a rock so big...
The question has been asked “Could God make a rock so big that He Himself could not lift it?” I have thought about that and my answer is that He would not make one that big. What He can do is quite a lot, and if He could make one that big, it would have to be to serve some purpose of His. He may have actually made such a rock, but I wonder: if He has, what purpose of His would it serve for Him to tell us of such a rock?
Now there is a very large and very heavy rock that God wants to move, and that rock is the unbelievers heart. And in every case (or am I wrong) God cannot move that rock until He has the permission of the unbeliever! God, contrary to hyperCalvinist doctrine, has given men the choice to believe and TRUST Him, or to run from His love. So it is perhaps shocking, but man can in effect in his atheism, be the rock of whatever magnitude that God cannot, and will not be able to lift! God will not coerce faith in any man or woman.
Coerced faith is not faith at all, it is slavery. It is the devil who coerces people by the deceit of sin and makes them slaves to evil and to unbelief! Is God unfair to stand back and let people live as deceived and enslaved to satan? I think He might be, except for the fact that everyone is given evidence of God, adequate and persuasive evidence of His divine and good personality, that evidence being seen in what He created.
Romans 1
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.
17 For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;
19 Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.
20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.
24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:
25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
