Context, Context, Context - Part 4

Predestination continued.

This point of view is one that I have come to after many years of study, prayer, and meditation on the relevant scriptures, taking all of them together in context, using the whole council of God. I see no inconsistency in my conclusion. Feel free to disagree and discuss any part of what I have written.

1 Peter 3:9
“To God's elect, strangers in the world, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia,who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood: Grace and peace be yours in abundance.” NIV

Here is where the term elect comes from. All the scriptures that I used last week also apply here. The big difference is the term foreknowledge as opposed to predestined. What this does is give further insight into unraveling this issue.
Here is how.
God is eternal and so he has to be, according to our temporal standard, the same past, present, and future. (Heb 13:8) God is not on a timeline, he sees everything simultaneously.
Given this eternal perspective he knew right from the outset, from the beginning of creation, who would choose to be saved and who would reject his salvation plan. The choice is ours, of our own free will. Does he draw us in? Yes. Everybody will be presented with the choice, whether or not it is accepted or received is an individual decision we make.
Here is the kicker: 2 Peter 3:9 “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”

God does not want anybody to perish so he has his salvation plan in place and EVERYBODY will have an opportunity to accept the plan or reject it. Being eternal he already knows who received his plan and trusted in Christ as savior.

This conclusion is what makes the most sense to me. I used the Bible in full context to arrive at this conclusion. This topic and the difficulty of it is one of the reasons I fell away for a while. I could not make sense of it where I was attending church and from what I was being taught. As always though, the spirit drew me back in. I dropped the “ology” and “ism” I was being taught, which freed my mind, and I have found a place where I can be comfortable and assured with the concept and conclusion I have arrived at.

Gods way are not our ways. God trying to teach us anything is tantamount to us trying to teach quantum physics to an amoeba, and this analogy still isn’t strong enough to describe the difference in intellect and nature of his being compared to ours.
We only have his book, the Bible, to go by. A small part of his knowledge is contained in this book and we are only capable of fully understanding a very small part of it. It contains an eternity of knowledge and we have but a lifetime to get to know what we can.

I pray that this has helped somebody today and until the next time, may the LORD bless us and keep us, in Jesus name I pray.