Posted on 11/20/2015 1:24:30 PM PST by SeekAndFind
The part about all of our sins being forgiven through the sacrifice of Christ? How about spending eternity in Hell for rejecting God’s provision?
Once you start assigning the bits that don’t fit your narrative to the poetry file, where does is stop?
How much baby, if any, is in the bath water? And who’s to say? Old Luther opened up Pandora’s box.
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The Bible needs to be taken literally and in context and one is in good shape. And, there were woes to those who did not follow God's command and wipe everyone out - He wanted them to clean the kitchen of roaches and they didn't so they had to suffer consequences.
I think the flood was primarily to get rid of the Nephillum. Also, I believe that God gave the sinful people living in the Promised Land something like 400 years to get straight with God. (And the Hebrews living in Egypt). And of course, by NOT following God’s commands, and not wiping them out, the Hebrews became corrupted by the survivors and worshiped the pagan idols. And then God punished, and corrected them of that during their exile in Babylon - with Israel and the temple completely destroyed.
My wife read through the entire Bible one year. The pastor asked her what she thought of the O.T. “The thing that kept coming back - was that He is a God of love.”
The pastor was surprised. “Yes - but most people don’t get that.”
But time and time again God gave the people second and third and fourth and .... chances. And the entire time God was foreshadowing sending His son Jesus.
I wonder if this same author things that God is a child abuser? (You know - having His own son whipped and then put to death. I DID read an article where the author laid it all out in that manner!)
The mistake I made, and I think a lot of people make, is that we can think of God as an infinitely bigger one of us. God is categorically different from us, since He is the Author of Creation and every life. God gives life and He can take it away. We don't have the same rights that he does.
RE: OK to believe Sodom and Gomorrah, but not this?
I think what liberals have a hard time with his NOT that God would act on His own to destroy a city and its inhabitants.
It is that God, who commanded people not to kill, would use His own chosen people to actually do the mass killing.
Killing is a very ugly thing ( an understatement ) to do and affects not only the one who is killed, but the killer’s own soul as well.
THAT is what disturbs people when they read about it.
I think what people have a hard time with his NOT that God would act on His own to destroy a city and its inhabitants (e.g. Sodom and Gomorah).
It is that God, who commanded people not to kill, would use His own chosen people to actually do the mass killing.
Killing is a very ugly thing ( an understatement ) to do and affects not only the one who is killed, but the killer’s own soul as well.
THAT is what disturbs people when they read about it.
I think what people who take this literally have a hard time with his NOT that God would act on His own to destroy a city and its inhabitants. He obviously has the authority to take ANY life, since He is the giver of it.
It is that God, who commanded people not to kill, would use His own chosen people to actually commit the mass killing.
Killing is a very ugly thing ( an understatement ) to do and affects not only the one who is killed, but the killer’s own soul as well. One can never be the same when one kills another human being ( much less many human beings ).
THAT is what disturbs people when they read about it.
Many peoples of the prejudeo christian world in europe asia the pacific islands and the americas at one time practiced human sacrifice of one type or another. The ones that did it on an industrial scale in the americas and the middle east also had homosexuality in the priesthood.
in the pre judeo christian world when someone wanted to f-uck the state —they went to the temple prostitute—who could be male or female.
You’ll want to read a book called the conquest of new spain by bernal diaz. he was cortez’s lietenant. he chronicles the human sacrifice and homosexuality that cortez and his men encountered in central America and the Caribbean.
Cortes’s reaction was much the same as that of Moses and Joshua.
It is generally thought in christian circles that the sudden power of homosexuals in recent decades is due to roe v wade. that abortion is the human sacrifice sacrament that sustains the power of homosexuals in the culture since homosexuality and abortion operate in the same liberal moral universe—and not till after roe v wade did the homosexuals suddenly rise in power.
reverse roe v wade and the power of the homosexuals will go into decline.
in the meantime meantime its generally thought among american evangelicals that America has entered into a period generally akin to the evil period of the old testatment. that would be the book of judges.
that would be the one with the sing song. every man did what was right in his own eyes. they all did evil in the sight of the Lord.
the reason for democrat advocacy of all manner of abomination is to make people unable to control themselves. they lose the power of self government and so power and money shifts to the government where the government party—generally but not always the democrats— makes their living.
Ya need to re read a lil bit of Genesis.
The serpent lies, man dies.
We did it to ourselves, with a lil help from an insanely jealous cherub.
Very interesting post, thanks.
it was bernal diaz “conquest of new spain” that converted me to christianity. Why? Because there was no contact between the old world and the new world.Yet the new world people had the same nasty habits as the old world people of the bible.
that meant that the bad behavior grew out of something genetic. that the biblical contention that people are NATURALLY bad to the bone is forensically correct.
that only divine intervention can save a person or a people from destruction
Fascinating. I’m listening to a set of recorded lectures on “The Conquest of the Americas,” and Bernal Diaz is one of the sources most often mentioned. I probably read at least some of it in the course of ten years of Spanish classes, but that was a long time ago.
When I was teaching a religion class on Tuesday, I gave a quick summary of events in Joshua-through-Kings, and told the class that this is what people are like: lust, murder, betrayal, conquest. Then I asked the class, many of whom are from Mexico, if they knew about the Mayas. Some did, so I told them about the recent (since I was in college) translation of the Mayan glyphs, and how their inscriptions revealed a history of lust, murder, betrayal, and conquest. “This is what people are like, and only Christ can change them.”
Agreed. And often people who don’t take the Bible seriously try to use it to marginalize Christians and Christianity.
I took a cruise last winter and visited some mayan ruins in beliz. according to the people there most of what is jungle now was at one time part of a vast metropolis among the maya. the temples that have been excavated are only the tip of the iceberg.
the tour guide explained the various blood sacrifices the mayans did. they would usually pierce themselves. but when times where tough they went on to human sacrifice.
if you google climate changes in the 800’s ad or about the time of the collapse of the maya—you’ll notice that there was a terrible drought in central america.
similarly with the collapse of the mocha in peru about 600 AD. there was a terrible el nino that caused rains to come perpetually. archaeologists have found highly decorated skeletons with bashed in skulls at the tops of the temples. Apparently, the priests sacrificed much of the elites in a vain effort to appease the gods and stop the rains.
I asked my mayan tour guide if she was a christian. she said yes but the wide eyed look in her eyes said it all.
If you know what came before , then you know that Christianity offers a very good deal.
btw, if you want to understand the mind of the precolumbians and the caananites—a good book to read is Julian Jaynes “the origin of conciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind.
The first 50 pages are very dense but they will give you some deep insights into the way your mind works. After page 50 or so the book opens out on the ancient world of the 3rd and 2nd millium bc. and then it goes to the transitional world of the 1st millenium bc and on to the new world that the spanish encountered.
Its fascinating.
The last part of the book breaks down because of Jaynes unitarian leaning. that is since he takes the low of christ—that means that words are invention and not something discovered like the mathematical laws to which math refers.
that means in Jaynes view words have no connection to the universe. they are just things that rattle around in the head. which in effect makes Jaynes very much like the pagans he describes.
A christian views Jesus as the word made flesh. God writing himself into human history—very much top down as well as bottoms up. that is Jesus is both fully God and fully Man. On that tension hinges western civilization.
http://s-f-walker.org.uk/pubsebooks/pdfs/Julian_Jaynes_The_Origin_of_Consciousness.pdf
If you google it —you can also find free online copies of Bernal Diaz book too.
Thanks, I’ll look into those.
I reread it all the time. We do make our choices, but He makes the rules, not us.
My point was, by definition, good and bad are what He says they are, and the inventions of people in that regard are meaningless. Who are we to judge Him?
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