
Now do you realy think that the devil somehow got the upper hand on God even for a second? or ever has?
Man is made in the image of God.
God by His own free will said "Let there be light"
The road to calvary did nto start at Bethelehem.But with those words.
For do you not know God knows the end from the beginning?
That he has revealed himsel;f through the scriptures as a "husbandman" Both in Word and practice. For he" planted a garden east of Eden"
Now even a farmer knows the harvest he will reap or the fruit that will grow by the seed that is planted ,does he not?
Well how much the more does God?
For is it not written and recorded the Words of jesus that the kingdom of God is likened unto a sower that whent to sow.Or like unto a good man who sowed good seed in his feild but while MEN slept his enemy came and sowed tares?
Know ye not that God is not mocked whatsoever a man sows that shall he reap?
Now if A&E believed the serpent and died .Are we then to assume that Gods eternal will was thwarted?
of course not.
For the first Adam was made a living soul the last (Adam)a quickening Spirit.
Did not Jesus say "The devil has come to steal to kill and to destroy,but I have come that ye might have LIFE and life more abundantly"?
Is it not written "My Word that goerth forth out of my mouth shall not return unto me void but shall acomplish that where unto I sent it"?
Is not Jesus the Word made flesh?Who proceedeth from the father?
So How is gods will thwarted because men do not believe?
Have you forgotten that the children of Isreal are given for our ensample?
That through thier unbelief they were cut off and through our belief we were grafted in.Albeit we are the wild branch and they the naural.
Now if they were cut off through unbelief do you not think that if the gentiles fall into unbelief that they will not be cut off also.
and if the Jews now believe they will be grafted back in.(romans 11)
How then is Gods will in vain if men do not believe?
it is not.
in very truth when a person is truly BORN again by the Word of God and the Spirit of God. Then they do but enter into that eternal will of God preordianed and determined from before the foundations of the world.
This is even from the beginning even from Able.
Therefore it IS Gods will that NONE should perish but that ALL should come to a knowldge of the truth.
That those who perish and do not is not to Gods shame but to thiers and it is to Gods glory that His will was such and is.
"For havign loved them he loved them to the end"
When Jesus the Lord of the feast dipped his bread into his wine strached out his hand and offered it to Judas. That is an underserving honour to the one to whom it is offered.
It is no coincidence then that it is written :
"In the night he was betrayed ;He took bread and ....."
For on the night of the deepest intamacy and fellowship he was betrayed by one sitting at his own table.
Did not david speak of it as settign a table before my enemies?
The Lords hand is still streched out .Offerign mercy and reconciliation to God.
If men do not accept that .Gods will has not changed.
For jesus knowing that he would betray Him still by an act of will held out his hand.
That Judas rejected that mercy left only judgement.
The gentiles have no excuse.
Even as the generation of Noah had no excuse.
For if you add up the days.
You will find Adam still living almost to the time of Noah.
They had Enoch.
and then they ahd the 125 years of Noahs warnings and the preaching of rightousness.
It is written that "Noah condemned his generation"
The generation of Abaraham had no excuse either.
For Noah lived up to the time of Abraham.
God was justyfied then and they condemned.
The gentiles have no excuse either .
For they have the Jews as thier ensample.
an Unbroken line bearing witness to the laws and the prophest of God.
The gentiles therefore have no excuse and if they all perished .Gods will is done and not thwarted and he is judtyfioed and gloryfied in it all.
But those who have believed and by thier lives and words bare witness to the as yet unseen blazing sun.
Who are the light in a world of darkness.
Then they too condemn those who do not believe the truth.
Or rather "they who do not believe are condemned already" For they have not believed on Him whom God has sent"
God is NOT willing that any should perish. TRUE.
if a man finds himself in hell.
It is because he has resisted that will and loved darkness more than the light.
To resist the irisistable is to bring destruction down upon your own head.
To deny the irifutable is to bring damnation to your soul.
in Christ
gerald
