God is indeed a Being of Love, He is Love itself, but God is pure and holy and we are anything but. We are disobedient defiant rebellious creatures and it is our own opposition to God that turns His love into wrath. Yet He, seeing this, sent salvation from it, but salvation requires recognition of our sinful condition, recognition of our JUST condemnation, and recognition of God's goodness in providing a way out of our condemned condition. For starters.
That sounds exactly like the description of an abusive parent.He loves you, and he only beats you becuase you deserve it. He's GOT to be right, though, because he's Dad. /sarcasm
God has total control over Nature. He made it. The laws we discover about how it operates are laws He put in place. We will never control Nature. This universe is one huge interconnected spiritual reality and everything in it either obeys God's moral laws or goes into destruct mode for disobeying them, and His natural laws serve the moral law.
We gain more control over our natural surroundings every year. No, we can't prevent natural disasters yet, but we
can alter our environment as we see fit, ad we really don't have to fear predators any more unless we go into wild areas unprepared.
Had sin / opposition to God / transgression of the Law not entered the system there would never have been any kind of disaster. There would have been no death, no disease, no destruction, no suffering of any sort. Nature would have been mild and beneficial, full of blessings, never suffering.
According to an interpretation that takes Genesis as literally true, yes. Not according to the rest of us.
It is in any case. We will all face Him individually on the last day. However, the OT makes it clear that God does in fact deal with nations / tribes / cities / families as a whole too. There are dozens of such examples in the OT, and some of them include prophecies of the coming destruction, time to repent, and a report of the fulfillment of the prophesied destruction too, most dramatically in the case of Israel.
All superstitious BS - the Biblical authors simply attributed any major event in their history to God, just like they attributed natural disasters to His punishment.
What a bizarre and meanspirited idea.
And yet possibly
true. I disagree with Jar here - I don't think Genesis was part of the monetary portion of Christianity - that began with various traditions of the Catholic Church, and Genesis had been around for a long time before then. But I don't think Genesis has any basis in reality. Every scrap of evidence disproves the Genesis account of Creation, and to punish an entire species becuase of the actions of its prodenitors is flatly immoral, and I don't believe the God of the Bible would do any such thing.
That is true, but it isn't God you are loving if you have a false idea about His nature and His message. Loving a false image of God is idolatry.
That statement is meaningless without something to prove that
your conception of God is somehow correct, while ours is wrong.
Oh yes, human beings, all of us sinners, are of great value in any case, created to be the reflection of God Himself, and we retain that great value despite our sin. We are not animals, or genetically related to animals, we are an amazing creation designed specifically to reflect the nature of God. Our abilities are remarkable even in our fallen condition. But we ARE fallen, we disobeyed God in our first parents and continue to disobey, and are under His condemnation.
Not genetically related to animals? You've got to be kidding. Remember that bit about calling black white and up down? Well, you just did it again. Our genetic code is over 90%
identical to that of certain apes. Lesser degrees of genetic similarity are present between us and a host of other mammals. The physical similarities are obvious, as well. How does this
not mean that humans are related to animals?
Here again you show that you are stubbornly defending a preconceived conclusion in the fact of evidence to the contrary. It's obvious that you did
not examine evidence and
then reach the conclusion that the Bible is true. Rather, you became a believer, decided the Bible is inerrant, and now you will flatly ignore absolute irrefutable evidence if it contradicts your pre-existing worldview.
If the Bible claimed that the sky was red, you would say "then that color up there must obviously be red, not blue. The Bible is inerrant, so our eyes must have been affected by our Fallen nature so that we see it as blue. The sky is really red, though, becasue the Bible says so."
To deny the reality of our condemnation is the opposite of loving yourself, and certainly of loving your neighbor, as it gives false reassurance to lull people into inaction when they need to face the reality that is going to destroy them if they don't. How is it love of self or of others to deny that a real danger is hanging over our heads? Those who recognize the reality of their predicament and seek God's provision for their salvation from it are the ones who REALLY love themselves.
That doesn't make any sense. Feeling guilty for merely
existing has nothing to do with love, and suggesting that others live that way has nothing to do with loving them, either. Jesus didn't preach guily, He preached forgiveness, love, and understanding.
It is a religion of life plucked from death. It is not a religion of sweet soothing lies.
Neither is it a religion of genocide, bigotry, racism, slavery, murder, rape, or guilt. But your interpretation believes it
is. Jesus message had everything to do with love, and nothing to do with condemnation.
I've given the true gospel many times on this thread, and your version of the gospel, I'm sorry to say, is the same sort of soothing false words the devil spoke to Eve, and that the false prophets told Israel, that bad things would not happen to them.
No, you've given
your interpretation of the gospel, and said that you believe it to be true. That's fine for you, you certainly have the right to believe however you want, but it's needlessly insulting to suggest that Jar or myself are somehow the "tools of Satan" simply because we strongly disagree with you.
Every time a fundy breaks the laws of thermodynamics, Schroedinger probably kills his cat.
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