Slacker G wrote: Eph 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.
I understand free will and predestination and they do not conflict.
However, God does direct the steps of man. He keeps the feet of the Godly on the path. There are so many passages where men plan to do something and God redirects them. There are also passages where it is obvious that some were created for noble purposes and some for ignoble purposes.
I'm not sure if you realize this, but you chose a verse with the very word "predestined" and followed those verses with "No predestination going on here".
Outside of that, there is no conflict between Free Will and
Providence. There is EVERY conflict between Free Will and predestination/determination. The very nature of predestination implies an incompatibility with Free Will. The only thing above that you managed to show, by the quantity of verses you've made available, is that God ordered/beseech-ed/requested/or otherwise asked those servants to comply the way he wished. It was up to them to choose to follow that advice. They may have been told a certain outcome would come from it, but that doesn't mean they HAD to choose that path. That is the beauty of Free Will. If you deny that nature of Free Will, then there is no culpability for any evil we might choose to enact.
Regardless, the only reason why I am entertaining the idea of argumentation through the bible is because denial of that book as 'fact' would render all of its contents moot, to logic.
@Dane; There is no difference between being "undocumented" and illegal. Even if they were legal, simply having lost their documentation on hand, they would still be on file. A simply computer check could tell people who to incarcerate until things are cleared up, and who is probably just irresponsible.
If they are undocumented, they ARE illegal. That is because there is no documentation present/available to authorities, to verify the legality of their citizenship. It's absolutely NOTHING like leaving your driver's license at home, which you will still be fined for driving without. [/i]