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Exploring Christianity
Biblical examples of God overriding Free-will
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<blockquote data-quote="lookingglass" data-source="post: 54537922" data-attributes="member: 261093"><p>You are misled on the idea of pharoh's free will. He was hardened but not beyond repentence. If you remember pharoh's magicians were also hardened and they tried to convince pharoh to give in to Moses. If they also were hardened how is it they could do this? There are examples in Exodus where the hardening of Pharoh heart gives way to his own confession when he says I have sinned in not obeying God. If his free will was taken away how is it that he could say this? The hardening process does not mean that God completely takes away free will and it does not mean God closes the door to repentence for those who are humble enough to repent. </p><p>Now concerning punishment of cultures and children and animals I wrote to someone about this some time ago and I think it might be appropriate to include it in this response as follows: This was a response to a guy named Andrew who had similar concerns and who misconstrued the biblical idea of morality as you do. This is what I wrote to him.</p><p> You are right about god intervening in the destruction of societies in particular when Israel invaded the land of cannen. So what you are doing is examining the moral character of god . You seem to think you have trump card by calling into question, " the problem of evil" as an error in Christianity. OK. I will give you my answer to this question but I am not sure how you will receive it. Now you seem to have a very limited understanding of Christian theism so these deeper waters we are about to embark in are not for the faint of heart. When it comes to the moral foundation of all truth it has to be that truth is grounded in god himself. So also for morality it is evident that all people have an understanding of the differences between right and wrong. As I see it there cannot be any universalism for truth. There is only one road to truth and it goes directly to Jerusalem. From there it has it genesis in the revelation of god through the prophecies of the old testament and ends in the culmination of that revelation of god in Christ himself. Now back to your question. You are attributing a moral error with the god of the old testament. The old testament god has a seemingly different message than the god of the new testament. So how can they be the same god? When god revealed himself to the Israelites he was intending to groom them as a nation of priests for revealing himself to the world. This grooming intended to show how different he was from the other gods especially of those that the Canaanites worshipped. Among other idolatries the Canaanites had deities that required sacrifices of first born children. These were yearly rites that when viewed by god made it necessary for him to take initiatives and that is what was happening when he gave commands to kill cultures that had instituted such grave atrocities. The Canaanites worshipped a pantheon of gods and had instituted national celebrations. These celebrations were instituted by force of law. People of this culture would gather in yearly celebration to the gods to sacrificed and celebrate. The law required that a very large iron furnace would be constructed. The furnace was an idol in the form a man sitting cross legged with outstretched arms that were pitched upward leading down to his abdomen where a fiery kiln had been heated.. The Canaanite priests would send out authorities to gather from the populace all the firstborn for this rite. They would take screaming babies from their screaming parents and ready them for this rite. Sounds a little like the Nazi régime doesn&#8217;t it? The priest would then offer up prayers thanking the gods for the increase of the yearly harvest of crops and were sure to oblige the gods with a return of thanks. And so with huge crowds of Canaanites in waiting and large clouds of incense burning the smell of death was palatable! This speaks of the depravity of men hearts as these priests heartlessly began to smash babies down into the waiting arms of this idol. You can imagine for yourself this horror! Now you want to talk about atrocities what do you think about that! For four hundred years god waited patiently for the Canaanites to get their act together and repent of these practices. But they waxed worse and worse and created a pantheon of gods for more and more horrendous atrocities. When after four hundred years had passed he called his son (Israel) out of bondage and brought them out of Egypt and finally into the land of cannan to destroy those wicked societies. His message to those cultures back then was contained in believing in a Monotheistic god. Israel&#8217;s chant was behold Israel the lord our god is one. He was a different god. He never intended men to harm their own children like the Canaanites did. His message was that men should live by his commandments and live in fidelity to these commands. A man who walks with god and keeps his commandments is a man who is right with god and his fellow man. Now I think you have misconstrued the laws of god by your intuition that god is somehow under the same laws as men. Intuition does not always ring true. We must look deeper for answers and those answers can be best understood in seeing the work of god through an historic outworking of his revelation. When god gives moral laws those moral laws are not laws for god himself. He does not have to live by those same laws. He is a Law unto himself! He is the Lawgiver! He does not need to live by commandments as if he is somehow sinful. He is Holy! He cannot sin and there is no evil in Him! We on the other hand need to be changed because we are sinful and our sins will if left unchecked carry us into extreme depraved states. That&#8217;s what people need to face up to. &#8220;For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God&#8221;. If you imagine that god has to live by laws then your god is no longer the foundation of truth. He would be just you and me and in need of instruction in righteousness. It would make it impossible for him to intervene in such ways to do away with atrocities. God&#8217;s hands would be tied and he would be unable to bring us out of sinful idolatries. We would forever be in our sins. So in the old testament God had more of an ability to stop evil in the world by directly intervening as you think he should. But that part of history was under the tutelage of the law. With the advent of Christ the old tutor of the Law has been replaced with the new tutor of Grace. This tutor calls for all men everywhere to repent and follow the Son. This period of Grace is different from that former period. God cannot any longer intervene as he did under His tutelage of the Law. We now must see that what the law could not do by force, Grace does by changing people hearts moving them away from idolatry and its atrocities. As people ingest Christ by faith he changes them from within thereby changing the world for a better place. </p><p>Mike</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="lookingglass, post: 54537922, member: 261093"] You are misled on the idea of pharoh's free will. He was hardened but not beyond repentence. If you remember pharoh's magicians were also hardened and they tried to convince pharoh to give in to Moses. If they also were hardened how is it they could do this? There are examples in Exodus where the hardening of Pharoh heart gives way to his own confession when he says I have sinned in not obeying God. If his free will was taken away how is it that he could say this? The hardening process does not mean that God completely takes away free will and it does not mean God closes the door to repentence for those who are humble enough to repent. Now concerning punishment of cultures and children and animals I wrote to someone about this some time ago and I think it might be appropriate to include it in this response as follows: This was a response to a guy named Andrew who had similar concerns and who misconstrued the biblical idea of morality as you do. This is what I wrote to him. You are right about god intervening in the destruction of societies in particular when Israel invaded the land of cannen. So what you are doing is examining the moral character of god . You seem to think you have trump card by calling into question, " the problem of evil" as an error in Christianity. OK. I will give you my answer to this question but I am not sure how you will receive it. Now you seem to have a very limited understanding of Christian theism so these deeper waters we are about to embark in are not for the faint of heart. When it comes to the moral foundation of all truth it has to be that truth is grounded in god himself. So also for morality it is evident that all people have an understanding of the differences between right and wrong. As I see it there cannot be any universalism for truth. There is only one road to truth and it goes directly to Jerusalem. From there it has it genesis in the revelation of god through the prophecies of the old testament and ends in the culmination of that revelation of god in Christ himself. Now back to your question. You are attributing a moral error with the god of the old testament. The old testament god has a seemingly different message than the god of the new testament. So how can they be the same god? When god revealed himself to the Israelites he was intending to groom them as a nation of priests for revealing himself to the world. This grooming intended to show how different he was from the other gods especially of those that the Canaanites worshipped. Among other idolatries the Canaanites had deities that required sacrifices of first born children. These were yearly rites that when viewed by god made it necessary for him to take initiatives and that is what was happening when he gave commands to kill cultures that had instituted such grave atrocities. The Canaanites worshipped a pantheon of gods and had instituted national celebrations. These celebrations were instituted by force of law. People of this culture would gather in yearly celebration to the gods to sacrificed and celebrate. The law required that a very large iron furnace would be constructed. The furnace was an idol in the form a man sitting cross legged with outstretched arms that were pitched upward leading down to his abdomen where a fiery kiln had been heated.. The Canaanite priests would send out authorities to gather from the populace all the firstborn for this rite. They would take screaming babies from their screaming parents and ready them for this rite. Sounds a little like the Nazi régime doesn’t it? The priest would then offer up prayers thanking the gods for the increase of the yearly harvest of crops and were sure to oblige the gods with a return of thanks. And so with huge crowds of Canaanites in waiting and large clouds of incense burning the smell of death was palatable! This speaks of the depravity of men hearts as these priests heartlessly began to smash babies down into the waiting arms of this idol. You can imagine for yourself this horror! Now you want to talk about atrocities what do you think about that! For four hundred years god waited patiently for the Canaanites to get their act together and repent of these practices. But they waxed worse and worse and created a pantheon of gods for more and more horrendous atrocities. When after four hundred years had passed he called his son (Israel) out of bondage and brought them out of Egypt and finally into the land of cannan to destroy those wicked societies. His message to those cultures back then was contained in believing in a Monotheistic god. Israel’s chant was behold Israel the lord our god is one. He was a different god. He never intended men to harm their own children like the Canaanites did. His message was that men should live by his commandments and live in fidelity to these commands. A man who walks with god and keeps his commandments is a man who is right with god and his fellow man. Now I think you have misconstrued the laws of god by your intuition that god is somehow under the same laws as men. Intuition does not always ring true. We must look deeper for answers and those answers can be best understood in seeing the work of god through an historic outworking of his revelation. When god gives moral laws those moral laws are not laws for god himself. He does not have to live by those same laws. He is a Law unto himself! He is the Lawgiver! He does not need to live by commandments as if he is somehow sinful. He is Holy! He cannot sin and there is no evil in Him! We on the other hand need to be changed because we are sinful and our sins will if left unchecked carry us into extreme depraved states. That’s what people need to face up to. “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God”. If you imagine that god has to live by laws then your god is no longer the foundation of truth. He would be just you and me and in need of instruction in righteousness. It would make it impossible for him to intervene in such ways to do away with atrocities. God’s hands would be tied and he would be unable to bring us out of sinful idolatries. We would forever be in our sins. So in the old testament God had more of an ability to stop evil in the world by directly intervening as you think he should. But that part of history was under the tutelage of the law. With the advent of Christ the old tutor of the Law has been replaced with the new tutor of Grace. This tutor calls for all men everywhere to repent and follow the Son. This period of Grace is different from that former period. God cannot any longer intervene as he did under His tutelage of the Law. We now must see that what the law could not do by force, Grace does by changing people hearts moving them away from idolatry and its atrocities. As people ingest Christ by faith he changes them from within thereby changing the world for a better place. Mike [/QUOTE]
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