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

However, Isaac was NOT killed, it ends up being a lesson against human sacrifices such as were performed in Abraham's own time by the heathen religions, and Christ could not ultimately die because He was sinless, He chose to die in our place, so there is no killing going on here at all. And of course by dying for us Christ saved millions of us from death through God's judgment for our sins. None of that is good in your eyes? You need to try to rewrite that from the Christian perspective too: "religious differences?" That's a joke. We're talking about the one true God against satanic idolatries that worship other gods in His place thanks to the Fall in Eden. God gave us the Bible so we could know about these things. Worshiping Satan isn't good for them or for anybody. In any case after hundreds of years during which they failed to repent God judged them in righteousness. And you reduce this to a conflict between equal meaningless religions. Blech. Far better to let them go on sacrificing their babies and being subjected to male prostitution for another few hundred years I guess. "Over their parents' religion." What a black joke. Fear not, such tests of faith are reserved for the truly faithful who are important in God's redemptive plan, nobody else is going to be asked. Abraham trusted God, the one true living omnipotent omniscient omnipresent God who is worth trusting. In Hebrews it says He supposed God would raise Isaac from the dead, that was the extent of his faith, misapplied in the case of Isaac but prescient in the case of the sacrifice of Christ which Isaac prefigured. Yet God didn't have him slaughter Isaac. In a day when human sacrifice was performed to God by heathen religions God refused it, made it a denunciation of such practices as well as a test of Abraham's faith and a foreshadowing of the death of the God-Man who alone could pay for our sins. Something done for a specific purpose of judging sin of serious offenders, through God's agents, to teach us about the seriousness of sin, and not at all generally "approved." God doesn't hope, He knows. Abraham is the one who couldn't be sure, that's why it was a test. The first murder was committed by Cain, a human being. Humanity continued in violence until God wiped them all out in the Flood. They ignored Noah's preaching to save themselves for the hundred years it took to build the ark so they can't say they weren't warned that judgment was coming. There was plenty of bloodshed and agony done by human beings.You insist on your own definition of forgiveness but as God told Noah: whoever kills man, by man must his blood be shed. And later: without the shedding of blood there can be no remission of sins. You'd like it otherwise. But blood and death are a fact of life, you can't pay for murder by forgiveness. Even when victims have the grace to forgive a murderer this doesn't substitute for the murderer's execution - except in morally depraved states where the death penalty is considered too barbarian (not that the murderer had any such qualms of course) The fact is that in the nature of things He could not have merely forgiven, as my quotes above suggest. The shedding of blood requires the shedding of blood. And Jesus extended the law against murder to hatred in the heart, which makes us all guilty of the shedding of blood. As well as guilty of all those we fail to warn of judgment and hell. Please review the history of human sin before you judge God for punishing it as He does.

You "never took it literally though." Too bad.I have empathy for those under God's judgment; we are told to be merciful to them, and I was a child of wrath myself before I became a believer. There is a prayer for God to have mercy in judgment as well, but in many places it says He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked but would prefer that they repent. He considers judgment His "strange work," it is not something He enjoys. You accuse him of bloodthirstiness (or at least Aussie does) although he says many times this is not the case. The shedding of blood is necessary. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

God disavowed it in the test of Abraham. And came back to life because He was sinless.

I have plenty to say to you but your ears are closed.

The moral bankruptcy here is that of those who fail to recognize the horrific deeds God was punishing in those incidents you decry. The Amalekites murdered the Israelites at the rear of their column, women and children and exhausted men, for no reason whatever, no war motive to justify it, just murder. God promised that they would be wiped out, though that didn't happen until hundreds of years had passed, and then Saul failed to execute the command, kept the Amalekite king alive, kept the spoil for nimself. The psalm that speaks of dashing babies on stones also says this is payment for the Babylonians having done the same to Israelite babies. You seem to have a problem with justice.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

There is something wrong with your moral equilibrator.

Yes I am.And your moral equilibrator has a serious glitch in it.

Aussie dear, you are having a massive failure of the ability to distinguish levels of discourse. In short you've lost your marbles. Attributing any particular emotional or moral attitude to me on any of this is already an egregious failure on your part. I am judging it all quite objectively. Yes it is Justice when the punishment fits the crime. That's the definition of justice. An eye for an eye. Jesus gave us a different standard as individuals in our dealings with individuals but that doesn't change the fact that justice is the punishment fitting the crime. We are talking about a time roughly 3500 years ago when justice was effected in a tribal context by primitive means. Yet the definition of justice does not change and has not changed.Were I to have to witness any of it I'd probably throw up or faint dead away or have a heart attack -- so much for your assessment of my emotional position in this. I AM a modern person with no experience of such things, but am nevertheless able to think rationally about circumstances other than my own. Which I suspect can't be said of you.Yes, I am quite capable of judging things objectively apart from my own feelings, cultural context and so on, and all the situations you have brought up as moral indictments of God and of me are your own subjectivity being self-righteously applied against a frame of reference you have no ability to judge properly. I am not "broken" and you are way way out of line to make such a personal judgment in a debate.There is no "craving for blood" in the pulpit or on God's part, it's all quite objectively determined by the nature of reality, -- The Bible reveals reality to us, nobody makes it up -- and is in fact not at all desired by God or man, quite the opposite, it is regretted and lamented, and you have no right to judge anyone personally. Some people ARE capable of objective assessment. Clearly you aren't.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

God is not said to have been behind the dashing of babies against stones; it is said merely to be just retribution for what the Babylonians did to the Israelite babies.God IS said to have commanded the total annihilation of the Amalekites and it's a very strange excuse for a "Christian" who pretends He didn't say it.Since you all prefer your personal feelings to objective fact there's no point in continuing this discussion.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Funny the question why God didn't do it Himself was brought up on one of the Bible discussions I was just reading recently but I was looking for something else and now don't remember where I saw it.I think the answer was something along the lines of God's using His people as His instrument. In the days of Sodom He didn't yet have a "people." God's people were to be like His right arm.What I mean by objective fact is that what I'm referring to is in the Bible. The stuff that's being subjectively imposed on the issue is not in the Bible.

I answered you before ringo. You are wrong. Eye for an eye was intended as the standard of perfect justice, as I keep saying, not a literal exchange but a principle for deciding what the perfectly equitable legal decision should be, as HERE: It could be penal or compensatory. According to that article the Pharisees were turning that principle into a rule for personal vigilante justice, whereas in the OT it was clearly intended as a judicial principle to be applied by the judicial system.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I'm making no distinctions whatever. God's law is God's law to me, I don't tell Him what to do. You and the others here are doing that. You're singling out the killing of babies from all God's other judgments. I have sympathy for anyone under God's judgments for any reason. That's what I said, that's what I meant.

Oh fer....Why do you keep imposing the OT on the NT? Clearly the OT is history, there are no injunctions anywhere there or in the NT to enact the kinds of justice you are all making a cause for having fits of moral indignation. We've been living under the NT for centuries now, though you are still tearing your hair out over ancient history as if it were today. Equating ancient history with today's Muslim beheadings must give you all some spurious sense of equality that makes you feel better about having been born in a superior culture, but the equation is bogus. The feverish blood-and-guts thinking here is all on your side. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

My answer to your question why God would use His people rather than do it Himself is that I don't know beyond His choosing a people for that among other purposes. You are of course only interested in calling God's actions into question. There are many ways of doing that I'm sure.

Don't know what question I'm supposedly "evading" but your accusation makes me less than interested in finding out.As for "what the babies did" to deserve punishment, there is a concept of corporate guilt involved which means many of the tribe may not have "done" anything in particular to deserve the punishment. And I'll mention again that if you kill all the mothers and not the babies you might as well have killed them anyway.