"How many miracles happen. Not many. No one talks about it. Why is the Bible full of contradictions? No one talks about it. How can God be love yet send 4 billion people to a place, all coz they don't believe? No one talks about it."
I don't doubt that at one time he genuinely thought himself a Christian-- just like many others who consider themselves Christians and presume on their salvation. However, his Christianity was obviously paper-thin-- planted in shallow ground and awash in the froth of feel-good and glitzy mega-church theatrics. This is blindly obvious by his wonderment at "questions that are never asked."
What kind of church would one attend where basic but hard questions like this are never asked? Even if your main participation in it is holding a guitar for a couple of hours every Sunday, how in a Christian's life do they NEVER come across the "hard questions" of the Christian life?
What his comments reflect-—and I don’t hate him for them-—is the utter failure of our leading churches to explain the basics of Christianity.
Why does “God allow people to suffer and die?”
Because, dillweed, we HAVE AN ENEMY who seeks to kill us, and because we allow it through free will. Sin meant that every one of us is appointed a time to die. Only two men in history have escaped earthly death (not even Jesus escaped death, but later overcame it) and many think those two men will reappear in the end times and . . . die.
This is more than a slam against Hillsong. It reaches many of our churches. While I think mine is very good, never do I hear that SATAN is the cause of pain, sickness, disease, and death. Until we get straight who are the good guys and bad guys, we’ll have more Marty Sampsons.