“So God created Souls he wished to destroy?”
They’re not destroyed. They’re tortured in hell for an eternity. And the answer is, most definitely. God created the elect for salvation, and God created the reprobate for condemnation.
Pro_16:4 The LORD hath made all things for himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil.
If he did not, then God allowed people to be born who literally have no purpose from Him, whom He foreknew would sin and damn themselves for all eternity, when He could have stopped them being born in the first place. Or, at least, could have sent an evangelist to them, instead of leaving them in some Mongolian place where they will never hear the Gospel, and therefore would not even have the opportunity to be saved at all.
Hence the verse, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and whom I will I hardeneth.”
God has no obligation to save us in the first place. When Adam sinned, he died, and all his offspring died with him. We, before salvation, are all spiritually dead, having noting but sin in our flesh and a desire for evil in our minds. We are all the enemies of God, a damned race, and therefore not one of us is worthy of mercy.
“And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)”
(Eph 2:1-5)
But thanks be to God, that He chose us in Himself before the foundation of the world, so that though we were utterly depraved and great enemies of His, yet He plucks us out of the greater damnation of the world and brought us infallibly to eternal life.
An omnipotent God creates a race he knows will choose knowledge of good and evil, and then continues to create souls to be damned (destroyed, eternal suffering).
That is a faith thing I struggle with and a bitter pill. We are created in the image of God, and I find that act fundamentally wrong. A Natural Wrong as it were. Then you have to accept God as he is, not as we wish him to be. Which I have but the full magnitude of this cannot be discounted. The abject HORROR of this thing!!! It boggles the mind and fully twist the concept of fairness as humans grasp fairness.
So do we bargain? Are we gamblers? Do we accept this out of fear? Does God accept those who choose out of fear alone this monstrous proposition?
So the God of agape created some with the sole intent of condemning them to eternal suffering. That would make him the god of cruelty.
No thinks I will stick with the God of Love.
This is something I've struggled with for years. If I think I'm saved, asked for the Lord to forgive my sins, and done my best to try to live as a Christian, yet when I finally pass from this life, I find myself in Hell, with no chance whatever to escape. Then, at the Final Judgement, God informs me that I was never His, no matter what I believed?
If that is truly the case, then that IS monstrous. It's the ultimate crapshoot, the ultimate gamble. You THINK you're winning, and end up losing at all in the end.
I will believe in OSAS and call it good, thank you.
Yes indeed Amazing Grace how sweet the sound.