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Post by Admin on Aug 4, 2015 4:44:03 GMT
“Mother Nature sure blew it . . .”
Hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts, and earthquakes kill tens of thousands of people each year. Multitudes endure crippling diseases, endless suffering, and unspeakable pain. Many non-Christians credit a heartless Mother Nature for giving us all this grief. They fail to consider that “Mother Nature” has a Senior Partner—Father God.
However, if God is responsible for all this heartache, that presents an interesting dilemma. If God is an “all-loving” Father figure, as we are told, we seem to have three choices: 1) God blew it when He made everything (He’s creative but incompetent); 2) God is a tyrant, who gets His kicks from seeing kids die of leukemia; 3) something between God and man is radically wrong. These are our choices... and those who take time to consider the evidence will lean toward number three. Something between man and God is radically wrong, and the Bible tells us what it is.
There is a war going on. We are told that mankind is an enemy of God in his mind through wicked works (Colossians 1:21). That’s not too hard to see. Man is continually committing violent acts such as murder and rape, lying, stealing, etc., as the daily news confirms. He uses God’s name as a curse word, while Mother Nature gets the glory for His cre-ation—unless there’s a horrible disaster; then man calls that “an act of God.”
An applicable acronym for WAR is We Are Right. Any country going to war does so because it has the conviction that it is in the right. However, a quick look at God’s Law shows us who is right and who is wrong. We, not God, are the guilty party. If we want His blessing back on our nation and in our lives, we must make peace with Him, and that is possible only through faith in Jesus Christ.
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Post by treepolitik on Aug 16, 2015 1:33:42 GMT
Mother Nature is supposed to be the earth and all its natural features personified. So Christ uniting with the wood of the cross is Christ purifying humanity of nature's bad influence. Human nature is savage and takes after Mother Nature. This might mean that Mother Nature was corrupted by Satan when Eve took the fruit.
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Post by treepolitik on Aug 16, 2015 1:43:57 GMT
Some people look at your first option as saying that God created humans to be flawed, not perfect, because it's more appropriate that we struggle with the mystery of how we are to work hard throughout life, but work won't earn our way into Heaven.
For the second option, people might say, since we had such good times before the disappointments, we were lucky to have the good times and can savor them in memory over and over again.
For the third option, you could say that God and man are operating in a closed system, meaning that outside forces have no effect on what happens between them. So because man chose to interact with sin, he let down his guard and made it an open system. The wasted energy on sin would be what keeps us from getting to God.
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Post by treepolitik on Aug 16, 2015 1:55:25 GMT
I do want to mention that there are a lot of people who see joining the military as literally serving God and helping to bring about His Kingdom. Usually when people serve in the military, the fruits appear to be good. We see people getting good jobs, getting more education, getting married, raising kids, having the healthiest neighborhoods, getting a big house, getting cars, going to events and expanding hobbies. We see families sending their kids to Christian schools, to colleges, and to study abroad, or the whole family lives abroad, giving the kids great experience. We also see people in other countries freed of their oppressions and brought up to modern industrial standards. We also get new trade and global security partners.
Where does God say, "I don't want you to go to war." Because I think a lot of people would say that the events of the Bible led up to the formation of America and were guided by God's Hand. By that reasoning, if America decided to go to war it was willed by God and God would be on our side, leading our troops into battle against tyrants. And by the same reasoning, the tyrants that we went to war against would be characterized as Satan's forces. What do you think of this view?
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Post by Admin on Aug 19, 2015 0:21:52 GMT
I do want to mention that there are a lot of people who see joining the military as literally serving God and helping to bring about His Kingdom. Usually when people serve in the military, the fruits appear to be good. We see people getting good jobs, getting more education, getting married, raising kids, having the healthiest neighborhoods, getting a big house, getting cars, going to events and expanding hobbies. We see families sending their kids to Christian schools, to colleges, and to study abroad, or the whole family lives abroad, giving the kids great experience. We also see people in other countries freed of their oppressions and brought up to modern industrial standards. We also get new trade and global security partners. Where does God say, "I don't want you to go to war." Because I think a lot of people would say that the events of the Bible led up to the formation of America and were guided by God's Hand. By that reasoning, if America decided to go to war it was willed by God and God would be on our side, leading our troops into battle against tyrants. And by the same reasoning, the tyrants that we went to war against would be characterized as Satan's forces. What do you think of this view? Okay, to answer your question about where it says that we cannot go to war, we need to understand about the 2 Kingdoms: The Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of the World. These 2 Kingdoms are completely at "war" with each other. In the Old Testament, we do see war, I must admit. King David fought many wars over his time of his Kingship. Abraham sneaked into an enemy's fortress and fought to rescue his nephew, Lot. That is true. War is evident by the Old Testament people because on that side of the Covenant, they fought to gain Earthly grounds. They did not know that much about the Heavenly Kingdom. When Jesus came to this World, He did not changed the Law. He just magnified it and made it honorable (Isaiah 42:21). He knew that people, who are educated in the Moral Law of God, knew the Law says to love our neighbors and hate our enemies. But Jesus told something that is very shocking. He says that we need to love our enemies. We need to bless them that curse us, do good to them that hate us, and pray for them which despitefully use us and persecute us (Matthew 5:43 - 48) There are many people that fight in the name of God. For example, Hitler. He thought God was on his side and thought he is doing God a favor by killing all of the Jews and many other kinds of people. But Jesus says that there will be some that kill others and thinking he is doing God a favor, but they do not know the Father or even the Son (John 16:2 - 3). Am I saying that a true Christian cannot enter into the military or there aren't any true Christians in the military? Of course not. It never said "Repent and be baptized for the remissions of sins and don't ever go to war, and thou shalt be saved. It is not an issue of Salvation, but it is an issue of Authority. Who authority are we under? God's or man's? Once we see ourselves under God's authority, we can clearly see that God wants us to live in peace with all men (Romans 12:18). |
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