OK but it's often claimed that God can't intervene to stop freewill at all or else he'd wouldn't be loving yet He does so anyway which I guess means that maybe He's not all loving.
If you read the scriptures, you will find that God
acted only once. After finishing his creative activities, he thereafter only
reacted to the activities of his intelligent creation.
Giving us free will was supposed to be a gift, to use many times a day to enhance our lives and make them more enjoyable.....what to eat...what to wear...what to do....it was all up to us but within the parameters created by God. Once we stepped outside of those parameters....we were on our own.
When has God stopped people from exercising their free will? He has never stopped anyone from making their own decisions. Does that mean that he will never hold them to account for what they choose to do? We are free to break the laws of the land, but there are penalties if we do. Doesn't that seem reasonable to you?
OK but our will still conflicts with His will so shouldn't he intervene to stop us from conflicting with his will?
God will never stop us from conflicting with his will...that has to be our choice.....he will only introduce penalties for breaking his laws. If we know the penalty before we commit the crime, why complain when the sentence is carried out? Do you think its impossible to refrain from activities that God condemns? If it was impossible, he would never ask us to comply and then punish us for breaking his laws. That would be a grave injustice. He teaches us how to live a life that is in harmony with his will.....if we are good students, then there will never be a time when our will wins out. If we love God more than ourselves, we will always do the right thing.....or at least try. If we fail, then all God asks is that we say sorry and really mean it....that will also mean not going down that path again. Why would God forgive the same sin twice. It would mean that we weren't really sorry the first time.
It does imply it given the imagery of hell described in the Bible.
There is no imagery of "hell" in the Bible. The dead are said to go to either hades (sheol) or gehenna. Neither one involved any kind of life afterlife.
Jesus condemned the Pharisees to "gehenna" not "hades". Hades is simply the grave. This is one doctrine that the church really messed up. They translate both words as "hell" and their version of it means eternal torture and suffering in a fire that never stops. Would a loving God even think up such a place? Not according to Jeremiah.
When Israel fell to sacrificing their children in the fire to Molech, God said....
"They have built the high places of Toʹpheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinʹnom, in order to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, something that I had not commanded and that had never even come into my heart.’" (Jeremiah 7:31)
If God condemned his people for burning their children in a fire, which he said had never even entered his mind, why would he then do that to his own children?
The Valley of Hinnom, (Gehenna) which was the place where this heinous activity took place, was just outside the walls of Jerusalem. God had it turned into a rubbish dump where the city's refuse was thrown into 'Gehenna' for disposal. The carcasses of dead animals and even the bodies of executed criminals were thrown in to the fires. What the flames missed, the maggots finished off. Gehenna was not hell but a symbolic place where those considered unworthy of a resurrection were cast.
To a devout Jew, a burial tomb with the name of the person and his family lineage were inscribed, was synonymous with God remembering a person so as to bring them back to life in the world to come. Those cast into Gehenna has no such tomb and it was believed that God would not remember them. Their death was to be eternal.
If you think about it, everlasting death is the opposite of everlasting life. The ancient Jews had no belief in life after death except by resurrection.
Yes but He still obstructed Pharaoh's free will so how is that loving?
No he did not. He allowed Pharaoh to exercise his free will 10 times before he acted to put a stop to his nonsense. And then when he finally allowed Israel to go....he changed his mind again and went after them. He not only caused his own death, but took all of his army down with him. Do you blame God for that? Pharaoh was to be used as an example of a proud King who contended with the true God and lost...big time. We are still talking about him.
Aren't the Gospels just hearsay accounts? and why not have faith in those stories, isn't faith a requirement for a believer? Isn't unbelief a sin?
We have to separate the hearsay from the truth. The gospels are part of God's word and as such are inspired by him. (2 Timothy 3:16-17) Two of the gospels are eyewitness accounts (Matthew and John) and the other two are accounts obtained from eyewitnesses. They all harmonize, each adding more detail.
If you believe that God inspired the writers, then why not put faith in them? They have never proven to be false...in fact we are living through prophesy as we speak. Look at the state of the world.....spiritually, politically and economically, it is a complete mess. Add to that the results of climate change and the damage wrought by dramatic weather events almost on a daily basis, and you will see where we are in the stream of time. Christ warned us about all this, and we are told who rules this world. (1 John 5:19)
So we have two choices basically, as I see it. You either obey God and live...or disobey him and die. Its never been more complicated than that since the garden of Eden.