Posted on 06/20/2005 4:38:37 AM PDT by HarleyD
”Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God" (Rom. 11:22). “
In the early part of this century liberalism took mainline Protestant churches by storm. It might be argued that the first half of the present century ushered in the most serious spiritual decline since the Protestant Reformation. Evangelicalism, which had dominated Protestant America since the days of the founding fathers, was virtually driven out of denominational schools and churches. Evangelicalism managed to survive and even thrive outside the denominations. But it never regained its influence in the mainline groups. Instead it has flourished chiefly in relatively small denominations and non-denominational churches. In a few decades, liberalism virtually destroyed the largest Protestant denominations in America and Europe.
One of the most popular spokesmen for liberal Christianity was Harry Emerson Fosdick, pastor of the Riverside Church in New York City. Fosdick, while remaining strongly committed to liberal theology, nevertheless acknowledged that the new theology was undermining the concept of a holy God. Contrasting his age with that of Jonathan Edwards, Fosdick wrote,
Fosdick was never so right. He correctly saw that liberalism had led to a warped and imbalanced concept of God. He could even see far enough ahead to realize that liberalism was taking society into a dangerous wasteland of amorality, where "man's sin, his greed, his selfishness, his rapacity roll up across the years an accumulating mass of consequence until at last in a mad collapse the whole earth crashes into ruin." 2
Despite all that, Fosdick ultimately would not acknowledge the literal reality of God's wrath toward impenitent sinners. To him, "the wrath of God" was nothing more than a metaphor for the natural consequences of wrongdoing. Writing in the wake of World War I, Fosdick suggested that "the moral order of the world has been dipping us in hell."3 His theology would not tolerate a personal God whose righteous anger burns against sin. Moreover, to Fosdick, the threat of actual hell fire was only a relic of a barbaric age. "Obviously, we do not believe in that kind of God any more."
Fosdick wrote those words almost eighty years ago. Sadly, what was true of liberalism then is all too true of evangelicalism today. We have lost the reality of God's wrath. We have disregarded His hatred for sin. The God most evangelicals now describe is all loving and not at all angry. We have forgotten that "It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (Heb. 10:31). We do not believe in that kind of God any more.
Ironically, this overemphasis on divine beneficence actually works against a sound understanding of God's love. It has given multitudes the disastrous impression that God is kindly but feeble, or aloof, or simply unconcerned about human wickedness. Is it any wonder that people with a such a concept of God defy His holiness, take His love for granted, and presume on His grace and mercy? Certainly no one would fear a deity like that.
Yet Scripture tells us repeatedly that fear of God is the very foundation of true wisdom (Job 28:28; Ps. 111:10; Prov. 1:7; 9:10; 15:33; Mic. 6:9). People often try to explain the sense of those verses away by saying that the "fear" called for is a devout sense of awe and reverence. Certainly the fear of God includes awe and reverence, but it does not exclude literal holy terror. "It is the Lord of hosts whom you should regard as holy. And He shall be your fear, and He shall be your dread" (Isa. 8:13).
We must recapture some of the holy terror that comes with a right understanding of God's righteous anger. We need to remember that God's wrath does burn against impenitent sinners (Ps. 38:1-3). That reality is the very thing that makes His love so wonderful. We must therefore proclaim these truths with the same sense of conviction and fervency we employ when we declare the love of God. It is only against the backdrop of divine wrath that the full significance of God's love can be truly understood. That is precisely the message of the cross of Jesus Christ. After all, it was on the cross that God's love and His wrath converged in all their majestic fullness.
Only those who see themselves as sinners in the hands of an angry God can fully appreciate the magnitude and wonder of His love. In this regard our generation is surely at a greater disadvantage than any previous age. We have been force-fed the doctrines of self-esteem for so long that most people don't really view themselves as sinners worthy of divine wrath. On top of that, religious liberalism, humanism, evangelical compromise, and ignorance of the Scriptures have all worked against a right understanding of who God is. Ironically, in an age that conceives of God as wholly loving, altogether devoid of wrath, most people are tragically ill-equipped to understand what God's love is all about!
The simple fact is that we cannot appreciate God's love until we have learned to fear Him. We cannot know His love apart from some knowledge of His wrath. We cannot study the kindness of God without also encountering His severity. And if the church of our generations does not regain a healthy balance soon, the rich biblical truth of divine love is likely to be obscured behind what is essentially a liberal, humanistic concept.
Notes
1. Harry Emerson Fosdick,Christianity and Progress (New York: Revell, 1922), 173-74 (emphasis added).
2. Ibid., 174.
3. Ibid (emphasis added).
You really don't know it is for everyone, you believe it is, but your knowing/belief, requires a similar belief in the bible, which not everyone has. I said I believe He communicates with us as individuals. How God communicates with someone other than myself, is unknown to me. Besides, I said this is how I believe, not this is how it is.
Once again, your beliefs are backed-up by the bible, mine, are not. I exist as He has designed me. I have not said He gave mankind no way of knowing how to serve Him, I haven't mentioned service at all. I said I believe He communicates with us as individuals.
I believe there is only one God.
How did you form your belief that there is only one God?
Along with all the wonderful, good things that happen also, yes.
I don't believe God is a monster, I just believe He is God, and we are humans, and obviously, this is the way it is.
I believe right and wrong are human traits, confined to us here on earth, and that God is above them. Yes, I do know right from wrong, as I have a God-instilled conscience.
I never said anything about the God of the bible.
I do not know what God wants, as opposed to what He allows. As far as I know, since God is the creator of all things, then everything is as He allows and wants. Who am I to distinguish what God wants or allows?
I don't know. As I have said, it is self-evident to me.
Just because God knows what they are going to do doesn’t exclude people from punishment. People, in general, are punished for their sins. That being said there are two types of people in the world; those who are born again and those who are not.
God’s punishment to non-believers is different than believers. God will punish non-believers for a variety of reasons including immorality and pride. God chastises those who have been reborn to discipline them and assist them in their growth.
”If He didn't want/allow them to do these things, why does He create them?”
Assuming you’re talking about those who have been reborn, it states in scripture the reason we are disciplined for our unrighteousness is that God wish to share His glory.
It is for our good that we receive discipline. But in order to save some He had to create us all.
”I don't believe we have a choice in our actions, because, if God does know what we are going to do before we do it, and if God cannot be wrong....then how can we do anything differently?”
Saying we cannot control our actions is fatalism or determinism. But I would agree that God knows what we are going to do before we do it. It is also safe to say that God has our punishment equally laid out.
Sometimes God gives us a choice as He did with David whether to choose famine, the sword of David’s enemies, or pestilent; but it is silly to think that God did not know which one of the three choices David would select. David had a choice in his actions and he chose the plague. God knew David’s choice the same way as God determined the death of the people who would die and live by the plague. But it was still David’s choice. With your proposal you would be saying David was compelled to choose a plague.
stuartcr: "Why does God get angry, and punish people, when He knows exactly what they are going to do?"
Because God is perfectly just. God's character does not allow Him to just overlook sin - it must be recompensed.
stuartcr:"If He didn't want/allow them to do these things, why does He create them?"
For His own glory. You are not the first to ask this question, of course. Paul answers this succinctly in Romans 9
Romans 9 (NKJ)
17 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, "For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My name may be declared in all the earth." 18 Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens. 19 You will say to me then, "Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?" 20 But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, "Why have you made me like this?" 21 Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor? 22 What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, 23 and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had prepared beforehand for glory, 24 even us whom He called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?
That would be a wonderful trip.
If you have no basis for your beliefs, they why bothering having any beliefs at all?
If God wanted all men saved, all men would be saved.
____________________
"God does not work without a plan.
God has not left the world to chance.
There are some men who are always kicking against the doctrine of an eternal purpose, and who grow angry if you assert that God has settled what shall occur.
It is by the consent of all agreed that men are foolish if they work without a plan, and yet they cry out when we insist that God also, in all his working, is fulfilling a well arranged design.
Depend upon it, however, let men rebel against this truth as they will, that God has determined the end from the beginning.
He has left no screw loose in the machine, he has left nothing to chance or accident.
Nothing with God is the subject of an "if" or a "peradventure," but even the agency of man, free as it is, as untouched and undisturbed as if there were no God, even this is guided by His mysterious power, and works out thoroughly His own purpose in every jot and tittle.
God wings the thunderbolt, and shall He not guide the most passionate spirit?
God puts a bit into the mouth of the whirlwind, and shall He not control the most ambitious will?
God takes care that even the sea shall come no farther than He bids it, and shall not the heart of man be equally subject to the Divine purpose?
Yielding to man his free agency, giving to him his responsibility, leaving him as free as if there were no purpose and no decree, yet the eternal Jehovah works out His plans, and achieves His purpose to the praise of His glory.
Everything that has moved or shall move in heaven, and, earth, and hell, has been, is, and shall be, according to the counsel and foreknowledge of God, fulfilling a holy, just, wise, and unalterable purpose!
God is wonderful in His design and excellent in His working. Believer, God overrules all things for your good.
The needs-be for all that you have suffered, has been most accurately determined by God.
Your course is all mapped out by your Lord.
Nothing will take Him by surprise. There will be no novelties to Him. There will be no occurrences, which He did not foresee, and for which, therefore, He was not provided. He has arranged all, and you have but to patiently wait, and you shall sing a song of deliverance.
Your life has been arranged on the best possible principles, so that if you had been gifted with unerring wisdom, you would have arranged a life for yourselves exactly similar to the one through which you have passed.
Let us trust God where we cannot trace Him.
In the end we shall read the whole of God's purpose as one grand poem, and there will not be one verse in it that has a syllable too much, or a word too little. There will not be one stanza or letter redundant, much less one that is erased.
But from beginning to end we shall see the master pen and the master-mind drawing forth the glorious array of majestic thoughts. And with angels, and seraphs, and principalities, and powers, shall burst forth into one mighty song, "Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! the Lord God Omnipotent reigns!"
We shall see how from the first even to the last, the King has been ruling all things according to His own will.
***I don't believe God is a monster, I just believe He is God, and we are humans, and obviously, this is the way it is. ***
But your OIPINIONS about God have led you to form an idea of Him that is monsterous.
***I believe right and wrong are human traits, confined to us here on earth, and that God is above them.***
How do you determine if something is wrong?
***I never said anything about the God of the bible***
Well, that's what the thread is about.
***Who am I to distinguish what God wants or allows?***
You can't fully distinguish - unless He tells you. That is what He has done in the Bible. But for some reason you don't seem to want to recognize it's claim over you.
"If God wanted all men saved, all men would be saved."
That is your opinion. God does have a plan. Every person who obeys the Gospel and lives a faithful life will receive their just reward, which is an eternal home in Heaven. Every person who does not obey the Gospel will receive their just reward, which is an eternal home in Hell.
Then you are on the wrong forum.
Or perhaps you are a troll who is ridiculing the Bible and the Doctrines of Grace, and you've discovered a new way to hijack a thread.
Stuartcr has a basis for his beliefs. It is his refusal to worship the God who created him in the manner that God demands.
It is easy to believe in the god of your own design, many people do it.
I will agree that here on earth, people, in general, are punished for their wrongdoings. That is how God designed us and our civilisations.
How do you know what happens after death? Can you show this to be true?
Why do you say that it is safe to say that God has our punishment laid out for us? Why would He punish us for doing something that He has designed into us to do?
If God knew what David would do, and He still created David, how did David have a choice? Could David have done something that God knew he would not do?
I believe just is something for us humans here on earth, besides, how do you know God is perfectly just?
Of course I'm not the only one that has asked these questions, they have been asked repeatedly throughout history.
I don't believe that God has a need or desire for self-glorification.
Because that's the way God made me.
It is not monsterous to me.
By societies mores, and whatever it is inside of me that is my conscience.
We have obviously strayed from the thread.
As you said, when God tells me to think differently, then I'm sure I will.
I have ridiculed nothing. I have asked questions, and expressed my beliefs.
I have been on this forum long enough for you to know I am not a troll. If you do not like what I say, you should at least try to refrain from making unpleasent accusations.
I believe those of us that do worship the only God there is, do it as He intended for us.
So God made you an irrational being?
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