Pure Goodness

Originally posted by sonship
I get repeatedly the attitude that God is wrong to punish.
I get repeatedly the insinuation that He should permit anything as behavior.

From people that don't believe in the God figure that you happen to believe in and promote? From me, the "attitude" that you ought to be getting is that, if you subscribe to the ideology of "eternal torture in burning agony" for thoughtcrime, then your moral compass is spinning and it matters not what you claim it points to at any given time.

Originally posted by sonship
I get repeatedly the attitude that God is wrong to punish.
I get repeatedly the insinuation that He should permit anything as behavior.

Where do you hear this? Here? From who?

Originally posted by sonship
I get repeatedly the attitude that God is wrong to punish.
I get repeatedly the insinuation that He should permit anything as behavior.

Why should god be right to punish?

Originally posted by FMF
Do you personally condemn those people with different beliefs [from those you just so happen to have] as being part of "Satan's rebellion"?

I personally regard all of us who descended from the first man Adam, to be by default in rebellion to God.

I am told to go and spread the good news of Christ's salvation.
And I am told to do that with some unknowns as to how EVERY conceivable case will be judged by God.

Some evanglists do seek to argue for a 100% air tight flowchart, computer like, in which we can predict what God will judge for every possible case.

I do not do that. I am willing to preach the good news of Christ's redemptive death and resurrection, God's command that we believe in Christ, and bear the burden that I do not know everything He knows.

So if you seek to press me "But what about THIS case? And what about THAT case? And how does your flowchart handle this OTHER case?" I would say many times that I don't know.

I think God is definite and would still leave us with some unknowns.

In the book of Ezekiel it is often repeated "And they shall know that I am the Lord."

I believe that there is a great distance to which God's longsuffering will go. There is great extent to which God's patience will go. There is a great extent to which He will allow or tolerate some things. But there is an end somewhere.

If you think on it, it makes sense. But it only makes sense if He is indeed God. And at some point "And they will know that I am the Lord" and will so for eternity.

Now let me put a question to you the old veteran Bible believer.

In Revelation after 1,000 years (at least) of a paradise like restored earth where there is the absence of war, the presence of plenty, the eradication of disease, blindness, deafness, and elimination of all kinds of curses in the Millennium - WHY would some of the people afterwards STILL want to revolt against God and Christ ?

"And when the thousand years are completed, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, God and Magog, to gather them for the war. Their number is like that of the sand of the sea.

And they went up upon the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city; and fire came down out of heaven and devoured them. And the devil, who DECEIVED them, was cast into the lake of fire ..." (Rev. 20:7-10a)

You have posted much about punishment as being a wrong motif to induce love. How come 1,000 years of universal mercy on all the inhabitants of that world, is not enough to persuade them that God's way is better and that they ought not any more join Satan's revolt ?

Love and mercy in a 1,000 year paradise did not persuade them follow God.

Maybe this is just for our education that some of His creatures just WILL NOT be reconciled to God either by love or by punishment.

How come after the millennial kingdom when Satan is bound up and the earth is restored to a Edenic like fruitfulness and bounty, a sizable number of its inhabitants can be deceived again to throw their lot in with Satan ?

Originally posted by sonship
In Revelation after 1,000 years (at least) of a paradise like restored earth where there is the absence of war, the presence of plenty, the eradication of disease, blindness, deafness, and elimination of all kinds of curses in the Millennium - WHY would some of the people afterwards STILL want to revolt against God and Christ ?

Presumably you imagine that there will be countless billions of people who, while all this is going on, will be being tortured forever due to your God figure's vengeful wrath and His right to "inflict misery" [as you put it] and this will be because these people did not believe the Jesus story?

Originally posted by sonship
IYou have posted much about punishment as being a wrong motif to induce love. How come 1,000 years of universal mercy on all the inhabitants of that world, is not enough to persuade them that God's way is better and that they ought not any more join Satan's revolt ?

Because it is a figment of your imagination and what you assert about your God figure means absolutely nothing to many billions of people.

Originally posted by FMF
Presumably you imagine that there will be countless billions of people who, while all this is going on, will be being tortured forever due to your God figure's vengeful wrath and His right to "inflict misery" [as you put it] and this will be because these people did not believe the Jesus story?

I believe that there is such a thing as an ultimate evil just as there is such a One as an Ultimate Good Life.

I have no stats. But the universe is a large place and eternity is a long time (so to speak).

And the gangrene of Satanic revolt will be confined and kept from infecting that world without end of the kingdom of God.

"A new heaven and a new earth in which righteousness dwells" means unrighteousness is justly punished and confined from spreading. And this after a long history to creation of its fruitlessness.

Originally posted by FMF
Because it is a figment of your imagination and what you assert about your God figure means absolutely nothing to many billions of people.

Because it is a figment of your imagination and what you assert about your God figure means absolutely nothing to many billions of people.

I don't think the God who was revealed in Christ and tells me to live through Him and preach the Gospel, yet without exhaustive knowledge which only He has, is a figment of my imagination.

My imagination is not that powerful to insert Jesus of Nazareth into history. He was known when I arrived on the scene.

You see in your reasoning process you exclude the Person of God. You form your assumptions assuming no God. You develop your theory assuming no God. You arrive at your conclusion imagining no God. At every stage of your reasoning process you exclude the possibility of God and His character.

I include the Person, the ways, the character, the methods, the acts of God throughout my reasoning on this. So where you exclude God's omniscience and righteousness along the process of your reasoning, I include them.

"Will not the Judge of all the earth do justly?" (Genesis 18:25)

I would rather spend the time interceding like Abraham, to God, (which is probably why He visited him). I would rather spend the time to pray for many people as I do, even sometimes at random, believing that my prayers will be answered.

I think this is more profitable than wrangling on and on with suspicions that limitations humans have must also be those of God.

This is one of the things agnostics and atheists and skeptics do, I think. They look at their own failures and assume that a Big Person simply could not exist.

I see my failures and my limitations. I do not let them dictate to me that a Perfect Person could not exist. And I think history argues that a Perfect Person did and does exist in Jesus Christ.

He said He was Son of God. And from His mouth came the greatest words of love and forgiveness with also the greatest words of terrible consequences for unreconciled rejection of God.

Originally posted by sonship
My imagination is not that powerful to insert Jesus of Nazareth into history.

Others did it for you

Originally posted by sonship
You see in your reasoning process you exclude the Person of God. You form your assumptions assuming no God. You develop your theory assuming no God. You arrive at your conclusion imagining no God. At every stage of your reasoning process you exclude the possibility of God and His character.

No, as it happens I assume there is a God. My reasoning process leads me to believe He has not revealed Himself to you. But I have said this to you in direct conversations countless times. You are in hair dryer mode again. Can you really not differentiate between the people you aim your monologues at?

Originally posted by sonship
I see my failures and my limitations. I do not let them dictate to me that a Perfect Person could not exist. And I think history argues that a Perfect Person did and does exist in Jesus Christ.

And those who do not agree with your interpretation of "history" and Iron Age mythology, and your personal opinion about Jesus, they will all be tortured in burning agony for all eternity as a punishment, right?

Originally posted by sonship
And the gangrene of Satanic revolt will be confined and kept from infecting that world without end of the kingdom of God..

You reckon I am part of "the gangrene of Satanic revolt" infecting the world? You sound like you are laying down the justifications for the everlasting torture of people with different beliefs from you.

Do you honestly reckon you can walk away from delivering these ghastly pronouncements and condemnations with your moral compass still in working order?

Originally posted by sonship
I don't know why you think I would not be being serious.

Go back and read your own posts so far. Your responses to legitimate criticisms, or rather you lack of genuine response is what I take as not being serious.

Everything related to Adam's relationship with God speaks of God's goodness.
Stating it over and over doesn't make it true, nor does it address peoples challenges to your claim.

And if you do not see the pure goodness of God in this, I do.
Yet when asked simple straight forward questions about it, you fail to answer.

Originally posted by FMF
You reckon I am part of "the gangrene of Satanic revolt" infecting the world? You sound like you are laying down the justifications for the everlasting torture of people with different beliefs from you.

Do you honestly reckon you can walk away from delivering these ghastly pronouncements and condemnations with your moral compass still in working order?

A ghastly result exists to those whose names are not recorded in the book of life.

"Ghastly" is an appropriate expression for what has been a ghastly eternal sin.

Now, there have been a few questions from me to you which you have swept aside as you plow on with your probing for a problem in my belief.

To recount how many unanswered questions I put to YOU which you swept aside unnswered, I would have to go back and review. But I think since the start of this thread there have been at least two or three.

So before you plow on like a juggernaut with more examination, take a moment to respond to my couple of questions to you.

I think one involved the people who are deceived to rebel against God after the millennium. Why didn't blessing and mercy persuade them otherwise?

I think the other may have been do you think an ultimate evil act exists or not.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Go back and read your own posts so far. Your responses to legitimate criticisms, or rather you lack of genuine response is what I take as not being serious.

[b]Everything related to Adam's relationship with God speaks of God's goodness.
Stating it over and over doesn't make it true, nor does it address peoples challenges to your claim.

And i ...[text shortened]... this, I do.
Yet when asked simple straight forward questions about it, you fail to answer.[/b]

Answers not to your satisfaction are merely that.

I wrote that there are some unknowns to me anyway. Did I not? So answering EVERY possible question successfully is perhaps your criteria for belief. It is not ours.

But once again - I feel compelled to obey the charge of Christ to live through Him and share His Gospel to the world, albeit with some unknowns.

Making pointed issue that I left some questions unanswered then, is not an ultimate decider of everything, as far as I am concerned.