Amo 4:7 "I also withheld the rain from you when there were yet three months to the harvest; I would send rain on one city, and send no rain on another city; one field would have rain, and the field on which it did not rain would wither;
Amo 4:8 so two or three cities would wander to another city to drink water, and would not be satisfied; yet you did not return to me," declares the LORD.
Amo 4:9 "I struck you with blight and mildew; your many gardens and your vineyards, your fig trees and your olive trees the locust devoured; yet you did not return to me," declares the LORD.
Amo 4:10 "I sent among you a pestilence after the manner of Egypt; I killed your young men with the sword, and carried away your horses, and I made the stench of your camp go up into your nostrils; yet you did not return to me," declares the LORD.
Amo 4:11 "I overthrew some of you, as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were as a brand plucked out of the burning; yet you did not return to me," declares the LORD.
Judging by many of these posts, many still do not see the sovereignty of God to return to Him in this. We really have invented a god after our own image.
Good point Harley. Instead they ridicule Him.
They want a god that caters to their feelings and their accomplishments and their desires. A god that follows them. It amazes me how much scripture twisting occurs to accomplish that. They don't realize that it is all about His glory, His worthiness, and our unworthiness. Only when we realize that and give Him the glory do we really get what we crave - peace with God through Christ.
IMO it's reflective of our culture. As a people we now take a dim view of stern fathers who discipline their children. Discipline, rigor and pleasure deferred are negative concepts. Fathers-if they are even taken into consideration at all-are expected to be "mommies with facial hair." God hardly comports with our modern gelded father-concept, so we must give Him a new image. A rebranded God for our shallow, superficial generation. Huggy Jesus, if you will. Huggy Jesus would never allow anything bad to happen to anyone, yet bad things happen, ergo Huggy Jesus isn't in control. He's watching from a distance, wringing His hands and hoping it all works out OK.
Phew...off the soapbox now.
“”What amazes me is that very few Christians on this seem to actually believe in a sovereign Lord””
Catholicism believes God is sovereign,but we understand God can ONLY be sovereign good and only will good.God would be imperfect if He were to will any evil ,thus God would be moved and in error and lack the perfection of perfect goodness.
To believe in double predestination is to limit God to time where he somehow does not know free will decisions, or even worse, to think God creates life for the purpose of hell,thus sacrificing life for the devil and being subordinate to evil
The only reason for those who think they are already saved to believe that God predestined someone for hell is to think your own personal sin means nothing. If you keep sinning the same sins and think this way than you really don’t love the sacrifice of Christ but rather love the sin more than the sacrifice of Christ
Here is some Aquinas for you to ponder upon
That God cannot will Evil
EVERY act of God is an act of virtue, since His virtue is His essence .
2. The will cannot will evil except by some error coming to be in the reason, at least in the matter of the particular choice there and then made. For as the object of the will is good, apprehended as such, the will cannot tend to evil unless evil be somehow proposed to it as good; and that cannot be without error.* But in the divine cognition there can be no error . 3. God is the sovereign good, admitting no intermixture of evil 4. Evil cannot befall the will except by its being turned away from its end. But the divine will cannot be turned away from its end, being unable to will except by willing itself . It cannot therefore will evil; and thus free will in it is naturally established in good. This is the meaning of the texts: God is faithful and without iniquity (Deut. xxxii, 4); Thine eyes are clean, O Lord, and thou canst not look upon iniquity (Hab. i, 13).