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.