LordReed:

LoL. You are just a joker.

ihedinobi2:


Oh, okay. I was curious. I wanted to be sure where your question was coming from.

I think that offering you an answer no matter how good is very likely an exercise in futility but I allow for the possibility that I am wrong since one only knows so much about any given thing. So, while I intend to try to give you an answer on the assumption that you will give it proper consideration, I may not pursue a debate unless it looks like it may be reasonable rather than an "unfettered slugfest". Please excuse me if I sound condescending saying that. I really just want you to understand my disposition to this exchange.

So, regarding your argument, I think that there is really no question that death serves as much as God's agent as everything in creation does. He is God after all. Nothing could do anything without Him. So, even if Satan were responsible for every single death in history, well, he wouldn't exist or cause death unless God created him and provided him with ability, opportunity and enablement to do as he does.

However, this is not the whole story.

Free will is the critical other half.

When God first created the whole universe, He did it out of nothing and it was perfect, without darkness or evil of any sort. Then He made the angels who were the only creatures made to be like Him in possessing a free will. The angels were (and are) spirits with incredible abilities that even we now as humans can little imagine much less comprehend. And they saw God face to face and had perfect fellowship with Him.

Each angel was created in a particular "rank", if you will, possessing distinct personality, ability and duties. And Satan was the very highest ranking of all of them. He, just like the rest, was created holy and perfect, wanting for absolutely nothing. At the time, there was only one guardian cherub, that is, an angel whose job was to sort of symbolically maintain the absolute separation and holiness of God from creation. Satan was also the "high priest", if you will, of the angels. He stood before God to represent the rest. In short, the Bible's description of him in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28, especially the latter, leaves the reader with the idea that Satan had everything possible that a creature could possibly desire. He was the preeminent creature in God's universe. He maintained superiority over every single angel. And all the angels ruled the universe of that time.

But God never intended that His creatures would serve Him perforce. He always wanted them to make a conscious choice to be His Family throughout eternity. This is why the angels had free will and why man would later come to have it too. Satan had it.

Now, Satan had no reason, no temptation, no tree of the knowledge of good and evil to show him that things could be any other way than they were. This is very important to note. It shows that God is never the source of temptation to do evil. There was no reason external to Satan that he should rebel against God. He manufactured a reason all by himself because every creature possessing free will is essentially like God in the most important way: they possess the ability to decide what to be.

Satan was the touchstone of perfection in creation. He was also the wisest creature that God made. These things were the very things that he corrupted himself with. He figured that he was perfect and wise enough to become God in his own right. What that means is that Satan actually chose of his own free will to ignore the single important detail that he was a created being, not a self-existing entity. God is of necessity without beginning or end. He was never created and will never go out of existence. This is not true of any created thing. God, of course, created all things to be eternal in essence but each thing was created. Therefore, not one of those things God made can ever under any circumstances become God. It is impossible to become God. You are either God or you are not. But Satan sold that lie to himself and began a process of corruption in himself that soon led to full revolt against the God of Creation.

His revolt involved seducing his fellow angels with promises to get them to join him and increase (in their limited minds) their chances of success in taking rulership of the universe away from God. He did succeed at seducing a third of the angels with promises of obtaining material existence in physical bodies. That led to vile corruption of the pristine Earth of that time both from what they did with the bodies of the animals that they took possession of and from their experimentations to create bodies that fit their lusts.

God allowed it to go on for as long as it was necessary to make sure that all the angels who wanted to rebel did and that all those who didn't want to made it clear that they never would. Then He flooded the entire universe.

That ended Satan's activities at the time. Following that was the judgment of God upon him and his cohorts and the rewarding of the angels who stayed loyal to God. It was at this time that the ranks of the elect angels were reshuffled with four of them becoming the new guardian cherubim associated with God's Throne and other angels variously retaining their starting positions, rising in rank or losing rank depending on their zeal in siding with God.

However, God's Creation was fractured. God is a Unity even though there are Three Divine Persons Who are all God in Their Own Right. Therefore His Creation is destined to be a Unity as well. In fact, this was what Satan counted on to preserve him from God's Anger. He figured that God would rather let him get away with his shenanigans than fracture creation. But that would not happen. God did permit the fracturing of Creation to separate the rebellious from the faithful.

Then He created man to replace the angels who rebelled. But this time, man was closer to the beasts than to the angels in makeup. He was a physical being with a spirit. Therefore, he had severe limitations in ability and intelligence which the angels did not have. However, he was created this way in order to demonstrate to the angels that all the lies that Satan had told about God in his campaign to get them on his side were really lies. First and most important, being physical beings was not really something that God had denied them. Rather, it was something that God had spared them. As spirits, they possess ability, knowledge and intelligence and freedom from material restraints and needs that we lack because of our bodies.

There were other extremely sophisticated lies many of which in fact the Bible was given to us by God to refute. Each human life is an opportunity to demonstrate the faithfulness and love and power and wisdom of God where Satan had questioned each.

But this is really the answer to the question why the execution of Satan's judgment was delayed. Satan possessed a free will and sought and created an opportunity to exercise it against God. Man, however, was not smart enough to be that evil. This was why God created an opportunity for him to go against Him, if he decided that he wanted to and also why Satan was allowed to try and seduce man into rebellion against God. That was why the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was in the restored Garden of Eden. It was the test of man's heart. Satan was there just to provide man with an alternative to God.

Man was also given all he needed to stay true to God if he wanted. The Garden was perfection. Even though he was a physical being, he never lacked for anything. Life could not have been better for him. He had the perfect mate, the perfect job, the perfect entertainment and God's friendship. What's more, God gave him every single thing in sight except the one tree. He did not need to know anything about good and evil. What for? But then Satan had it all and also wanted to be God. Evil is always arrogance. We sin by reaching for what we think that we have been denied.

That is how Eve was seduced. Adam joined her in sin knowing what he was doing simply because he was afraid of losing his wife. But in trying to keep her, he forfeited everything else that God had freely given to him. That was the same exact thing that Satan did.

Now, this is the background of everything you complained about in your post.

God is good and loving and beneficent. But He isn't stupid. He made the universe to be good an perfect, not because it would hurt Him in any way if it wasn't but because He wanted His Family of Angels and Men to be happy. He created all these wonders that once existed, are existing and will yet exist for our enjoyment. Evil corrupts these things and renders them unfit for enjoyment. What loving father would not try to clear a playground of dangerous material and animals so that his little ones can play safely?

Satan's revolt and the activities of his angels ruined the fun for everyone, so God destroyed that universe by flooding it. Then He remade it to create Man. Then, Man in disobedience ruined himself as well. And God had to do the whole cleanup routine again.

The pattern has continued. Had death not existed, that is, if we physical beings had not been subject to decay and expiration, can you imagine what evil we could have done? Imagine serial killers who are immortal. Does that seem like good news at all to you? There were many depraved nations throughout history whose continued existence would have extinguished all the conscience left in humanity. There were powerful nations which made a practice of sacrificing their young in despicable ways and whose brutality made them rich and powerful so that even those with a decent conscience started to waver in being good. Sodom and Gomorrah were a good example of such nations. Had God not wiped them out, they would have either corrupted other nations or wiped those nations out themselves.

This is why God continues to clean the board to allow other people to make their own eternal choices about Him. If we choose to submit to Him, we can look forward to eternity in a United, perfect family with God as our loving Father forever. If we don't, well, we get to be without Him or His Gifts eternally too.

Now, Satan does come to steal, to kill and to destroy.

From what I already said, I think that it is obvious that if Satan had not chosen to oppose God and if no other angel had, there would never have been death. God did create Satan and give him a free will like He did the other angels, but it was all Satan when he decided to oust God. That had nothing to do with God. God would rather that all His Creatures exist from beginning to eternity without any pain or suffering of any kind but He gave us a free will so that we can choose to be family with Him or not. He can't have the family He desires if we cannot choose to be that family. And we can only be able to make a true choice to be that family if we can also choose not to be that family. So, death is really all Satan's doing. But God has not left things that way. He has taken responsibility to fix everything the way He has been, using every single choice made by every single person - angel and human - to bring about this family he wants. So, even though death exists as a direct result of Satan's actions, God does use it to keep things on course to creating that perfect eternal tomorrow that all believers look forward to.

You should be able to see that in this, the goodness and love and faithfulness of God is manifest. The fact that people die is regrettable for the most part but God made that possible so that people can continue to choose who and what they want to be. After all, at the end of all of this, every single person who has died will be brought back to life. Then each person will go where they have chosen to be eternally.

So, I think it is actually something to glorify God for that death exists and that He uses it the way that He does. Had Satan succeeded at wresting control of the universe away from God (an impossibility though), I am very certain that we would be in a miserable state of existence. Whenever people have chosen Satan's way, it has never worked out right. Hearts are broken, lives are destroyed, people are killed. Every. Single. Time. The angels who chose Satan did not get bodies for themselves. Even had God left them to their devices eternally, they would never have succeeded at getting what they wanted. The reason is that wisdom belongs to God. Satan knows only what God makes him able to know. That is true with all of us. We can never become self-sufficient. So, if the angels were ever going to have bodies, God was the only One Who could give it to them.

God's Ways may be mysterious but His Character and Personality is manifest in the world around us and in the believers we meet who have taken following Him seriously. And from what we see, we know that we can trust Him even when what He does is beyond our ken.

I would add that when believers die or suffer, this can be God's Discipline or it can be Satan's attack (governed by God's purposes and loving supervision of their lives).

DoctorAlien:


Genesis tells us that the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were created in 6 days, and that God ceased from His work of creation. Ezek. 28:13 affirms that satan(an angel) was created. But we find no mention of God creating angels during the creation week. Therefore angels were created before the creation week.

LordReed:


I'll take my time to read this. I used to enjoy your writing.

LordReed:


I also conjecture that death is part of God's creation therefore it was created before the creation week.

DoctorAlien:


LOL. Where is your proof that "death" is part of God's creation?

LordReed:


Deceived by what? Your fairytale book?

Isaiah 45:7 King James Version (KJV)
7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.

That is from your fairytale book, God the creator of all things, including evil.

LordReed:


This is my "proof" from your fairytale book.

DoctorAlien:


That GOD is able to bring destruction and disaster(which can be seen as undoing what he did in creating) on His creation does not mean that GOD "created" death when He was in the work of creation.

sonmvayina:
Religion has really messed us up.. To the extent that we just put our common sense aside just so we try as much as possible to make sense of the bull sheet in the bible.. This is so sad..
I just hope that soon we will come to realise what God is and is not, so that we can move our society forward.. This dark age is really taking too long.. This darkness is really hurting us..

It is God that will destroy those European who introduced the book(bible) to us and set us on the this dangerous path.. They know there is nothing good in it.. Why can't they give us the blue print for making aeroplane and other good technology that will empower us economically..


It is so sad to say the least.

bloodofthelamb:
Can a potter be guilty or faulted when he destroys a purposeless clay pot that he made?

ihedinobi2:

So, regarding your argument, I think that there is really no question that death serves as much as God's agent as everything in creation does. He is God after all. Nothing could do anything without Him. So, even if Satan were responsible for every single death in history, well, he wouldn't exist or cause death unless God created him and provided him with ability, opportunity and enabling to do as he does.

However, this is not the whole story.

Free will is the critical other half.

When God first created the whole universe, He did it out of nothing and it was perfect, without darkness or evil of any sort. Then He made the angels who were the only creatures made to be like Him in possessing a free will. The angels were (and are) spirits with incredible abilities that even we now as humans can little imagine much less comprehend. And they saw God face to face and had perfect fellowship with Him.

Each angel was created in a particular "rank", if you will, possessing distinct personality, ability and duties. And Satan was the very highest ranking of all of them. He, just like the rest, was created holy and perfect, wanting for absolutely nothing. At the time, there was only one guardian cherub, that is, an angel whose job was to sort of symbolically maintain the absolute separation and holiness of God from creation. Satan was also the "high priest", if you will, of the angels. He stood before God to represent the rest. In short, the Bible's description of him in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28, especially the latter, leaves the reader with the idea that Satan had everything possible that a creature could possibly desire. He was the preeminent creature in God's universe. He maintained superiority over every single angel. And all the angels ruled the universe of that time.

But God never intended that His creatures would serve Him perforce. He always wanted them to make a conscious choice to be His Family throughout eternity. This is why the angels had free will and why man would later come to have it too. Satan had it.

Now, Satan had no reason, no temptation, no tree of the knowledge of good and evil to show him that things could be any other way than they were. This is very important to note. It shows that God is never the source of temptation to do evil. There was no reason external to Satan that he should rebel against God. He manufactured a reason all by himself because every creature possessing free will is essentially like God in the most important way: they possess the ability to decide what to be.

Satan was the touchstone of perfection in creation. He was also the wisest creature that God made. These things were the very things that he corrupted himself with. He figured that he was perfect and wise enough to become God in his own right. What that means is that Satan actually chose of his own free will to ignore the single important detail that he was a created being, not a self-existing entity. God is of necessity without beginning or end. He was never created and will never go out of existence. This is not true of any created thing. God, of course, created all things to be eternal in essence but each thing was created. Therefore, not one of those things God made can ever under any circumstances become God. It is impossible to become God. You are either God or you are not. But Satan sold that lie to himself and began a process of corruption in himself that soon led to full revolt against the God of Creation.

His revolt involved seducing his fellow angels with promises to get them to join him and increase (in their limited minds) their chances of success in taking rulership of the universe away from God. He did succeed at seducing a third of the angels with promises of obtaining material existence in physical bodies. That led to vile corruption of the pristine Earth of that time both from what they did with the bodies of the animals that they took possession of and from their experimentations to create bodies that fit their lusts

God allowed it to go on for as long as it was necessary to make sure that all the angels who wanted to rebel did and that all those who didn't want to made it clear that they never would. Then He flooded the entire universe.

That ended Satan's activities at the time. Following that was the judgment of God upon him and his cohorts and the rewarding of the angels who stayed loyal to God. It was at this time that the ranks of the elect angels were reshuffled with four of them becoming the new guardian cherubim associated with God's Throne and other angels variously retaining their starting positions, rising in rank or losing rank depending on their zeal in siding with God.

However, God's Creation was fractured. God is a Unity even though there are Three Divine Persons Who are all God in Their Own Right.

Therefore His Creation is destined to be a Unity as well. In fact, this was what Satan counted on to preserve him from God's Anger. He figured that since he and the other angels would never change in their rebellion, they could never be rehabilitated nor could God destroy them since. But that would not happen. God did permit the fracturing of Creation to separate the rebellious from the faithful.

Then He created man to replace the angels who rebelled. But this time, man was closer to the beasts than to the angels in makeup. He was a physical being with a spirit. Therefore, he had severe limitations in ability and intelligence which the angels did not have. However, he was created this way in order to demonstrate to the angels that all the lies that Satan had told about God in his campaign to get them on his side were really lies. First and most important, being physical beings was not really something that God had denied them. Rather, it was something that God had spared them. As spirits, they possess ability, knowledge and intelligence and freedom from material restraints and needs that we lack because of our bodies.

ihedinobi2:


There were other extremely sophisticated lies many of which in fact the Bible was given to us by God to refute. Each human life is an opportunity to demonstrate the faithfulness and love and power and wisdom of God where Satan had questioned each.

But this is really the answer to the question why the execution of Satan's judgment was delayed. Satan possessed a free will and sought and created an opportunity to exercise it against God. Man, however, was not smart enough to be that evil. This was why God created an opportunity for him to go against Him, if he decided that he wanted to and also why Satan was allowed to try and seduce man into rebellion against God. That was why the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was in the restored Garden of Eden. It was the test of man's heart. Satan was there just to provide man with an alternative to God

Man was also given all he needed to stay true to God if he wanted. The Garden was perfection. Even though he was a physical being, he never lacked for anything. Life could not have been better for him. He had the perfect mate, the perfect job, the perfect entertainment and God's friendship. What's more, God gave him every single thing in sight except the one tree. He did not need to know anything about good and evil. What for? But then Satan had it all and also wanted to be God. Evil is always arrogance. We sin by reaching for what we think that we have been denied.

That is how Eve was seduced. Adam joined her in sin knowing what he was doing simply because he was afraid of losing his wife. But in trying to keep her, he forfeited everything else that God had freely given to him. That was the same exact thing that Satan did.

Now, this is the background of everything you complained about in your post.

God is good and loving and beneficent. But He isn't stupid. He made the universe to be good an perfect, not because it would hurt Him in any way if it wasn't but because He wanted His Family of Angels and Men to be happy. He created all these wonders that once existed, are existing and will yet exist for our enjoyment. Evil corrupts these things and renders them unfit for enjoyment. What loving father would not try to clear a playground of dangerous material and animals so that his little ones can play safely?

Satan's revolt and the activities of his angels ruined the fun for everyone, so God destroyed that universe by flooding it. Then He remade it to create Man. Then, Man in disobedience ruined himself as well. And God had to do the whole cleanup routine again.

The pattern has continued. Had death not existed, that is, if we physical beings had not been subject to decay and expiration, can you imagine what evil we could have done? Imagine serial killers who are immortal. Does that seem like good news at all to you? There were many depraved nations throughout history whose continued existence would have extinguished all the conscience left in humanity. There were powerful nations which made a practice of sacrificing their young in despicable ways and whose brutality made them rich and powerful so that even those with a decent conscience started to waver in being good. Sodom and Gomorrah were a good example of such nations. Had God not wiped them out, they would have either corrupted other nations or wiped those nations out themselves.

This is why God continues to clean the board to allow other people to make their own eternal choices about Him. If we choose to submit to Him, we can look forward to eternity in a United, perfect family with God as our loving Father forever. If we don't, well, we get to be without Him or His Gifts eternally too.

Now, Satan does come to steal, to kill and to destroy.

From what I already said, I think that it is obvious that if Satan had not chosen to oppose God and if no other angel had, there would never have been death. God did create Satan and give him a free will like He did the other angels, but it was all Satan when he decided to oust God. That had nothing to do with God. God would rather that all His Creatures exist from beginning to eternity without any pain or suffering of any kind but He gave us a free will so that we can choose to be family with Him or not. He can't have the family He desires if we cannot choose to be that family. And we can only be able to make a true choice to be that family if we can also choose not to be that family. So, death is really all Satan's doing. But God has not left things that way. He has taken responsibility to fix everything the way He has been, using every single choice made by every single person - angel and human - to bring about this family he wants. So, even though death exists as a direct result of Satan's actions, God does use it to keep things on course to creating that perfect eternal tomorrow that all believers look forward to.

You should be able to see that in this, the goodness and love and faithfulness of God is manifest. The fact that people die is regrettable for the most part but God made that possible so that people can continue to choose who and what they want to be. After all, at the end of all of this, every single person who has died will be brought back to life. Then each person will go where they have chosen to be eternally.

So, I think it is actually something to glorify God for that death exists and that He uses it the way that He does. Had Satan succeeded at wresting control of the universe away from God (an impossibility though), I am very certain that we would be in a miserable state of existence. Whenever people have chosen Satan's way, it has never worked out right. Hearts are broken, lives are destroyed, people are killed. Every. Single. Time. The angels who chose Satan did not get bodies for themselves. Even had God left them to their devices eternally, they would never have succeeded at getting what they wanted. The reason is that wisdom belongs to God. Satan knows only what God makes him able to know. That is true with all of us. We can never become self-sufficient. So, if the angels were ever going to have bodies, God was the only One Who could give it to them.

God's Ways may be mysterious but His Character and Personality is manifest in the world around us and in the believers we meet who have taken following Him seriously. And from what we see, we know that we can trust Him even when what He does is beyond our ken.

I would add that when believers die or suffer, this can be God's Discipline or it can be Satan's attack (governed by God's purposes and loving supervision of their lives).

DoctorAlien:


If I am able to destroy something which I created, does it mean that when I created that thing, I also created the destruction of that thing?

Originakalokalo:


If the power to allow evil is not in God, then he is not almighty.

If God cannot create evil, then he is limited..

that is why ALL POWER BELONGS TO HIM.

That is why he is the almighty.

He allows evil... to punish sin. however, he still determines the extent to which evil can go.

Sin is in the world... and God punishes the World by allowing the evil one, but with a specified boundary..

Left to the demons... they would want to contaminate food and water and kill a whole country...

As much as they are incurably evil, there is a boundary.... set by the almighty God...

Many of you speak ignorantly.

You know the Bible abi?

continue with that understanding..


Your cross.

LordReed:


Technically speaking yes. Just as you do not need to create darkness, just take away light. If you are unable to take away light then you can never have darkness. As soon as God created a mortal universe he inevitably created mortality. Taking it further back, as soon as God decided that his plan for redemption will involve sacrifice then he created death.

LordReed:


And he has the power to disallow evil and instead he allows evil till several billion people suffer and die. Such a brilliant God. He's best plan is to let people suffer, such a loving God. He let's the so called demons to roam around free but he has prevented them from being more wicked, let's clap hands for him. Let's also complete put it out of our mind that he also has the power to completely eradicate them but no he is such a brilliant loving God. SMH.

DoctorAlien:


Your analogy fails as the absence of created living beings doesn't necessarily mean presence of death(e.g. before the beings were created).

Death is not a mental construct but the uncoupling of a living being. If a thing is said to be created, then it is in existence. But how can you say that death was part of what God created when from time immemorial until the fall, death did not exist and could not be attested to by anything?

What if man never sinned? In the sinless state of creation, could anyone point to where the "created" death is, regardless of God's decision about redemption?

Originakalokalo:


Your cross.

LordReed:


OK so I took my time to read your submission but you must forgive me because as I no long believe the book from which I presume you crafted this post from, I will be highly critical of everything you wrote. I see the book as nothing but a fairytale but since you believe this story as told from the book represents an explanation of the universe as it is now then I will use the rational thought which operates in this universe as it is to evaluate your submission.

Once again forgive me because I will not pull my punches.

LordReed:
Let's start with this, free will. Unless you don't believe God is omniscient then you have to explain how free will is compatible with an omniscient creator of all things.

How is it that God who knows everything that will happen in advance yet fails to anticipate the corruption of his creation?

If you say he is not omniscient then explain how he is able make prophetic declarations that serve his purpose? If he is able to precipitate actions before hand for his own benefit then what stopped him from precipitating actions that would stop his creation from being corrupted?

And how does knowing your actions in advance indicate that you have freewill? You will do those things already fated so what choice are you making?

LordReed:
I will continue on the free will theme before moving to some of the things you said.

So Satan a wise created being who has seen God in all his power decides he could challenge this power? How does this show wisdom? How were a third of a gigantic host ever convinced that they stood a chance against the other two thirds? Only beings driven by a compulsion would have undertaking such a doomed mission. There is no way knowledgeable creatures as you make the angels out to be would have of their own free will done this.

LordReed:
How is that creatures who are perfect and only know good could then turn evil? This can only be if the capacity to become evil already existed in them. You cannot say they had free will to choose if there wasn't a choice in the first place.

LordReed:
Now addressing the issue of creation. You assert that God is not created, by what evidence outside of the bible do you make this assertion? By what evidence do you assert that God made the universe? By what evidence do you assert that God made the universe out of nothing?

LordReed:
There is no evidence that anything in this universe is eternal. Evidence shows that the universe itself will end. So by what means are you asserting that all things were created to be eternal? Aside from the Bible of course.

LordReed:
Not even the bible records this so you are conjecturing this right?

LordReed:
Flooded it with what? And where is the evidence for this flood?

LordReed:
Again this is conjecture right?

LordReed:
So tell me how this is different from the pantheon of gods represented in pagan worship?

LordReed:
What then is the Lake of Fire? The one where Satan and his cohort are tossed into for eternity?

LordReed:
God decides that he would leave these fellows to ravage his creation for thousands of years, leveling untold hardship, destruction and death through out the period and yet he says he is a loving God? If any parent behaves like this we would probably lock the person up for cruelty. Yet we are supposed to believe that such actions from a God represents love?

LordReed:
So God has an opportunity to create a replacement for the Angels he lost and he decides to create an addled being? As a lesson?

Imagine you were given the chance to choose your offspring and the following choices were offered to you:

A. A child with diminished physical capacity (poor eyesight, feeble bones, prone to disease and illness) and diminished mental capacity and will suffer all of this throughout its life.

B. A normal healthy child who would grow up and be normal and healthy.

C. A child who would grow into superman in every sense of the word.

So you, loving father, will choose A because the children you had before, normal as they were, disappointed you. Really that is how you'd define your love? Your wisdom? You'd choose a child that will suffer all its life? Wow.

LordReed:


According to your fairytale, death is a being so when I say he created death I meant the concept of it but it is evident by your fairytale book that he created death as a being of some sort. As far we know as you yourself have conjectured such beings were created by God before men.

LordReed:
Again God shows his wisdom by giving his creature opportunity to be corrupted, knowing that this corruption will cause massive death and destruction? Please explain how this is the actions of love or wisdom. How does the deaths and suffering of countless number of living, thinking and feeling beings ever compute as a factor in any grand plan that defines love and wisdom? Not only that these same people after suffering and dying sometimes painfully, will still be granted an eternity of suffering and death? Really this sounds like a good plan?

Add to it that the so called instigator Satan has seen God and was given the chance to still rebel. Yet these creatures who will suffer and die twice will not see this God, will not be given unequivocal evidence of his existence, will only be given the tales of a disjointed narrative which will not be made into a book for 4000 years, written by beings as themselves not even from a divine hand, have the book subject to all manner of rewriting and interpretation then told that if they did not believe these writings they'll suffer and die twice. All this from a loving, wise, all powerful God. Really?

LordReed:
So of all the brutalities of man, only the ones in one of the smallest regions of earth had any significance for this all powerful, all wise God? He didn't intervene when the Meso Americans were sacrificing their children, didn't intervene when the Africans were burying slaves with kings. Didn't intervene when the Greeks were sacrificing humans either. But some 2 cities in the middle of nowhere were such prime targets. Add to that, no historical record of this "purge" exists. He totally ignored much better targets for his wrath which would have resonated throughout history for some obscure cities nobody had even heard of.

LordReed:
Also God in all his wisdom saw suffering and death as the only way out? More and more the wisdom and power of this God is called into question. How can the wisdom and power that created this universe be unable to create a way forward that didn't involve suffering and death?

LordReed:
God creates a universe, puts people in it, tells them if you don't do what I want you to do, I will kill you in a horrible way but I love you and I won't let you see me or talk to me, I won't even write you or communicate with you in anyway you'd be certain it is me. Remember I love you, now go and make a choice. This is the scenario we are presented with from the Bible. A scenario that has no way of being verified let alone being accessible to all.

LordReed:
Now Satan gets the blame for everything God, through possibly a single action could have stopped. An action God has chosen to now push so far into the future several billion people will suffer and die first. This tale continues to be so incredulously devoid of anything approaching wisdom or love.

LordReed:
Nope I do not see goodness. You say God destroyed people because of human sacrifice yet he himself uses human sacrifice. That is not, goodness that is hypocrisy.

LordReed:
How is the suffering and death God has rained on us different from whatever you imagine Satan would have done? How is suffering and death any kind of discipline?

LordReed:
Jesus accuses Satan but yet the buck stops at God's table. He created a situation which according to the tale has lasted 6000 years in failure. Imagine a student with the kind of failure rate God has shown, will such a student graduate? And the student keeps saying my dog ate my homework. He'd probably be kicked out of school.

LordReed:
This mysterious God you somehow know so much about his motivations and secrets. And should we ask a different person they would come up a completely different set of contrary motivations and secrets for this mysterious God. How is he unable to keep his own story straight?

LordReed:
I know my words will ruffle both the feathers of you and others but these are some of the ugly truths I have had to confront. None of it makes a smidgen of sense.

LordReed:

Tripe.

ihedinobi2:


I commend you for reading. It was a really long post and even Christians tend to find such things hard to read, so well done.

As for your present attitude to the Bible, I joined the conversation for two reasons: one, because of what past relationship or acquaintance we had; two, because you essentially asked a biblical question, not a general philosophical one. I am explaining what the Bible said so that you can better understand that part of it that you were objecting to. So, while I respect your lack of belief in the Bible right now, I can't accommodate any appeals outside of it to explain its own statements. I will answer your questions by referring to the Bible to explain what it really says. At the very least, I think you should get right what you disagree with.


.

DoctorAlien:


If you refer to those passages in which the Bible used personification on death, or in Revelations where death is depicted as riding a horse, then your argument fails because they are all either figurative or are used to code messages, or to make the situation being described more vivid. I only said that angels were created before men. Death is not an angel.

pressplay411:
Lol
Between God and Satan, who saves?
Oh that's true, Satan never saved any one, not any.

LordReed:


I have read your responses and while there is a lot I will love to respond to, our apparent disagreement on how useful and true the bible is will make further discussion pointless. I am quite frankly, tired of arguing the bible like I think its real and this has shown me no matter how much illogicality is pointed out to believers, they will always have a defense for it. Until maybe like me they decide to stop defending bullshit and accept that the bible is not useful in describing our universe or the situation in it nor does it comport to reality. Also many believers are unaware of all the rewriting it under went in other to be the way it is now. So thanks for your time, I wish you good luck in continuing to believe this fairytale.

nwabekeyi:
is there any sense in killing millions and saving thousands?

pressplay411:


Is death sentence fair for Criminals?
I mean hypothetically, if you were the victim of an armed robbery or Boko Haram terrorists.
Would you want justice even if justice meant killing them for the crimes committed and so that they don't go on killing other innocent lives?

God wants everyone to be saved.
But He is a Just God.
Crimes have to be paid for.
Pray to understand God better, you will no longer see a wicked God but a Just God who we exhaust His Love and Mercy and Compassion till He has no choice left.

Horus:
He has killed millions