Thanks for the pictures. Few things cooler than a 21st century Southern rebel.

"Iraq War is God's will; Respect all human authority"
Really?? Are you sure they weren't being ironic? <-- irony

Johnny---this time for real!

It must be God's will, after all the religious right put Bush in office.
Tom

My take-

I believe His decretive will is being done weather or not His Preceptive will is being done by His creatures remains to be fully discovered at His coming.
------------------

In the annals of human history, the growth of nations, the rise and fall of empires, appear as if dependent on the will and prowess of man; the shaping of events seems, to a great degree, to be determined by his power, ambition, or caprice. But in the word of God the curtain is drawn aside, and we behold, above, behind, and through all the play and counterplay of human interest and power and passions, the agencies of the All-merciful One, silently, patiently working out the counsels of His own will. {PK 499.4}

pat

Pat

I believe in free will. God knows the end from the beginning. There are no surprises for God. I believe He can checkmate anytime He chooses. The fact that God did not stop Bush et al doesn't mean God intended a preemptive act--but He was prepared for it.

At some point, He will say: "enough is enough!" and then then end shall come. Tom

P. S. Thanks for your contributions to these threads--we seem to have common interests and outlook.

Tom,

Yes, in all these man made terms... "Preceptive will" is God's prescribed will for His creatures to follow that they at times disobey by their "free choice." With my limited information, I am not sure what the exact course to be followed was. I simply acknowledge that I do not know. I am not a "pacifist" that never sees the need for confrontation.

His decretive will is simply stating that He can stop or cause events to come to pass. He is not surprised and all is taken into account in the final analysis. Stretches the mind doesn't it.

Ditto on your PS.

So Pat and Tom, if I understand you correctly, you believe that ultimately war is God's will? That He could stop it, but doesn't when it suits His purposes?

All I can say is, the God I love and serve is not behind the hell of war.

Hi Carrol,

Can't speak for Tom but I believe nothing happens that does not suit His ultimate purposes in dealing with the fall and a world of sin. This of course also includes allowing His creation to suffer some of the consequences of mankinds wrong actions as a part of "free will" and sin.

Is it harmful if you do not let your children learn by learning the consequences of their actions? Yet, I believe an all wise God sets the parameters of activities so that we may maintain hope and faith while at the same time learning.

Part of that "free will" consequence of ours resulted in Christ dying on the Cross to redeem us. He could have stopped that also but did not in love so that we might have life. His purposes were met that we might have eternal life. So He also has "skin" in the conflict of good and evil.

We seem to demand our "free will" and then complain He shouldn't allow the fallout of it when it doesn't suit our liking. We all have difficult lessons to learn as part of the purpose of God's redemptive plan. Sin is costly!

And how do these conflicts ultimately get resolved in the present age? By a God of passivity? I think not. In the civil area force must at times be met with force as part of His setting the parameters of the course of sin and our being able to see the necessity and benefits of justice.

Is it love when He delivers and destroys the wicked? Ps.136:15-26.

Does this mean that He desires "all war" or that all war is just? No, but it is part of His permissive will and the freedom of mankinds choices.

"What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? 2 You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. And you are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. 4 You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think that the Scripture speaks to no purpose: “He jealously desires the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us”? 6 But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” 7 Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you." Js.4:1-10.

Some questions to all:

How do we confront the texts in Scripture that seem to indicate that God endorsed Joshua's Canaanite genocide?

Does God use humans to make war with one another for the greater purpose of justice in "The Great Controversy?"

What of the verses in the Psalms where it addresses "throwing the babies of your enemies off cliffs?"

Is it "biblical" to believe in the idea that human understanding of God and His will is progressive and ever improving as He reveals Himself more fully?

Taking what Christ says about the matter of our enemies, how then do we understand those passages in the OT that seem to conflict?

Just some thoughts.

God says He is a being whose attributes include not only justice but mercy (Exodus 34). He will have mercy on the humble but war out with the proud. He does not play favorites. Jew or Gentile receive the same treatment. In Deuteronomy 27, it is explained why God wanted the Canaanites exterminated. Since this record was posted. The Canaanites knew why Israel was there. They could have repented like Gibeon or Rahab but they preferred their way of life. They chose to fight and lost. God warned Israel, the same thing would happen to Israel if they picked up a life style like the Canaanites, so Israel was destroyed also for the same reasons; when people are too proud to obey and to violent to be free, that is the only solution.

We did this very thing, right here in America, during the Civil War. We had to exterminate 260,000 Southern Americans before there could be peace, slavery torn up by the roots and thrown into the fire. There is a time for everything under heaven, a time to talk and a time to refrain from talking, a time of war and a time of peace and God has made everything beautiful in its time.

In the Old Testament church and state were united. In the New Testament church and state are separate. Force may still be used in civil government but a wall of separation between Church and state prevents the use of force against religious beliefs. Words are the weapon of choice in the New Testament.

the green light of the spectrum,

Raymond,

I think you need to specifically list the texts you wish others to discuss...just a thought.

Raymond

Thanks for asking. Did you ever read Ex. 23: 28 or De.&:20 or Jos 24:12? God's primary intention was the same as in the Book of Genesis: A Flood, and a Fire. He would do the cleansing not man. Man would have it other. God gave man both man's choice and his consequences. Tom

First, it wasn’t Joshua's Canaanite genocide. Read the account. God was giving the instructions.

Biblically, God revealed himself most fully to the people who while they were educated they were still ignorant concerning God.
• Korah.
Ye take too much upon you, seeing all the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them: wherefore then lift ye up yourselves above the congregation of the Lord? Numbers 16:1-3.
• The Royal official with the sick son
So Jesus said to him, “Unless you people 11 see signs and wonders you will never believe!” John 4
• Israel To many examples to list
• Baalam and the donkey

Many times I read of Liberals talking about "throwing your babies of your enemies off cliffs."
You should have seen the Bill moyers PBS programs Genesis A Living Conversation.
Scholars and teachers were commenting on every aspect akin to "throwing your babies of your enemies off cliffs."
I will never forget when Karen Armstrong, who is a former nun with a B.L. degree from Oxford said, (of the flood, and its been a while so I paraphrase) "God his here behaving in an evil way and if he is like that he would never be worthy of my worship."

Many times it seemed like they were a bunch of over educated dunces who were in effect evaluating God for a job application.

For the sake of discussion, lets say God does want us to throw the babies of our enemies off cliffs.

Whatever we thought about that, would God still be God? Would what we thought about him and his actions make him more or less God? Would he still be responsible for our every breath? Would he still be the one who gave us the ability to have children, enjoy life or even exist?

Are Gods way above our ways or not?

God is STILL God no matter who anyone may try and make him to be.
In the end its like the three blind men describing an elephant. They all are sure they know, and they are completely wrong.

Is God worthy of praise simply because he is God? Or only if he fits into our personal job discription of God?

Michael
I'm afraid I'm Karen Armstrong and the over-educated dunces who are against evil, no matter who's behind it. And that includes Yahweh, whose was behind a number of unconscionable atrocities, were the OT to be believed. Even if Stalin had divine powers, I would be against him. To resist evil takes priority over offending an immoral God.

Of course, I don't believe that any God had anything to do with these OT stories. Most of them, if not all, are falsifiably wrong (to the extent that archaeology can falsify Scripture). We have to face up to the fact that the Bible often slanders God, if we are to believe that he is righteous and good--and that he exists.

And the Southern Accent's take on the Iraq War is also slanderous as well as slightly ridiculous. Why in heaven's name would an allwise God--who presumably can see the end from the beginning--invest credibility in supporting the Bush administration's disasterous war?

Carrol

In all this time almost two weeks, nobody seems to have picked up on the facetious nature of my comment. ie If the Religious Right put George Bush in Office, the Iraq war must have been God's will!

In a serious vain. There is such a thing as free will. God does not alway interfer with the choices or will of man. Since God has the power to intervene, of course, He is blamed as the primal cause. Which is only 180 degrees out.

Recall the parable of the wheat and the tares: Jesus said, "An enemy hath done this!"

Time will not premit me to recount all of the atrocities that I saw in WWII. War is indeed hell. It must hurt God terribly, if I could feel the pain. What God permits is not necessarily God's will. It is the consequence of man's rebellion and Satan's instigation. Tom

Michael,

Just addressing your three blind men and the elephant illustration. The only person who can see that they are all grasping different portions of the elephant and getting it all wrong, is the person who sees the entire elephant.

Are you claiming to be that kind of person with that kind of vision? That carries some heavy implications for anyone who disagrees with your positions, even if they are backing it up with what they feel is a scripturally or rationally sound position.

Thanks...

Frank

When will we realize that the Bible's description of events, particularly those related in the Hebrew Scriptures, were the product of a fertile Hebrew imagination? There is absolutely no archaeological evidence for many of the events described therein: The Exodus, Forty years of millions of people living in the Sinai desert, Jericho's walls falling down(even when visiting there with HMSRichards, Sr., some 30 years ago, he told us there was no evidence backing up the biblical story and that the dates were wrong by several centuries), and many more (See "The Bible Unearthed)

Might as well read the Homeric epics and call them factual. A story of the early Americans telling the Native Indians about their Creation story (as told in the Bible) and the Natives listened respectfully. Then, when they told their story of origins, the Americans laughed and called them fables!

As R.D.Gold aptly puts it in his book, "Bondage of the Mind" "We have only one source of evidence for those events [in the Torah], and that is the Torah's texts themselves. When religious stories and doctrines are learned at an early enough age, they become perceived as common knowledge. That is why Orthodox doctrine would not be convincing to an adult raised in the Hindu tradition (and conversely, why the Hindu sacred texts would rarely convince an adult raised in the Jewish or Christian traditions."

The Torah is the work of human beings who wrote it not to record an accurate history of a people but to create a history and a THEOLOGY FOR a people; and as such they are not history but a mix of myth, fable, and legend.

For those who say that because God chooses not to intervene in man's affairs, that it is his will that wars and evil continue. With that premise, the Holocaust was God's retribution for the sins of the Jewish people, so Hitler was the good guy, God's agent doing God's will? In a world in which we are never sure whether we will be rewarded or punished for our actions, allows us the possibility of leading a truly moral life; for the ethical decision is the decision to do the right thing because it IS right and not for any other advantage.

Sorry Frank.
Didn’t mean to confuse with the illustration.
My point was God is the only one who sees the whole elephant. Even the best that ever lived among us may be only able to see half the elephant.
Those of us who finally enter the city will have an eternity to learn about the whole elephant.
It does me no good to say God is this way or that way, through my own perception or my own brainpower. It amazes me how much stock people put in their own cognitive abilities when modern science confirms we only have the ability to use what, 10% of our brain? What device do you own that you would accept 90% nonfunctionality?

No, I would be one of the blind men. That’s who I identify with.
Frankly, the amount of time and energy many educated people spend speculating on issues akin to, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, is a tragic waste when so many people still need to hear about Christ.
Since I have been reading Spectrum, I have read different accounts of people stating how terrible it is when insufficiently educated (their perception) people try to evangelize or win people to Christ.
It will be interesting in the end to see which type of endeavor is counted to be the greater waste of time.
1. Debating issues we cannot possibly grasp due to our own inabilities or insufficient information to form any conclusion, or
2. Evangelizing (albeit sometimes badly.)
One serves no purpose whatsoever and the other at least has the ability for God to intervene with the gift of ears, ala Pentecost.

I'm just hoping to have a few loaves and some fish when God needs them. The rest is up to him.