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To: WilliamIII

Simple answer: This world was cursed by God after the original sin. Disease, decay, and death and all manner of evil will continue until the final judgment. As Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world.”


84 posted on 01/12/2011 5:33:52 AM PST by Drawsing (The fool shows his annoyance at once. The prudent man overlooks an insult. (Proverbs 12:16))
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To: Drawsing
Genesis 3:17And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;

I realize this is a difficult concept to grasp, but it is important to do so: that there are negative consequences for getting off track is not the same as God applying the negative consequences for getting off track. It is sort of like a self-correcting system: when one gets 'off track', there are built in provisions for getting traffic back on-track, albeit with great pain and difficulty. When a child who has been told to not grab at things up on the stove actually disdains the teaching and grabs a hot skillet, it is not God burning the child's hand. Cause and effect does not mean God is a machine or puppet-master applying every effect.

When God commands that we not do something, He is cautioning that there are negative consequences designed into the system which will go into effect if we choose to disobey. But that these negative consequences exist and will happen is not the same as God applying the consequences to the individual in disobedience. Playing Russian roulette will eventually result in getting shot, but it is not God shooting you.

To mistakenly apply the actions of asserting the negative consequences as God doing them is tantamount to accusing God. Please see post #67 above, again. A natural disaster is not God spitting on the Earth; the consequences of sin is not God slapping the sinner, the sinner is responsible for his own sin and the negative consequences built into the system. Jesus Christ is God's Grace, offered to those who are off track and cannot get themselves back on track--which is all of us, for all have sin. Jesus is not God dangling an either/or hammer or dove in your face. The hammer was built into the good system which our ancestor Adam chose to deviate from.

88 posted on 01/12/2011 8:13:38 AM PST by MHGinTN (Some, believing they can't be deceived, it's nigh impossible to convince them when they're deceived.)
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