Depending on how you understand eternal life, every man will have eternal life. See Acts 24:15. It was part of Christ's work to bring Life to all men. This is eternal life. Immortality. In that He certainly did not fail.
If I understand eternal life not to be eternal life, then perhaps everyone will have eternal life. But then, it won't really be eternal life, now will it? What perversity to call eternal death a type of eternal life!
That fact that some men will not choose Christ and make a diliberate negative answer to God's call is not the problem of God but of man. God desires that all men be saved, however in His purpose of creating man gave him a will so that man could voluntarily, without compulsion, without force, without manipulation choose to freely love and obey. If not, there is absolutely no purpose for man in this creation, except to be a toy of God.
"Who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the moder, 'Why did you make me like this,' will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay,
to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use? What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience
vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? And
He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy,
which He prepared beforehand for glory, even us, whom He also called not from among the Jews only, but also from among Gentiles" (Rom. 9:20–24).
That is why limiting God's power is making God a failure. He didn't do what He purposed to do.
A god who is not capable of accomplishing his will is no god at all.
Again context: Jesus came to save those of the House of Isreal. He also knew that they had rejected Him. The prophets of the OT had foretold that the Gospel, the Messianic Age would also be to the Gentiles. If you go back up to verse 46 that is explained to you. Paul then goes directly lto the Gentiles. They had been appointed to receive the Gospel in this age. That is the meaning and use of the word appointed. Simply, not just the Jews but Gentiles which in effect meant every human being since.
Acts 2:47 also reinforces this concept.
Your interpretation is nonsense. The verse says, "As many as had been appointed to eternal life believed." If the "appointment to eternal life" is simply being made morally neutral such that one may choose either good or evil without a predisposed bias, then following from this verse all WOULD believe. But we know that not all believe, and indeed the verse implies that not even all present there believed, but rather only those who had been appointed to eternal life believed.
This the the sole reason of the Incarnation. God needed to redeem the physical creation in order to put mankind back to gether, that is body and soul for eternity. Under Adams judgement of death, man would have died the physcial death whereby the body decays, and the soul lives in eternity, but also a spiritual death because man could have never been reunited with God without Christ, thus the soul(s) of all men would be eternally in hell. That would essentially annhilate God's sovereign purpose for man and His creation.
So, Christ came to give life to all men, correct the judgement, Give immortality to all men. The just and the unjust. It is man who will dicide on which side of the wall he will spend eternity. Man must chose this day whom he will serve.
How does it solve the problem when the greater portion of mankind will burn eternally in the pit of hell, will die eternally? That is as much an annihilation of God's purpose in your scheme as anything, for both body and soul are continually destroyed in hell. There is no eternal life there.
He did not guarantee any such thing, even for His sheep. He promised eternal life IN Christ to those who believe, John 3:16. It is whosoever, not those specially designated.. All who believe are His sheep. The texts I posted on this thread twice already all speak to this very fact.
Indeed, all who believe are His sheep. However, only those whom God has appointed (predestined) to eternal life will believe! "Whosoever" does not imply that every individual may choose to believe, only that belief is not restricted to a particular class of human beings, i.e., the Jews. ANY who believe, Jew or Gentile, male of female, free or slave, will not perish, but have eternal life.
Actually, I can show that is actually true in the sense that all humans are His Sheep, He created them, preserves all life,. and give immortality to all life including the universe. He loves all sinners, His love never faileth.
Indeed, He loves the greater portion of man to such an extent that He allows them to perish eternally. What love is this!
Theologically, and Scripturally, the only way you could hold to such a view, is that man in his essence is not the same. So that in the Incarnation of Christ, those men who of only that certain nature or essence would be saved, thus excluding all other men who are somehow of a different essence.
Absolutely and utterly wrong. All men alike are sinners; no man differs in his humanness or in his fallenness from other men (except for the Man, Jesus). For Paul writes, "You were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrat, even as the rest" (Eph. 2:1–3). The difference between the sheep and the goats arises not from within the sheep, but from outside the sheep; indeed, the difference that arises between the sheep and the goats is the result of God's love for the sheep, just as it is written: "But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus" (Eph. 2:4–7).
So lets hear your proof. Scripturally.
The proof of the predestination of the elect: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as
He chose us IN HIM before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him.
In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to the kind intention which He purposed in Him with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in the heavens and things on the earth.
In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will,
to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory. In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—
having also believed, you were SEALED IN HIM with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God's own possession, to the praise of His glory" (Eph. 1:3–14).
The only thing that is guaranteed is the Work of Christ on the Cross. That work is theologically called redemption. The salvation of individual man, the purpose of man in this created order, is a synergistic cooperation between God and man. Adam's walk, our walk. Living the life of Christ IN Christ. Becoming Like Christ, attaining the conformation to His Image.
"Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?" (Gal. 3:3).
