What Does the Second Coming Entail?

Your perogative. "Natural death" is a human construct. PhysicalWe are all born spiritually dead. You can't kill something twice that I know of.

And rightly so. But neither do you believe the Bible is the word of God. Actually not. Most people here realise that if you want to talk about what the Bible says then you must presume (for the sake of argument) that it is the word of God. Like, you cannot use the Bible as a weapon against his attributes if you don't believe ( for the sake of argument) that what it says describes his attributes. Now can you? I find you evasive and not very pleasant to discuss with for the reason given. You dodge and weave around the issue of the Bible being the word of God. One minute you quote from it as if what it says is true and the next moment you deny it is the word of God. You want it both ways. But you cannot have it both ways - in my view.

Who says there are any rules in fact? You believe a god who can lie to you? More than tough I would suggest. You cannot know. You cannot trust what God says - can you? Based? One cannot base faith on anything if God is capable of lies. I'm not saying it is a lie. God creates evil that is true. On the other hand you are saying it is true that he creates evil. On what basis - given that you say God can lie? A lying God can lie about creating evil. Maybe God cannot create anything at all. There might not be anything such as evil at all - just moral relativismNope, it seems to me like you end up going in cicles when you suppose God can lie to you.

No doubt thats one of the many Gospels according to Ringo. You see, this is where is all gets amusingly ridiculous. Did God say lying is evil? And if he did, was he lying about what constitutes evil?

Irrelevant whether God tells the truth or not? Poppycock. Thats fuzzy thinking on a par with the Ringo-position of denying that the bible is (at least for the sake of discussion )"the word of God"Forgetting the argument about how one links God creating evil with him being evil for a sec. Take that unmade argument as a given:"I create evil. But I am also a liar and lying is not evil. And I lied about saying I create evil. I didn't. I'm good. A good liar in fact"Think before you post CK

All God has to do in order to be God is to be capable of whatever he is capable of. No more. He does not have to be capable of simply anything at all anyone can dream up. I didn't say he lies. I say he doesn't. YOU say he is capable of it (or at least that must be inferred from your position that he is capable of simply anything at all). And the natural outworking of that is that you cannot trust what he says. Because you cannot know if what he says about anything is true. Don't dodge the horns of the dilema you are impaled upon. You cannot trust him as it stands.I on the other hand, can. We are both making assumptions in the end Arach. You assume that God cannot be trusted for you assume he is capable of lies. I assume that God can be trusted for I assume he cannot lie.Whatever. Any discussion based on your premise falls at the first fence "We don't know if God is lying or not" The only way you can discuss anything is to assume, like me, that he never does. And if you don't agree with me on this, watch me chase you around for a while asking "Arach, how do you know God is telling the truth here" To which you must respond "I assume he is" in order to progress.You will have to assume he does everytime. Which means you actually hold, my own position. I never said God was lying as a defence. That was you arguing that to question "I create evil" means that one is making God out to be a liar. The issue actually arose out of your notion that God is capable of "simply anything at all" I'm afraid I'm not. But I don't want to stab at you. I want you to see how ludicrous your position that God is capable of simply anything at all (which includes lying) is. You will hopefully find that you must believe like me, that he always tells the truth - in order to discuss anything on this board.When we park this issue we can go back and look at "I create evil" with a view to discussing whether that means evil eminates from within God.

Arach. You are better than this. That was irony aimed at a person who doesn't believe the Bible to be the word of God.

You mentioned somewhere that your intention on this site was not to enter into debate but was instead to utilise some psycho-babble inspired headlines to head lurkers seeking information off at the pass. And you talk of credibility. My word!Edited by iano, : No reason given.

You said evil eminates from within God. I said that a consequence of this was that God could lie and asked you did you agree with that. You agreed.If that is the case then we cannot really discuss what God says in any meaningful way. For we have no more reason to suppose he is telling the truth than suppose he is lying.Can tell lies doesn't mean Does tell lies. Granted
Can tell truth doesn't mean Does tell truth. Granted?Its at this point you speak of trust. You speak of trusting humans. We can trust people alright, but given that they are all capable of lying means we cannot trust them to tell us the truth 100%. Nobody trusts another human 100% - for if they did, it would mean that that person could tell them to jump off a bridge "it'll be fine" and the trusting person would have to do it."No one I trust 100% would ask me such a thing" you might say. Meaning that you trust people more, the less they get you to do things that you think are crazy, stupid, unwise etc. That's not 100% trust - that's limiting options for being lied to - not an unwise thing to do.In order to truly trust someone 100% we have to believe they cannot lie to us. That's total trust. And if someone cannot lie then evil cannot eminate from within them.In order to discuss we must trust God to tell us the truth 100%. That means he cannot lie, which means evil cannot eminate from within him. There must be a way in which God can create evil without being evil himself. I gave an example of how that could be earlier - before we headed down this road.

Sorry if it makes your head spin. Me? I'm fineHave you anything of substance to say Lfen? Then by all means pull up a stool and case a spell.Evil eminating from God?God capable of lying?I'm quite happy to quit amusing myself with CK and spend some more possibly fruitful time with yourself.

How does God create evil Arach?

You don't know how he does it. Which means you don't know if he can do it in a way which doesn't necessitate him being capable of evil himself. Yet you say he is capable of evilHow so?

The bible said he created evil. You conclude he is capable. But that merely speculates that in order to create evil he must be capable of evilBut you said you didn't know what the process of creation involves.How do you make the link between him creating and him being capable of evil?Edited by iano, : No reason given.

We might be back on track again!The Bible doesn't call any of the verbs involved evil. What the verb creates, brings, does etc produces evil. Evil as a product, a resource. I pointed out quotes of yours which indicated evil as a tool applied. God creates a tool and applies it. But the actual act of creating the tool is never called evil. I'm off to bed. Perhaps we can look at a few of these verses in context again. Evil the tool. I understand your frustration. Do you not think that I feel the same way at times? But no, I am not begin deliberately obtuse. I suppose I look around at all he has made, am staggered by the sheer ingenuity of it all and have no problem in the least supposing he can do something a simple as that. All it takes is a little bit of ingenuity. He has it in spades.The main reason however is the fact that I know him - personally. And all the exposure I have had to him indicates ovewhelmingly (and I mean that in the literal sense of the word that God is light and in him there is no darkness. At all. Even when he disciplines my sorry assG'night Arach. Its tough I know. But y'all calling our God evil.