The Hiddeness Of God

[Jill]

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[Michelle]

Michelle wrote: "What do you mean by, "this gives me knowledge. A kind of hidden knowledge, that of experience."

To read scripure, to get these Ideas into me, I find that I am changed. I have consoling whole thoughts. I am changed by the ideas I read in scripture. Believing came by reading, hearing, and seeing, for me. Not because I'm any sort of elect or pre-elect kind of being. I am nothing special and that's why I have absolute certainty that those who read, study, and follow these writings of Jesus Christ, and those that do the same, can experience healing and happiness. Anyone. Even, I believe, a child of hell whos just sick and tired of hell. I also believe that everyone born, is in the arena now of this one great living God. Everyone.Not just some kind of elect group, or of elect secret sayings. This scripture is public.

Okay, I gotcha. I agree, scripture is public and anyone can believe. You talked about hidden knowledge before, something about experiential knowledge, I think. What do you mean by that? Why do YOU think some believe, but others don't? Does it have something to do with the knowledge of experience?

[Jill]

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[Michelle]

Cars, the net, tv, colors, rauchus, so many toys, how cute we are, Ophra....
(gotta go ).

So things of this life crowd out spiritual thoughts?

[Suzana]

....And I still don't know why some believe and others don't. That's one of the things about Calvinism that's attractive to me; you have an answer for that puzzling question.

But I think the Calvinist answer to that one puzzling question opens up too many other unanswerable questions and contradicts the core meaning & sense of God’s dealings with man as revealed in the Scriptures as a whole.

I have also found it incomprehensible that all those people who saw the many miracles of Jesus would then turn away from Him.
I’ve come to the conclusion that, in the end, people will only believe what they choose to believe, regardless of the evidence:

Joh 3:17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through Him.
Joh 3:19 And this is the condemnation, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than the Light, because their deeds were evil.
Joh 3:20 For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light, lest his deeds should be exposed.

I think people count the cost, & find the price too high. If they acknowledge the existence of God, they might need to respond in some way….and if they prefer to remain independent & run their own lives, it’s a lot easier to remain deceived & wilfully discount evidence of God.
Jesus’ parable of the sower probably has some bearing on this also.

[Michelle]

But I think the Calvinist answer to that one puzzling question opens up too many other unanswerable questions and contradicts the core meaning & sense of God’s dealings with man as revealed in the Scriptures as a whole.

Yep, that's my problem. It answers one nagging question, but opens up a whole series of more difficult problems, I think.

I have also found it incomprehensible that all those people who saw the many miracles of Jesus would then turn away from Him.
I’ve come to the conclusion that, in the end, people will only believe what they choose to believe, regardless of the evidence:

Joh 3:17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through Him.
Joh 3:19 And this is the condemnation, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than the Light, because their deeds were evil.
Joh 3:20 For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light, lest his deeds should be exposed.

I think people count the cost, & find the price too high. If they acknowledge the existence of God, they might need to respond in some way….and if they prefer to remain independent & run their own lives, it’s a lot easier to remain deceived & wilfully discount evidence of God.
Jesus’ parable of the sower probably has some bearing on this also.

I agree.

[mikew]

The parable of the sower appears more to be an explanation why many had fallen away before the kingdom of God came.
Matt 13
13:3 He spoke to them many things in parables, saying, “Behold, a farmer went out to sow. 13:4 As he sowed, some seeds fell by the roadside, and the birds came and devoured them. 13:5 Others fell on rocky ground, where they didn’t have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, because they had no depth of earth. 13:6 When the sun had risen, they were scorched. Because they had no root, they withered away. 13:7 Others fell among thorns. The thorns grew up and choked them. 13:8 Others fell on good soil, and yielded fruit: some one hundred times as much, some sixty, and some thirty. 13:9 He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” (WEB)

Jesus was the sower while on earth. This parable then explained that some people heard the gospel to whom the message wasn't intended -- intended to change their lives. The were not the prepared soil. But they naturally reacted to the gospel with joy yet could not sustain the seed.

Its interesting along this line of thought that if there wasn't persecution of the church in the first century that the gospel likely would have spread so quickly that the alternate doctrines and gospels would overwhelm the true gospel. As it was Paul had enough trouble keeping the believers away from the law and fleshly behavior.

But what is important is that the sower only intended to sow seed in the field. The field is where the seed should grow. And we can't blame the soil along the road for being hard, this is how a road is supposed to be. Again, the rocky ground was not designed or prepared for the seed.

Now the subsequent parable about the wheat and tares showed that Jesus sowed the good seed. So when and where He planted that seed, the wheat grew. Never in that parable was it seen where wheat became tares or tares became wheat.

So the good seed was wheat seed (the wheat seed being the gospel of the kingdom) and the intended field was the good soil. This parable then doesn't get into the discussion about counting the costs or choosing Christ.

[Suzana]

But what is important is that the sower only intended to sow seed in the field. The field is where the seed should grow. And we can't blame the soil along the road for being hard, this is how a road is supposed to be. Again, the rocky ground was not designed or prepared for the seed.

True-in real life. And in the parable of the wheat & tares, Jesus said the field was the world.
I realise that parables can't perfectly reflect reality, but to me it sounds like Jesus was blaming the rocky ground for not being good soil:

Mat 13:14 And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah which said, "By hearing you shall hear and shall not understand; and seeing you shall see and shall not perceive;
Mat 13:15 for this people's heart has become gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and they have closed their eyes, lest at any time they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them."

The one that I was particularly thinking of originally was the following verse, although it doesn't really address people not believing in the first place, but rather why they fell away after:

Luke 8:14 (KJV) And that which fell among thorns are they, which, when they have heard, go forth, and are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection.

[darinhouston]

But what is important is that the sower only intended to sow seed in the field. The field is where the seed should grow. And we can't blame the soil along the road for being hard, this is how a road is supposed to be. Again, the rocky ground was not designed or prepared for the seed.

That sounds like a particularly Reformed understanding of the passage. I would not agree that the road was "intended" to be hard or that the seed was only intended for the field. Jesus seems to simply be describing the truth of life. I think your interpretation relies on a presupposition you bring to the passage.

[Michelle]

The one that I was particularly thinking of originally was the following verse, although it doesn't really address people not believing in the first place, but rather why they fell away after:

Luke 8:14 (KJV) And that which fell among thorns are they, which, when they have heard, go forth, and are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection.

Seer originally asked why God doesn't make himself more obvious to unbelievers, and I think the ones who fall away are part of the answer. Even some who do believe at first don't carry on to bring fruit to perfection, so how would in-your-face evidence that God exists result in more true disciples?