Predestination and Miracles

This is an excellent article by Vincent Cheung on the link between predestination and miracles. *Recommended reading. (Click on this link for the article)

Brief summary:
John 15:16–17
¹⁶ You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and your fruit should remain, in order that whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you. ¹⁷ These things I command you: that you love one another.

Cheung explains that predestination is for more than just bare salvation. It also includes a whole package of blessings and responsibilities. God has chosen us, and predestined us to bear fruit that will last. The Father will give us whatever we ask in his name.” By giving us whatever we ask of him, the Son brings glory to the Father. In so doing, we bear fruit and show that we are his disciples. Christians are commanded (not requested) to ask the Father for ‘whatever’ so that the Father can answer it. This is also how we show that we love one another. And by obeying God’s commandments, we also show that we love God. When something is repeated so many times in Scripture we need to pay special attention.

1) Predestination means that we are…
2) Predestined to bear fruit that will last.
3) God commands us to ask him for “whatever”
4) And God promises to give us whatever we ask of him
5) God is glorified by answering our prayers
6) This is how we bear fruit and show that we are his disciples.
7) And this is how we show that we love one another and love God.

This summary does not really do justice to Cheung’s article, so I would highly encourage you to read what he has written in its entirety.

 

 

“To philosophize is to love God.”

“To philosophize is to love God, whose nature is incorporeal. Whence it certainly follows that the student of wisdom, that is, the philosopher, will then become blessed when he shall have begun to enjoy God. For though he is not necessarily blessed who enjoys that which he loves (for many are miserable by loving that which ought not to be loved, and still more miserable when they enjoy it), nevertheless no one is blessed who does not enjoy that which he loves. For even they who love things which ought not to be loved do not count themselves blessed by loving merely, but by enjoying them.

Who, then, but the most miserable will deny that he is blessed, who enjoys that which he loves, and loves the true and highest good? But the true and highest good, according to Plato, is God, and therefore he would call him a philosopher who loves God; for philosophy is directed to the obtaining of the blessed life, and he who loves God is blessed in the enjoyment of God.”

Aurelius Augustinus, City of God, Book 8, Chapter 8