[P-Marlowe]

I wonder sometimes if the intensely purposeful anti-God or anti-Christianity people are not major actors in accomplishing God's will - like Pharaoh whose heart was hardened, Esau, Judas or even Satan:

And I have wondered whether or not the term "vessels of Wrath" as used in Romans 9, refers (at least on some level) to everyone God has used to Chasten his people or to bring judgment upon nations.

It does appear from that passage that these "vessels of wrath" have no individual power over the use to which God put them to.

In many ways the Hebrew people were used as vessels of wrath to carry out God's judgment on people like the Amalekites. Did that mean that because God fashioned them to be vessels of wrath, that they were destined for Hell? It doesn't appear so, does it. Indeed David was a vessel of God's wrath against the enemies of Israel.

We are all vessels in the hands of God. Sometimes the best of men are used by God as vessels of wrath.

Just some food for thought.

[CynicalBear]

God did use their evil to punish His people and will use them again in the future.

Ezekiel 38

[metmom]

It’s an excellent point.

[metmom]

Another thought. Since God foreknew who would and would not be saved, if He chooses to use those who would never repent as vessels of wrath, who are they to complain?

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so very much for sharing your insights, dear brother in Christ!

Whereas I strongly agree that God may use most anyone - believer or not - to carry out His judgments, the "vessels of wrath" in Romans 9 must be "fitted to destruction:"

[What] if God, willing to shew [his] wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory, - Romans 9:22-23

We Christians were not made for His wrath:

For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, - I Th 5:9

Indeed that passage indicates we are warriors for the light, against the darkness:

Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness.

Therefore let us not sleep, as [do] others; but let us watch and be sober. For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night.

But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation.

For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, - I Th 5:4-9

God's Name is I AM.

[HarleyD]

And I have wondered whether or not the term "vessels of Wrath" as used in Romans 9, refers (at least on some level) to everyone God has used to Chasten his people or to bring judgment upon nations. It does appear from that passage that these "vessels of wrath" have no individual power over the use to which God put them to. In many ways the Hebrew people were used as vessels of wrath to carry out God's judgment on people like the Amalekites.

A very good point P-M. And when the Israelites ran into the Promise Land and failed to do God's will, God set in motion to have the people of the land be a "snare" to the Israelites as a tool of chastisement:

Jdg 2:1 Now the angel of the LORD went up from Gilgal to Bochim. And he said, "I brought you up from Egypt and brought you into the land that I swore to give to your fathers. I said, 'I will never break my covenant with you,

Jdg 2:2 and you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall break down their altars.' But you have not obeyed my voice. What is this you have done?

Jdg 2:3 So now I say, I will not drive them out before you, but they shall become thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare to you."