Tribute Thread For the Recently Raptured Faith

God is perfect. He can do no wrong. Like it or not it is justice when He wipes out a tribe of people, and we should learn from it what God considers deserving of such punishment because some nations are ripe for it today. The kinds of punishments are listed in Deuteronomy and Leviticus and we are already suffering the beginnings of some of them, but very few of us take the Bible seriously enough to recognize this. In any case the word "genocide" has criminal connotations, therefore it does not apply.

You see God as perfectly embodied in Jesus, as He came to us in His first advent. That way you limit Him to His work as savior and Suffering Servant and conveniently ignore that He is going to come again to destroy the enemies of God (Isaiah 61:2 and Revelation 19). He's God, GDR, He's God the Son; He was at the Creation; all things were made through Him. There is no way His character is any different from that of God the Father, who wiped out whole tribes for their idolatries. You are deceiving yourself.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Yes, legally, strictly speaking, you are using the terms correctly. The problem is that "genocide" carries connotations that do not apply to God. Yes, God may wipe out a whole tribe of people in judgment for their sins.

I knew you would misread this. No I am not justifying the evil perpetrators of 9/11, I'm simply saying that God can use people with evil motives to perform His will in this world. He used the Assyrians and the Babylonians against His people Israel in the same way. But He will punish them in the end for their murderousness. {abe: on a smaller scale Joseph tells his brothers who had sold him into slavery in Egypt years before, that they had intended it for evil but God intended it for good./abe}And 9/11 was also a display of great mercies by God. There are many miracle stories from that day, people who know God protected them in various ways. Overall it was a love tap of a judgment compared to what judgment can be. a reminder to repent. But we haven't and we won't. Some churches may have repented on behalf of the nation, I hope so, but very few because it was clear from the Christian reaction on that day that most of them wrongly thought of it the way you do. Well, not at all because the God of Islam has his followers murder people who reject him. The true God makes precise judgments for known sins. Understanding how God functions in this world is something we are charged to do: the Old Testament was "given for our admonition" it says somewhere in the New Testament. We are supposed to understand God's workings in the world, His judgments for sin and so on. It's supposed to benefit us to know that. We remain ignorant of most of the things that happen in the world if we treat the OT the way you do and unfortunately so many so called Christians do. All that is ALSO true. But since you hate the God of the Old Testament you will never get the whole picture and will always miss God's judgments against sin, and when they are missed and denied they accumulate and bring on worse judgment.Again, Jesus came to suffer and save, but He's coming again to judge the earth. You see Him only in the role you like.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

His mercies are enduring!!!! Which part though? The death by suffocation? Death by incineration? Death by blunt force trauma from the fall? Or one guy who, by blind luck, survived on a slab of concrete underneath a cushion of air?Hundreds upon hundreds of Christians died that day. And a single person lived. What metric do you think God uses to spare some and have others die through pure suffering?

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God is perfect. He can do no wrong. Like it or not it is justice when He wipes out a tribe of people, and we should learn from it what God considers deserving of such punishment because some nations are ripe for it today.

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In other words - solely because the Bible says that God is guilty of ordering genocide - you claim that genocide can be a good thing. But you don’t offer any real justification. More your statement even suggests that you want some nations to be exterminated.

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In any case the word "genocide" has criminal connotations, therefore it does not apply.

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And you remain confused because you ignore the points that have been raised. I repeat my point. Genocide does not merely have criminal connotations - the act of genocide has been decreed a crime. And by that definition God is - according to the Bible guilty. It’s an open and shut case.Using spin to try and obscure the facts is not honest.

Yes many people suffered and died, though overall a LOT fewer than could have been the case. And the mercy stories I've heard are, yes, those of just a few by comparison, but they include providential events that kept them away from the disaster, and events that helped them escape, including a woman who is sure it was an angel who held open a door for her as she was escaping from the tower. I don't know how God makes such decisions, but I'm happy to hear such stories. Usually the people then get involved in helping others.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I will ask a few questions which I doubt you will answer though they are worthy of consideration.

Who created the "enemies of God"? Did they choose to become His enemy? Without knowledge of Jesus back then, how was there any way out? What was expected of these primitive people from God? Arguably the Jewish Nation was no more saintly than the heathens....except it was chosen by God.

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Are we any better today than people were back then?

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An argument is often made that if God foreknows an individuals or nations destiny before the judgement than that makes God responsible for evil as well as good. I was taught that God is good. jar always maintained that God was complete and had both good and evil tendencies as written...though jar believed that humans made up God as they understood Him. You start with the presupposition that the Bible perfectly describes God. If so, and if you believe God reveals Himself to those who seek Him, what do you think He expects modern people to do? Is the US any better than her enemies?

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Edited by Phat, : No reason given.

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Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. —RC Sproul
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." —Mark Twain "
~"If that's not sufficient for you go soak your head."~Faith
You can "get answers" by watching the ducks. That doesn't mean the answers are coming from them.~Ringo

The Bible says we are all enemies of God by nature, due to the Fall. Nineveh repented in sackcloth and ashes when Jonah preached to them that God was going to judge them, and God withheld the judgment. There is no difference between the people God chooses and those He doesn't. We're all sinners. He has to teach us and mold us into something else. Maybe worse.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Good answers.Ninevah evidently knew enough about God to choose to repent. Did all of the heathen nations have similar knowledge?And again...does God foreknow who will choose Him and who won't?

Somehow missed this, confused it with your signature I think. God is good and we make a mistake applying our standards to Him.1 John 1:5: Repent and believe is what Jesus tells us to do.The US used to be the best nation on earth because of our strong Christian heritage. That is no longer the case and we are doing things that deserve God's judgment..

Just what the Bible teaches. That's an interesting question and I don't know. The Old Testament describes incidents where the heathen nations. or at least individuals from those nations, came to learn that Israel's God is the Creator God as opposed to all the lesser tribal gods they were familiar with. Rahab tells the spies from Israel that all Jericho is quaking from fear of them because they know what God has done for them.There were already prophets and holy men of the true God among the heathen though. Balaam was one. Job was one. Melchizedek who met Abraham was a "priest of the most high God," so there was apparently a range of knowledge among the peoples. I'm a Calvinist, Phat, I believe God does the choosing and doesn't merely "foreknow" things but predestines them.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Curious. You describe jar in the past tense. Has he left EvC?

I think he may have some health problems. Keep him in prayer.

Yes I will certainly pray for him.