Tsunami: Please Explain God's Wrathful Intent

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1) Is the recent tsunami in Southeast Asia an example of God's willful and wrathful intent to inflict punishment, vengence, or some other specific intent?

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What you are really saying is . The question itself is over simplistic and tries to portray God as a flighty hot head that is distant, capricious and unknowable. If God is really like that then the world is in some deep kemshi!From a Biblical perspective, Genesis states that the universe was spoken into existence by God. On the fourth day of creation it seems that the stars in the universe were brought into existence. All that was said for the trillions of stars was "Let there be lights".
When it comes to constructing the Earth itself, God becomes more hands on and takes a more intimate role in it's creation. Dividing dry land from sea and such. In each action after that he becomes even more intimate with the creation until finally God actually forms man out of dirt instead of speaking him into existence and then God actually breaths life into man.So if God created the Earth, he would have complete knowledge of it's inner mechanics. In it's original form, it was perfect. Similar to a Honda CVCC engine. When the engine is in it's intended form by the manufacture, it is unbeatable in form and function. But what if you willingly remove one of the spark plugs? The engine begins to run rough and the cumulative stress begins to build and parts begin to fail. Eventually the engine completely fails as the level of destruction exceeds the innate robust nature of it.At the fall in the garden, God said that the day you perform the forbidden act, you will surely die. Well, they didn't physically die that instant but they did die spiritually at that instant as reflected by their next act - trying to hide from God. The perfect environment was now corrupted and even though they both lived for many hundreds of years after that, they eventually died physically as well. So a process was put in motion at the fall with the introduction of sin.The Bible claims that the whole creation groans with pain from the result of the fall and longs to be restored just as the CVCC Honda engine would rather have the missing spark plug reinserted so it can resume smooth operation. The difficult part of this is trying to get an understanding of just how sin itself is weighted in God's spiritual economy. From what the Bible claims, the wages of it is death. It is not out of the scope of what the Bible is saying to submit that these events are part of the death that Adam imposed on the creation when the choice was made to take the fruit.The Bible also claims that in a future end times era, events like these are going to become more frequent. Are they a result of God being mad at man? Or are they the culmination of the original malfunction inserted into the creation by Adam at the fall? Similar to the engine dying, the events in it's internal operation become more catastrophic and more frequent until the end. They are not a function of someone standing outside the engine doing more damage with a swinging hammer, but the result of the initial past event of removing the spark plug but allowing the operation to proceed anyway. Remember that it was Man who removed the spark plug in the garden though, not God. God warned of the consequence but also created the environment to allow for free will which is another concept that is weighted very heavy in God's spiritual economy according to the Bible.So God might of had a choice at the fall to scrap the creation at that point, or to one day fix it at his discretion. The same can be said about the Honda CVCC. You can trash the engine because the spark plug was removed by someone, or you can intervene and repair it. The Bible claims that the Earth will be restored as a "New Earth" just like if you go in and repair any damage to the Honda and restore it as a new engine.The events like this past tsunami are not evidence of God's wrath or judgment on the people of that region as some are claiming, but evidence of the Biblical claims of fallen world and creation. If the Bible is correct, events like these will become progressively more frequent and more intense as the Earth starts to sputter and misfire and the resulting internal stresses unleash their energy, similar to the closing stages of the CVCC's catastrophic failure.spelling and clarity fixed by AdminPhat This message has been edited by AdminPhat, 01-12-2005 02:04 AM

Sorry that I didn't include that. I went back in and fixed my spelling mistakes (hundreds) and seen that I failed to include that information. If you would re-read my post now that it is gramatically tolerable, you will find that answer.Again, sorry for my spelling.

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Your analogy fails because we can analyze the engine and discern how the loss of a spark plug is related to the failure of the engine. What you're describing is like removing the hubcaps and blaming that as the source of the engine trouble. They have nothing to do with each other; human sin has nothing to do with the laws of physics and the motion of the Earth's crust.

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You are absolutely correct in your logic, from a purely natural perspective. If all of the universe is a result of a distant "Big Bang", then the mechanics of plate tectonics are solid and predictable.However, if you move outside the box of the purely natural and try to superimpose yourself in the situation from a Biblical perspective, the events become explainable by the concept of sin. It will and should sound absolutely crazy to you to even try to think like this as the Bible predicts that it will. But go with it here for a moment anyhow.
The Bible says It does not say some profit if you could acquire the whole thing. It definitely doesn't say much profit to trade your soul for the whole world. You could substitute universe in for world for at the time of the writing of the Gospels when Jesus made this claim, the galactic expanse wasn't understood as we have access today. So one human's soul has more value in God's scale of economy than the entire physical universe according to the Bible.So the actions of man would then also have tremendous implications in the spiritual realm, and the reactions would become manifest in the physical realm since that's where we currently reside.
So if man's actions are tremendously important, the most important of these are his actions towards the Creator. The most negative or detrimental thing a created being could do to the Creator is to deny the Creator. This is called disobedience which is a part of sin. In God's scale of economy, one sin is pretty heavy stuff. One sin according to the Bible is enough to send a soul that itself is more valuable than all of the physical creation, to eternal separation from the Creator. The Bible states that God cannot tolerate the presence of sin. It is extremely important in God's relevance.So one sin the first sin was enough according to the Bible to set in motion a chain of events that it calls the groaning of creation. Since that first sin, the sum total of sins committed against the Creator is completely incalculable by human means but the Bible claims that an accurate account of all is being kept in Heaven.So again, if you look at the natural world from a Biblical perspective, God created the Earth. God chose to weigh sin as heavy as it is weighted. God allowed the committing of one sin to be enough to upset the balance of a perfect world and the result is it's slow but steady demise.God weighs one human soul more valuable than the Earth and everything else physical, so whatever happens to the Earth is inconsequential compared to what happens to each soul. If what it takes to get people to realize the seriousness of sin, is to allow the demise to continue, then God will not intervene, keeping consistent with his scale of economy.
The Bible says the God will in fact intervene at some point in the future or else no flesh would remain, but that time is still probably a long way off.Again, this will and should sound totally crazy to you as the Bible predicts that "it is just foolishness to the natural man", but at least try to get outside the natural perspective box long enough to examine my post as I've tried to expound on a Biblical explanation of this past Tsunami.
This message has been edited by Lizard Breath, 01-11-2005 18:03 AM
spelling and clarity edited by AdminPhatThis message has been edited by AdminPhat, 01-12-2005 02:23 AM

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I haven't seen any reason to, or any evidence that there's more at work in the Earth's crust than we observe.

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That's cool. I didn't think that you would entertain me with looking at it from any other perspective than the strictly natural one. I was just trying to give a Biblical perspective answer as to what happened without bringing in crazy religious superstitiousness like a signature in the waves crap.If God created the universe, then he created plate tectonics and they exist. If no creation method exists and there is no God, then plate tectonics exist. Either way, spiritual or purely natural, it's a cause and effect event. No grand devine judgements this time.

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Do you believe devine wrath latter day judgements are at some point in order for the planet?

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I believe that the Bible was written by a Being outside of our space/time dinemsion and so I believe what it says. The writings in the apacaliptic portions are not predictions but are news events. They are written in past tense and present tense as well as future tense. This is done to give us some idea of the scope of power that the author possesses.Unlike most of the doom and gloom style defenders of a Creator/God though, I perceive the upjcoming events as blessings. Even with the recent Tsunami, it can be explained as a natural occurance via plate tectonics and general physics. I am proporting that that mechanism is a byproduct of a machine that is malfunctioning verses the normal mode of operation as Crash Frog defends. My viewpoint requires the viewer to assume the event from a spiritual perspective guided by the Bible. His requires examination of the scientific data which is itself far easier and tangible.So why do I view the Biblical accounts of the future cataclysms as a blessing? Because according to the Bible, when they begin, there won't be any doubt as to why it is happening. They will be in a catagory so extremely different that it will leave no room for non-Biblical interpretation. The Bible states this when it reports what the inhabitants of the Earth at that time do in response to the events. So any non-believers left at that time will be forced to make a choice as to follow or rebel but there will be no doubters as to the existance in a Supreme Being at that point.The Tsunami leaves tremendous room for interpretation from the purly natural perspective as to why it happened and the spiritual perspective via Biblical reference. Was this part of God's judgement against man as some are saying?Is there some room for a natural interpretation? If the answer is Yes, then this was not a judgement from God but merely another physical expression of a broken Earth. If the answer is no, then this thread would not exist. The event explainable by physics, the cause explainable by past events in the Garden.

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Jesus went from a roaming preacher without a temple to a son of a God. Then a God himself.

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The Bible tells that Jesus was always God and never stopped being fully God when he arrived on the Earth in human form. He was a roaming preacher but he always refered to the Jewish temple as "His Father's House" and he also said that "I and the Father are one". This implies that the Temple was in fact his. The Bible never says that Jesus was "A son of a god" or "A son of God", but rather THE Son of God.The Bible never draws a chronological time line for the different transitions of Jesus. He never stopped or started being fully God. The only chronological transition is when at his baptism, his Earthly task began and so God the Father formally announces the commencement as Jesus emerges from the water.In the military, when the duty day starts, you show up in uniform. You are a full military member before the day starts and you will be one at the end of the day. But to formally begin the day's work, you assemble into formation and at a set point, the first shirt calls the flight to attention. It's at this point in the beginning of the duty day that the mission for the day is begun. But no change in status has taken place amoung the military members. Everyone is just as much a member of the military before, during and after the call to attention.This is somewhat the purpose of the baptism of Jesus and the Father's proclaimation of it to the witnesses there as is recorded in the Gospel accounts.