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FirmFare -> RE: "Acts of God" Riddle (7/24/2005 1:54:57 AM)
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F&F You had me busting up. I love tales of how the innocense of a child challenges the conclusions of teachers. Teaching is one of the most humbling experiences in this world for that very reason.
I'd like to respond to your point 1. About the other people mentioned in Genesis. Before the first sin, there was no death. So we don't know how long Adam and Eve lived before the sin or what they had learned about their own bodies and the 'functions' they could share. Presumably they knew how to get it on by the time they were banned from the garden. Also, even after the first sin, people lived anywhere from 500 to nearly 1000 years in those days. The Bible mentions that they had other sons and daughters. Over a 500 year period, one couple could produce a family of 250 kids conceivably, at a rate of 1 every two years. All the while those kids are able to produce grandkids from the age of 20, and if each kid produced an average of 1 kid every two years you'd have 6 producing couples by year 30. After that, every 10 years would triple the population of producing couples. Allowing for accidents and mishaps that damage reproductive abilities, by the year 500 there potentially could be a population of more than 3600 people. If Cain saw the population explosion happen so rapidly, when he was cursed, naturally he could imagine the whole earth being covered with people who would know he was cursed by the mark God placed on his head.
Next question usually deals with, "I thought God commanded not to marry your sister?" Well He did, but not until after the flood.
Point 2. You said, "Jesus along with some of His disciples made the waters calm a time or two. So perhaps the natural disasters aren't God's fault as much as they might be ours for not using the faith in the Name of God or Jesus to stop these disasters. People having the faith the size of a mustard seed to move mountains is metaphorical but Jesus still calmed the storms and walked on water or so the Christian faith says."
Now you're getting it. Faith or lack of, has consequences in our natural, physical existence. That's why there is disease and also natural disasters. An example in microcosm was (King David sinned against God in adultery.) The product of that sin was an innocent baby. God pronounced judgement against David and part of his consequence was the death of that innocent child. I can only hypothesize that the consequence of allowing the baby to survive would have been greater trouble for God's purposes and for the nation than the concern people would have for a God that acts so callously. I can't justify God's choice, but then I don't see the full extent of the consequences of all options either.
Merc & LaM
Please note that God is perfect and the church is not. It seems from earlier posts, you have associated what the church says or does as equivalent to what God says. I acknowledge that you stipulated a separation between them but still seem to equate the church's actions as indication to God's will. (We should eliminate the excuse for killing that is causing the problem) This is like blaming the husband for his wife's behavior. The husband can command, instruct, influence, encourage, and support her but she has her own will. This does not make him responsible for her actions. God chose to take the personal consequences for the faults of the church upon Himself so He could save her for His personal pleasure. This does not mean He takes every consequence of every sinner and certainly not every consequence of sin. Rather, He takes the personal consequence of sinners who agree with Him about their behavior. (That is was wrong) Again, sin is whatever is not from faith. So where would we find the incentive to seek God's will if everything we did was always fixed before it was a problem.
Also, if you set Budhism and radicals agianst one another, the radicals don't seem to have any qualms about wiping out the so called infedels or equivalent depending on the religion, Budhists in the name of their God. So Budhism is similar to Jehovah's Witnesses in the U.S. They don't stand against their own destruction and therefore forfiet their own existance. The only reason they continue to exist is under the protection of the unconverted. If you carry their faiths to their natural conclusions, eventually, they would cease to exist. Some would say Christianity is supposed to act that way, "Turn the other cheek" and so on. But this is meant for personal social behavior not for national behavior. Again, where have Budhists made a difference in the world. In India, with their sects, a man who suffers from malnutrition is getting his due karma. To interfere with his karma is bad for your own karma. In Christianity and Judeism are found the only God given commands to bless others in order to serve Him. Not only for other believers but for anyone in need. This is not meant as an attack on other faiths. Just a statement of facts. If someone can give me examples refuting, I'd welcome them.
I am with Merc on the need and preference for clarity and simplicity. As I see it, He does publish standards and rules. The problem is that we deny He exists or sets rules because to admit so would mean we will be held responsible for our actions. If God does not exist, or if His rules are interpreted to suit our will or we adopt a set that does suit our will, then we are free (in our own minds) to do as we please.
God said to us, "If we seek Him with all our hearts, we will find Him." Challenging Him to prove us wrong reveals that our hearts are already set against His will for our lives. This looks incredibly circular as an argument for proof, but look at it from His point of view. He isn't trying to prove His existence, He is trying to save people from self destructing and build a perfect kingdom. Proving His existence only forces you to bend your will to His. He has made it clear that He wants volunteers for His kingdom. If you want to be in relationship with Him, He's available. If you want to avoid relationship with Him, He grants that desire. This is the ultimate form of freewill.
If you want proof before you are willing to believe, you are not ready for the kingdom. If you want answers before you are willing to live by His standard, I think that's fair. But then, I am not the one with the answers. All I can give you is why I believe. I believe because with Him I am blessed with clearer thinking, better money management, better life management, a goal and a purpose I don't have otherwise. I also have greater success in life when I align my will with His. The blessings are so numerous I can't begin to list them all. Without Him I carry a sense of dread and pointlessness. When I came into relationship with God, I was aware of His call to me, but I could have written it off as my imagination. I chose to believe because, as it was explained to me, He loves me and has a plan for me. I needed His love and I needed His direction. It wasn't until I believed that I saw proof that He exists and is present in our lives.
Merc; you put it beautifully in your post on 7/20. "But I will take your concept to a dichotomy. I believe I've expressed before; I've never seen an alien but believe there is life on other planets. Strange huh? That I have no problem with that belief? Maybe its because belief in aliens was never a cause to kill anyone."
The crux of the matter is; Because we have difficult issues to face in history and world events, we don't want to believe, yet without those difficult issues we would never seek out an answer to whether we need God or not. We wouldn't be interested in knowing Him at all since it entails personal sacrifice and often times suffering for His will.
Sub4hire
I disagree that the dead are around us all the time. There is nothing consistant with this idea in the Bible. The quote you referred to applies but not until Jesus returns. I don't refute that paranormal events occur, I just believe they are the work of spirits. The Bible calls demons, 'Princes of the air' and angels (literally translated messengers) are of the same make, they just chose to remain in God's service. I think the paranormal events are the demons playing with us to accomplish whatever damage to God's will they can. I freely admit that this is entirely conjecture. Don't have any evidence, Biblical or extrabiblical, to support my theory here. There are plenty of stories however, in the Bible that show the demons at work on the people in Jesus' day and in the works of the disciples after Jesus gave them authority. Don't see any evidence for ghost like events. There is one event in the Old Testament that awakens a dead man from his slumber, but this was a bad king using a witch to raise a prophet who then cursed him by his faith in God because he'd broken the commandment to kill all mediums and their like in the land.
From an earlier post you said, "What if God answers all prayer..."
I believe He does, but the answer is usually, "No" or "Wait" but if our wills line up with His, then we get the answer usually far better than what we were hoping for. There is also the requirement for an element of faith. That's one of the reasons I doubt deathbed conversions. Faith requires acting on the belief that what God says He will do, He does. What faith is required at death. You've lived by your faith or lack of it all your life. How does a last minute plea equal living by the standards He has laid out. I'm not saying it can't happen, look at the thief on the cross, but everything the thief had left from a lifetime of sin he gave over to Christ. (He chose to go down with the Jesus who was being mocked as a fool) He gave up the little identity he had to die a follower of a so-called fool.
From way back on page 6, SirKenin posted in reply to dark~angel that prophecies have ceased as well as tongues and signs.
I respectfully disagree. The scripture you refer to is in context of when we are living in the kingdom of heaven. See verse 1Cor13:10 just a few lines further down. It says, "When that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away. So until we are perfect, tongues, prophecies, miracles and signs are a part of the Christian life.
Everybody;
The best evidence for the validity of the Bible I can come up with is something that was e-mailed to me several times. NASA proved the Bible true by accident. They were trying to lay out the paths of all the heavenly bodies, something they need to do if they plan on sending equipment up among them so they won't go bumping into them. So they entered all the criteria, size, speed, direction and orbits into a computer for calculating there whereabouts. They ran the program forward and backward to verify their calculations, but the computer stopped while running in reverse, and began flashing an error message. It seemed that a space of time was missing in their calculations. This was very important because if their calculations were wrong then they could not count on passing through space without falling into a planet's gravity well or bumping into a known comet or something. So they carefully went over their figures and established they had made no mistakes and ran the program again and low and behold the same thing happened at the same point. The rest can be found at this link.
http://www.detailshere.com/nasaproves.htm
I realize this does not answer the question posed, but it is great evidence for the Bible being true. Hope this helps.
Bob
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