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

Judging God to be evil is the greatest evil there could ever be. We are told God is good and believers believe it. You self-righteously judge Him."Because of their parents' religion?" Right, you all think ISIS is the same as Christianity, or at least the OT, you think all religions have a right to exist, even religions that sacrifice their own children and are celebrated by prostitituion in the temples. You've all lost your minds, you all who made such horrendous moral equivalences. You learned nothing from your preacher father and your godly mother. Only the Bible is the revelation of the true God, the true religion, all the others are the inventions of Satan. Which ought to be obvious really. "Worship a different deity" you say? They worship Satan. Stop preaching at me, you are the one who needs to learn honesty. I know what I believe and why I believe it. You are incapable of distinguishing between justice and murder. You are condemning God's justice, which I am affirming! Oh but you are! You confuse murder, a crime punishable by death, with God's justice in the punishing of it. My my my how you love and adore your self-righteousness. I haven't claimed to understand why God included babies, but I know God and I know it can only be justice, unlike you who impose your own fallible human righteousness on God. Millions upon millions of sins and crimes as a matter of fact, that He willingly chose to pay for in His own body to set free millions upon millions of grateful sinners.Sorry you've rejected the glorious gift.

I answered you already. Go start your own religion. I'm sure you'll find followers. What? Jesus LAID DOWN HIS OWN LIFE! He IS God, He IS the God of the Old Testament Whom you despise.Go start your own religion.My God DOES drip blood, from His hands and feet and side. For my sake.Your morality is childish and inane and evil.

This is the way things are. This is Reality, built into the inexorable Moral Law. I'm sorry God didn't see fit to save you.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Which is exactly what you and Aussie and so many others here do, as I've said over and over. God defines what is good and what is evil; you don't. How many times do I have to say it? It's not genocide, it's justice, punishment for sin. I already explained why picking up firewood on the Sabbath isn't a "petty offense" but a serious offense worthy of death.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Sorry, Aussie, you're very confused about good and evil. Picking up firewood in itself is work, but it further implies that a fire is to be lit to do the work of cooking. Orthodox Jews today scrupulously avoid work on the Sabbath to an obsessional and unnecessary degree (won't flick a light switch), but that's how seriously they take it.I answered this in [Msg=58] alreadyNo, I am not advocating the murder of children. God doesn't commit murder, His own laws forbid it.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I know you don't want a reply to this but I have to take the risk to tell you that I thought I was complying with your caution. I gave scripture for my answer first, then I said I'd answered already in a particular message, which I linked so it could be read, because I thought that was what you asked for. Sorry if I misread you but I did think I was complying.

Aussie, it doesn't matter what I think. Early on I was often shocked at things in the Bible, but to me the Bible is God's inspired word and my job is to learn what HE considers to be a reasonable penalty. From there I can read commentaries or come to my own understanding of why He sees it as He does, why HE sees it as that important.* All that is my job based on regarding the Bible as the inerrant word of God. If that's what it is, we do not judge God, He judges us. Period. You keep appealing to your own offended feelings as the higher standard, and excoriating me for failing to share them. It is you who need to think this through again. God is the judge, we aren't. Your language continually betrays your refusal or inability to recognize the Bible as God's word and God as the judge. It certainly matters how seriously GOD HIMSELF takes HIS OWN laws. Christianity is not just another religion, it is the God-inspired truth. It would help a great deal if you understood all this in context, which you should be able to if you had any kind of decent instruction in theology. Most of those laws were written for the ancient NATION of Israel, not for modern Jews who are no longer part of that nation. They take it seriously enough to take obedience to an obsessive level. They weren't very faithful when it came to obeying God's laws back then anyway.And being a Christian I'm freed from all those laws through Christ since their true spiritual meaning is now the point (We are to rest in Christ and do nothing for Him in our own flesh but through the Holy Spirit), so my taking it seriously is not through obedience of the literal law but through recognizing how God understands the importance of His laws, the seriousness of sin and so on. This is standard Christian theology. Yes, I have to assume that. The Amalekites had treacherously dealt with Israel; their punishement needed to be severe. And for the umpteenth time, THIS IS GOD'S JUDGMENT ON SIN, IT IS NOT MURDER.The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord. Aussie, please get the point: God's judgments for sin are not murder. Of course I won't renounce it; it's God's own word. I wish you would get that you are trusting in your own very limited mind over God who knows what is important and necessary. That's what needs to be renounced here.-----------------
*Abe: So from the fact that the death penalty is the decreed punishment for work on the Sabbath what we should learn is that the purity of the Sabbath is extremely important in God's redemptive plan. You can't just come along and call it trivial when God has attached such importance to it. We are to learn why it is so important so that we can respond to it properly.Same with the killing of a whole tribe including all their animals. I confess I don't know all the reasoning for these commands, I need to read up on them, but just from the fact of the command it isn't hard to determine that God sometimes considers it essential for His work through the Israelites that these enemies not be allowed to survive at all. You, believing none of it anyway, have no way of judging these things rightly. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : Add last two paragraphs

Sigh. I too am sorry I tried to explain things to YOU. I make that mistake a lot. Oh well.You know what's really odd is that for two millennia Christianity has attracted followers because of its revolutionary gentleness and peaceableness, so well known as to be common knowledge until this recent generation decided to accuse it of the opposite. Funny so many were "broken" by it, according to you, but it's quite odd that it had a completely different reputation until recently. Including the absolutely lovely and merciful God of the Old Testament. Yes.Strange.Oh well.Come soon Lord. I'm not the only one of Yours who is stressed over trying to stick it out any longer.

Sigh.The Accuser of the Brethren is really hard at work these days.Moral Indignation is a powerful weapon, even without a shred of justification, maybe stronger for its lack of justification. Political Correctness is just another version of the same attitude. Good for evil, evil for good. Come soon Lord.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Apparently the only case you'd recognize would be capitulation. I believe the answer that I regard the Bible as God's word provides all the valid points there could possibly be. If you won't accept that as a "great case" there's nothing I could possibly say that you would accept. It's the essential difference between our points of view. The Bible as God's word is something unbelievers can't entertain seriously I suppose. I'm not entirely sure why not since it should be possible to apply normal imagination to the claim without having to agree with it. Well, you are consistent in that of course, but it seems to me it should be obvious that this is the source of all the "frustration" in those "desperate" attempts to get me "to come to terms with reality." I did spend about forty-five years in that "reality" already, before recognizing the truth of Christianity, but that doesn't seem to stop anyone from insisting with all the certainty of their narrow frame of reference that I return to what I rejected as false. "In the same way" is the problem. I rejected all other religions when I came to realize that the Bible is the truth. I also think the Bible is so patently obviously the truth and the others so patently obviously a bunch of fabrications it's astonishing to me that anyone can believe them. Even you with all the advantage you had in a believing family, and some training in theology, can't even seem to make such distinctions. That's a very common but superficial assessment, the usual false moral equivalence. There are all sorts of "religions" that are "as important" to some people without even qualifying as a religion. There are followers of Heinlein for instance who quote just about nobody else. Or Ayn Rand. Some Marxists have the same zealous commitment. Or what about our gnostic member who originated this thread? Perhaps it wouldn't be too hard to find that you yourself have allegiances with that degree of commitment.Why is it that a Christian is never given the credit for having come to a recognition, an understanding, as the basis for belief? A RATIONAL understanding. You'd think forty-five years without God, steeped in all the assumptions of atheism, secularism, modernism and postmodernism, ought to give me some credibility as competent to make a rational assessment. But no, alas, no, make such an assessment and you become some other kind of creature entirely that is incomprehensible to those who remain in the assumptions of "reality" so-called. It's just incomprehensible to me that you wouldn't know that if the Bible is God's word there is no argument that could possibly be formulated against it. You reduce my frame of reference to your particular moral objection to it and castigate me for my logical position that puts God's sovereignty above all such objections. You seem unable to grasp the logical context. You actually think that any particular objection could be sufficient to determine that the Bible is NOT God's word? If it's God's word there are reasonable explanations for any objection you can come up with. I've given some already but you have a padlock on your mind so that you continue to put your objections above God. There's no getting through such a barrier unless God intervenes. From my point of view I was freed from a prison of lies and confusions when I became a believer. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I don't count Catholicism as Christianity. Constantine was the beginning of that error, and the Crusades, Inquisition, Dark Ages, al express it. None of that is Christian, and those outside the official "church" (such as the Waldensians) considered the papacy to be the Antichrist. When the Reformation came they had the same point of view. If it's the Antichrist, it's not Christian.I don't link Christianity today with militarism, don't know where you are getting that.

Just wondering if you could bring yourself to try to see Abraham's obedience the way believers have seen it for many millennia: as a noble act of faith in the the one true trustworthy good God?

I just asked Bliyaal if he could possibly consider his opinion from the other side, and I'd like to ask you the same: is it possible for you to see al this "scent of blood" accusation of God and moral depravity of Christians as Christians actually see it? Can you put it into words?

You did fine. How you can turn that good into evil is of course the next question but I'm not really asking it as I'm sure it will just be the usual. But thanks for the answer to my question.

I missed something I want to correct, reading too fast: The ram in the thicket represents Christ who was the ultimate substitute for Isaac, since the death of Isaac couldn't accomplish anything, just as all the human sacrifices various religions have offered couldn't pay for our sins. Abraham's willingness does prefigure God's willingness to sacrifice His Son, and counts for his personal faithfulness to God, as you said.