Since nothing like this has ever been uttered by
@Brian2 or myself, I’m pretty sure it was the Jehovah Witnesses and not us that convinced you of this.
God KNEW what would happen if they sinned, and He knew what would happen if they didn’t.
I'm not sure how you arrived to the former conclusion without concluding the latter.
Of course not! That’s not Christianity’s God, that’s a WT God.
A WT God doesn’t know our future, much less His own. So of course He’s going to “wring his hands” and say “Oh, what am I going to do?”! Why? Because such a God is clueless! He's vastly smaller in size, scope, grandeur and majesty than the God we find in the Christian bible.
How long will the WT's God remain clueless? Until the WT say differently! We all know that if the next issue of the WT claims "new light" and states God is all knowing, every single Jehovah Witness, all 8 million of you, will fall in line. In fact, you will wonder how you could have ever believed otherwise.
Then please tell us what is “wrong” about my perception of your belief because from what you and others have said, and from my numerous studies with JW’s, it seems pretty “right” to me.
You yourself stated it would be “cruel” of God to have allowed us to be born if He knew we would be defective! I cannot fathom the reasoning behind that. I have a cousin who is severely disabled. She cannot eat without assistance. She cannot talk. She cannot walk. She is blind. She wears an adult diaper. She does feel and she can hear and smell. Her mother knew she would be severely disabled before she was born but decided to go to term because she loved her baby.
It amazes me that you would think this was an “ungodly” act, but that is exactly what you are telling me when you say God would not have created mankind if He knew we would be “defective”. Yes, you say, He would have aborted mankind immediately!!
And then we have the other end of the spectrum where you tell us it is cruel to give someone life in punishment, but far less cruel to kill them instead. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever and nothing you have posted so far has enlightened us as to why it would.
My goodness you do jump around and I’m still trying to get answers to the OP!! You're not trying to change the subject, are you? I'd really like to know what was convincing in the "kill rather than punish", "abort rather than be defective" line of reasoning that made you reflect and say "I am privileged to know God and from that based on what I've learned from my study of the Bible and its reasoning with Jehovah's Witnesses".
I do not see their reasoning as you do, but I'd like to know why, and for that I'll need a bit more of the rationale behind the reason.
Not only what would happen IF they sinned, but IF they didn’t. He not only sees what WILL happen but what COULD happen. He foresees and presides over any and all potential possibilities. Let’s not forget who created our
entire reality, everything that was, everything that is, and everything that, from our perspective, has yet to be including space and time. The Christian God is no Zeus or All Father Odin but beyond the scope of anything we could dream or imagine. He can bring what is to naught, and what is not to be. He is not confined by space and time, He does not live in the star system Pleiades, but He does set the foundation and borders of our universe and any other.
“He did not know in advance” is simply another way to say God is completely ignorant at certain times...in fact all times future. It is something JW’s like to say, but it’s not anything we find in scripture. Please see @Brian2’s posts on the subject. Then explain why demons know the future whereas God does not. (Acts 16:16:40).
Yes, He did.
It makes no sense that Witnesses cannot answer the 3 simple dilemmas put forth in the OP.
It makes no sense that God doesn’t know His creation. Quite simply, if God doesn’t know the end of Time then He doesn’t know the ends of Space either, and things have
seriously gotten out of His hands.
It makes no sense that you cannot tell me the order of initial creation. Did God create Time and Space first, wait a fraction and then create Jesus so that he was “…’i
n’ the beginning”?
It makes no sense that God would prefer to kill sinners rather than allow them to live in punishment, thus allowing wardens of our prisons to show more grace and mercy than God.
It makes no sense that God would prefer to abort rather than create mankind simply because they would be flawed, thus allowing my cousin to show more grace and mercy than God.
And it makes no sense that we should add jots and tittles or any other scurrilous addition to scripture in order to make our doctrines more "biblical" (Col 1:17).
What the WT says doesn't add up. With scripture the math is impeccable.
That He is, but let’s remember…the WT’s version of a “just God” kills rather than punishes, and aborts rather than creates . Thus, according to the WT, He is not just by deed but just by name only.
Nothing you’ve told us so far gives any inclination that Jehovah Witnesses would run our birthing or penal systems “justly” but "cruelly". If this is a misstatement of your belief, tell us why.
