Judges 19 - Sickest story in the bible

I guess what God should have really gave us when Moses went to the mountain was some plans for local hotels, some cell phones, and a police station. This way things like this would never happen. There would be no need for hospitality, woman would never get raped, the guilty would never get away with things, and wars would never happen.I just love it when people compare things that happened thousands of years ago, by todays standards. Then you realize, things haven't changed one bit.Just what was it like to live back then, and why did they have the rules they had, is what you should ask yourself.

That’s exactly what he did when he delivered his people from Egypt. Only thing is you or I have a hard time relating to it, because we really just don't fully comprehend what it was like to be alive in those times. We only have drips and drabs of what went on. The world has not changed one bit since those times.
People are still put to death, slavery still exists in its rawest form, and in a way that we don't yet fathom, and flying planes into the Twin Towers, or the Oklahoma City bombing is not an atrocity? The pollution we have done to this planet, the disease we have created, and pumped our bodies and streams full of chemicals till offspring with 3 eyes start appearing?Yea, the world is a much better place, really it is, keep telling yourself that. It's all relative. The punishments for the crimes back then, were relatively correct. Society was scarce, and maybe things like policemen patrolling the streets, and prisons were few and far between, so a law of the land had to be laid down.
Would you rape someone if you knew that when you get caught, that you would be stoned to death? There wasn't much of a justice system, or a decent way to enforce it, so the punishments were more severe.Take a look at the way some of these third world countries live. Places that are void of enforcement, and you'll start to get a better picture. It's probably the reason they still believe in eye for an eye.The world doesn't need to be filled with second chances, it needs to be righteous, so that God may enter into our lives, and we can be one with God.. But God knew this wasn't possible, so he gave us his Son. The way I see it, is that he had no choice in the matter. He did because he had no coice. It wasn't the husbands fault. You know this by his reaction afterwards. Yes and no Yaro. If the earth entered into a 3rd world war, and had a nuke fest, and most of the population was wiped out, there would be no doubt in my mind that the current way of society as we know would just be thrown out the window, and we would have to start all over again, having learned absolutely nothing from the ways of our past. I bet you would even have to discover the hard way that living like that was a "necessary evil" (we only perceive it as evil now) and you would be forced into living like that, if you were dropped into those conditions. In order to survive, and in order to bring your righteous way of thinking into the future. And I do think that you are a righteous thinker. Because it is truth, and it happened. Don't be angry at an account of what happened, but try to understand why things were the way they are. If God is all loving, then you have to read that book from that point of view. You are reading the book with the preconceived notion that God does not exist, and it was all just a big joke. Pray to God to give you the understanding, he will give you what you ask. Stop listening to man, and start listening to your spirit. Forget about what the world has taught you, open your mind, and think out of the box the sum of your experiences and teachings has put you in.

We create, God creates. The difference being that only God can create something from nothing, we create from what God has so graciously given us to be responsible for.Yes God sent disease down to the unrighteous, and justly so, for he is the only one that can judge.However when man pollutes the earth, and we get sick from it, it falls under suffering the sins of others. We are a unified human race, regardless of what anyone thinks we are.Tell me the military has never created a disease?
Tell me Asbestos was a good idea, and it never got anyone sick.
Think of all the medicine gone bad.
Think of chemicals pouring into our watershed areas.
Think of Chernobyl.
Agent orange
Lead poisoning
We burn enough oil to fill a football field 2500ft high everyday, the byproduct we breath, which leads to disease.
The list goes on and on.Behind everyone of these things is,, you guessed it....science. But never fear, because science will save the day, and cure all those diseases, hurray!!! we are saved!!!So the question remains, has science done more harm than good?When God destroys a race with disease, or sends a sickness or golden hemorrhoid, it is for a good purpose, to the unjust. We just kill ourselves for money. Which one will you worship tonight? Which one will get you into heaven?Rockefeller was the richest man in the world, relatively speaking. You know how much he left behind when he died?All of it.Yes nothing happens but by the will of the Father. But the Fathers will is to leave it up to us.If he didn't give us the bad with the good, it would be like giving us a boomerang and no arms to throw it. I am getting kind of tired of people blaming God for all the bad in the world, and not taking responsibility for it, or taking responsibility to stop it. But I understand that point of view, for it was my own for so many years.

Precisely the point why God had to come and give some kind of justice structure to the current society.
I do not find stoning someone to death for rape a bad idea at all. Call me sick. But when a person gets raped, they are ruined for life. The punishment fits the crime.
The moral of the punishment is....DON'T DO IT!!
What's so bad about that, unless you think rape is ok. Yes, I can see that, I've been trying to point it out to you as well. Harsh conditions only has a part to do with it. If think it was only harsh conditions, then you are not allowing a reasonable explanation for the rules, ignorance of the times at work. Exactly the same reason why the punishments were what they were. Only if you mis-understand me. The morals haven't changed, I believe I expressed that. Our physical surroundings have, and our ability to police ourselves has, but not in every country.
I should start a thread, defining morals. Thanks be to Christ our Lord, Amen.
If it wasn't for him, we might still be living under those laws. Parts of the world still do. You owe your current way of thinking to the Lord Christ. I don't know, or pretend to know. Let's go pull up the census report from 3000BC If being alive longer is the only qualification to describe a better life, then I disagree. My Grandmother is 88, and is on several medications, suffers from Alzheimer’s, and hardly remembers one day from the next. She gets dizzy spells, and falls down, is constantly going to the doctor, and has to watch everything she does. MY motherin-law, my father in-law, my Aunts, my Uncles, my step mom, my dad, are experiencing similar things. But hey, its great to be alive!!! I can watch the rest of the world have fun, while I take 7 pills a day, and count my steps to make sure I don't fall. I can also watch the inheritance I built up for my children be pissed away on medication, so much to the point that I can't even afford a steak dinner anymore. Crap, I can't even eat steak anymore, because my teeth would fall out, and my intestines will jam up so hard, that I would have to call roto-router to free up my ass. But hey its great to be alive!!!!I am only showing one side of it. Of course there is a good side to all of that, but I need to show you just how great things are really.The bible says we can be healed. I wish we were faithful enough to actually see those healings take place every time we need them. I have seen healings, but there is no science in explaining them. I have myself been healed of minor physical ailments, and mental ones too. But its all subjective, from a scientific method point of view. I am not sure. Have you ever felt that you were born in the wrong era? Many people do, and wish they were alive many years ago. I sometimes wish that, but I like living today, and even sometimes wish I could live in the future.If everything is from God, then the good is too, and I choose to thank God for being able to be alive in this day and age. But ff 1000 years from now, and people might look back at these times, and say, boy I am sure glad we didn't live back then.But please explain this advancement in thought you speak of.
I only see advancement in science, which requires thought, but that has little to do with morals, or love. Was there cancer 5000 years ago? Me too brother! But I currently live in a society that forces me to pollute, in order to survive. I destroy to live. Yes, I agree, but that is not the rule. People lived long lives back then as well. I think the bible promises 70 years to a righteous man. If you caught someone in the act of raping your daughter, what would you do to that person? (God forbid!!) So in a sense you agree that mentality exists then?
Eating babies? Yuck!
I think the OT teaches people to take care of the neighbors, it was law. There should be no starving around you. Not impossible for him, impossible for us. Missed point.
Blame God if you want to, I did for a long time. Seek him to find out the answers. When and if you experience God, if you haven't already, you might come to a better understanding. The truth is hidden from you. Your picture of the scene, and the one I have are very different.
I think if he would have stood in the path between his wife and them, he would have died, and the wife would have been raped anyway. Only on a need be basis. That is why we are were we are today, and they were where they were then. That’s my point, and you just expressed that you agree with it. Yes, that's exactly what God is doing. I believe if he would have advanced us to far to quickly, we would have never got it. We still don't get it. I have a 80% rule in life. 80% of the people who do what they do, either suck at it, or do it for the wrong purpose. This includes religion, doctors, car mechanics, plumbers, etc.If only 20% of the people on earth (probably less than that) actually get what God is trying to teach us, and follow it. Then how could he come down and change things so rapidly?You can see this in our human nature in the stories of the bible. 40 years in a desert with a pillar of fire by night, etc. They kept abandoning God at every tough turn in their lives.
Even the disciples, every corner they turned with Jesus, he had to reteach them and show them faith.
We are a species that seems to do best by learning from our mistakes, and our trials and tribulations. How can we know the light, unless we experience the dark? But when the light comes into your life, the dark has no choice but to run and hide.Yes God came down several times, and then sent his Son for us, but you still sit here and complain that he should come down and change things for us, and show us a better way.Tell me one thing that Jesus said that you disagree with.Jesus was the next logical step in our walk with God as a human race, and this will all lead to the end. (whenever that happens).When we develop stuff, its a step by step process, that takes years on end, and sometimes never comes to completion. This is the way of life. This is a law from God. You can't put a formula 1 engine in a model T and expect it to stay together when you step on the gas.BTW, its ok to wish things were different. I do too. I think its God's nature in us. The bible does say that he wrote his laws on the minds and hearts of everyone, after Jesus. I think its those laws that you are trying to get in touch with. I hope this makes sense to you.

Maybe we are the ones who don't have a clue. I share in your fustration.
How could you expect to understand the One who just breathed the universe into existance?

You mean you can't imagine how? especially if she gets pregnant. It stays on the mind of that person forever. No amount of theropy will ever erase that memory. Plus back in the OT when being a virgin, actually meant something, you would lose your virginity. Virginity was everything to a woman then. Now it seems we just don't give a hoot. This is a blanket statement and it seems to go against everything we are trying to break down and discuss here. You are going to have to be more specific in just what you are saying that God condones. Please supply verses, then we can go over these things case by case. We've been through that in another thread.
I suggest we keep on topic here, as most of these things have been covered already. When did I say that?
I am saying the opposite, that morals do not change, I said it a few times. Not only right, but necessary, for our survival. This is not my field of expertise. Has there ever been bones found with cancer on them? Your arguements do not make much sense at all. According the bible, that has all changed, and is the only thing I can relate too now, because I live in the now, not the then, and do not pretend to know what it was like back then.I do not make the mistake of comparing todays soceity with the soceity of long ago. But I will compare morals. The tuff part is finding out just what are the morals. No, just the way we deal with it.

We have gone over this one before in the forums as well.
There are 5 different meanings to the word rape in the bible.Just because we don't understand an interpretation, doesn't mean there is no God.*edit*
Its not the word rape in the verse that drives that law. It's the value of a woman's virginity. There is also much more to that law than just 50 schekels. You were then responsible for that womans saftey and well being for the rest of your life, or you were stoned to death.In other words, or the way you think, its the rape that lasts a lifetime, lol
I don't think it was a common thing.This message has been edited by riVeRraT, 10-31-2005 10:20 PM

Hey thanks.I am sure there must have been some cancer. From a biblical stand point it would make sense that hereditary cancer may have stemmed from original sin. But that is only a passing thought, I have nothing to back it up. I also feel like we can be healed from it by God.To me the Egyptians would have been more likely to get cancer, as they were a more technologically advanced society, and possibly been introducing unGodly cancer causing toxins into their bodies. Just another passing thought.Either way, I do not like to mix science with the bible, I am not very learned in it, so I don't do well in guessing at things. I do like science, and I do love God. I am not a professional in either.