Does God have a plan for when and how each of us will die?

Question

I asked yesterday if people would save their child if they ran into the street and were about to get hit by a car or if they would trust that God's plan wasn't to let the child die at that point in time or not. People claimed that we have free will and God's plan would interfere with that. My question today is, how come the child getting hit by the car would be the free will of the child, or the driver causing the accident, but someone getting a horrible disease and dying is suddenly "God's will"? How can it be free will in one place and "God's will" in another?

Answer 1

The answer is yes because God knows everything and knows exactly when, where and how we will die. Nothing we can do will change what God already knows will happen. The answer is no because we do have an impact on when, where, and how we die. Obviously, a person who commits suicide causes their own death. A person who commits suicide would have lived longer had they not committed suicide. Similarly, a person who dies because of a foolish decision (i.e., drug use) “expedited” their own death. A person who dies of lung cancer from smoking would not have died in the same way or at the same time if they had not smoked. A person who dies of a heart attack due to a lifetime of extremely unhealthy eating and little exercise would not have died in the same way or at the same time if they had eaten healthier foods and exercised more. Yes, our own decisions have an undeniable impact on the manner, timing, and place of our death.

Answer 2

The Christian doctrine of "free will" simple means that people are able to make moral choices and then are responsible for the consequences of those choices. If the case of a child walking into the street, it was his choice.

God fits in the "free will" equation in that he is able to woe, bribe, threaten, promise, etc. to influence our decisions. But in the end we are the ones who make them - good or bad. God (who also has "free will") has chosen not to violate ours whenever possible. If you read the Bible, there are some situations in which God has reserved the rights to overrule a person's free will.

When you get into things like disease, you are often beyond the control of human being. You MIGHT have been able to avoid cancer by changing your diet (free will) or you might have avoided that STD by being chaste (free will) or you might have avoided the flu by not getting around people who already had it (free will). But once you are sick, a different principle comes into play.

There is still some "free will" involved, in that some people - even when dying - refuse to turn to him for healing. Or they have reached the point in their life where their desire for heaven is stronger then their desire to live, and they (free will) choose heaven.

God can - and does - heal people who have cancer or other diseases. But not always. If anyone has ever figured out all the guidelines by which he makes those decisions, I have not seen them. But I do know that he is omniscience - meaning he knows everything. He is able to look down all the possible futures that our free will can cause, and know when it is the right time to heal, rescue, deliver, do a miracle, etc - and when it is not.

Since God, at that point, choose not to step in and overule the situation with a miracle, you could say that it is "his will" that the event happen. But what would the world be like if God were constantly overruling everything? There would be no need for safety - God will just rescue everybody. There would be no need for morality - God will just take away all consequences of evil. There would be no need for maturity - God would just take care of us no matter how stupid we act. There would be no need for love - anything we do is just as good or bad as anything else since there are no consequences. So God does NOT overrule our actions most of the time.

But having said all that about "free will", there is a second princple also taught in the Bible. It is called sovereignty. It means that in the end, God uses everything to reach his ultimate goal. What might appear to be bad, he somehow uses for good. Such as Joseph being sold as a slave so that he could end up in Egypt and prepare the salvation of his family. Or the death of Stephen, the first Christian martyr, who while being stoned so convicted the heart of one of the people watching that he became the great Apostle Paul.

So when Christians speak of something tragic being the "God's will", they mean that somehow in that situation, God will turn it or use to further his ultimate plan. The apostle Paul talks in Romans 8:2 about God having a "good", and "acceptable", and a "perfect" will. When a tragic happens, it is normally not the "perfect" will of God. But he can still find a way to use it to produce his "good" or his "acceptable" will.

Answer 3

Unfortunately the hardest thing for people to accept is that we
live in a fallen world . No where in the Bible it tells us that this
life is going to be easy . But there is a way out and that is
thru Our Lord Jesus .God has a plan for you , me & anyone else who will accept the truth ,and that is all by His Grace .
See , God's plan is not for this world but the new one that he
has made and when we accept the Gospel Message which
was brought to us from His Son Jesus , then we know with
complete confendence that as true christian's that ,there is no more death but ,God's plan is for us Eternal Life . It is very
good that you are asking ? because He has started a good
work in you . But to really know God you will have to read His
Word given to us in the Bible , pray & listen . Plus be careful
not to become decieved by false teachings . That is Satan
mission to decieve and drive you away for the Truth . You
must persevere and not become discouraged . It takes time
to learn of all God's good plan for us . May He Bless You &
quicken you with His Truth.....Amen

Answer 4

No. God's plan for us from the very start did not include death.

Genesis 2:17
but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."

It was lucifer that brought death into the equation.

Genesis 3:4
You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman.

While God does know the end from the beginning, He chooses not to know what we will do with what we are given. That's the way free will fits into the equation.

When one chooses to follow Christ He does know what we will do as long as we continue to follow Him. When we choose to side step and no longer listen He waits patiently for our return but knows not how we will proceed.

As for our end each of us will die apart from the 2nd coming and resurrection of the saints. How we will die has not been established beforehand.

Question for you -- which verse specifically defines a "rapturing" out of the church at the end of time? Which verse uses the word "rapture" in God's Word?

Cheers
Guy
http://inhisgracecards.com

Answer 5

Free will and an all knowing, all powerful, God are irreconcilable. There is, and can be, no such thing as a God as described by any of the major religions.

Answer 6

Every decision of everyday can lead to our demise. You must just make the decisions that feel right, and most likely you will make it home safely, and wake up the next morning with ten fingers and ten toes. Count each day as a gift, and live life to the fullest because tomorrow is not promised to anyone...... Infinite blessings to you and yours.....

Answer 7

'Fireball' is right.

God does not have a plan for anything that horrible.
Read Ecclesiastes 9:11 where it says that time and unforseen occurences befall us all.
So there is no set time when God will kill us or have us killed. Many times, people have control over that. You may be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that's that.

Answer 8

It actual

Answer 9

It is not God's will to plan people's deaths. He knows his own purposes in advance (it says this in the book of Isaiah) but I don't see any indication that he knows other people's.

Disease and car accidents have this in common. If disobedience to parents is involved, that person has contributed to a chain of events that is dangerous.

The apostle Paul said in Romans 1:
21For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

24Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

26Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

28 Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

Answer 10

Of course. Time and place of death is pre-determined by God.