Remember Andrea Yates? She is the mother who, in 2001, drowned her five children in a bathtub. She said that the devil had influenced her children, and so they needed to die.
A few years later, another mother, Deanna Laney, tried to kill her two children, claiming that God told her to.
Then there is the case of Victoria Soliz, who tried to drown her son in a puddle because Jesus told her to do so.
No Christian with their head on straight (or unless you’re John Piper) honestly believes that God actually told these mothers to kill their children. Nobody who really understands the message and ministry of Jesus, and especially His love for children, can imagine that Jesus wanted or commanded these mothers to do such horrific things to their babies.
And yet…
How strange is it that while we decry and condemn such actions by various people today, we turn around and tell the story of God drowning millions of babies (along with their mothers and fathers and siblings) in the flood story of Genesis 6-8?
Does this make any sense?
On the one hand, we say, “There is no way God told these mothers to drown their babies,” but then we turn around and say, “God drowned millions of babies during the flood.”
Oh, but they deserved it, you see. Those babies at the time of the flood were going to grow up to be the devil. After all, haven’t you read what Genesis 6 says about the Sons of God having sex with the daughters of men? All those millions of babies were devil spawn! God had to drown them.
Yeeeaaah … that’s what the mothers above said too. Go read those articles I linked to. You’ll see. They thought their children had been influenced by Satan and so Jesus wanted them dead. Sounds eerily similar to our “explanation” for the flood, doesn’t it?
If we really stop to think about it, if there is absolutely no way that Jesus would be involved in a mother drowning her baby today, then there is absolutely no way that Jesus would be involved in the drowning of millions of babies in the flood.
“What are you saying, Jeremy?”
I am just saying that the flood event, as recorded in Scripture, looks nothing like Jesus. Does anybody disagree with that? You cannot find anything anywhere in the Gospels where Jesus acts or behaves in this sort of way toward anyone—and especially not toward children.
I have talked about this with numerous people over the past couple years, and almost without fail, people who defend the divine origin of the flood point to Jesus entering the temple with a whip (John 2:15; Matt 21:12) as proof that Jesus was also involved in sending the flood.
Really? Overturning the tables of a few greedy moneychangers is the same thing as drowning millions of babies? I just don’t see it. The text doesn’t even say anything about Jesus using this whip on the moneychangers—or even on the animals! Oh, except for all the children. These Jesus whipped till they were bloody. NO! NO! NO!
In my conversations about this, people usually then turn to the book of Revelation and point out how when Jesus returns a second time, He is going to kill so many people that there will be a lake of blood 200 miles wide and as deep as a horse’s bridle (Rev 14:20).
Yeah… I’m thinking that if this is how we read the book of Revelation, we’ve probably misunderstood the book.
If Jesus is a God who drowns babies because “They’re the devil!” and then rides His horse through a lake of blood from His slain enemies because “They wouldn’t worship me!” (Duh! You drowned millions of their babies!), I’m just not sure this sort of God is worthy of our worship.
But I still follow and worship the God revealed in Jesus.
Why?
Because Jesus doesn’t drown babies. He doesn’t slaughter His foes and then ride horses through their blood. And He never, ever, ever tells us to do so either. And since Jesus reveals God to us, this means that God doesn’t do these things either.
So what about the flood? What about Revelation?
I’m working on it!
I can’t yet share what I think about these texts, but one thing I know for sure: We will never understand these troubling texts of Scripture, and we will never understand God, and we will never understand ourselves, unless and until we begin with the realization that Jesus does not drown babies.
So, when God sent the flood on the earth, and drown all those babies, he promised to place His bow in the sky as a reminder that he has promised to never do this again (destroy the whole world).
If we are looking for types in Scripture the rainbow is a type of Christ. You can say that Jesus does not drwon babies because when the Father looks on the Son, He sees that he does not need to drown babies ever again because His Son is at work reconciling the world.
I do differ with you when it comes to the blood drenched returning King of Revelation because my readig is essentially exactly what you have described. It’s been a while since I swam in those particular waters (no pun intended) so I can’t lay it all out at the moment, but that was definitely the impression that I cam away with.
Yes, the rainbow is a significant symbol. But it has always bothered me as well. If God can promise that no matter how evil mankind gets, he will not send another flood, then why didn’t he just make that promise in the first place before the flood? Does he regret sending the flood? If so, why send it? If not, why promise to never do it again?
A bit of a bizzare topic?? But on the question of whether God could be violent – I’m curious about your understanding of Revelation. For instance, God lets locusts torture people but not kill them even though the people long for death. Do the people notice that Christians aren’t being tormented? Why isn’t there some mass conversion of some sort? In another scenario, one of the Four Horsemen gets the power to kill through all kinds of methods; famine, pestilence, wild animals. Not to mention that famous scene where four angels kill 1/3 of mankind. I mean I could go on and on but you’re familiar with all this. The question is if this is not a revelation of God’s judgment, at all, then what is it? John or whomever wrote this book obviously wasn’t bothered by violent imagery. The author seems to have no problem combining violently macabre images with God in the same sentence.
CONTEXT CONTEXT CONTEXT—messages like this always lack context. Without it you have text without context and then you have what you desire: PRETEXT. Vilolence with out context means nothing.
Add to the conundrum the 10th plague in the Exodus and the command to Joshua to kill every living thing in the cities under Cherem (dedication to destruction) in Canaan, including infants. This is likely another scriptural and theological paradox that cannot be reconciled logically, nor can it be comprehended this side of eternity. I appreciate your willingness to attempt to wrestle with these seemingly mutually exclusive scriptural realities.
I know full well that a hopeless religion can drive any normal person to insanity. I was a slave to Armstrongism from Oct. 1961 thru Jan. 1995. He wrote a commentary of Heb. 10:25-26 that was the greatest evil any human being could possiblly do to another person. After my brother, Dennis, hung himself (June 1967) he went to be comforted by Jesus – I stayed in hell for years thereafter. But thanks be to God, I am now free, free at last.
Glad you have found freedom, forgiveness, and grace! I think of all the most destructive and damaging psychological prisons that exist, religion is the worst.
Yes. Jesus drowned babies. I have no problem with that. People assume that Jesus was a passive, lovey dovey hippie type that didn’t think of harming anyone, especially the highly worshiped children that we put on a pedestal today. As for what Jesus taught, he said some pretty disturbing things about God’s wrath upon the earth, and then in his ascended state, he told John the graphic horrific violence that would come at the end of days.
BTW…the “babies” Jesus drowned in the flood were nephilim: angel (or celestial beings in general) and human hybrid which created a race of barbaric giants wreaking destruction upon the earth.
None of us would have a problem with a soldier defending his country who then comes home and attends the wedding of his child. as an Armenian believer any child who dies in his innocence will end up in heaven .Jesus said let them come to me.Those children killed in these OT scriptures are saved from growing up in an evil society (God said they were were evil and a bad influence on His children ) The book of Revelation is about God pleading with mankind to find Him. Attacking Jerusalem is a surefire way to bring God’s wrath (good advice, don’t shake you’re fist at the God of the universe.)
Jim,
Thanks. I am not sure what your argument is here. God killed babies so they don’t grow up in an evil society? So why is it wrong to kill babies today?
Yuri Wijting, I think we have terribly misunderstood Revelation. We use it to justify our own violence, rather than see it for the subversion of violence that it really is.
Mark Richmond, yes, the context in which I am reading this text is the ultimate revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Since He shows us that God is not violent, this means that the violence needs to understood differently.
Ransom Backus, You don’t have a problem if Jesus drowns babies? And who said anything about lovey dovey hippies? It takes way more strength and courage to die for one’s enemies than to kill them.
He drowned “angel”/human hybrids that shouldn’t have existed in the first place but were a result of the darker things. The fruit of their existence was chaos and violence that would have destroyed the planet itself. It wasn’t about killing his enemies, but about protecting his creation from a fate far worse than a flooded planet.
Couldnt disagree more. Violence isnt the issue. The issue is CONTEXT. Violence is a word describing an action- Read Revelation/Read Exodus. I dont know what Bible you are reading.
violence: noun
1.swift and intense force: the violence of a storm.
“violence needs to understood differently.” You are making a statement with the word in it and stating the word is different when God uses it. I guess these kinds of word games make sense to you. I find them silly and counter productive. Sorry to be MEAN (is that a bad word too?)….the PC police are out in force…whew.
Ransom, yes, just like these mothers thought their children were demon spawn and so God wanted them dead. Just like the Iraqi people are the “Axis of Evil” and so we must bomb them into the stone age. We scapegoat others and make them evil so as to justify our violence toward them.
Mark, I’m reading the same Bible you are. We apparently just understand it differently. I agree the issue is context, and the context is Jesus.
the mothers weren’t Jesus. Jesus is Jesus. Jesus isn’t deluded, but He IS the King of everything and He acted like a King, doing His job to protect his creation from a fate far worse than a flood. People mistake brutal political action for actions of evil and hatred.
http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2014/04/30/the_myth_of_a_non-violent_jesus.html
I think if we were to disregard every violent act of God and jst focus on the nice things from the Bible, we wouldn’t have much of a Bible…in fact, we wouldn’t have a Bible and may as well just start a new religion altogether. (think: pulling a single thread out of a sweater, unravelling the whole thing.)
Mark, the author of that article has absolutely no clue what non-violent proponents teach or believe. It is full of straw-man fallacies. If that is what you think I believe, then I can understand why you think I’m crazy.
Ransom, We don’t disregard anything. The violent texts have some amazing things to teach us, and are inspired and inerrant. I just do not think they teach what the proponents of a violent God claim.
I accept all of God, even the parts that disturb, scare, and perplex me. God is too big for one room. He needs a mansion with many rooms to contain all that He is. I cannot go to one room and say :this is Him and the other rooms aren’t.” that is making God too small and not worthy of true respect or worship. I worship a God who loves me and sent His son to die for me…and a God who slaughtered babies.
When I was a child I believed everything my church told me the Bible said. As I grew older I discovered that other churches had a wide range of understandings of what the Bible said at almost every point. As a mature adult, I find it presumptuous to think that my understanding, my interpretation, of the Bible is the only correct understanding.
Many stories in the Bible, especially some in the Hebrew Scriptures, or what we commonly refer to as the Old Testament, are difficult. Many of us find a God presented in much of the Old Testament who looks much different than the Jesus we find in the New Testament. Instead of a Jesus who loves, heals, forgives adulteresses, and feeds the hungry we find a God who commands Israel to slay entire populations. We find a God who sends a flood that presumably drowns almost the entire human population. Can these possibly be the same God?
Personally, I have few difficulties with the God of the Old Testament. The God presented there is God as ancient Israel supposed him to be. They wrote down what they thought was true and correct. This was the God who had laws about mold. Laws about how far one could walk on the Sabbath. The God who sent his people to slaughter women and children. The God who purposely and intentionally caused most of the population of the earth to drown.
Then in the New Testament we find the God who came in flesh and showed us who he is, his love, his character. That is the God I know, the God I follow, the God who loves me, the God who knew me when I was in my mother’s womb. That is the God who loves each of us, even those we do not love. That is the God who tells us to love them, not kill them.
I find his character consistent. I find that humanity’s understanding of him has developed and continues to develop through the millennia.
Yes! His character is consistent, and is best revealed in Jesus Christ, and especially in Jesus Christ dying on the cross. Thank you, Sam, for being one of the people who have consistently shown this to me.
“The LORD is a man of war” (Exod. 15:3, KJV).
If the pacifist position were correct, it would seem logical that throughout history God would either prevent war, or at least not take sides in human conflicts, but that is not the case. God is certainly no pacifist, and the acts of our warrior-God fighting on behalf of His people, often via his angels, are seen all through the Bible.
Some pertinent examples are: God removed the wheels of Egypt’s chariots as they pursued Israel, and drowned them in the sea (Exod. 14:25, 28); He threw hailstones down on the Canaanite army (Josh. 10:11); He rained down fire from heaven and burned up the enemy soldiers who came to get Elijah (2 King 1:9-15); He killed 185,000 Assyrian soldiers who were attacking Jerusalem (2 Kings 19:35); He blinded the false prophet Bar-Jesus, who stood against the teaching of Paul (Acts 13:9-11). In the future, He will throw huge hailstones, weighing about 100 pounds each, upon his enemies (Rev. 16:21).
God’s angels are warriors also, and are in His army. In fact, God is called, “LORD of hosts” more than 200 times in the Bible (cp. 1 Chron. 11:9; Ps. 46:7-11; Isa. 13:4; Jer. 11:22; 51:33; Nahum 2:13; Haggai 2:6). Unfortunately, the average Christian does not know what the phrase means, and it has even been translated out of some versions, such as the NIV, which uses the phrase “LORD Almighty” instead of “LORD of hosts.” This change greatly dilutes our understanding of the spiritual battle. The Hebrew word translated “hosts” means “armies” (as does the Greek word in Luke 2:13). The angels are a major part of the army of God, and the Bible reveals that angels join God in His fight against evil, as the following verse shows:
Revelation 12:7
And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon [the Devil], and the dragon and his angels fought back.
Truthortradition.com
There are definitely many OT texts which defend the warlike image of God. And the book of Revelation seems to as well when read according to one particular perspective (the one informed by a warlike view of God from the OT).
And I am not saying God is a pacifist. Nor am I saying we should be either. I believe in non-violent resistance, which is very different.
Anyway, rather than try to make Jesus look like God, it is my attempt to try to make God look like Jesus. When viewed this way, all those OT texts you reference get turned around and reveal something else entirely…
Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever. If he harmed no one while he walked about Galilee and Judea, he never did, doesn’t now, nor ever will harm anyone.
We are told to love God, our neighbors, our enemies. To curse not, but bless. To put away all anger, malice, wrath, etc. To think evil of no one. To be kind, gentle, humble, etc. Seek peace and pursue it.
I have found nowhere in the Bible where God says, “Do as I say, not as I do.” Instead we are told to be holy because He is holy. He is the law and the lawgiver. He who said, “Do not murder,” surely does not murder.
Who dares call God a hypocrite?
Yes, yes, yes!
Thanks, David. This is exactly right!
I dare to call God a hypocrite.
Those children who were the decsendents of angels and men were not at fault for their ancestry. And even if that somehow justified it, those who say that ignore the fact that there were also fully human children who were drowned as well. I do not condone the murder of either, by God or anyone else.
This is like saying that a child of a warlike nation should be killed just in case he or she grows up to be like their ancestors.
Absolute hogwash.
I guess that in a way I would have to answer that it is the account that we get, and we kind of have to go with it. It is hard to speculate on these things without conveying the idea that God tried different things that didn’t work out, so now after thousands of years we end up with the true answer in Jesus.
I would wonder if part of the answer was that in order to understand some aspects of our fallen nature, we needed the picture of the flood to see how truly awful the world would become without the intervention of God.
Not long after the flood narrative, we start to see Him raising up a people to carry his name.
In a way the flood gives us a picture of the natural end in our own fallen nature.
Israel gives us a picture of our end if left merely to the Law.
Just a few ideas percolating.
David
Perhaps Jesus harmed no one but lets look at the death penalty which God commands.
People are commanded to love God, one another and their enemies. This is the case today, and it was true in the Old Testament also. Yet it is clear that the death penalty was commanded by God many times in the Old Testament. The first and greatest commandment is to love God, and the Bible is very clear about how we do that: we keep His commandments. The death penalty is an example of obeying God.
It is true that Christ taught us to love our enemies, but we must understand what he was saying when he said that. First and foremost, he was not contradicting his Father and the commands of the Old Testament. He was stating them in plain language. It was part of the Old Testament Law that people were to be loving, even to their enemies. Although many examples could be given, Exodus contains some very clear verses:
Exodus 23:4 and 5
(4) If you come across your enemy’s ox or donkey wandering off, be sure to take it back to him.
(5) If you see the donkey of someone who hates you fallen down under its load, do not leave it there; be sure you help him with it.
Since the teaching about being loving, even to someone that hates you, was a part of the Old Testament Law, we need to carefully examine the words Christ spoke.
Matthew 5:43-45
(43) You have heard that it was said, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.”
(44) But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
(45) that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
Christ said, “You have heard it said,‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’” It is fair to say that most Christians think that it was God and the Old Testament Scriptures that said, “Hate your enemy,” and that Christ was changing the Old Testament Law. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Old Testament Law taught people to love, as we saw in Exodus (and there are many more examples beside those two verses). It was the religious leaders who perverted the Law of God and taught people to “hate your enemy.”
The well-respected New Testament scholar, R. C. H. Lenski writes:
This [“hate your enemy”] is the way in which the scribes and Pharisees taught the people the second table. They mutilated even the words they quoted from Leviticus….This omission in the usual rabbinical teaching was no innocent abbreviation …This was a flagrant perversion of the law which included all the members of the Jewish nation down to the lowest and extended even to the stranger.
It is imperative to notice that you can love your enemy and still obey the Old Testament Law, including executing justice and even going to war. Biblical love is not an emotion or a feeling, but is acting on what God commands. The words of Christ in Matthew make it plain that Christ knew that God loves His enemies, and even blesses them by sending them rain and sun even though they do not “deserve” His love and blessings. Exodus teaches us to be loving to our enemies and those who hate us by helping them out. The same God who teaches us to love our enemies in both the Old and New Testaments also commands the death penalty in both the Old and New Testaments.
It is love to obey God, and by having a swift death penalty we love the people in our society [many of whom are our enemies also] and offer them the best chance for a life free from fear and crime. By having a swift death penalty that is justly meted out, we are giving everyone the best chance to see the high value of life—theirs, and the lives of others. Without a swift and just death penalty, the value of life is cheapened. Most people in the United States, for example, live every day knowing that they may be killed by a drunk driver or by a robber in a convenience store. If they are killed, and if the criminal is actually caught, they know that their life was “worth” a few years in prison, if even that, because that is all that the criminal will have to pay. How can we call that “justice”? How can that teach the value of life? We assert that it cannot and does not, and that is a major reason the United States is overrun with crime today.
We are not loving God or people if we refuse to justly deal with criminals who will harm others. It is not loving people to allow an unsafe society to continue simply because we find it difficult to obey God’s laws. We are not really being loving if we allow murderers to go unpunished. The Bible says if there is no godly punishment of the wicked, then people who would not otherwise sin may be led into temptation, and that is clearly true. Just and quick punishments are a deterrent to evil behavior.
Watch out for trolls Jeremy they want you to believe they are the sheep but they are sheep in wolf skins. We do not know all things like God does so we cannot fully nor can we judge God who knows all things and why He allows certain things we do not fully understand to happen to us but with out evil we will not experience His goodness. Without sin in all the bad things it doe to us we would not have the need for a Savior and Lord fgor our
True point. Maybe they are just trolls masquerading as Christians to bring shame to the cause of Christ.
I wish you had a edit button on your blog I hate this keyboard for it doesn’t do what I want to do then I hate diabetes for making me half blind and don’t see my mistakes if I get into to big of a hurry to send the message. Thanks for your mercy for my typing problems RD
Jeremy sorry this took so long lost in shuffle /remember in the beginning, all knew of God. All seemingly turned from God except Noah /God repents/and saves a core group to start over/trying to protect His children is a common theme in the OT / I don’t know much of resistance or pacifism , but if you tried to harm my grandaughter I would probably respond with whatever it took. My point, which I made poorly was that ,even in protecting His children the innocent children of the enemy lose their lives but not eternity. You don’t call a judge a murderer /And it’s God’s character that doesn’t change /Jesus said I Am putting Him squarely in the OT
JLM,
I see your point.
But I would call a judge a murderer if he made a judgment against wicked evil people which resulted in a bunch of children getting killed along with the wicked people. I would at least say that he was an unwise and foolish judge who should have found a better way to punish the guilty party.
Who is better equipped to determine what is considered wise, foolish, right, or wrong? An omniscient, omnipresent entity? Or someone with finite knowledge looking at isolated events that happened thousands of years ago out of context? Might you be eliminating the need for ‘faith’ or ‘trust’ in God when something seems objectionable or hard to understand to the finite mind?
You liken God’s judgement here to Andrea Yates. Straw man much?
you wrote:
If we really stop to think about it, if there is absolutely no way that Jesus would be involved in a mother drowning her baby today, then there is absolutely no way that Jesus would be involved in the drowning of millions of babies in the flood.
I stopped to think about it, and this statement seems incoherent to me.
you wrote:
I am just saying that the flood event, as recorded in Scripture, looks nothing like Jesus. Does anybody disagree with that? You cannot find anything anywhere in the Gospels where Jesus acts or behaves in this sort of way toward anyone—and especially not toward children.
I fail to see how this all that relevant. Aren’t you forgetting about kenosis – setting aside the independent use of some of His attributes? Don’t you think that there’s a uniqueness about the incarnation as opposed to God’s normal omnipresent/omniscient state? Or was it just business as usual during the incarnation? Aren’t we ignoring the possibility of different dispensations of Law and Grace here? Shouldn’t we consider that might play a part in the actions we see from YHWH? Jesus came to usher in the age of grace. He paid for our sins. Doesn’t that change things just a little bit? After all, the veil of the Temple was torn in two and the earth shook and rocks were split. Any chance that as a result of Jesus mission, things are a little different know between God and Man?
When did Jesus ever display His omnipresence during the incarnation? To be consistent, aren’t you forced to say that YHWH isn’t omnipresent either? Consider that Jesus learned and displayed lack of omniscience, aren’t you forced to say that YHWH isn’t omniscient?
You wrote:
In my conversations about this, people usually then turn to the book of Revelation and point out how when Jesus returns a second time, He is going to kill so many people that there will be a lake of blood 200 miles wide and as deep as a horse’s bridle (Rev 14:20).
Yeah… I’m thinking that if this is how we read the book of Revelation, we’ve probably misunderstood the book.
Or, maybe we haven’t misunderstood the book of Revelation and we shouldn’t torture the text of most of the Bible to force a Hare-Krishna-Flower-Child concept onto YHWH throughout all of eternity.
Dave, someone explained it to me this way: John says the Word is God. Jesus when He was on earth physically said He and the Father are One. Hebrews says Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever. Therefore the character of God in Old Testament times and the character of God in the future ought to match the character of God we saw exhibited in the incarnation. Unless the people who penned the Gospels failed to mention that Jesus, God with us, was violent, then let’s assume that the character of the God of the Old Testament and the character of the Jesus of Revelation must reflect the character of the earthly Jesus. Otherwise, the God of the Old Testament and the Jesus of Revelation must be another God and another Jesus. Could it be that it is easy to take some of those Old Testament bloodbath stories and the imagery of Revelation too literally?
So when Jesus said that if we have seen Him, we have seen the Father, He was lying to us?
It sounds like you are referring to John 14? I see that passage as historical narrative of a conversation Jesus had with Philip. I believe He was addressing Philip there, not us:
Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works.
Not to nitpick, but Phillip saw Jesus, we have not.
In any event, of course Jesus wasn’t lying to Phillip. Nothing that I’ve posted suggests that this quote, or anything in the gospels…NT is inaccurate, or unreliable. On the contrary, I affirm that everything Moses, the prophets, and the Apostles recorded in the Law, the Writings, the Prophets, and the Gospels, and the Epistles.
Every single text in the Bible is historical narrative. So if what Jesus said to Philip can’t be used to teach us about the nature and character of God because it’s historical narrative, then this same argument applies to every text in the Bible, and you can also not use anything from the Law, the Writings, the Prophets, the Gospels, or the Epistles.
you wrote:
Every single text in the Bible is historical narrative.
I disagree. I would classify proverbs and some of wisdom literature differently(though there is some history in there).
you wrote:
So if what Jesus said to Philip can’t be used to teach us about the nature and character of God because it’s historical narrative.
That’s not what I said. The fact I was pointing out was that Jesus said what he said to Philip. Not you. Not me. Also, I haven’t seen Jesus with my own eyes and I doubt you have either. Philip had seen Jesus with His own eyes. I don’t want to make too much of that, I just thought it was distinction worth mentioning.
Put it this way…if I walked across the street, pulled some mail out of somebody’s mailbox and found a bill, a letter, and some junk mail. I open up the bill, from Best Buy, it is addressed to Fred McGillicutty, and he owed Best Buy $700. I believe it would be a misapplication of that letter to say that I should pay Best Buy $700. However, let’s say that the letter was from the State Governor, and it was addressed to Fred McGillicutty as well, and in the letter it stated that all State residents would receive a $100 tax credit in 2015….since I am a resident of the same state, I can assume that, more than likely, that tax credit applies to me as well.
But since you mentioned the Law, Prophets and the Writings. I believe we can learn certain things form it: history, how God generally interacted with Israel under that covenant. I also believe that many/most of the injunctions commanded and addressed to Israel don’t apply to me in the 20th century as a believer baptized into the body of Christ in a new covenant.
Scary words Jeremy
This is why I am a pro-choice. God obviously had no problem with killing babies or he wouldn’t have flooded the earth. Punishing children for the sins of their parents is 100% biblical. In fact if someone gets pregnant before marriage they should be forced to have an abortion, as the child is a product of sin and should be destroyed.
May the peace of Jesus be with you all! 🙂
Yes, isn’t it great that it is also 100% biblical to kill people of other religions and races, women, gay people, people we don’t agree with and even other Christians who have the wrong theology? 🙂 Isn’t that the way we read our Bible?
I have no problem at all with a global flood, but it should be mentioned that there are very conservative scholars that accept a local flood. The waters covered the ‘Eretz’ which sometimes refers to the entire globe, but numerous times refers to an area of land, or simply ‘land.’
Just one example(there are many):
“And Jonathan smote the garrison of the Philistines that was in Geba, and the Philistines heard of it. Then Saul blew the trumpet throughout the land [eretz], saying, “Let the Hebrews hear.” – (1 Samuel 13:3) (Obviously, Saul could not have blown a trumpet loud enough to be heard around the entire planet)
God is either all good or not, and if He is all good, babies don’t drown after falling into a pool with no adult to help. I am so unbelievably tired of people telling me, despite the outrageous hell on earth many experience, that God is loving. Was He loving when I was being raped at age 12 by an adult (imagine how good that must have felt!!!!) or when I was fired for not lying to clients, and now have been out of work for years. Stop the nonsense, and just admit that God is one of three things, and can be no other: 1.) Impotent 2.)A monster 3.)Non-existent.
No other choices receive Him of allowing literal Hell on earth, none!