OT equivalent of militant Islam?

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Ian
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OT equivalent of militant Islam?

Post by Ian » Tue Jul 02, 2013 2:13 pm

This kind of case is of course shocking:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23139784

Not only does it cast a slur on Islam but, indirectly, in the eyes of many militant atheists, on religion generally, feeding prejudices, as if there weren`t enough already.

So it got me to wondering: is there an equivalent group in the Old Testament to modern militant Islamists? The Canaanites strike me as a debauched lot, mixing sex and religion, presumably to please both facets of life at once. Beaming him back in time, I would expect a militant Islamist to want to especially commit jihad on a Canaanite (more so than on an Israelite). Which bothers me a bit, because that is actually what the Israelites did. In other words, militant Islamists seem to fit the ancient Israelites` shoes better than they do the Canaanites. Which I would rather they not do. Hence the question. Thanks.

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steve
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Re: OT equivalent of militant Islam?

Post by steve » Tue Jul 02, 2013 3:28 pm

What a terrible story!

There are several differences between Islamic Jihad and Old Testament-authorized killing (e.g., blasphemers and Canaanites). I don't pretend to provide a complete list, but several come immediately to mind:

1. Israel was never commanded to convert anyone by threats or by force;

2. The Canaanites and Amalekites are unique cases of societies that were to be annihilated—not because of their failure to convert to Israel's religion (they were never offered that option), nor as honor-killings to avenge blasphemies against God (as non-Isrealites, they were not under any legal obligation to honor Israel's God), but because of their utter barbarism, corruption, worship of demons, sacrificing of their children, and sexual perversions;

3. Israel was a distinctive nation under special covenant with God. Within the nation, there were various laws, including those carrying a capital penalty. No one was forced to live in Israel, under such laws (the borders were open). Those who chose to live in Israel, did so under the agreement that there were certain penalties for certain crimes (as is true of those living under any government). Fortunately, nothing that is a mandatory or necessary human action was defined as a crime in Israel's laws;

4. Pagans living outside Israel were generally to be left alone, unless they attacked Israel. Even an Israelite who wished to leave his faith could do so, if he moved from the jurisdiction of the Israeli State. He would not be pursued. There were no Salman Rushdies in the Old Testament.

5. Most important, the instructions given to the Israelites were instructions from the God who created all things and who retains the prerogatives of life and death among His creatures. The Islamists, of course, make the same claim for themselves. The question, however, is one of which divine commander is the true God, speaking through true prophets. If Allah and Mohammed are the true God and the true prophet, then the jihadists are justified in following their orders. If Yahweh and Moses are the true God and true prophet, then Israel is justified in following their orders. The similarity of certain actions (e.g., the execution of blasphemers) does not mean that both cases are equally divinely authorized and justifiable.

The first four of the above are objectively observable; the fifth is a specifically Judeo-Christian conviction. I am a Christian, meaning that I accept the specifically Christian conviction, along with the other observations. For those who embrace Islamic beliefs, or no religion at all, consistency would require that Israel's severe Old Testament actions, in many cases, be condemned.

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Re: OT equivalent of militant Islam?

Post by Paidion » Tue Jul 02, 2013 7:57 pm

Steve wrote:The Canaanites and Amalekites are unique cases of societies that were to be annihilated ... because of their utter barbarism, corruption, worship of demons, sacrificing of their children, and sexual perversions
;

Would the same God command us today to annihilate individuals or societies because of their practising these same evils? If not, why not?

I am a Christian, and I fail to see any significant difference between these killings and the Islamic ones. I don't find the reason given for these killings as any more justifiable than that of "blaspheming God's prophet."

Jesus, the Son of God revealed the Father as He really is—not as one who kills evil doers, but as One who causes His rain to fall and His sun to shine on both the righteous and the unrighteous—as One who is "kind to the ungrateful and the selfish." (Luke 6:35). Why didn't Jesus, who bears the exact imprint of the Father's essence (Heb 1:3), ever kill anyone or command his disciples to kill evil doers? Especially if God did it in Old Testament times, and if Jesus is "God, a member of the Trinity"?

We need to make up our minds about the Father. Is His character that which His divine Son revealed? Or is His character that which Moses and his successors described? It cannot be both, can it?

Yet, it seems that many are able to believe in a schizophenic God. Many say, "Yes, God is a God of love, but He is also a God of justice," and this statement is supposed to explain how, out of love, God could send His son to die for the sins of some, and at the same time, out of justice, condemn the majority of mankind to an eternity in hell.
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Re: OT equivalent of militant Islam?

Post by steve » Tue Jul 02, 2013 10:38 pm

Hi Paidion,

You and I have discussed this a number of times at length on different threads. You believe that everything that God said in the Old Testament that doesn't resemble the instructions that Jesus gave to His disciples must be invalid—that is, God didn't really give those instructions, but the prophets (including the greatest of them all, Moses—Num.12:6-7) mistakenly thought God said it—meaning they were false prophets.

The problems that this position faces include (but are not limited to) the following:

1. Jesus believed in the Law and the Prophets. It was about these that He said, "the scriptures cannot be broken" (John 10:35). It is these that He rebuked the Sadducees for not "knowing" (Matt.22:29) and the Pharisees for "rejecting" (Matt.15:3). He even rebuked the two men on the road to Emmaus as being "fools and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken" (Luke 24:25). Paul and Peter also affirmed that the scriptures are "God-breathed and profitable for...instruction in righteousness" (2 Tim.3:16) and that those who misuse them are "untaught and unstable" (2 Pet.3:16). In quoting words given by Moses to Israel, Jesus prefaced the quote with "God commanded..." (Matt.15:4). He apparently expected His listeners to recognize, in the commands of Moses, God's own words. If you were Jesus, would you have taught otherwise?

2. The very same character of God—a gracious God who judges sinners—is found in both the Old Testament and the New. In the Old Testament, God wiped out the whole world of Noah's day (Gen.6-8), and Sodom and Gomorrah in Abraham's day (Gen.19). He later destroyed Pharaoh's armies in the Red Sea (Ex.14). He supernaturally incinerated Nadab and Abihu (Lev.10:1-2), opened the earth to swallow Korah and his confederates (Num.16:30-32), and struck down Uzzah for profaning the ark (2 Sam.6:7) . He also said that Assyria was His instrument of judgment against Samaria (Isa.10:5-6), and Cyrus was His instrument of destruction upon Babylon (Isa.45:1). Likewise, the Maccabeans were God's weapons of war against Antiochus Epiphanes (Zech.9:13). It goes on and on. In fact, He consigned the whole human race to death because of sin (Gen.3).

How about the New Testament? John the Baptist said that God was about to cut down the fruitless trees and cast them, with the chaff, into aionios fire (Matt.3:10, 12)—a rather unambiguous reference to the coming holocaust of AD 70. Speaking of the same events, Jesus said that the King (God) was angry and sent His armies to burn down Jerusalem (Matt.22:7). God struck down Ananias and Sapphira for lying to the Holy Spirit (Acts 5:1-11). The angel of the Lord struck Herod so that worms ate him and he died (Acts 12:23). How are these manifestations of God's character in the New Testament accounts different from the similar stories in the Old Testament?

God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac (Gen.22). Had Abraham held your views, he would have said, "That can't be God!" and gone his merry way. He would have failed the test. In recognizing this as a genuine command from God—one that went right against Abraham's understanding of something else God had said about Isaac's future—Abraham is said to have had great faith (James 2:21-22; Heb.11:17-19). It is not reported that Abraham accused God of schizophrenia.

3. The entire Book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ reveals an aspect of Christ that you seem unwilling to acknowledge: "the wrath of Him who sits on the throne and of the Lamb" (that'd be Jesus). Are you prepared to risk incurring the sanctions pronounced on those who take away from the words of that book?

4. To speak of God as schizophrenic is disingenuous. God has pronounced the death sentence on every person who has sinned (Rom.6:23). God is no more uncharitable when He removes someone through war, through disaster, through direct supernatural intervention, or through a quiet death in their beds. Death is common to all. The God that sent Jesus to us takes no pleasure in men's deaths, but this has not caused Him to change His universal policy. If He decides that some must die earlier than they otherwise would have, because their judgment is due and necessary to the proper ordering of the world, how is He less loving in that than if He had let them live twenty more years, and then taken them by other means?

Jesus contrasted His kingdom with the kingdoms of this world in this very respect—the latter fight their enemies (John 18:36). If the differences between God's administration of the Israelite kingdom (an earthly, political entity) and His administration of the kingdom of Christ (a spiritual entity of which Christ spoke) are not sufficient in your mind to justify different instructions for the different cases, then you will be left having to wonder why so many false prophets (Moses, Isaiah, et al.) were not stoned and why Jesus placed His imprimatur upon them. I prefer to take Paul's way, "believing all things which are written in the Law and in the Prophets" (Acts 24:14).

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Homer
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Re: OT equivalent of militant Islam?

Post by Homer » Wed Jul 03, 2013 12:17 am

Hmm...Are we to believe annihilation is compatible with God's character or no?

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steve
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Re: OT equivalent of militant Islam?

Post by steve » Wed Jul 03, 2013 10:20 am

Sure, why not?

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Re: OT equivalent of militant Islam?

Post by Bud » Wed Jul 03, 2013 12:18 pm

Thank you Steve for the repeated defense against repeated false accusations. ( I am referring here to Steve's reply to Paidion's post)
Malachi 3:16 Then those who feared the LORD spoke to one another, and the LORD gave attention and heard [it,] and a book of remembrance was written before Him for those who fear the LORD and who esteem His name. (NASB) :)

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Re: OT equivalent of militant Islam?

Post by Paidion » Thu Jul 04, 2013 11:29 am

Steve wrote:Jesus believed in the Law and the Prophets. It was about these that He said, "the scriptures cannot be broken" (John 10:35)
Here is what Jesus said:

If He called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken), do you say of Him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? (John 10:35,36)

“broken”= λυω (to loose)

In the NKJV (if I have counted correctly) the Greek word “ λυω” has been translated as “loose” or a synonym for “loose” 27 times. It has been translated as “break” or “break up” 8 times, “destroy” twice, and “melt” or “dissolve” thrice (only in 2 Peter). So it is not clear what Jesus meant in this quote. I doubt that he meant that every statement written in the Law and the Prophets is true.
He rebuked the Sadducees for not "knowing" (Matt.22:29)...
"Therefore, in the resurrection, whose wife of the seven will she be? For they all had her."
Jesus answered and said to them, "You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels of God in heaven. But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living." (Matt 22:28-32)


He rebuked them for their misunderstanding of the Scriptures.
and the Pharisees for "rejecting" (Matt.15:3).
He answered and said to them, "Why do you also transgress the commandment of God because of your tradition? "For God commanded, saying, ‘Honor your father and your mother’... (Matt 15:3,4)

He rebuked them for transgressing God's commandment by saying that what would have been given to their parents, was given to God.
Paul and Peter also affirmed that the scriptures are "God-breathed and profitable for...instruction in righteousness" (2 Tim.3:16)
Another possible translation is given by the American Standard Version:

Every scripture inspired of God is also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction which is in righteousness. (2 Tim 3:16 ASV)
and that those who misuse them are "untaught and unstable" (2 Pet.3:16).
...and count the forbearance of our Lord as salvation. so also our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, speaking of this as he does in all his letters. there are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the remaining writings. ( 2 Peter 3:15,16)

The author of 2 Peter was speaking primarily of the “"untaught and unstable" twisting Paul's letters to their own destruction. “The remaining writings” may refer to writings of Paul other than his letters.
In quoting words given by Moses to Israel, Jesus prefaced the quote with "God commanded..." (Matt.15:4). He apparently expected them to recognize in the commands of Moses God's own words. If you were Jesus, would you have taught otherwise?
The words are:

For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother... (Matt 15:4)

Have you asked me an appropriate question? From the beginning of our discussion, I indicated that Moses sometimes misunderstood the revelation of God. Not always. Honouring one's father and mother is a far cry from commanding the people of God to destroy nations as well as many Hebrew individuals who made a misstep.
The very same character of God—a gracious God who judges sinners—is found in both the Old Testament and the New. In the Old Testament, God wiped out the whole world of Noah's day (Gen.6-8), and Sodom and Gomorrah in Abraham's day (Gen.19). He later destroyed Pharaoh's armies in the Red Sea (Ex.14). He supernaturally incinerated Nadab and Abihu (Lev.10:1-2), opened the earth to swallow Korah and his confederates (Num.16:30-32), and struck down Uzzah for profaning the ark (2 Sam.6:7) . He also said that Assyria was His instrument of judgment against Samaria (Isa.10:5-6), and Cyrus was His instrument of destruction upon Babylon (Isa.45:1). Likewise, the Maccabeans were God's weapons of war against Antiochus Epiphanes (Zech.9:13). It goes on and on. In fact, He consigned the whole human race to death because of sin (Gen.3).
So why doesn't He destroy individuals or nations now? “I am Yahweh. I change not.” (Mal 3:6)
Or does He still use peoples and nations to destroy others? Apparently both the Catholics and Protestants of the middle ages thought that they were the instruments that God used to burn at stake the “heretical Anabaptists” of their day. Were they right? The concept seems pretty much the same as what God supposedly did as per your description above, even if for a different reason. That is probably where the Catholics and Protestants of the middle ages got the idea. Is it not also similar to the militant Muslims of our day who destroy the “infidels”, believing they are the arm of God in doing so.
How about the New Testament? John the Baptist said that God was about to cut down the fruitless trees and cast them, with the chaff, into aionios fire (Matt.3:10, 12)—a rather unambiguous reference to the coming holocaust of AD 70.
Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” (Matt 3:10-12)

It doesn't sound unambiguous to me. How do you know “the fire” is not figurative? In John's sentence in between the two which you quoted—the sentence you omitted, John said that the one coming after him would baptize with Holy Spirit and with fire. Did that fire refer to the fires in the valley south of Jerusalem also? Perhaps the fires in all three verses are the purifying fires of correction. The chaff which is to be burnt up may be the impure, useless part of “the wheat's” character.
Speaking of the same events, Jesus said that the King (God) was angry and sent His armies to burn down Jerusalem (Matt.22:7).
This is not speaking of A.D. 70 at all. This is a parable of the Kingdom, the future aspect of the Kingdom when our Lord returns. Our Lord used a parable to show that He would deal with wrongdoers when He returns to make everything right.
God struck down Ananias and Sapphira for lying to the Holy Spirit (Acts 5:1-11).
How do you know God did it? They may have died from fear.
The angel of the Lord struck Herod so that worms ate him and he died (Acts 12:23).
What the people of the time observed was the manner in which Herod died. Have you ever wondered how Luke knew it was the angel of the Lord who did it? Did Luke see the angel?
How are these manifestations of God's character in the New Testament accounts different from the similar stories in the Old Testament?
In the New Testament, there are no accounts of God destroying nations, killing individuals for minor offenses things as steadying something which was carried, slaying some wicked persons but not others, destroying whole people groups, using His special people to make war on nations in order to destroy them, commanding his people to put to death those who touched a mountain, commanding his people to put to death the owners of an animal which has killed someone, commanding his people to stone to death someone caught gathering sticks on the Sabbath day, or for cursing, commanding his people to stone to death their rebellious sons.
God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac (Gen.22). Had Abraham held your views, he would have said, "That can't be God!" and gone his merry way. He would have failed the test. In recognizing this as a genuine command from God—one that went right against Abraham's understanding of something else God had said about Isaac's future—Abraham is said to have had great faith (James 2:21-22; Heb.11:17-19). It is not reported that Abraham accused God of schizophrenia.
God wanted to test Abraham to see whether he would obey unconditionally. It is no reflection on God's character since He didn't permit Abraham to kill his son.
God has pronounced the death sentence on every person who has sinned (Rom.6:23).
You think that was physical death? Was not God speaking of the “death” to real living as a result of sinning. Is this “death” not that to which Christ referred when He said, “Let the dead bury the dead”?
Notwithstanding, it is true that “death entered into the world” as a result of the original fall of Adam and Eve. Thus everyone dies sooner or later. Even if there were a person who lived his whole life without sinning, as a member of the human race, he would eventually die.
God is no more uncharitable when He removes someone through war, through disaster, through direct supernatural intervention, or through a quiet death in their beds.
So you think that when a person undergoes a quiet death, God has removed him? I believe death is the consequence of the Fall of Man in the beginning. Nature itself had fallen, and death entered the world, so that now death comes “naturally” and is not directly caused by God.
Death is common to all. The God that sent Jesus to us takes no pleasure in men's deaths, but this has not caused Him to change His universal policy.
Death is not a universal policy of God. Rather it is the “natural” consequence of the Fall, as are the changes in the behaviour of animals such as animals devouring one another, mosquitoes sucking the blood of mammals, internal parasites, etc.
If He decides that some must die earlier than they otherwise would have, because their judgment is due and necessary to the proper ordering of the world, how is He less loving in that than if He had let them live twenty more years, and then taken them by other means?
I doubt that God ever makes such decisions.
Jesus contrasted His kingdom with the kingdoms of this world in this very respect—the latter fight their enemies (John 18:36). If the differences in God's administration of the Israelite kingdom (an earthly, political entity) and of His administration of the kingdom of Christ (a spiritual entity of which Christ spoke) are not sufficient in your mind to justify different instructions for the different cases, then you will be left having to wonder why so many false prophets (Moses, Isaiah, et al.) were not stoned and why Jesus placed His imprimatur upon them. I prefer to take Paul's way, "believing al things which are written in the Law and in the Prophets" (Acts 24:14).
So you think the difference is merely a style of administration. I think there is a radical contrast between the two. In the Israelite kingdom, they were commanded to kill and destroy other peoples, just as God supposedly did. In the Kingdom of God and of Christ, we are commanded to love our enemies and to pray for them, and be kind to evil people, just as Jesus said His Father is—kind to evil and ungrateful people (Luke 6:35).

I have never claimed that Moses, Isaiah, and others were false prophets. My claim is that they didn't receive the full revelation of God and of his character, because they were incapable of doing so. One of the main reasons that God sent His Son to be born on earth and to live among mankind, was that He might reveal the Father's character as it really is. And this, the Son has graciously succeeded in doing.
“Hear ye Him.” (Matthew 17:5)
God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac (Gen.22). Had Abraham held your views, he would have said, "That can't be God!" and gone his merry way. He would have failed the test. In recognizing this as a genuine command from God—one that went right against Abraham's understanding of something else God had said about Isaac's future—Abraham is said to have had great faith (James 2:21-22; Heb.11:17-19). It is not reported that Abraham accused God of schizophrenia.
Are you presuming that I have done so? Quite the opposite. I suggested that those who say, “God is LOVE, but He is also just (where “just” means punishing sinners forever in hell) believe in a “God” who is schizophrenic, and do not understand God as He really is. And I think that those who believe that God kills individuals for trivial reasons and sends his people to destroy sinners and/or nations, hold to the same or simiilar mistaken belief about God.

Yes, God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac as a test of Abraham's trust. But He didn't let him carry it out.
To have done so, would have been contrary to His character.
The entire Book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ reveals an aspect of Christ that you seem unwilling to acknowledge: "the wrath of Him who sits on the throne and of the Lamb" (that'd be Jesus). Are you prepared to risk the sanctions pronounced on those who take away from the words of that book?
Firstly, the book of Revelation is highly figurative, descriptive of what the writer saw in his vision. Secondly, being wrathful, does not imply killing people and sending people to destroy nations.
Jesus exhibited wrath while here on earth. He overturned the tables of the merchants in the temple, but He never killed anyone. He was Another who bore the exact image of the Father's nature (Heb 1:3), so if the Father killed people for their evil deeds, why didn't Jesus?

Many of the second-century Christians not only took away words from the book of Revelation, but took away the whole book, regarding it as a forgery.
To speak of God as schizophrenic is disingenuous. God has pronounced the death sentence on every person who has sinned (Rom.6:23). God is no more uncharitable when He removes someone through war, through disaster, through direct supernatural intervention, or through a quiet death in their beds. Death is common to all. The God that sent Jesus to us takes no pleasure in men's deaths, but this has not caused Him to change His universal policy. If He decides that some must die earlier than they otherwise would have, because their judgment is due and necessary to the proper ordering of the world, how is He less loving in that than if He had let them live twenty more years, and then taken them by other means?
I am not speaking of God as schizophrenic; I am speaking of the conceived “God” who supposedly is LOVE and who ALSO sentences the majority of people to conscious eternal torment as "schizophrenic".
I am also suggesting that the conceived “God” who supposedly is both LOVE and one who kills people and sends his henchmen out to destroy nations and individuals similarly appears to be schizophrenic.

The rest of your paragraph above appears to minimize the value of human life. So if one of us goes out and kills someone, it's not so bad, since they are going to die anyway in 20 years or so. Or do you think it's okay only for God to do it? And if so, why? And why be concerned about "partial-birth abortions" (actually infanticide since it occurs in the third trimester of pregnancy, or even in the final month)? The killing of these children will prevent them from growing up in this world and possibly becoming evil people. It will also prevent them from going to hell.

You affirm that God killed people and ordered the Israelites to kill people and destroy nations because they were wicked. Or maybe to preserve the righteousness of the Israelites. Didn't the Catholics and Protestants in the middle ages burn as many Anabaptists at stake as possible for the same reasons? To allow the Anabaptists to live would be to let them proselytize others, and that would be a sentence to eternal torment for those others. It would also allow the Anabaptists to sink into a deeper and deeper damnation.
I prefer to take Paul's way, "believing al things which are written in the Law and in the Prophets" (Acts 24:14).
I prefer to take Christ's way, believing that God “is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.” (Luke 6:35)
If Christ's words mean anything, they mean that God does not kill ungrateful and evil people, but does good things for them. That is what Christ instructed US to do. He said:

Love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. (Luke 6:35)

This was “the universal policy” of the Father, not causing death but administering life. Jesus put the people who love their enemies (instead of killing them) in the same category as the Father, and in this way show themselves to be truly sons of the Most High. There's not a double standard here—one for God and a different one for Christians. Jesus was instructing us to love our enemies by doing good for them, and thus be like the Most High who loves his enemies and “is kind” toward them, that is, does good for them. If we kill our enemies instead, we do the opposite. We prove that we don't love them. So do you imagine that God is in a different category? He can kill His enemies, but still have perfect LOVE for them?
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Re: OT equivalent of militant Islam?

Post by steve » Thu Jul 04, 2013 5:00 pm

Hi Paidion,

Whenever you and I get into this subject, your arguments quickly degenerate into strange rhetoric. This is not like you on other subjects. I wrote:
In quoting words given by Moses to Israel, Jesus prefaced the quote with "God commanded..." (Matt.15:4). He apparently expected them to recognize in the commands of Moses God's own words. If you were Jesus, would you have taught otherwise?
You replied:
The words are:

For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother... (Matt 15:4)

Have you asked me an appropriate question? From the beginning of our discussion, I indicated that Moses sometimes misunderstood the revelation of God. Not always. Honouring one's father and mother is a far cry from commanding the people of God to destroy nations as well as many Hebrew individuals who made a misstep.
You should have read to the end of the verse. Jesus attributed two different obligations to God’s commanding: 1) honoring parents; and 2) the killing of any son who curses his parents. My assumption is that the first of these you have no objection to, but that you do not believe that God gave the second. Yet Jesus said that both were commanded by God. Doesn’t this concern you?

So why doesn't He destroy individuals or nations now? “I am Yahweh. I change not.” (Mal 3:6)
What makes you so sure that He doesn’t still do this?
Or does He still use peoples and nations to destroy others? Apparently both the Catholics and Protestants of the middle ages thought that they were the instruments that God used to burn at stake the “heretical Anabaptists” of their day. Were they right? The concept seems pretty much the same as what God supposedly did as per your description above, even if for a different reason. That is probably where the Catholics and Protestants of the middle ages got the idea. Is it not also similar to the militant Muslims of our day who destroy the “infidels”, believing they are the arm of God in doing so.
You may not have read my first post (above). I said that God never authorized the killing of heretics, if by that we mean people who had wrong interpretations of scripture. He did order the killing of idolators, but He never gave any such commands to the church. Nor did He command the church to circumcise our children, to offer animal sacrifices, nor to rest on the seventh day (I suspect that you do not accept any of these as authentic commands of God, even in the Old Testament). This does not mean that God has changed. It does mean, however, that His commands have changed (Heb.7:12).

When I said that John the baptist’s words were unambiguously about the coming holocaust, you wrote:
It doesn't sound unambiguous to me.
I’m sorry that this is true for you. Of course, you seem to have adopted a hermeneutic that says, “If I find something in scripture offensive, then God must also find it offensive—so I will reject or reinterpret it, no matter how counter-intuitively.” Under such a rule, many otherwise unambiguous statements will become opaque.

The fact is that John was borrowing Jeremiah’s language, in which Jeremiah predicted the holocaust of 586 BC. Jesus also borrowed language from Jeremiah about the same events. Both John and Jesus predicted that something similar was about to happen in the generation of their listeners. They were true prophets, as the events proved.
How do you know “the fire” is not figurative? In John's sentence in between the two which you quoted—the sentence you omitted, John said that the one coming after him would baptize with Holy Spirit and with fire. Did that fire refer to the fires in the valley south of Jerusalem also?
Yes, it did. There were two options being presented by John to the Jews of his day. These two options were illustrated by three examples:

1) Some would be fruitless trees, cut down and cast into aionios fire, others would not be fruitless and would not be cut down or cast into fire;

2) Some would be baptized in the Hoy Spirit, others with fire;

3) Some would be wheat preserved in the barn; others would be chaff, cast into aionios fire.


Perhaps the fires in all three verses are the purifying fires of correction. The chaff which is to be burnt up may be the impure, useless part of “the wheat's” character.
This interpretation would work better if John had said something different. As it is, we must work with what he said (perhaps you believe his words were misreported, and that he really said something more suited to your interpretation? There really seems to be no end to the incompetence of God’s authors to get Him wrong and to misreport facts).

How does the cutting down of fruitless trees and casting them into the fire purify them? Why does he not cast both wheat and chaff into the fire to allow the chaff to burn away? Instead he says that the wheat is gathered one place, and the chaff to another.

You wrote that:
[Matthew 22:7] is not speaking of A.D. 70 at all. This is a parable of the Kingdom, the future aspect of the Kingdom when our Lord returns. Our Lord used a parable to show that He would deal with wrongdoers when He returns to make everything right.
There is no evidence that this is about events post second coming. Are you saying that after the second coming, Jesus will send his disciples throughout the world to gather in guests, who will later be eliminated for their lack of proper garments? Feel free to take such a view if you wish. To me the straightforward meaning of the parable (which parallels the previous parable in chapter 21) is far more reasonable.

I wrote:
God struck down Ananias and Sapphira for lying to the Holy Spirit (Acts 5:1-11).
To which you replied:
How do you know God did it? They may have died from fear.
This must have been a very unhealthy couple! I have, on many occasions, heard modern Christians receive much more severe rebukes than Peter gave here, without any evidence of so much as a heart murmur on their part. Maybe churches should keep a defibrillator in the pastor’s office, in case he needs to confront a church member sometime.

Yet this feeble-hearted couple, both of them, separately, fell dead from fear when Peter told them they had sinned. Peter even predicted that Sapphira would drop dead before it happened. If he was counting on natural weakness of heart to take Sapphira out, he must have been given supernatural revelation concerning her cardiovascular condition (which must have been, coincidentally, just as bad as her husband’s).

What’s more, after these two went down, great fear came on all the church (Acts 5:11). Great fear, you are suggesting, had a tendency to cause cardiac arrest in those days. Did all the church members start dropping like flies? What were the church members afraid of? They had not been rebuked. Were they afraid that they too might someday become very frightened and collapse from heart failure? I suppose this suggests that they had “nothing to fear but fear itself.”

There is, of course, a more reasonable possibilty which avoids nonsensical assumptions, and which is regarded by Luke to be too obvious to require explanation.

You wrote:
What the people of the time observed was the manner in which Herod died. Have you ever wondered how Luke knew it was the angel of the Lord who did it? Did Luke see the angel?
I doubt that Luke saw the angel. In fact, I doubt that Luke was even present at the time. His account must have been based on what the Christians present at the time had told him. There are two problems, however, with taking the position that Luke was wrong about this, because God would never kill anyone:

1) Luke wrote what he wrote, and if wrong, becomes a false witness. It is not enough to say, “He wasn’t a false witness because he actually believed it was done by an angel.” Yet, as you have pointed out, he never saw the angel. Therefore he was affirming something as true that he never saw. If a man does not know something to be true, but claims that it is, his ignorance does not change the fact that he is an unreliable witness. On the other hand, if an angel really did do this, and Luke had learned of it, then this problem vanishes;

2) Even if Luke were wrong (which I do not allow, but you do), it is evident that Luke’s view of God did not rule out what your view of God rules out. Either Luke believed it to be consistent with the nature of God to strike down a man like Herod, or else Luke was a deliberate liar. Yet, Luke learned his view of God's character from those who knew and learned from Jesus Himself. This raises the legitimate inquiry as to where your view of God came from.
In the New Testament, there are no accounts of God destroying nations, killing individuals for minor offenses…
True. If you do not accept the things affirmed in the New Testament (e.g., about God angrily burning down Jerusalem, about the angel of the Lord killing an orator for his not giving glory to God, etc.) then “in the New Testament, there are no accounts” of such things.

I wrote:
God is no more uncharitable when He removes someone through war, through disaster, through direct supernatural intervention, or through a quiet death in their beds.
To which you replied:
So you think that when a person undergoes a quiet death, God has removed him?
Thankfully, yes. I am very happy to know that God determines the day of my death, as He also does for lesser creatures (e.g., sparrows). The scripture says (Dang! There I go believing the Bible again!):

“You hide Your face, they are troubled;
You take away their breath, they die and return to their dust.”
(Psalm 104:29).

You wrote:
I have never claimed that Moses, Isaiah, and others were false prophets. My claim is that they didn't receive the full revelation of God and of his character, because they were incapable of doing so.
You did not use the label “false prophets,” but you described them as such. You claim that, though they spoke in the name of Yahweh, they nonetheless spoke falsely. If there is a better description of a false prophet, I have never heard it.

You don’t really blame the prophets for being false. They did the best they could do, given their ignorance. But then I had never thought that the prophets’ oracles were limited by their own ignorance (1 Pet.1:10-11).

Why were the prophets not able to speak reliably about God’s character? Assuming He was inspiring their oracles, was He not yet aware of His own character, so He could only tell them things about Himself that weren’t true?
One of the main reasons that God sent His Son to be born on earth and to live among mankind, was that He might reveal the Father's character as it really is. And this, the Son has graciously succeeded in doing.
“Hear ye Him.” (Matthew 17:5)
There is no controversy about whether we, today, are to hear Jesus or Moses. However, we are talking about the time before Jesus. The last command given by God, prior to the birth of Christ, was: “Remember the Law of Moses, My servant, Which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel…” (Mal.4:4). To those living under the Old Covenant, Jesus said, “If you do not believe [Moses’] writings, how will you believe my words?” (John 5:47). How would you answer Jesus on this, since you do not believe Moses’ writings?

You wrote:
Firstly, the book of Revelation is highly figurative, descriptive of what the writer saw in his vision. Secondly, being wrathful, does not imply killing people and sending people to destroy nations.
It does in the Book of Revelation, where God’s four severe judgments first wipe out a quarter of the population (6:8), then another third goes down under the sixth trumpet (9:18), and eventually the last bowls of God’s wrath heap horrendous (and deadly) plagues upon the remainder. I realize that you may have little regard for the Book of Revelation, but to the degree that you do regard it, it would be best not to misrepresent it.
Jesus exhibited wrath while here on earth. He overturned the tables of the merchants in the temple, but He never killed anyone. He was Another who bore the exact image of the Father's nature (Heb 1:3), so if the Father killed people for their evil deeds, why didn't Jesus?
I’m afraid this question is too silly to be taken seriously. Are you not aware that there were many centuries, in the Old Testament, during which God did not supernaturally judge sinners? Nor did He do so during the brief ministry of Jesus. However, there were many times in the Old Testament when God did judge sinners, and Jesus predicted that one such period was coming upon His own generation. Revelation likewise sees Jesus very much involved in judging sinners. If you really would like to know Jesus accurately, it will be necessary to take everything the scripture says about Him, not just the easy things.
Many of the second-century Christians not only took away words from the book of Revelation, but took away the whole book, regarding it as a forgery.
So if they did, we should? You yourself have pointed out that many church people killed Anabaptists. However, my impression was that you were saying this was a wrong thing for them to do, and that you were not recommending our doing the same. Yet, you point out that many churchmen sinned against the instructions in Revelation, and seem to be using this precedent as an excuse for our doing so.
The rest of your paragraph above appears to minimize the value of human life. So if one of us goes out and kills someone, it's not so bad, since they are going to die anyway in 20 years or so. Or do you think it's okay only for God to do it? And if so, why?
I find it very difficult to believe that you can see no distinction between God’s prerogatives and ours. I can not correct this deficiency for you here.
And why be concerned about "partial-birth abortions" (actually infanticide since it occurs in the third trimester of pregnancy, or even in the final month)? The killing of these children will prevent them from growing up in this world and possibly becoming evil people. It will also prevent them from going to hell.
I’m sorry, Brother, but this is irrelevant nonsense. No one here is arguing for abortion, for murder, for any criminal action. However, if God causes a baby to die at infancy (as He did David’s), then Christians believe that God knows best, and has reserved for Himself decisions about such things as a person’s time of death, which He has withheld from us.
You affirm that God killed people and ordered the Israelites to kill people and destroy nations because they were wicked. Or maybe to preserve the righteousness of the Israelites.
I assume you believe that God created the heavens and the earth. On what basis do you believe such a thing, which many find counterintuitive? Is it not because you have read this in scripture? That is how I know it. That is also how I know the things you mentioned. The same scripture (even the same author) wrote of both.

I wrote:
I prefer to take Paul's way, "believing all things which are written in the Law and in the Prophets" (Acts 24:14).
To which you replied:
I prefer to take Christ's way, believing that God “is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.” (Luke 6:35)
Certainly you know enough about rhetoric to recognize the fallacy of a false dichotomy. You make it sound as if God can only be merciful or only be judgmental. Paul said, "Behold the goodness and the severity of God..." (Rom.11:22). You wish to only behold one of these traits, and thus create a god lacking severity.

You know, Moses also believed that God is "kind to the ungrateful and the evil.” This did not prevent him from also believing that God must sometimes exercise His prerogative to judge sinners. Jonah believed that God was going to destroy Nineveh, but He also knew that God is “a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, one who relents from doing harm” (Jonah 4:2). The writer of Hebrews knew that Christ was a “faithful and merciful High Priest,” but found no conflict between this and the fact that God would “devour the adversaries” with “fiery indignation.” Why was it possible for biblical men (who were chosen and inspired by the Holy Spirit) to see both aspects of God without thinking Him schizophrenic, whereas you cannot? Did they, perhaps, know something you don’t?

Paul, unlike you (as you seem to acknowledge by saying you “prefer” to take Christ’s way than to take Paul’s) believed everything written in the Law and the Prophets.

Your position, whether you are willing to say it bluntly or not, is that God made a very poor choice of men to write the scriptures. He should have chosen someone more like you. More able to faithfully represent what the Holy Spirit wished to communicate through them. Though inspired, the prophets (you say) were not able to know about the graciousness and the lovingkindness of God (although they spoke of these traits in God more than did the New Testament writers), and the disciples that Jesus chose to officially represent Him and lead His movement were incompetent even to recognize as much as you recognize—namely, that the Old Testament scriptures (and even their own apostolic writings) were simply unreliable.

There are many who would agree with you, but not many of them would regard themselves as Christians (though I know you are). What I can’t understand is, if you can’t trust what Paul wrote, why your obsessive interest in parsing the Greek of his sentences? What a waste of time this is, if you already know intuitively more than Paul did about Jesus, God, and the scriptures?

Despite the tone of irony in a few of my statements, I am sincerely curious to know how you handle these questions.

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Paidion
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Re: OT equivalent of militant Islam?

Post by Paidion » Thu Jul 04, 2013 8:34 pm

Steve, you wrote:I find it very difficult to believe that you can see no distinction between God’s prerogatives and ours. I can not correct this deficiency for you here.
John Stuart Mill made an interesting observation:
John Stuart Mill wrote:"To say that God's goodness may be different in kind from man's goodness, what is it but saying, with a slight change of phraseology,
that God may possibly not be good?"
The following seems to be your position. If we kill people we are wicked and must be imprisoned for life, or even executed. If God kills people it is right and good.

The Old Testament is full of commands (presumably from God) which do not show love. I will mention one of the "better" ones:

If a man finds a young woman who is a virgin, who is not betrothed, and he seizes her and lies with her, and they are found out, then the man who lay with her shall give to the young woman’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife because he has humbled her; he shall not be permitted to divorce her all his days. (Deut.22:28,29)

The condition seems to be that if a man forces a virgin, that is rapes her, she must become his wife for life. No thought is given to the needs of the young woman. How many young women would WANT to become the wife of the man who raped her? Would you be okay with this, if it were your daughter who was raped? After all, you'd get 50 shekels of silver out of the deal!

But I suppose the girl would accept the marriage cheerfully once she came to know that it was God's command, and that He would command only the best for everyone concerned.

But then again, I suppose the man would punished a little, too, in that he would not permitted to divorce her.

Oh, I must post another well-known one that's brought up quite frequently:

If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and who, when they have chastened him, will not heed them, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city, to the gate of his city. And they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Then all the men of his city shall stone him to death with stones; so you shall put away the evil from among you, and all Israel shall hear and fear. (Deut. 21:17-21)

I don't think there's a man among us who would bring his rebellious son to the city elders to be stoned to death. Are we more loving toward our sons that God is? However, if you didn't do it, you'd be going against God's "righteous" command, wouldn't you? So I guess it's all right for you to do it, since God's "universal policy" in all ages is death to mankind, I suppose it wouldn't matter too much if the elders killed your son now. He's going to die in 20-60 years from now anyway. Right?

Yet again, I suppose you can be thankful that you live under a different administration than that of the Hebrews of the Old Testament. You don't have to kill your rebellious son. You can accept that God is now kind to evil and ungrateful (and rebellious) people, instead of ordering their deaths as he used to do. It seems that God Himself has changed in His behaviour toward His people. Did He learn something from His experience with the consequences of the former administration so that He now changed it, and through His Son told people to do good, kind, and helpful acts towards all people, especially those who hate his people?

I think it simpler to accept that the God "who changes not" was just as much LOVE under the first convenant as under the present one—that God didn't change, but people's understanding of Him did change—all because His beloved Son revealed to the world the true facts about the Father's total LOVE. It is unfortunate that some cannot fully accept the words of Jesus concernng His Father's loving character, a Father who is kind even to evil and ungrateful people with no desire whatever to kill them.
Paidion

Man judges a person by his past deeds, and administers penalties for his wrongdoing. God judges a person by his present character, and disciplines him that he may become righteous.

Avatar shows me at 75 years old. I am now 83.

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