Jesus and his sacrifice is Satan’s test of man’s morality.

That's the problem isn't it. Christians who in an attempt to justify the belief that God actually did those things in order to support and inerrant Bible so discredit God and the faith that it is no wonder people who see that as representing it leave. If I believed that to be a Christian I had to essentially make an idol out of the Bible, and believe that God actually did those things, then I too would reject the faith.Following God whose Word and wisdom is incarnate in Jesus is a very different form of Christianity than those who believe that God would be guilty of some of the things attributed to Him in the OT. One of things that Jesus did actually was to abrogate the notion that God was like that when He told them that they were to love their enemy. That was in a society where His countrymen were being brutalized by the Romans.

I have not said that I don't believe that God knows everything, whatever everything even means in this case.I'm saying that I believe that in general the future is unknowable even to God. It is my contention that He has created a world where the future is open. I wrote this earlier to Tangle:

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Omniscience is about knowing everything there is to know. It is my belief, that the future is open and unknowable even to God.

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If the future is knowable then all of history is pre-ordained. There would be no free will and everything becomes purposeless. This is not the message of the Bible, where we see in the OT Yahweh negotiating with the Jews, nor do we see it in the NT where Jesus exhorts people to change their ways. The whole point of Jesus doing what He did becomes pointless if all history is pre-ordained.

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I suggest that I'm still only having it one way. Happy 2016.

Just curious Faith. Do you consider yourself one of the innocents? Doesn't the Bible say that there is no one righteous.In an earlier post you claimed that God brought retribution to the US via the civil war. How about those who died fighting against the practice of slavery? You didn't respond to the idea that slavery was abolished in Britain due primarily to the work of the Christian William Wilberforce without any bloodshed. Does God like the Brits better than the Yanks? (Actually He is particularly fond of Canadians but we'll keep that between ourselves. )Have a great 2016 Faith. You have an indomitable spirit.

Thanks Percy. I'll correct it.While you are here I just want to thank you for this forum. I have benefited tremendously from it, both by hearing what others have to say, and even to see how what I believe sounds by actually having to put it down in writing.It has been a great education for some one like myself who doesn't have the background and education that many here have.It is also a very well organized and laid out site with very good moderation.Thanks again for the gift of this forum and have a great 2016.Greg

I skimmed through that thread and it is fairly clear that there are varying degrees of atheism. I can however accept the fact that they don't believe in any god or gods and go with that. As an aside I don't believe in naturalism.

As a Christian it is my belief that the flood story is to be understood as an allegory and we know there were other flood mythologies at the time and so this is just put a Jewish spin on it. The simplest take away message for the Christian from the story is that God isn't about to give up on us.However the main point I want to make is this. In the case of the flood we have Yahweh Himself being responsible for the slaughter. In other cases in the OT it has Yahweh commanding the people He has loved to slaughter all men, women and children of another community. This of course makes a mockery of Jesus' command to love our neighbour.Also however we have to ask what this slaughter would do to the hearts and minds of those carrying out this genocidal slaughter. These are the ones who were commissioned to spread God's love. Just look at what has happened to people in modern history who have come back from the various wars. I had a great Uncle who simply drank himself to death after WW I because he couldn't live with what he had had to face. How much worse would it have been if he had been called to personally, by his own hands kill women and children. Do you believe in a god that would command anyone to do this, let alone the people He has chosen to be His emissaries.If you actually believe that God is capable of all this I really have to question why it is that you worship Him? Personally I worship God because I firmly believe that He is good all the time, not just some of the time. I worship the God that I see embodied by Jesus who loved the enemy, turned the other cheek and told His followers that the fight was not against people but against evil itself and the weapon against that evil was love. If we fight evil with more evil we know conclusively that evil will always win.

That isn't the point here. Well is Jesus the "Word" of God or is the Bible the "Word" of God. The Gospel of John tells us that the "Word" became flesh in Jesus. It cannot be both as you cannot reconcile the god of the flood and other atrocities with the God the Father that we see incarnate in the life and words of Jesus. I know that you think you can but the two visions of God are irreconcilable.Again I go back to the notion that the flood itself is bad enough but the idea that Yahweh would command His followers to slaughter women and children would put Him in the same category as Pol Pot if it were true. And again, why would anyone who hates evil worship a god like that.

Then why are they in disagreement? I'll agree that the Bible is the word of God to the extent that we can learn about Him, and have our hearts touched by Him through the words of the Bible, but not when we read it the way you do.IMHO your method of understanding scripture provides a warped view of God. Jesus was a Jew who taught His followers through the words of the Hebrew Scriptures, correcting them when necessary but focusing on the aspects that reflected God's true nature which is always loving, kind, just and merciful but never cruel and certainly never genocidal. So yes, we need the OT to understand Jesus in His culture but we need Jesus to separate what is of God and what isn't in the OT. But there are none that justify genocide. If it can be justified then how do we know that it isn't God's will that we should nuke into oblivion Islamic countries today? It is because of Jesus that we know it is wrong but with an inerrant Bible we can't know as God was like that then so He very well could be like that again now.The differences are irreconcilable. It isn't God that you are know and trust. Your trust is in an inerrant Bible. IMHO you have made an idol out of the Bible, and again IMHO if you believe that God is capable of genocide and public stonings then I would also humbly suggest that you don't know Him at all.

You keep wanting to put things in neat little boxes. Yes it is about faith, but not simply faith in a particular set of doctrines. Read the sermon on the mount or Matthew 25. It is about faith in all that is good so that our hearts respond to love and goodness and ultimately so that is reflected in our lives. If you want to worship a sometimes genocidal and sometimes cruel god then you are obviously free to do so. What that says to me is that you have turned Christianity inside out and made it all about you. You will worship Him, even though He is capable of evil as it will get you on His good side.It is actually very similar to the situation with the pagan gods of Jesus' time. People would worship them just because they believed they were god and weren't really concerned with the nature of any of their gods but it was in their best interest to be on the right side of them.

Well, to start with as I you know I do not believe in an inerrant Bible so I allow for some imagination by the authors. Also, if God is going to do something Himself then He would know that ahead of time. Jesus often foretold the destruction of Jerusalem but that would be on the basis of He could see that would be the retribution by the Romans for the rebellion was brewing.Many of the prophesies that we can see in the Bible are with the benefit of hind sight as well. Frankly, the Jews of that day didn't understand the prophesies the way we do now. It is clear that not even the disciples understood messiahship the way Jesus did. If Jesus had been a military leader defeating their enemies then we would be looking at other biblical verses that would prophesy that.If God knows all that there is to know then, even though the future is unknowable, He can predict the future with a fair degree of accuracy. As I said earlier, it could easily be predicted that Jesus would be crucified as that would happen to anyone, (particularly someone who had already upset those in power), who was going to do what Jesus did when He entered into Jerusalem.

That makes no sense. Using your analogy once God has looked out the window of time, (which in your view is the entire future), and observed you doing something, even before you were ever born, then that action is fixed and you have no free will to deviate from it.

Jesus spoke out against the militants and with His knowledge of the politics of the time He saw a rebellion at some point in the future to be inevitable. Given the strength of the Romans it then wasn't to difficult to forecast the outcome. Not at all. I can say with a coin toss that I have a 50% chance of calling it right. If I then call it heads and tails comes up it wasn't that I was wrong. Actually I was right in saying that I had a 50% chance to get it right.Again my point is that God knows everything that is knowable but has created a world where the future is open and unknowable.IMHO both God and I know that my life as I enjoy it now is going to come to an end. Neither of us know when, although I'm sure God has better estimation of that as He would have greater knowledge of my personal health situation.

I get the argument but it makes no sense even from a fundamentalists perspective. Why would God debate with OT characters about things like how many righteous men it takes before He doesn't kill everyone in a village?
From Genesis 18:

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1 The LORD appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day. 2 Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground. 3 He said, "If I have found favor in your eyes, my lord, do not pass your servant by. 4 Let a little water be brought, and then you may all wash your feet and rest under this tree. 5 Let me get you something to eat, so you can be refreshed and then go on your way--now that you have come to your servant." "Very well," they answered, "do as you say." 6 So Abraham hurried into the tent to Sarah. "Quick," he said, "get three seahs of fine flour and knead it and bake some bread." 7 Then he ran to the herd and selected a choice, tender calf and gave it to a servant, who hurried to prepare it. 8 He then brought some curds and milk and the calf that had been prepared, and set these before them. While they ate, he stood near them under a tree. 9 "Where is your wife Sarah?" they asked him. "There, in the tent," he said. 10 Then the LORD said, "I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son." Now Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent, which was behind him. 11 Abraham and Sarah were already old and well advanced in years, and Sarah was past the age of childbearing. 12 So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, "After I am worn out and my master is old, will I now have this pleasure?" 13 Then the LORD said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh and say, 'Will I really have a child, now that I am old?' 14 Is anything too hard for the LORD? I will return to you at the appointed time next year and Sarah will have a son." 15 Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, "I did not laugh." But he said, "Yes, you did laugh."
Abraham Pleads for Sodom
16 When the men got up to leave, they looked down toward Sodom, and Abraham walked along with them to see them on their way. 17 Then the LORD said, "Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? 18 Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. 19 For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing what is right and just, so that the LORD will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him." 20 Then the LORD said, "The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous 21 that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know." 22 The men turned away and went toward Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the LORD. 23 Then Abraham approached him and said: "Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? 24 What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? 25 Far be it from you to do such a thing--to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?" 26 The LORD said, "If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake." 27 Then Abraham spoke up again: "Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes, 28 what if the number of the righteous is five less than fifty? Will you destroy the whole city because of five people?" "If I find forty-five there," he said, "I will not destroy it." 29 Once again he spoke to him, "What if only forty are found there?" He said, "For the sake of forty, I will not do it." 30 Then he said, "May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak. What if only thirty can be found there?" He answered, "I will not do it if I find thirty there." 31 Abraham said, "Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, what if only twenty can be found there?" He said, "For the sake of twenty, I will not destroy it." 32 Then he said, "May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if only ten can be found there?" He answered, "For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it." 33 When the LORD had finished speaking with Abraham, he left, and Abraham returned home.

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This passage points out a couple of problems with your understanding of the Bible. Firstly it has God willing to slaughter a whole village when the God we see in Jesus says to love our enemy. Secondly does this really sound like a god who knows the future.Is God not capable of creating a universe where He has left the future open even to Him? If God knows the entire future and it is set before we are even born why bother with the Holy Spirit?Edited by GDR, : No reason given.

But that isn't what these passages say, and didn't Jesus teach us to pray, "lead us not into temptation". Besides, the idea of God slaughtering communities, or asking His people to is not uncommon in the OT so there is no reason to suggest that this is anything but what it says. I did and it is corrected. Thanks If God knows the whole future then He knows what it is you will have for lunch on Jan 23 2019 and that is that. You can change your mind all you want but it will always wind up being predestined from before you were born. How can you argue around that? I am not trying to force anything. I am simply seeking truth through scripture and reason. I have shown how scripture argues against your position and I think it is pretty obvious that reason does as well. OK, but that does not mean that He knows our future in the same way He knows our past and present. If He is truly the creator
then He is quite capable of creating a world where the future is open. That makes no sense. If everything is present tense then there is only "now" that exists which does not allow for change. There would be no present or future. Time is simply the way we experience change.I go back again. If God knows the entire future why does He send His Holy Spirit to change people's hearts?

Matthew 7 1 "Do not judge, or you too will be judged.Luke 6 37 "Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.Faith you read and understand the Bible strictly through your fundamentalist glasses. Maybe you should try reading to see what it really says.