Now you feel the night especially at night. "the night is especially dark before dawn"

The question that I would like to discuss will be of interest primarily to believers, although it concerns everyone. The question is simple in its formulation, and it would seem that every Christian should know the answer to it, but according to my observations, this is not the case.
So, attention to the question: why did God create people?

The fact is that I personally was not able to find a specific answer in the Bible. People seek the answer to this question based on an understanding of God in the context of all Scripture. And a very popular version is that God created people because he needed them. I’ll say right away that I see no reason to believe so.

God is Almighty and He does not need anyone or anything. Especially in sinful people.
Then why did God give His Son to die for the sake of people if He does not need people? – ask supporters of the human-centric position.
Because God loved people! (John 3:16) Personally, I see a big difference between the words “love” and “need.”

“And the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually; and the Lord repented that he had made man on the earth, and was grieved in His heart" (Genesis 6:5-6)
God is All-Knowing, and He knew that man would sin even before He created him. So why did He do this? - you ask. Did God really need people to create whom He would regret? So the reason is different...

I think God created people because He is the Creator. This is one of the qualities of God, and He creates continually.
“I knew that the Lord is great, and our Lord is above all gods. The Lord does whatever he pleases, in the heavens and on the earth, in the seas and in all the deeps" (Psalm 134:5-6)

Secondly, for His glory. To be glorified through this whole plan of saving mankind.
“For the sake of My name I put aside My wrath, and for the sake of My glory I restrained Myself from destroying you... ...For My own sake, for My own sake, I do this - for what a reproach would there be [against My name]! My glory I will not give to another" (Isaiah 48:9-11)

And if you ask this question to people: why did you give birth to your child? I’m now talking about a child born into a normal family, and not due to pregnancy or something else.
What will his parents say? We needed him and couldn't live without him? Were we unhappy without him? Were we planning to procreate?
Children are the fruit of love! And how to explain the desire to give birth to a new life, which will cause a lot of trouble, and everyone knows this, but they give birth anyway.

We are children of God, He loves us! But it is not He who needs us, but we who need Him.

UPD: Found another one a good place from the Bible

24 God, who created the world and all that is in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made with hands
25 and does not require the service of human hands, [as if] having need of anything, Himself giving to all things life and breath and everything.
26 From one blood He made the whole race of mankind to dwell upon all the face of the earth, having appointed appointed times and bounds for their habitation,
27 so that they seek God, will they not sense Him and find Him, although He is not far from each of us:
28 For in Him we live and move and have our being...
(Acts 17:24-28)

The question of why God created Adam, and then Eve, and people in general, does not have a clear answer. There are several versions, but they are all human attempts to explain.

Version 1

The most acceptable idea seems to be thatpeople (Old Church Slavonic) God needed them to replace the angels who retreated from him, who were cast out of heaven along with Satan onto the earth and are now on the earth, and above the earth (in the atmosphere), and underground.

The fact is that someone Satan, or the devil, was once a bright angel and was called Dennitsa. Through him there was a distribution of Divine Grace, or Light, to the Universe. Of course, holding such a high “post,” he became proud and decided to take the place of God. In addition, he carried away some of the previously bright angels with him and raised them to revolt. Archangel Michael defeated Satan in a heavenly war and imprisoned him (threw him down) to earth. Since then, the abode of Satan has become the above-ground space, which we call heaven (atmosphere, space, astral plane).

In fact, in Christianity, the sky is understood not as the atmosphere above the earth, but as a much more distant space, located in another dimension, where the entrance dark forces prohibited. So keep in mind that the earthly sky is the element of Satan and demons, and do not think that God is sitting there on a cloud. From different sources it became known that approximately a third of the angels turned from light to dark. So, in order to replenish his army of bright angels, most likely, God created man.

Yes, and also, it probably seems strange to you that God settled us with Satan on the same planet. After all, there are enough other planets!

But, if we assume that man was created to replenish the army of angels who separated from God during the rebellion of Satan, then people must learn to fight precisely with Satan and similar creations, in order to henceforth prevent possible incidents and not fall like the angels who departed from God. into the power of the same Satan.

God created Adam in his own image and likeness. That is, Adam was a perfect creation and possessed immortality, various divine abilities: insight, clarity of mind, etc. He had complete power over the entire world of creatures on earth. Adam gave names to animals, which indicates that he saw the essence of each creature, since you can give a name only if you understand the meaning of the one you are naming. Adam could freely communicate with angels and God, understood the structure and laws of the Universe and had to look after Paradise, improve and strengthen himself and his soul qualities in order to become stronger and begin to fully serve the Lord.

Of course, God assumed that Adam and his wife might not resist the temptation of the devil and break his commandment, seemingly such a trifle: not to eat the fruits of just one tree in Paradise. But precisely with this argument - “On the day that you eat of them, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.”(Gen. 3:5) - Satan seduced people. Before this, Satan also tempted the angels: a third of the light spirits turned into demons. It is not surprising that people were seduced by the words of the devil, and now they must develop an antidote (immunity) against satanic pride throughout their lives. In other words, man was put on earth in order to learn to be faithful to God and resist satanic false values, passions and their consequences, sins.

Version 2

The first version is good, but very human. That is, we attributedWe give God human thinking and greed. He, they say, created man because he needed warriors. But God is not known to us, since we are still very far from Him.

And in general, the first version looks too doubtful: Moreover, a person consists of body and spirit, and angels and demons do not have a bodily shell. That is, man was created completely different and, accordingly, for different purposes. But for which ones?

This can often be observed in children when they want to play with someone rather than alone. It makes a person happy to give joy and love to others. This is inherent in every person. And we are created in the image of God. And God created us to increase love, joy, and goodness.

Professor A.I. Osipov answers the question “Why did God create man if he knew that he could sin?”:

Take it for yourself and tell your friends!

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Please tell me, is there an answer in Scripture to the question - why did God create man when He had already created angels? I can’t find what makes a person better than an angel, it seems like nothing, only worse for everyone. Has God revealed to man the purpose of creating anything? Perhaps the Church has its own opinion on this matter, which is not confirmed in the Bible? Denis.

Priest Nikolai Guleiko answers:

Hello, Denis!

Any doctrinal truth in Orthodox Church has its basis in Holy Scripture. Moreover, even theological opinion is always based on Holy Scripture.
The creation of man, like the creation of the entire world, had no reason. As Vladimir Nikolaevich Lossky wrote: “Creation -free act… For Divine being it is not determined by any “internal necessity. Even those moral motives that are sometimes used to justify creation are meaningless and tasteless. God the Trinity is the fullness of love. In order to pour out His love, He does not need “another,” because the other is already in Him, in the interpenetration of Hypostases. God is the Creator because He wanted to be one.” God created man so that he could enjoy a blissful life in union with Him.
The average person in morally, of course, below an angel. However, in God’s plan it is much higher, since God accepted precisely human nature forever, not angelic. In addition, man is higher than the angels also because man has a body, which means he can change. Angels cannot change.

Sincerely, priest Nikolai Guleiko.

One who has achieved personal perfection becomes the temple of God, and the Holy Spirit dwells in him. Living in complete unity with God, a perfect person acquires the Divine nature. Such a person obviously cannot commit sin and cannot fall.

Why does God need Adam and Eve and why do they need Him? For two reasons. First of all, because the ideal of God's love can only be realized with the help of Adam and Eve, and secondly, because it can become visible in the image of a perfect man and woman. In other words, Adam and Eve would become the visible form of God, and God, through them, would be able to enter into a relationship with the visible material world.

God is incorporeal, He has no visible form. Therefore, He must reveal Himself in some form. To have dominion over man and creation that have form, God must incarnate in Adam and Eve. In this case, Adam, Eve and God will achieve complete unity, and God will become, as it were, the soul of Adam and Eve. Know that God, dwelling in the souls of Adam and Eve, unites with them and ultimately becomes the inner Lord of Adam.

God abides in spiritual world as an incorporeal Entity, and, therefore, He cannot control the Universe. Therefore, He needs to put on a material body, like a mask. Therefore, He created man to acquire a body, become a King and rule over His descendants, sons and daughters born on earth.

3.926 Ruslan (virsta@???.ru) asks: “I don’t understand why God knew that people would sin and still created them.”

Vasily Yunak answers:

Greetings, Brother Ruslan! I want to offer you two answer options. They represent two perspectives on Omniscience or Omniscience of God.

1. Initially, God created the world. The first intelligent beings created by God were angels, and the first of them was Lucifer, who later became Satan. So we understand from Holy Scripture. At the same time, God created rational beings with free will, who in their obedience to God must be guided by the principle of love. God could create creatures that would never sin, but then the principle of love and freedom of choice would not exist. The likelihood that that someone would sin existed from the beginning. And God knew it. Therefore, He provided a plan of redemption long before the first sinners appeared in the universe. We find in the Bible that Jesus Christ, the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world, was slain from the very foundation of the world. This means that He made the decision to die in place of the repentant sinner long before sinners began to repent and long before sinners began to sin ( ; ).

Yes, God knew that Lucifer would rise, and therefore was ready for this long struggle. God initially fought a fair and just battle with Satan, responding to his claims by allowing him to test both God Himself and God's creation for loyalty to God. God confidently went into this long struggle, knowing that many millions and billions of people would die, but He also knew that if this battle was fought in a different way, then throughout eternity the uprisings would be repeated here and there, and in the end there would be even more losses. big. Only such a struggle in which evil showed itself fully, and in which God showed all His love to the universe on Calvary, only such a struggle could serve as a guarantee that sin would never happen again.

God knew that man would sin, but God knew that in the end man would endure the struggle through the power of Christ. And then the victorious inhabitants of the earth will be a living testimony, a living force who will not allow a relapse of sin.

Christ knew that Judas would betray Him, yet He trusted him to the last. Christ knew that Peter would deny Him, nevertheless, he entrusted him to be the shepherd of the other apostles. Christ knew that the disciples in Gethsemane would sleep and then run away, nevertheless he took them with Him and asked them to stay awake with Him.

God knows everything, but He knows much more and beyond. And he says that having gone through trials and redemption, we will become more precious and worthy for eternity (). And God chose this path.

2. The second answer is offered to those who, for one reason or another, cannot fully perceive such omniscience and omniscience of God. That's right, the Bible says that God knows the end from the beginning. But the end is the complete victory of God over evil. And in the middle there are victories and defeats of the participants in this great struggle between Christ and Satan. Does God really know every step of my life with absolute certainty until the very end? Does God really know with absolute certainty where I will be in twenty years and three months and two days at 12 hours 5 minutes 25 seconds, and what decision I will make at that moment? After all, this decision will depend only on me, and not on Him?

One interpreter of the Book of Revelation stated that the book with seven seals is absolutely exact history our land, with a description of all the little things in the life of every person, but written even before the creation of our world. And when the Lamb takes it and opens its seals, and compares it with the Book of Remembrance, which is being written today before the face of God, it will be found that the contents of both books are exactly the same, and this will confirm the omniscience of God.

When I read this interpretation, I really felt funny, I put this book aside, and never opened it to read again, although I opened it a couple of times only to later show others some of the misconceptions of this author. And the fact that he was mistaken is clear from the fact that he predicted the return of Christ in 1996. There was a time when many Adventists avidly read this book and reproduced the prophetic patterns from it, despite the official warnings that the General Conference published about this author.

I say this in order to explain a different approach to understanding the Omniscience and omniscience of God. In the parable of the barren fig tree, Christ presented the work of saving people, in which God works on the sinner for a certain time, extending the time of grace for him (). Does God know what the sinner's decision and response will be? God can guess. He is ready for any turn of events. God knows that in any case the universal struggle will be won. He is preparing a place in Noah's Ark and in the New Jerusalem for everyone, but how many will actually go there?

In the Bible there is the concept of “fullness of time”, “fullness of the measure of iniquity”, “fullness of the house” ( ; ; ). The Spirit of Prophecy says that the Lord would have come long ago if we had been ready and done our job of preaching the Gospel. Almost all of God's prophecies are conditional and depend on many factors, including our choice. The Trees of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, similar to the one that was in the Garden of Eden, and in which man sinned, are also located on other worlds created by God, and there, too, the inhabitants of those worlds could have fallen and sinned by eating from the fruit of that tree, but they remained are true. Is it necessary for God to know everything down to the smallest detail in our life? future history? No, it is enough for Him to foresee all His actions down to the smallest detail in case of any development of the situation.

I imagine God as some kind of Great Grandmaster, playing chess simultaneously on millions of boards, and at the same time confidently winning, but not because He knows in advance every move of the opponent, but because He perfectly knows how to control the situation and calculate all possible options in advance, even without knowing exactly all the enemy’s intentions. Yes, God can predict multitudes the smallest details in our future life, but it will be exactly the same as if the World Chess Champion looked at the game of two boys and said to one of them: you have already lost, because he will now make such a move, to which you will answer him like this, and he will react like this so... And this grandmaster will most likely be right only because he knows perfectly well all the possible variations of the game, sees the balance of power and observes the development of the players' thoughts. Is he omniscient? Does he see the end from the beginning? Yes and no. He foresees. His knowledge is based on wisdom, and not on the fact that in some way unknown to us He can “look” ahead and “spy” on the result.

So, no matter which answer you choose from the two options presented, the answer is the same: God was ready to create man, even knowing (foreseeing) his fall, because God was confident in His final victory, and knew that in this way He would win alone once and for all with much less loss than if He had chosen a different path.

Blessings! Vasily Yunak

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