God’s ways are not our ways - Don’t read into the Bible your own desires and sensibilities!

[Victor Van Heerden]

He believed God was good and had one hell of a reason for asking what He did.

Do some research on this. Abraham was not morally repulsed by Gods command to sacrifice his son . “Take your son, your only son—yes, Isaac, whom you love so much—and go to the land of Moriah. Go and sacrifice him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you.” Genesis 22:2

Hebrews 11:17 “It was by faith that Abraham offered Isaac as a sacrifice when God was testing him. Abraham, who had received God’s promises, was ready to sacrifice his only son, Isaac…”

Why was Abraham not morally repulsed because it was common practise.

Ex 22:29-30 we read:

“You shall not delay to offer from the fullness of your harvest and from the outflow of your presses. The first-born of your sons you shall give to me. You shall do likewise with your oxen and with your sheep: seven days it shall be with its dam; on the eighth day you shall give it to me.”​

Ezekiel 20:25-26 "' Moreover I gave them statutes that were not good and ordinances by which they could not have life; and I defiled them through their very gifts in making them offer by fire all their first-born, that I might horrify them; I did it that they might know that I am the LORD.”


Abraham was not morally repulsed by the command itself and there is no command against this practice. ( Genesis 22). In fact the sacrifice of Jesus the Son of God has redeemed all of mankind. He was our substitute the "Lamb of God, spotless, without blemish". God demanded continual blood sacrificial offerings in the OT. In the NT Jesus is the last and complete blood offerings to God. Without the shedding of blood there is no remission from sin.

Heb 9:22 "And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission."[/BIBLE][/BIBLE]

 

[Victor Van Heerden]

glad a good God

WL Craig claims that you cannot morally judge God since his actions do not have moral dimension. God IS good. Period. Wither we think he is good or not is irrelevant. He is God and he says what is good, - not us. Is that why you are saying God is good? Yet there is no need to posit a God who serves as a paradigm of intrinsic goodness. He is God and if He commands plagues, armies, pestilences etc to teach people a lesson he will do it wither we think it is morally good or not. God is intrinsicly good even when his actions incite moral disgust in our modern sensibilities. God is always right. And we are always wrong.

 

[KingJ]

God nevertheless is God. And His Kingdom is a KINGDOM. Not a democracy!!! Where God asks the opinion of everybody. Nope. It His way and His way only. God is an autocratic ruler. ( An autocracy is a system of government in which supreme power is concentrated in the hands of one person, whose decisions are subject to neither external legal restraints nor regularized mechanisms of popular control. Absolute monarchies and dictatorships are the main modern-day forms of autocracy.)

God knows what is best for you so we have NO choice BUT to fall in line or go to HELL. So you would not be out of bounds if you called God a King or Dictator. Tyrant nope. King yes. Dictator yes. The Kingdom of God on earth and in heaven is a Theocracy which is a form of government in which God is the source from which all authority derives.

God will ask our opinions. It is the reason He gave us high intelligence. He may be all powerful but He is also humble James 4:6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble''.

Your 'problem' is you define God off of a few scriptures only. Omniscient and Omnipotent = dictator. But you (like many others) do not grasp that He is as good as He is great. Evidenced by the cross. He ''literally'' lay His life down for His creation. Made Himself a Lamb to the slaughter Isa 53:7. Showed mankind the greatest act of love possible John 15:13. Your view of God falls completely on its face in light of this fact. John 3:16 alone debunks your view of God.

We can rejoice and give thanks as David says, because God is good Psalm 136:1. He could be wicked, Rom 9 is clear on that. But He is good. The rest of scripture is clear on that.

Hell is evidence of no dictatorship. You choose to go to hell. You choose to not be with Him. Hell is a place He created for those who hate Him. Since those who hate Him are evil (John 3:19), hell will be a bad place.

Of course God is not a tyrant. Unless I am miss-reading your posts, I am interpreting you and Sue as believing God is cruel and oppressive. This is the dictionary definition of tyrant.

 

[KingJ]

Workers of inequity are whoever God feels are workers of iniquity. Anyone out of his will and authority is a worker of iniquity. Anyone not under his jurisdiction and part of his family is a worker of iniquity. If a bad, cruel, sinful, tyrant fits in with Gods plan he is not a worker of inequity but a tool in Gods hands. Like for instance a Donald Trump type. Or a Cyrus the Great type, the great Persian monarch. Workers of inequity are relative to what God feels they are. Buddhists types who never hurt any living creatures and spend their whole life in innocent peaceful uplifting meditation and prayer are workers of iniquity. Why - because they are outside the Kingdom of God.

"Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you." John 15:14

We need to take a closer look at 'His commandments'. Love your neighbor as yourself. Turn the left cheek. Love your enemy. Do not murder. Do no commit adultery. Do not steal.

What quite literally stands out when reading His 'commandments' is that they are all geared to loving others. Treating others as we want to be treated.

Granted with the Jews and with those who have tasted of Jesus there were / are some extra 'rules' as the Sabbath and idolatry. These are geared to being respectful to God.

I am sorry but the word 'dictator' doesn't feel appropriate for someone who just wants us to treat others well. These are 'rules' He should not even have to tell us.

I have quoted this verse above, but please meditate on it. God hates these things. What good person wouldn't? His ''command'' is that we also....hate....what is clearly....evil.

Proverbs 6:16-19 King James Version (KJV) 16 These six things doth the Lord hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: 17 A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, 18 An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, 19 A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.

 

[KingJ]

What is interesting is that if it was a figurative fire which in this instance it might be, but in others it is not and was written to be taken literally like most of the Bible is then why if it was not real fire would anyone be afraid of God or hell?.

It is not correct to say it is figurative. Rather we need to grasp what the word means to God. He is trying to describe the spiritual realm with human words. He uses 'death' to describe a place away from His presence. When death to us is someone in a coffin that will never awake. The words 'fire and darkness'' are words He uses to describe those living in a place of death.

According to Luke 13:28, the terrifying thing about hell is eternal separation. Luke 13:28 They weep and gnash their teeth because they look up and see they are cast out.

" The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom:.." prov 9 2 Corinthians 7:1 7 Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.

Why is it that only the wise fear God? Only good people fear God. Only those living upright lives fear God. It is because they don't want to be cast away from Him. They don't want to be with those who can't repent. The wicked. The wise grasp Luke 13:28.

 

[KingJ]

Do some research on this. Abraham was not morally repulsed by Gods command to sacrifice his son . “Take your son, your only son—yes, Isaac, whom you love so much—and go to the land of Moriah. Go and sacrifice him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you.” Genesis 22:2

Hebrews 11:17 “It was by faith that Abraham offered Isaac as a sacrifice when God was testing him. Abraham, who had received God’s promises, was ready to sacrifice his only son, Isaac…”

Why was Abraham not morally repulsed because it was common practise.

Ex 22:29-30 we read:

“You shall not delay to offer from the fullness of your harvest and from the outflow of your presses. The first-born of your sons you shall give to me. You shall do likewise with your oxen and with your sheep: seven days it shall be with its dam; on the eighth day you shall give it to me.”​

Ezekiel 20:25-26 "' Moreover I gave them statutes that were not good and ordinances by which they could not have life; and I defiled them through their very gifts in making them offer by fire all their first-born, that I might horrify them; I did it that they might know that I am the LORD.”


Abraham was not morally repulsed by the command itself and there is no command against this practice. ( Genesis 22). In fact the sacrifice of Jesus the Son of God has redeemed all of mankind. He was our substitute the "Lamb of God, spotless, without blemish". God demanded continual blood sacrificial offerings in the OT. In the NT Jesus is the last and complete blood offerings to God. Without the shedding of blood there is no remission from sin.

Heb 9:22 "And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission."[/BIBLE][/BIBLE]

This is just evidence that you have frequented atheist / god bashing sites.

It is a cherry picked verse God Didn’t Command Child Sacrifice | Stand to Reason.

I am just shocked though that your scriptural knowledge not be able debunk it. God killed firstborns in the tenth plague on the Egyptians. It was the last and most severe plague as punishment on them for rebellion. Why would He demand this of people who obey Him?

 

[KingJ]

WL Craig claims that you cannot morally judge God since his actions do not have moral dimension. God IS good. Period. Wither we think he is good or not is irrelevant. He is God and he says what is good, - not us. Is that why you are saying God is good? Yet there is no need to posit a God who serves as a paradigm of intrinsic goodness.He is God and if He commands plagues, armies, pestilences etc to teach people a lesson he will do it wither we think it is morally good or not. God is intrinsicly good even when his actions incite moral disgust in our modern sensibilities. God is always right. And we are always wrong.

This is false teaching. It does not matter who teaches it.

If God has a code of ethics that differs to what He has described to us in scripture, He would be a liar. The bible says God is not a human that He should lie Num 23:19.

God is intrinsicly good even when his actions incite moral disgust in our modern sensibilities.

Modern sensibilities? Like GLBT?

 

[KingJ]

Buddhists types who never hurt any living creatures and spend their whole life in innocent peaceful uplifting meditation and prayer are workers of iniquity. Why - because they are outside the Kingdom of God.

I take it you are not refer to the Buddhist monks raping and murdering Muslims in Myanmar?

When I think of Buddhists / anyone who claims to be a good person and is not yet a born again Christian, I think of Matt 23:27 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness.

 

[KingJ]

. He is able to listen to and answer if he wants, billions if not trillions of daily prayers. Mostly mundane like, help at the exam, or in the game, or to find a parking bay, or to heal my head ache etc. No tyrant does that.

Brilliant observation. We finally agree on something :smile:.

However how does God rule? He is God. He has not overthrown another god and usurped authority and therefore needs to declare some kind of Marshall law and rule in a police like state with oppression. Nope God has absolute authority. He created the mighty, immense, vast universe. Of trillions of solar systems like ours. He rules not only on earth but everywhere in a forty billion light years across creation. He has gazillions of orders and angels to command in order to run the universe. Yet he has time to count the trillions hairs on billions of his children heads

We need to be careful of not making assumptions about God. The devil will push thought toward us being insignificant to Him. We need to grasp that we are as significant as is possible to God John 15:13, John 3:16.

 

[Br. Bear]

We need to be careful of not making assumptions about God.

We need to be fearful of not making assumptions about God


Bless you ....><>

 

[Victor Van Heerden]

According to Luke 13:28, the terrifying thing about hell is eternal separation. span.bible { /*color: #D97070;*/ font-size: 16px; font-weight: 400; } span.bible a { /*color: #D97070;*/ /*background-color: #FFE9E9;*/ padding: 1px 4px; border-radius: 1px; } Luke 13:28 They weep and gnash their teeth because they look up and see they are cast out.

Nope - the lost are separated from God now. Their sin separates them from God. And only Jesus can solve that problem. In hell they will be with their peers. Why would they not want that? You are off track here.

 

[Victor Van Heerden]

This is just evidence that you have frequented atheist / god bashing sites.

It is a cherry picked verse God Didn’t Command Child Sacrifice | Stand to Reason.

Ad hominem. ( Ad hominem, short for argumentum ad hominem, is a fallacious argumentative strategy whereby genuine discussion of the topic at hand is avoided by instead attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument, or persons associated with the argument, rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself.'

The Bible is not an atheist site.

And it praises and glorifies God not bashes him.

God never forbade it only when it was offered to foreign gods. Child sacrifice was something that several Biblical people either did, or assisted others in doing so. Child sacrifice to foreign gods was so prevalent that it’s named as one of the major reasons why God sent the Babylonians to conquer Israel and forcibly take many of them as captives 2 Kings 17:16-18 They forsook all the commands of the Lord their God and made for themselves two idols cast in the shape of calves, and an Asherah pole. They bowed down to all the starry hosts, and they worshiped Baal. 17 They sacrificed their sons and daughters in the fire.

I repeat and you have not attended to my comment properly 'WHY WAS ABRAHAM NOT MORALLY REPULSED BY THE COMMAND TO SACRIFICE ISSAC?"

 

[Victor Van Heerden]

We need to be careful of not making assumptions about God.

LOL. Did you read that statement. Read it properly because that is exactly what you are doing.

 

[Br. Bear]

I repeat and you have not attended to my comment properly 'WHY WAS ABRAHAM NOT MORALLY REPULSED BY THE COMMAND TO SACRIFICE ISSAC?"

Greetings,

why, should he have been?


Bless you ....><>

ps... please don't forget or overlook that nobody is required to attend to anyone's comments here at TalkJesus

 

[Br. Bear]

Greetings,

ps... please don't forget or overlook that nobody is required to attend to anyone's comments here at TalkJesus

now, that's a comment that could be dissected.... after all, who is nobody and why are they required???


remember grace and peace


Bless you ....><>

 

[Victor Van Heerden]

Modern sensibilities? Like GLBT?

Nope - like genocide is against the Geneva convention. And the Israelite committed it under instructions from God many times before it became unfashionable due to modern sensibilities. ( Genocide is intentional action to destroy a people in whole or in part. The hybrid word "genocide" is a combination of the Greek word génos and the Latin suffix -cide. )

 

[Victor Van Heerden]

Greetings,

why, should he have been?


Bless you ....><>

ps... please don't forget or overlook that nobody is required to attend to anyone's comments here at TalkJesu

Oh okay - my bad. I thought KingJ was engaging me. No problems. Bless you to.

 

[Victor Van Heerden]

why, should he have been?

Nope he should not have been especially because of his era and area where he lived. Sacrificing to God was a common practise. And the greater the sacrifice the better.

 

[Victor Van Heerden]

Modern sensibilities? Like GLBT?

Deuteronomy 20:13-15

13 When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. 14 As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies. 15 This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.

A commandment to kill all the men in a conquered city and to seize the women, children and livestock as plunder....? Is that a modern or antiquated sensibility?

 

[Br. Bear]

Nope - like genocide is against the Geneva convention. And the Israelite committed it under instructions from God many times before it became unfashionable due to modern sensibilities. ( Genocide is intentional action to destroy a people in whole or in part. The hybrid word "genocide" is a combination of the Greek word génos and the Latin suffix -cide. )

Deuteronomy 20:13-15

13 When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. 14 As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies. 15 This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.

A commandment to kill all the men in a conquered city and to seize the women, children and livestock as plunder....? Is that a modern or antiquated sensibility?

Greetings again,

genocide and our use of it and for some, the abhorrence of it, is mans way of playing God, the God we ought not restrict to our ways.


Bless you ....><>