If God knows which people will go to Heaven, why not only create those people?
Upvote:1
The question of whether God could simply "fast forward" earth and simply create free creatures who obey Him was recently asked on this site, so for the sake of answering the first part of the question I'm going to assume that that's not possible and time on Earth is necessary.
This then leaves the first question - could God not just create the people He knows will obey him, and not create the ones who won't be saved? I believe the answer is no, for a couple of reasons:
1: The circumstances that lead to someone following Christ almost always include interactions with someone who does not follow Him. For example, some may have become Christian after seeing for themselves the fates of those who led lives of sin and eg died from substance abuse. We have no way of telling what the consequences of such eugenics would be on society, and maybe if God were to only create the people who would be saved in our current world, many of them wouldn't be saved after all.
2: The freedom God has given us includes our children. Could Ghandi have been born in Australia in 2023? Could Mother Teresa have been born in Britain in 1200 BC? I am not inclined to believe that God places a soul in a person such that who they are is fixed based on that initial seed with no relation to how they are raised and their experiences.
One possibility some have considered is that perhaps God could have created a world in which everyone was saved, but due to human nature such a world could only have contained maybe 200 people, and with any more than that someone would always fall away.
Upvote:2
I applaud you for asking tough questions but there is a logical break in your question that I would like to try and point out.
"He could instantly implant all the spiritual growth, experiences, knowledge, etc. that these people would have gotten on Earth into their minds in Heaven - making the need for the experience/journey we go through on Earth unnecessary." - OP
God cannot create someone with an experience that has never actually happened because, if He did, He could not then have foreknown it. If God foreknows everything from before creation then He foreknew, for instance, all the selfish thoughts and behavior that would plague my heart and drive me to the Lord Jesus Christ. If, however, he created me in a way that I never had any selfish thoughts or behavior but only an experience of having had them, how can He have foreknown me having them?
In other words if God foresees something happening that never actually happens then God has not actually foreseen it. Such an activity would nullify the notion of foresight altogether and makes God out to be wrong, at best. This is why prior to creation, having foreseen all, He chose to send a Savior rather than to not create what He had foreseen.
A heaven filled with people who believe they have experienced things that never really happened? God does not play pretend. I hope this helps.
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