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No, that is not 'my god,' it is your straw man. If one kills a rabid dog or a man-eating tiger, this is not a matter of punishment, but rather of protecting the innocent. You reason as if there were only two alternatives, a vengeful God, or a passive one who never acts to end evil. The vengeful god is the god of Old Testament pagans; capricious, envious, and wrathful. The vengeful god is one kind of reductionism. Another type of reductionism is the God never kills or destroys. We construct those reductionist deities to alleviate the need for the intellectual and emotional effort required to wrestle with the God portrayed in the Bible. Jesus withered the fig tree--a destructive act, surely. It is, as scripture says, a 'strange act' for God to destroy, but scripture makes it clear in multiple places that he does just that. The Revelation 19 passage I mentioned earlier is just one, but a very pointed, example. The mass of verbiage required to deny these examples is an indication of how weak that position is. Because of the many examples of God commanding or approving of violence--see Samuel's dispatch of Agag, for example--the God never kills argument requires multiple different explanations (or did he merely "hide his face" when Samuel hacked Agag to death? And why didn't Samuel get the memo?). This violates Occam's Razor, and renders the position inconsistent and incoherent. You seem sensitive to any perceives slight, yet quite willing to define another's position falsely in the most pejorative terms. Black-and-white, false dichotomies are not constructive to the discussion, and not expansive to the intellect.

I don't think God's sovereign will ever changes; but I am open to the possibility that His strategy to implement His sovereign will may be flexible. For example, His sovereign will is that His Son will establish a global Kingdom in accordance with the Law established in His Word in the "fullness of time". Did the election of Donald Trump push the exact date of the" fullness of time" forward, backwards, or leave it unchanged? Would that date be different if Clinton, Sanders, or Carson were elected? Was Trump elected at the sovereign will of God, or was it truly the voter's free choice? Or did God's Spirit simply "influence" the election due to people's prayers? Or did their prayers not really "help" the Donald? Was EGW right or wrong when she stated that if we would have followed his guidance, Jesus would have returned way before now? If our free-will decisions cannot alter the conditional will of God; is everything predestined? What is the difference between "predestination" and "foreknowledge"? That's probably enough questions for now.

Genesis 19:29 -- And it came to pass, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when he overthrew the cities in the which Lot dwelt. "They must be led to renounce the debasing customs and practices which existed in Sodom and in the antediluvian world, whom God destroyed because of their iniquity." -- Ellen White. Numbers 23:19 -- God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good? Why should Satan get the credit for cleaning up the abominable mess in Sodom? Why should we call God a liar to say He did not do what He said He did? It is simply a mischaracterization to paint such actions of God as "dirty work." Nothing could be further from the truth. It was a work of cleansing. Ultimately, either we believe the Bible and Ellen White, taking God at His Word, or we place our own opinions above a plain "thus saith the LORD."

I am having trouble with the idea that Satan does God's dirty work when God's people need God to show Himself mighty in their defense. Was it Satan that freed God's people from their Egyptian bondage? And that because God didn't want to do what needed to be done for Pharaoh to relinquish control? I just have questions.

I sounds to me, from the message to the Laodiceans (the last church) that they had too much invested in the world. They hesitated to let go of it all (possessions, positions, careers, entertainments, etc. etc. etc.). That's a lot like LOT's WIFE. The angels were dragging them out of a city on fire, and she just wasn't ready to let it all go. There are messages to SEVEN churches. To FIVE the Lord says, "repent" or "I will remove your candlestick from it's place". 7 minus 5 = 2. The TWO last WITNESSES, Smyrna and Philadelphia. The martyrs and those with brotherly love. The straight message IS: "Love the LORD your God, with all your heart and soul and strength, and your neighbor as yourself. You CANNOT hang on tightly to the "the world" and fulfill this requirement.

The reason I am asking is because I AM interested in the Middle Eastern mindset and have studied some.

Ok. Well I still wouldn't have any idea really of how to differentiate the Maxwellian view, as I have understood it to be, from what "he actually believed." Maybe I should just call it "the Middle View" and at such time as I would understand that there is a fourth view that differs in a significant manner from the traditional view yet cannot fit into the middle view because of elements of active wrath in the post-millennial phase I could chart a fourth view. But at this time I am not aware of any other major views, save Mike Clute's universalism, which I don't even bother including in my discussions as it is in another category altogether. I know Mike Clute, having had many interactions with him over the years, and his theology is fraught with numerous serious difficulties, Gnosticism, speculations, wild interpretations, and even absurdities. He knows that I soundly reject his work and have nothing to do with it. There is Dr. Lorraine Day, also a universalist. These folks are way out in left field, having taken some good basic principles regarding God's pacifism way too far. M. M. Campbell released a new edition of "Light on the Dark Side of God," calling it "Light through the Darkness." LOTDSG enjoyed a fairly wide distribution. She decided to do a second edition of LTTD at which time we had known each other for a few years and had attended some of the same camps and conducted a symposium in her city. We stayed in her home and at that time did some work on the final fires. I have a sixty-some page paper that comes out of this, which is built around chapter 42 in GC, "The Controversy Ended." It is called "The Ending of the Great Controversy: The Fires." You can download it here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/107170239/The Ending of the Great Controversy_The Fires.docx Later, I consulted with Margaret as she was revising LTTD and contributed material to the book (which is credited by a footnote on the relevant chapter, regarding final destructions). Your DVD sounds interesting. If you don't mind, email me straub AT direct DOT ca and I will give you my address for mailing a copy, when you get the time to create one.