Does god want a specific number of children?

[Julian4jc]

I always wondered if God wants a specific number of children to make up the bride? If no,

what if God were to cause a cataclysmic event in order for us to go back to the stone age. That would destroy our capacity to annihilate ourselves.
He could do that as many times as he wants and there would be a never ending number of people getting saved.

[matt]

The answer to this my friend has got to be no!

God has set things in place and Created a perfect sinless world, until the Fall in the Garden of Eden. God will never go back and start over as you have described because he values your free will too much. He wants you to want to be joined to him, of your own free will.

And in reference to your first point about God wanting only a certain number to be saved and make up the Bride of Christ again, that's not so. God wants everyone to be saved.

That's why Paul tells us that God is not delaying in what He said He would do at the time of the end, as some would say, but is patient with us (and the world), because He wants all people to be saved and to come to Him.

Take Care,

Matt

[LaMontre]

I always wondered if God wants a specific number of children to make up the bride? If no,

what if God were to cause a cataclysmic event in order for us to go back to the stone age. That would destroy our capacity to annihilate ourselves.
He could do that as many times as he wants and there would be a never ending number of people getting saved.

He did do that in a manner of speaking during the dark ages after the fall of Rome. We have been steadily growing as a race ever since, and I think we will see only one resurgence of such a world wide governance as Rome, and that one will be led by the anti-christ, and will really encompass the entire world.

Fortunately, that will be the last time, because were it not, "no flesh could be saved" (Mat 24:22).

Speaks volumes about the real wickedness of mans designs.

[Julian4jc]

Thanks for your inputs..

[Jany]

What??? <><

[TomT]

IMO one is missing a key concept unless you pause to consider that God has always had full - complete and perfect foreknowledge of everything that would come to transpire today - or in the future...

Thus HE knew billions of eons before the creation of the earth precisely what each and every person would ever think - say or do - including complete foreknowledge that Adam and Eve would sin under their free will, etc

Therefore He has always known who and precisely how many human souls would come to accept Christ Jesus and thus become His Bride the Church ...

God exists outside of time and space as we humans are able to conceive of it - and thus what is the future to us - is in a very real sense the "past" to God

[1angel4u]

IMO one is missing a key concept unless you pause to consider that God has always had full - complete and perfect foreknowledge of everything that would come to transpire today - or in the future...

Thus HE knew billions of eons before the creation of the earth precisely what each and every person would ever think - say or do - including complete foreknowledge that Adam and Eve would sin under their free will, etc

Therefore He has always known who and precisely how many human souls would come to accept Christ Jesus and thus become His Bride the Church ...

God exists outside of time and space as we humans are able to conceive of it - and thus what is the future to us - is in a very real sense the "past" to God

This is also why he foretells us in http://www.blueletterbible.org/cgi-bin/popup.pl?book=Rom&chapter=11&verse=25&version=kjv#25 For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in.

He has always know the full number of Gentiles that end up coming to Christ. :thumb :dance2 :yeah

Sorry :twitch I copied the link wrong :ohno

[LaMontre]

Amen - I love the way this passage talks of the Church as being complete and whole.

Eph 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;
Eph 5:26 That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,
Eph 5:27 That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.