Apparent Contradiction that I need help with.

October 24, 2012

LifeHiscost, you are into something important, here, and this starts getting into the heart of the question raised at the beginning of this discussion, regarding God's commands in the realm of violence. To live without any violence, according to the complete picture of the true character of God, at a general societal, governmental level, is not possible. I am not even presenting such as any sort of ideal. It is out of the question. When I talk about replicating the character of God, it applies to the believer who is entered into the abiding relationship with the Godhead. As Christians, we should be seeing our way clear to a total commitment to nonviolence and noncoercion. This is not just talking about physical force but all forms of manipulation. Anything that is not of love, not entering into the spirit of agape, which is all-for-the-other-none-for-self, self-sacrificing-love, is violence. The principle of sin is self-exaltation and that principle operates by putting self to the top at the expense of others, or all-for-self-nothing-for-others, other-sacrificing self-interest and if there is built into the formula anything at all for others, it has a mercenary motive behind it. If it doesn't, it is because the Spirit of God is having a wooing influence in the direction of light and love. I am going somewhere with this. Walk with me.

All of the systems of men work on the principles of the world, which operate by arbitrary rewards for compliance and arbitrary punishments for non-compliance. By nature, these systems are inherently violent. They are all manipulative. They are all arbitrary. The systems vary in their power distribution structuring and in their equitability to all men. Invariably, no matter how well they may start out, if they are not based solely on the Word of God, they become decadent and murderous. The governing powers end up existing solely for themselves at the expense of the rest. Governance ultimately exists to perpetuate their position and consolidate all power. They are all modeled after Satan's principles. Satan is moving all governments and all institutions in this world to the point where he has all power and it will cost them all. Right now, they think they have aught to gain, but comes the drying up of the Euphrates and the dark awakening commences. They burn the whore. Revelation 18 tells the story. All of this world's systems function by authority of position held by office, in contrast to true authority which is held only in the Word of God. Speaking of the Church, there is no authority in office. A person may hold office but if they are not in harmony with the Word of God, they do not have authority. But that is speaking of the Church. We are talking about civil governance and authority in the institutions of men. Here, we are looking at sinful structures doomed to second death because they are all of the beast. Notice that Revelation 18:24 tells it in one sentence: "And in her [the beast system, Babylon, whose principles are kingly rule, man-over-man, wherein God is removed] was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth." Note that not only God's people are killed, but all violent death of every person who ever died a violent death is attributable to the world's systems of rule. There is none left over which we can say God killed. All death comes about by systems of human authority, full stop.

So, what is the thing about God setting up kingdoms and authorities in the world, ordaining that we should obey them? We could have a big discussion about Romans 13, but let me just give a brief introduction to the idea of "permissive will." I am currently writing an article on this for publication in an independent Adventist periodical. In the Bible, God is represented as doing many things that are not actually Him doing them as we understand in the ordinary sense. Such as hardening Pharaoh's heart (Ex. 4:21). Or facilitating adultery. Here's a good one:

"Now therefore the sword shall never depart from thine house; because thou hast despised me, and hast taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy wife.

Thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house, and I will take thy wives before thine eyes, and give [them] unto thy neighbour, and he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of this sun.

For thou didst [it] secretly: but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun" (2 Sam. 12:10-12).

So, back to the matter of earthly governments. It is not God's will that man should have needed earthly governments. When His Spirit directs every individual, perfect love reigns and love works no ill towards its neighbor. But since the fall, self-exaltation has replaced God. Without the restraints imposed by human laws, with thier arbitrary punishments (fines, imprisonment, physical punishment, death) we know that the ensuing chaos would catapult mankind to a speedy extinction. With the increasing wickedness in the world, we see how it can be so. So, although it is not God's will that men should rule over each other, He gives over to it in the paradigm of permissive will, or "accomodative will," as another teacher, Pastor Herb Montgomery, has recently been preaching. What gets accomplished in this is probationary time. It is forbearance and grace. It puts a check on runaway evil so that the knowledge of God can be preserved and future generations can come out of the darkness and be renewed in His image and prepared at last for entrance into eternity, where His perfect will reigns. So, when God "ordains" rulers, it is in the Biblical language. It is not so much that He does it proactively, but He gives man over to the various modalities of human governance, ranging from relatively benign and free to tyrannical. All are ordained of God, even those that run away into absolute depravity.

Permissive will is actually wrath. (The final generation elect will not function under it. The church today is organized under it, but the latter rain loud cry messengers will be organized as a theocracy, not a hierocracy.) When Israel clamored for a king to be like the nations (the world) they were asking to be after the common order and rejected God. It was not God's will. He told them all the bad things that would happen under a king. But then He selected a king for them. Permissive will. He gave over to their errant desires. Hosea calls it what it is:

"I gave thee a king in mine anger, and took [him] away in my wrath" (Hosea 13:11).

Notice also that even the taking away of that king was the anger of God which is a principle of His government in action, i.e., "giving over" or "hiding His face," wherein God exercises His judgment that He must allow consequences to fall to the degree that the free moral agent has rejected Him and His ways. So, in taking away Saul in wrath, the Bible declares that God slew him (1 Chron. 10:14), but we know that Saul actually committed suicide on his own sword (v. 4). Saul rejected God and God withdrew from Him. He will not force His way into a situation where He is not wanted.

May the reader ponder these things and come up higher into the knowledge of the Lord.

October 24, 2012

Read me carefully, Indignus. I know that it is hard in this fast-paced electronic and visual age to digest words properly. We have allowed our minds to become conditioned to the point where we have the attention span of a mosquito on LSD ;-)

October 25, 2012

Alright, Indignus, I'm not going to belabor this any more than a few quick comments and then lay aside our discussion. You believe it is a hands-down no-brainer that God is violent and go so far as to suggest that there is a call for the use of violence in His service today, or will be in the future; at least I am not hearing you deny that idea. To try and consider my viewpoint, which runs diametric to your own, you are not willing. That is human and it is understandable.

It is really difficult to try and share what we have learned from inspiration, not from following our hearts, when there is a hard resistance to hear and understand what we are saying. I understand that Bible language is hard to deal with, for starters. But the fact is that God is represented as doing that which He allows, or that to which He gives over. There is no Biblical evidence for creating two modalities of operation when it comes to God and violence, one where He gives over and the other where He does it proactively. All of it must be interpreted by His law and His character, which are one and the same. Love. So, where the curtain is not drawn back (as in "God" killed Saul according to the language--but Saul killed himself according to the narrative) we do not have legitimate grounds to fall back on a proactively destroying God. The God-did-it language is the case in both cases; our interpretation changes when we don't have the curtain drawn aside. I am simply asking for the evidence to go on that would allow us to create two modalities.

Then the realm of God's commands regarding use of violence is the clincher that many can't get past. The texts I have shared are not obscure by any means and had hoped they would merit a better response than you have offered. However, I will always maintain that Jesus is our primary picture of God and we must derive our hermeneutic basically from His testimony.

I am, by the way, educated and trained in the Bible, in Adventism, and in principles of interpretation and I graduated with high honors, second in my class. I am not sloppy in my research and my work has been reviewed by scholars more highly trained than myself. If you had read the reviews to our work As He Is: Issues in the 'Character of God' Controversy, you would find commendations by two major theologians, Dr. Herbert E. Douglass, Th. D. and Elder D. Douglass Devnich, former president of the Canadian Union, as well as other theological writers, Dr. James Said and M. M. Campbell. I am not saying that formal training or endorsements by qualified individuals is a test of truth, but I am trying to show you that I am not coming out of left field with a wild theory. This understanding of God's character and the great controversy has been at the forefront of reformation theology for about thirty years. It has been obscure for most of that time, but in recent years has been coming to the forefront through a number of teachers and ministries independent of each other. Some work within the pale of the denomination, others are supporting independents and some are simply independents, like myself. I would highly recommend that you go and listen to Herb Montgomery, SdA pastor, at www.renewedheartministries.com and in particular please take in the series "The Active Non-violence of Jesus" on the podcasts page http://www.renewedheartministries.com/Podcasts.aspx

Now, with regard to all that you have raised, it is required that we deal with the entire paradigm of permissive will. I would spend a great deal of effort to prove many things to you, but you are insistent on your opinion that my work is flimsy and unscriptural no matter what I bring. So, I am not going to work with you in detail on this. I will give you a really bare-bones nutshell of how we arrive at a non-violent God giving instructions in the use of violence.

It was not God's will that He should have led His people to the conquest of Canaan by their use of the sword. His deliverance would have taken the "purer" form, if I may use that term, of giving over, instead of permissive paradigm. In reality, however, the permissive paradigm is also "giving over" in that God winks at ignorance. What I mean is that in their ignorance of God's ways, they thought Him a violent Deliverer. They were in gross darkness in every way, hence the giving of the law. Another discussion. So God, in giving over to their paradigm, saw them pick up weaponry from the mail-clad bodies washed up on the shore. They got their arms from the dead Egyptians. They came out of Egypt unarmed and there was no other way for them to have obtained weapons. This reveals that they intended to fight their enemies their way. God worked with them in their own modality, for as long as they still had not entirely cast Him off, He was able to stay in the picture. The hands of Deity were tied, so to speak. It is God working with their own choice. Permissive paradigm is not the place to remain. God intends to bring us up out of it. They would not. That is why they rejected Christ. They wanted a military deliverer who would thrust through the Roman oppressor with the sword of slaughter. This is why Jesus told Peter to put up his sword, that the way of the sword ends in violence. They were desolated. God destroyed them by giving them over to their choice, "His blood be on us and our children, we have no king but Caesar."

Permissive paradigm is akin to parents giving instruction to wayward children who are coming of age. A parent may have every intent that a son or daughter remain sexually chaste until marriage. However, there are some that choose to have a partner or partners before marriage, casting off the counsel of the parents. A parent can kick the child out and entirely give them over to whatever results will come or they can sit that child down and give counsel as to how to conduct themselves within their poor choice. They can advise with regard to the use of prophylactics to avoid pregnancy and disease. They will tell them that it saddens them to see them go in such a direction, but it is better that they avoid complicating things by pregnancy or disease. Also, keeping them in the picture rather than turning away from them entirely will enable them to continue to have influence and hopefully get through to a time when they will have matured and come back to their senses. They will likely have emotional scars, but at least will not have to care for children on the scene who have one young parent and are missing the other, and will not have ongoing health repercussions from contracting STD's. Now, an onlooker might say that that parent was condoning premarital sexual activity by recommending condoms, but the reality is, that parent would never have done any such thing. All that they were trying to do was to mitigate the negative consequences of bad choices while praying for the repentance of their child.

So it is with God. Jesus came to set the record straight. He reminded them of their bent to violence and desire for eye for eye justice while saying that God's perfect will was to love one's enemies. Yes, God "gave" those eye for eye instructions, in the sense that He also gave them a king. In anger, or in giving over to their own poor choice. (See Hosea 13:11.) The civil code was but an advancement, or a step up from the Babylonian Code of Hamurrabi. The systems of law in the heathen nations were all eye-for-eye justice systems. The Hebrew version was not nearly as harsh. (We have written on this, Ch. 18 in our book, As He Is, my wife doing most of the research on that topic.) Moving on, we find Jesus saying that divorce was not God's perfect will, but "Moses" allowed it. Again, God allowed it through the civil laws under Moses. Why did He allow it? Jesus says that it was because of the hard heart of man. In other words, because man insisted on it. So God regulated it. The fact of divorce was not ever established by or allowed by God. Same with polygamy. Or slavery. And we are saying, "also violence." Those were all things of ignorance. God winked. Permissive paradigm. But now calls men to repentance.

There was never a call for men to exercise violence. That all came from the hardness of men's hearts. There is no call now for men to ever exercise violence. I could work this all through with you using the Bible and Spirit of Prophecy, but why? I will suggest that in support of your claim to the principle that the Almighty gave us violence as a gift with which to vanquish our enemies that you do a search for yourself on the gentleness of Jesus and the use of violence or anything harsh in the way and manner of Christians. Bring it back for me if you think you have something. My belief is that you will come up with a fat ZE-RO for anything pro-violence. My friend, you will likely still disagree with me, even if you did such an exercise. There is no more that I can say to help you. Put away your guns. He who lives by the sword will die by the sword. As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.

October 25, 2012

There is no Biblical evidence for creating two modalities of operation when it comes to God and violence, one where He gives over and the other where He does it proactively.

October 25, 2012

I will suggest that in support of your claim to the principle that the Almighty gave us violence as a gift with which to vanquish our enemies that you do a search for yourself on the gentleness of Jesus and the use of violence or anything harsh in the way and manner of Christians. Bring it back for me if you think you have something. My belief is that you will come up with a fat ZE-RO for anything pro-violence. My friend, you will likely still disagree with me, even if you did such an exercise. There is no more that I can say to help you. Put away your guns. He who lives by the sword will die by the sword. As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.

As I previously stated, Jesus's teachings of gentleness were intended for the early church, because that is the only way it could survive the tyranny in place at the time. 300 years later, Jesus spoke to St. Constantine, and, by the virtue of violence, Christianity is now the dominant religion of the western world. What a miracle!

October 26, 2012

Okay. I almost feel a little foolish or gullible for having engaged with you in a way that gives you any credibility. I only trust that what I have written so far will have turned on the lights for some other readers.

You claim that non-violence was only for the early church and that the church was then built on violence? Wow. Where is the Word of God or inspired comment from EGW on that? Nevermind...

You are coming from a place that I think almost every reader on this forum would think is way out in left field. I cannot see that your views reflect that of a follower of Jesus.

By the way, are you SdA?

You are aware that the dead do not speak to humans, right? They can't because they are, uhh, dead, right? Therefore, the spirit that came up before Saul was not Samuel, it was a demon. I for one am not going to build any theology upon what a demon says! Jesus is more reliable. "Peter, put up your sword."

I have brought the word. You avoid the Word, but rely on proof-texting. Why not deal with the Word that I bring you in response to your proof-texting? You cannot deal with what I bring, according Biblical keys, principles, and Jesus Christ Himself. But have only your proof-texting.

I am going to post the first draft of a paper I just wrote for publication. Read it. No comment required.

October 26, 2012

Okay, I have written an article for publication in my column in an independent Adventist monthly. This is the first draft. It will be broken into four parts.

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“Come Let Us Reason”

Fireside Chats on the Character of God

with Kevin Straub

Q. We have heard several teachers of God’s Character teaching wonderful things about the non-violent ways of Jesus and that He is the perfect image of the Father. They even show us how God is not one who tortures the finally impenitent in the process of the fires of second death but that there is a natural progression of cause and effect. Our problem is that we do not hear these teachers saying much about all of God’s apparent involvement in all the Biblical killing and especially about the fact that the Bible speaks of God setting up the violent kingdoms of this earth to obey them in their arbitrary laws, or of the commands of God to His people with regard to the use of violence, as we see in the Mosaic civil code; regarding how they should deal with internal dissensions; and concerning how they should war with their enemies. Some teachers stay silent on many of these issues but when asked outright, they will tell us that God did in fact play a killing and destroying role by proactively using the “sleep death” to “time them out” and part of this would have been God killing by proxy in His instructions to His people in the Old Testament theocracy. This seems unsatisfactory to us, still portraying God as one with a mixed character, having death in Himself. What do we say to all of this?

A. Yes, all of this tends to perpetuate the notion that somehow being directly under God’s direction as a people means that He will give them instructions in violence. Many of us have heard the question: “Why doesn’t God act this way now?” and the answer given is “Because we are not under a theocracy.” (This is unfortunate, because that is not what is meant by a theocracy. God intends that His Church should be a theocracy; only with man out of the way can the third angel’s message go forward with great power and “finish the work.” The hierocracy that is the present day GC structure cannot accomplish the work that the Lord will do when He alone is Head over His Church. But that’s another subject.) It becomes obvious that they don’t have a good answer and aren’t all that anxious to teach in this arena of the Character of God (CoG) discussion because it underscores that they do believe that God is violent and if He is not commanding us now to kill our enemies it is because He has changed, somehow. If we have a changeable God, then what are we saying about His character? It seems that we would be undermining the message we are trying to give.

This is a big subject and I am glad it is raised. It is going to take several installments just to begin to discuss it. In the examination of God’s loving character questions concerning His consistency are raised when we look at His use of violence. God’s commands to kill are particular points of discussion that need to be raised and I believe that the subject needs to be covered very early in our explorations of the truths of God’s character and attributes. Those who start to learn these truths can get very excited at the new views of God opening up to their understanding but as soon as they start to share with their brethren they get stumped with the questions regarding the wars of Israel, the civil laws, God setting up kingdoms of men which rule by force, and such.

We who present the advancing light on God’s character to others will generally make our initial launch into the studies with the basic appeal to the life, teachings, and cross of Christ as our fundamental hermeneutic on the character and attributes of God, for obvious reasons, as Jesus said plainly:

He that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou [then], Show us the Father? (John 14:9).

I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.

I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word (John 17:4, 6).

John went on to say that the basic message that Jesus came to teach those who walked with Him and which they were then to convey to all of us through their testimony, is that “God is light and in Him is no darkness. At all” (1 John 1:5) When we look at what he said earlier in John 1:4, we understand that the “light” of humanity is life – His life. Therefore darkness is death and it is not in God. If it is not in God, then He does not give it. At all. Ever. It comes from somewhere else. Where He is, there is light, life. Any place where He is not, there is nothing, which is darkness, death.

Some think that the Achille’s heel of the Character of God (CoG) theology has to do with God’s directives to ancient Israel in the use of violence. Such has caused modern SdA’s to come to the conclusion that “there is no room to deny God's preference for violence as a solution to wickedness” and that because “God commands violence, it is righteous, because God is perfect” and that we should “rejoice that He has given us this incredible gift with which to vanquish our enemies!” I am not making these statements up. They were made to me personally in a recent discussion on an online SdA forum http://clubadventist.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/577890/8.html

I appreciate this person’s ability to cut right to the bottom line and honestly make these statements because they expose the harsh reality of whither the standard paradigm of the destroying God tends. Even amongst those who hold to the standard paradigm, these bald statements about God must seem repugnant! The reality is, there is really no other conclusion that can be made when God is viewed and presented as one who deals with rebellion by use of pro-active violence, i.e., using weapons of physical force by His own hand in the realm of nature; in other instances apparently commandeering demonic forces to work His will; or in some cases raising up military forces of the enemies of His people in apostasy to punish the latter; or in the case under study here, when He commands His people in the use of violence. The first three are the more straight-forward arenas in which to exercise our exegetical skills, showing that God is not actually the destroyer although often represented as such in Bible language. We aren’t delving into those areas here. The fourth arena is that which we have called “permissive will,” or “permissive command.” This is in contrast to His “perfect will.”

October 26, 2012

Another major teacher of God’s Character in Adventism has come out recently defining the permissive paradigm as God making “accommodations” to men’s ways. God meets the darkened mind where it is at. We could use the term “accommodative will” instead of “permissive will.” What is it?

This paradigm of thought in the CoG study is the key that unlocks the mysteries of how God could be consistently—unchangingly—the same yesterday, today, and forever—non-violent in all His dealings, even in these cases where He commands the use of violent means. Our friend who has given over to the idea that God gave us violence as a gift with which to vanquish our enemies believes that we must be “double-talkers who play mind games, make excuses, and set up loopholes to contradict the evidence against our claims.” We shall see if it is the case because we don’t want to bring our own interpretations but see what the Scriptures say. On every hand we get into quagmires if we make God to have a violent side to His character. The litany of contradictions makes honest atheists. Christians in the standard paradigm cannot help any atheist; only madden them.

Let us look at the case of David, for instance. David could not build the house of God because he was declared to be a man of violence.

But God said unto me, Thou shalt not build an house for my name, because thou [hast been] a man of war, and hast shed blood (1 Chron. 28:3).

But the Scriptures declare that God is also a man of war.

The LORD [is] a man of war: the LORD [is] his name (Ex. 15:3).

The Scriptures tell us that God had directly to do with David being a man of war:

Therefore David inquired of the LORD, saying, Shall I go and smite these Philistines? And the LORD said unto David, Go, and smite the Philistines, and save Keilah.

So David and his men went to Keilah, and fought with the Philistines, and brought away their cattle, and smote them with a great slaughter (1 Sam. 23:2, 5a).

When we apply reason to this, (need I explain the difficulty, here?) we find that if the Lord is a man of war and instructed David to slaughter the Philistine enemy, yet said that David could not build His house because he was a man of war, we are left more than puzzled, right?

God elsewhere states His disdain for killing:

Thus saith the Lord GOD; Ye…shed blood: and shall ye possess the land?

Ye stand upon your sword…and shall ye possess the land? (Eze. 33:25, 26).

Here is some more trouble:

• Isaiah teaches that those who walk in the presence of God do not put violence into their minds. They do not hear of blood nor let their eyes look upon evil (33:15) yet just a little continued reading brings us down to chapter 34 wherein God will destroy all nations with fury (v. 2) and bath His sword to the full with blood (vv. 5,6) and so on. You can read it all there in that chapter; it is the day of the Lord’s vengeance, the time of unquenchable fire.

• The flood came because the earth was filled with violence but doesn’t it seem incongruent that God is represented as sending that flood from His own hand (Gen. 6:11, 13)?

• God hates violence, yet in the very next verse He will rain fire and brimstone upon the wicked (Ps. 11:5, 6).

These are the things with which we have to contend as we comb through the Scriptures. This is why the atheists have a heyday, spewing acidic sarcasm against the Bible and its God and this is why the agnostics who would like to believe in a benevolent God say they can’t see Him not only because of the violence that is in the world but they cannot see Him in the Scriptures and consider them unreliable. This is because nobody has shown them how to read them. We must show them!

We know now that God does not instruct us in violence, He saves us from it (2 Sam. 22:3). Jesus was prophesied as the tender plant of the Lord who “had done no violence (Isa. 53:9). Yet--“Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put [him] to grief” (v. 10a). Again, we have a seeming dichotomy, no? How to reconcile all of these things is all a study of how God destroys. It cannot be by the use of proactive violence, as men think. Jesus Himself told Peter to put away his sword because violence begets violence (Matt. 26:52).

In the same way that the Old Testament “LORD is a man of war” (Ex. 15:3) so also is the New Testament Christ a man of war. He said He did not come to bring peace but a sword (Matt. 10:34). In Rev. 19:11-14 we see that Jesus, as the Word of God, having blood-soaked garments, leads the heavenly armies in war. At last, “the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God” (2 Thes. 1:7b, 8a) destroying the wicked by “the brightness of His coming” (2:8).

I do not want to get off track here and launch into a discussion of how the Father and Son make war in righteousness. Many of the passages I have raised could in themselves become the basic text for entire articles. We need to get to our destination in this series of “fireside chats” and show where the commands to kill come in. It is difficult to do this without establishing some kind of background to the discussion. What I have attempted to build to this point is that there is a definite language that depicts God and His Christ as waging war on the enemies of righteousness either directly, indirectly, or--in permissive will--by proxy and when we juxtapose all of it with God’s abhorrence of bloodshed and violence we see that there is a call for harmonization of the Scriptures and for the establishment of a singular principle which gives rise to all of these apparent modalities of wrath.

October 26, 2012

God never acts “out of character.” We have thought that His “strange act” is to exercise violence but it is rather in giving over to men’s choices to have violent ways. Even in His instructions to ancient Israel to do violent things, it was all having to do with men’s own choice to have violence in their thinking and conduct. Let me explain the basis of permissive paradigm.

To live without any violence, according to the complete picture of the true character of God, at a general societal, governmental level, is not possible. It is not according to the Scriptures to promote such as any sort of ideal. It is out of the question. I know this may seem like a crazy statement after all that has been said. When I talk about replicating the character of God, it applies to the believer who is entered into the abiding relationship with the Godhead. As Christians, we should be seeing our way clear to a total commitment to nonviolence and noncoercion. This is not just talking about physical force but all forms of manipulation. Anything that is not of love, not entering into the spirit of agape, which is all-for-the-other-none-for-self, self-sacrificing-love, is violence. The principle of sin is self-exaltation and that principle operates by putting self to the top at the expense of others, or all-for-self-nothing-for-others, other-sacrificing self-interest and if there is built into the formula anything at all for others, it has a mercenary motive behind it. If it doesn't, it is because the Spirit of God is having a wooing influence in the direction of light and love. I am going somewhere with this.

Walk with me as we continue to unpack this.

All of the systems of men work on the principles of the world, which operate by arbitrary rewards for compliance and arbitrary punishments for non-compliance. By nature, these systems are inherently violent. They are all manipulative. They are all arbitrary. The systems vary in their structuring of power distribution and therefore in their equitability to all men. Invariably, no matter how well they may start out, (peaceable assumptions of power are rare in the history of the world) if they are not based solely on the Word of God, they become decadent and murderous. The governing powers of men end up existing solely for themselves at the expense of the rest. Governance ultimately exists to perpetuate the authority and office of its leaders and to continually consolidate power until all for self and none for others has come to the full. This is why it is an absolutely untenable system of governance and comes to nothing: self-exaltation destroys its opponents and when all live by this principle it is every man against the other. Satan is manipulating all governments and all institutions in this world to the point where he has all power and it will cost them everything. Right now, they think they will gain their piece of the pie, but ultimately comes the drying up of the Euphrates and the dark awakening commences. They burn the whore and annihilate each other. Revelation 18 and Ezekiel 9 tell the story.

We are talking about civil governance and authority in the institutions of men. Here, we are looking at sinful structures doomed to second death because they are all of the beast. Notice that Revelation 18:24 tells it in one sentence: "And in her [the beast system, Babylon, whose principles are kingly rule, man-over-man, wherein God is removed] was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth." Note that not only God's people are killed, but all the deaths of every person who ever died a violent death is attributable to the world's systems of rule which are according to Satanic principles of self-exaltation at the expense of others. There are no souls left over which we can say God killed. All violent death comes about by systems of human authority and exercise of arbitrary force, full stop. Even non-violent or accidental death occurs because of Satan’s principles being given to operate in the earth. Nobody escapes it except the final generation. The entire world is given over to a “general wrath” and the “punishment” for sin comes upon all things living, which come to their end, whether violent or non-violent.

So, what is the thing about God setting up kingdoms and authorities in the world, ordaining that we should obey them? (Romans 13:1-7).

It is not God's will that man should have needed earthly governments. When His Spirit directs every individual, perfect love reigns and love works no ill towards its neighbor. If men were to return to God, the kingdoms of this world would fall. But since the fall of the kingdom of God in man, self-exaltation has replaced God. Without the restraints imposed by human laws, with their arbitrary punishments (fines, imprisonment, physical punishment, death) we know that the ensuing chaos would catapult mankind to a speedy extinction. With the increasing wickedness in the world, we see how it can be so. So, although it is not God's will that men should rule over each other, He gives over to it in the paradigm of permissive will, or "accommodative will,". What gets accomplished in this is probationary time. It is forbearance and grace. It puts a check on runaway evil so that the knowledge of God can be preserved and future generations can come out of the darkness and be renewed in His image and prepared at last for entrance into eternity, where His perfect will reigns. So, when God "ordains" rulers, it is in the Biblical language. It is not so much that He does it proactively, but He gives man over to the various modalities of human governance, ranging from relatively benign and free to tyrannical. All are ordained of God, even those that run away into absolute depravity, for what men do with free choice is out of His hands. No human government is perfect, but many of them go too far and incur further wrath to the point where they fall altogether as God must withdraw further from them. Hosea says it concisely:

I gave thee a king in mine anger, and took [him] away in my wrath (13:11).

So we see that permissive will is actually wrath. (The final generation elect will not function under it. The church today is organized under it, but the latter rain loud cry messengers will be organized as a theocracy, not a hierocracy.) When Israel clamored for a king to be like the nations (the world) they were asking to be after the common order which is a rejection of God. In keeping with His character of love, it was not God's will to be rejected because it would not be good for them. He told them all the bad things that would happen under a king. But then He selected a king for them. Permissive will. He gave over to their errant desires.

Notice also that even the taking away of that king was the anger of God which is a principle of His government in action, i.e., "giving over" or "hiding His face," wherein God exercises His judgment that He must allow consequences to fall to the degree that the free moral agent has rejected Him and His ways. So, in taking away Saul in wrath, the Bible declares that God slew him (1 Chron. 10:14), but we know that Saul actually committed suicide on his own sword (v. 4). Saul rejected God and God withdrew from Him. He will not force His way into a situation where He is not wanted.

October 26, 2012

Coming down to God’s commands to Israel in the use of the sword, at last, we find that it was not God's will that He should have led His people to the conquest of Canaan by their use of the sword. His deliverance would have taken the "purer" form, if I may use that term, of giving over, instead of permissive paradigm. (In reality, however, the permissive paradigm is also "giving over" in that God, winking at ignorance, meets men where they are at in their thinking even giving instruction within an errant mode of governance.)

Moses thought God was going to work by military means.

He, supposing that they were to obtain their freedom by force of arms, expected to lead the Hebrew host against the armies of Egypt…. (Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 245, par. 2).

Moses later understood that this was not God’s way and became the meekest man who ever lived. But not so with the general body. So God, in giving over to their paradigm, saw them pick up weaponry from the bodies of the Egyptian soldiers washed up on the shore.

As morning broke it revealed to the multitudes of Israel all that remained of their mighty foes--the mail-clad bodies cast upon the shore (Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 288, par. 4).

They came out of Egypt “unarmed and unaccustomed to war” (ibid., p. 282) and there was no other way for them to have obtained weapons.

There are no direct records confirming that they did rush down and take the armor from the Egyptians. But all the evidence points strongly in that direction. Here are the facts. They approached, crossed, and emerged from the Red Sea without implements of war. Shortly after leaving the Red Sea, they engaged in warfare against the Amalekites in which they did not use sticks and stones. As there were no swordsmiths between the Red Sea and the location of this battle, the only way they could have become equipped was by salvaging the weaponry washed ashore (As He Is, 2nd Ed., p. 242).

This taking up of the sword reveals that they intended to fight their enemies their way. God never intended for it.

The Lord had never commanded them to "go up and fight." It was not His purpose that they should gain the land by warfare, but by strict obedience to His commands (Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 392, par. 3).

I will send my fear before thee, and will destroy all the people to whom thou shalt come, and I will make all thine enemies turn their backs unto thee.

And I will send hornets before thee, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite, from before thee.

I will not drive them out from before thee in one year; lest the land become desolate, and the beast of the field multiply against thee.

By little and little I will drive them out from before thee, until thou be increased, and inherit the land.

And I will set thy bounds from the Red sea even unto the sea of the Philistines, and from the desert unto the river: for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand; and thou shalt drive them out before thee (Ex. 23:27-31).

So, God intended that they would drive out the inhabitants of the land merely by advancing at His direction, not by bathing their sword in their blood and taking what did not belong to them. The heathen would have been forced to retreat under perilous circumstances which descended upon their heads because God was not with them, protecting and sustaining them. But Israel wanted to do the work of driving them out by the sword. Therefore, God worked with them in their own modality, for as long as they still had not entirely cast Him off, He was able to stay in their picture to a greater degree than He could for the heathen nations. The hands of Deity were tied, so to speak. It was God working with their own choice. He instructed them in the terrible work they must therefore do if they were to stay alive and have a place. Conquest by war and bloodshed is not ever God’s way. Not only is war the way of force, but of deception, as the waging of war is done utilizing methods of intrigue and lies.

Permissive paradigm is not the place to remain. God intends to bring us up out of it. He would have taken them under His wing, but they would not. That is why they rejected Christ. They wanted a military deliverer who would thrust through the Roman oppressor with the sword of slaughter. This is why Jesus told Peter to put up his sword, that the way of the sword ends in violence. And so they were desolated. “God” destroyed them by giving them over to their choice, "His blood be on us and our children, we have no king but Caesar."

In conclusion, it is quite easy to believe in a non-violent God when we just look to Christ, but when coming to terms with the Bible language, with God’s setting up human kingdoms, and with God’s commands to ancient Israel we have to study many hours, carefully comparing line upon line in the Scriptures and in history to settle into the new paradigm without throwing away the Bible. This is why we receive the accusations of rewriting the Scriptures, creating loopholes, and such things. I believe that we have to want to believe in a consistently gentle and non-violent God in order to see Him in this way at last. It is true that as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. If we want to retain the idea that God gave us violence as a way of dealing with our enemies we will not see otherwise, no matter how many careful studies are produced to the contrary.

(For further treatment of the subject of permissive will, there are a number of chapters in our book, As He Is that cover it. See http://www.teachservices.com/as-he-is-4th-angel-publications/ or write to straub@direct.ca .)

October 26, 2012

I have brought the word. You avoid the Word, but rely on proof-texting. Why not deal with the Word that I bring you in response to your proof-texting? You cannot deal with what I bring, according Biblical keys, principles, and Jesus Christ Himself. But have only your proof-texting.

October 26, 2012

I have brought the Word. I meant to capitalize "word." Not the "word of Kevin." I meant, you need to deal with the Word on the basis of proper exegesis, not proof-texting. I have clearly shown in the numerous lengthy posts in reply to various individuals on this particular discussion, that God's wrath is hiding of His face and the "giving over" principle is what operates in all instances of destruction as attributed to God in the Scriptures, even in that of His commands to Israel, which are also a "giving over" to their paradigm of taking up the sword to fight their enemies, put down internal dissension, and in the adoption of bloody civil law which derived from codes of the surrounding nations. I posted an eight page article in four parts which works with this a little bit. Our book has five chapters covering permissive will. It is all based on the Word of God and on the inspired text of the Messenger to the final generation, Ellen White.

Do you believe in Ellen White's testimony? I note that you didn't answer my question about being a Seventh-day Adventist. Are you SdA? I ask it again. If not, you may be in the wrong place. We don't believe in taking our theology from departed spirits because we believe that these are actually devils.

Please deal with the WORD!:

The Bible:

Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence (John 18:36).

Don't tell me this only applies up until Constantine. If you say such nonsense, you need need to bring the Word of God to support it, not the word of "Indignus" whoever that is.

The Spirit of Prophecy in our time:

"'Whereunto,' asked Christ, 'shall we liken the kingdom of God? or with what comparison shall we compare it?' Mark 4:30. He could not employ the kingdoms of the world as a similitude. In society He found nothing with which to compare it. Earthly kingdoms rule by the ascendancy of physical power; but from Christ's kingdom every carnal weapon, every instrument of coercion, is banished. This kingdom is to uplift and ennoble humanity. God's church is the court of holy life, filled with varied gifts and endowed with the Holy Spirit. The members are to find their happiness in the happiness of those whom they help and bless" (Acts of the Apostles, p. 12, par.2).

This principle as taught by Christ, did not only apply to a three hundred year span of time in earth's history. God does not change. The principle of non-coercion and repudiation of all carnal weapons (force and deception) stands for all time, even in the Old Testament. This is hard not only for you, who holds extremely violent views, but for Seventh-day Adventists who generally also have violence in their minds when it comes to their picture of God.

I must comment a little on your outrageous statement earlier, that violence was not used in the centuries prior to Constantine, because they (the Christians) would have been crushed. My thought here is simply this: By what you are claiming, it seems that Christians are to rise up in violence only when they are up against a weak power, or when they can enlist the state as their whore. When you appeal to this principle as having the successful result in history, of establishing the Christian religion in the Western world, you reveal the colors of your theology, as that of the BEAST, for it is the beast system that has established the so-called Christian faith, which is not Christian, it is apostate. That which was established was so terrible we call it the "Dark" Ages. Protestantism's reformations called men back to the light of truth and freedom, but became apostate in their rejection of further advances in reformation light in the mid nineteenth century. This apostate Christianity will join hands with the great apostate, the Roman power (and with Spiritualism) to effect the greatest violence on God's people ever known in the history of the world. This will be the final crisis and what will be shown are the contrasting principles of God's law vs. Satan's rule; that of coercion vs. freedom of conscience.

(Isn't there anybody else reading this stuff who would have a word for "Indignus?")

October 27, 2012

I have clearly shown in the numerous lengthy posts in reply to various individuals on this particular discussion, that God's wrath is hiding of His face and the "giving over" principle is what operates in all instances of destruction as attributed to God in the Scriptures, even in that of His commands to Israel, which are also a "giving over" to their paradigm of taking up the sword to fight their enemies, put down internal dissension, and in the adoption of bloody civil law which derived from codes of the surrounding nations.

October 27, 2012

Indignus and all other interested parties--

First, I want to apologize and pull in my horns a little (just a little, mind you). I have been getting too frustrated with the mindset you present. I have recognized in it the outcome of the belief in a violent God--that we would kill to bring peace, aka the "just war" theory and that we would kill for other reasons as well. I am sorry that this exists in the church and for the blindness of heart and unwillingness to hear Jesus and believe His witness. The end of it goes even further, that we would kill to bring the kingdom of Christ into being. This is an utter failure to understand His kingdom. What has astounded me to the core has been hearing it come in such stark terms straight from the lips of one claiming to be a follower of Christ and a lover of the Scriptures. Most Christians are not willing or able to state things as you have, yet in the shadows of their belief system lurk these very sentiments.

Now, I did not realize that what you promote--this business about the first 300 years of Christianity being pacifist then making a transition to taking up the sword in His cause as God's gift to His people--the gift of violence, as you have put it--actually has a name in the discussions amongst church historians. Have you ever heard of the "Constantinian shift?" This is really fascinating stuff.

Today I went for a long drive and started at the beginning of Herb Montgomery's series "The active non-violence of Jesus," which I had only listened to numbers 6 and 7 previously, at the point of recommending them to you for listening. Herb is addressing the very content of our discussion. In the first two lectures he lays out this history of which you speak, the first three hundred years, then what Constantine did, as a brilliant political tactician who saw that he had to meld the pagans with Christianity, for the sake of the Roman Empire. I could hardly contain myself listening to this.

Look, all I can say is that I beg you, plead with you, to go and listen. Lay down all arguments for a time, just suspend this thing and hear what Herb has to say in this series. If you will do this and come back to me and say it is all a pile of horse apples, that is fine. We will then wish each other well and go our ways. I can't let you go without humbly requesting you to give Herb a listen--at least the first two lectures, and numbers 6 and 7 also, if you will.

Right here: http://www.renewedheartministries.com/Podcasts.aspx

October 27, 2012

I have been away for a few months now. I am pleased to read your posts, Kevin, on this critical subject of the character of God. Well said!

sky (laval)

October 27, 2012

I just came across this discussion while doing a search to see if the domain name for our ministry is available--"4th Angel Publications" and it really looks like the folks here could use some help.

I have been seriously studying issues in God's Character in a dedicated and systematic fashion for almost ten years. I am not a high-end theologian like the smart fellows over at the Biblical Research Institute, but I do have a minor in theology. However, no person needs a university degree to sort this out. The Bible is sufficient. The writings of Ellen White are also given full credence as authoritative and inspired information for God's people on this subject.

If the kind people here would like to receive the offer of my time, I will put my oar in on this discussion. Ignorance and cavilling are not helpful in any way. The subject requires humility and an attitude of a student in need of education, with eyes set on the goal of graduation. This subject involves a shift of paradigm in how we have thought about God and is in fact at the very core of the great controversy. We should not let ourselves become so inflamed with pride of opinion that our passion descends to hurling mud at one another. All too often, I have seen that well-meaning people can become unglued when the keys to unlock this topic are used and the arguments become unanswerable. It is the natural progression of the carnal heart to then turn upon the messenger and roll out the "ad hominem" line of defense, i.e., descend to the level of personal denigration. We won't do that, here.

This is just an introduction of myself to this forum and this discussion. We have recently published a serious book on the subject, entitled "As He Is: Issues in the 'Character of God' Controversy" and you can find it over at TEACH Services, Inc. Or email me for a better price, straub@direct.ca

Now, the original question posited in this discussion is with regard to the commands of the Lord involving the use of the sword, i.e., the use of force, of violence. It is easy to show what is in fact the mechanism of wrath and we could discuss that and perhaps should discuss that first. But after we nail down the nature of God's wrath (a subject that I see got banned elsewhere on this forum, unfortunately--btw, we can't shut out the topic...the stones will cry out...it will keep coming back in various forms) this question invariably arises, as it should, as it MUST. You see, when we discover that a careful examination of God's wrath reveals that He is not pro-actively violent, which is to say, He does not fabricate and use weapons of mass destruction nor even of individual destruction, in the sense that humans understand destroy, but that He stands down in His role and gives the subject over to one of four areas of destructive force, we are then in position to move on to this question of God's commands to destroy, which were given on many occasions to put down internal dissent or to come against the enemies of the surrounding nations. This particular aspect of the "Character of God message" (aka "CoG" message) is vital for a full understanding of the Character of God. Very few teachers of the CoG understand it well enough to embrace it, unfortunately. Our friend Herb Montgomery over at Renewed Heart Ministries is now moving into it and we praise God. Herb speaks about God making "accomodations" to meet the people where they are at. We have labelled this modality of God's conduct as "Permissive Will," "Permissive Command," or "Permissive Paradigm." All of this is speaking of the simple truth of God's forbearance, or grace. Once we have made the shift in our thinking, it all becomes so simple. In a very bried nutshell--and we can unpack this over the days ahead--God meets people where they are at and if He is to stay 'in the picture' He must work with the material He is given to work with. God does not wholly cast off anyone because they have chosen their own way in certain areas. It is true that He does not condone any thinking or activity which is outside of the realm of righteousness and truth, but if a person or a people still desire God, then He continues with them, to guide and lead them up higher, to a better way. This is what we see with the first advent of Christ, when He taught that "eye for an eye" is not God's way, even though God, through Moses would have "given" this law. Those laws were based upon the common paradigm in law at that time and actually derive from the Babylonian code of Hammurrabi. We have an entire chapter in our book devoted to this. God permitted these laws because the people were not ready for the full glory of God's ways. Most people are still not ready, but the fact is that now the light on God's character as revealed in Christ is here. Even after 2000 years it has been tremendously difficult for this light to break through, but it is now happening. 4th angel brings in the glory of God, which is His character. We can prove this in inspiration.

So, I leave you to ponder this and will come back to talk more, if you will have me. Let me leave you with this thought about what inspiration has declared to be the content of the new light which was/is to come to God's people:

"At no period of time has man learned all that can be learned of the word of God. There are yet new views of truth to be seen, and much to be understood of the character and attributes of God..." (Fundamentals of Christian Education, p. 444).

Amen.

sky

October 27, 2012

The subject of the wrath of God/Character of God is one of the hot button subjects that has been seen bringing out pulsating veins in the temple area or peculiar twitches in the corner of the eye. Occasionally we witness spittle flying out of the mouth due to uncontrollable verbal sputtering. I am not joking, unfortunately. The truth is, far too many who claim to be followers of Jesus have the idea that God asks us not to kill our enemies so that He can do it Himself, instead. We love to think of how they are going to burn for what they did to us. We say, "Ohhh, they are going to meet the judgment. They are going to have to answer for that." When it is believed that God brings fire down on His enemies, then we don't have to really be much concerned about the malice we harbor in our hearts, for we are already created in the image of the God we hold dear. It is too hard to think of letting go of our desire for revenge. It is the fuel that keeps us watching the movies, when we see the bad guy "get his" we feel a visceral satisfaction. We want him to get it good. We have no problem smacking him down twofold, either. So, we acquiesce to the notion of simply being satisfied with "stroke for stroke, wound for wound."

Look at Marvin Moore's article "A Good and Angry God" in the August issue of SIGNS. The idea is explicitly promulgated in the standard theology when he sets God forth as the instigator (his word) of the seven last plagues as angry retribution on the wicked for their persecution of His people. This is not accurate at all. We know that it is Satan that plunges the world into the mayhem and destruction of the last plagues as God withdraws and gives Satan full control. This is explicitly taught in inspiration and the mechanism of wrath is explicitly taught in the Bible as God turning away, "hiding His face." Marvin introduces his article by comparing God's feelings to human feelings, bringing in the cliche situation of a man walking in on a crime scene in his home, where his daughter is being abused by an attacker, implying that God would feel "murderous" much as a human father might feel. He concludes his article by calling up the martyrs under the altar in Revelation 6:10, who call for revenge, saying that they are people who are "desperate for a God who will get worked up enough--angry enough, if you please--over the abuse they've been suffering that He will step in and do something about it." Jennifer Jill Schwirzer with Lesslie Kay in their book "A Deep But Dazzling Darkness" relate the story of a bully caught in the act by a protective father who picked up that perpetrator by the scruff and gave him a good shake and strong words and how this was a defining moment for the one bullied, who now felt a certain "rest in my father's love because of his wrath." Steve Wohlberg also weighs in in his book "The Character of God Controversy." I have had in-depth discussion with Steve and the same idea is promoted in his teaching--that God is going to unleash fury on those who have hurt His children and we can and should feel just great about that. This is all the standard paradigm in Adventism. And it is wrong.

Jesus is clear. When the disciples thought they would be on-track by calling fire down from God to burn up the Samaritans who refused them hospitality, we are told that He was PAINED at their lack of understanding of God. "The fact is," He told them, "you don't get God at all. Satan is the one who would burn up His enemies. I did not come to kill, but to save." We need to step back and give our head a good shake, realizing that this is truth. Jesus' main mission was to reveal the Father. Jesus said that He did nothing of Himself but whatever He sees the Father doing, this is the same thing that He does (John 5:19). Jesus, when reviled, reviled not again. Jesus taught to turn the other cheek. Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb. 13:8)and God is unchanging (Mal. 3:6). Therefore, God does not sacrifice Himself for His enemies one day but on another day burn them up with molten sulphur on their heads, while injecting His life-sustaining force into them to keep them alive while they suffer consciously on for pre-determined periods of time in penalty for their sins.

SdA doctrine of the destruction of the wicked is held out as such a wonderful advance on eternal hell and I suppose it is, when compared to the notion of eternal suffering, but it is still a grotesque portrayal of God and is fundamentally flawed in the face of what we hold out to be the primary principles of God's government as 1)freedom of choice and 2)non-coercion. These principles are rooted in love, which IN ORDER TO BE LOVE, MUST BE FREE. You cannot have a marriage proposition with a .44 on the table. In other words, God cannot be the one to stand as the executioner of the sentence against transgression. It totally defies logic and everything we innately understand to be true about love itself, that the one who would woo us to Himself would be the one to kill us if we reject Him.

We must paint this entire matter in stark, bold lines. There are no grey areas, here, at all. God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. This is the message. What is the light? It is life. John said that in Him was light and the light was the life of men. Therefore darkness is death and there is none of it in God to mete out. That all belongs to the realm of the beast. In HER was found the blood of prophets and saints and in fact, to come to think of it, of ALL that were slain upon the earth (Rev. 18:24). ALL doesn't leave any that were slain by God.

I am here to talk more, if anyone wants to walk with me a few steps or even go on a long journey. I have been at this for thousands of hours and I have no doubt that it is present truth. We have many things to learn, and MANY, MANY to unlearn. So says the inspired messenger. The darkness of the misapprehension of God is being lifted. Some will not come to the light because they love the darkness. Bitter malice and revenge are too dear to give up. But it has to go. There is none of it in God's kingdom. He does not burn up His enemies. Is there a fire? Oh, yes. We have done extensive work on this subject and it isn't what people think. Church! It is time to wake up. There was a time of ignorance, but now God is commanding repentance. There is no excuse for continuing in this gross distortion of God's Character. Lay aside all selfish pursuits and get ready to study this thing out. It is vital for the final generation to understand, especially those who would think to have a part in the giving of the third angel's message.

How refreshing to hear this. This is what I have been trying to convey for many years but I must say that the Lord is using you in a much mightier way.

May He continue to use you brother that this light may shine brighter and brighter upon the professed people of God and upon the world.

sky

October 27, 2012

Hi Doug,

Thanks for your response. I will cover several of your points, but separate them into individual responses, so that threads may develop that are focused on particular concerns. Two points will be addressed in this post.

First, I was responding to the emotionalism that is exhibited on this particular subject. It is sort of like discussing politics and religion with your family. People get irrational. My speaking to this point is to start out by having people consider that this is not an easy subject to deal with and to control themselves in their responses.

Second, coming against the standard paradigm, or any paradigm, is not ad hominem. Even looking into the human/evil psychology behind a false paradigm is not ad hominem. It is against the carnal heart of man, not against A man. We would have to disagree on this. Coming against an individual in name calling, character judgment, attribution of motive, and/or denigrating his personal dislike of Corn Flakes as if that were part of the problem with his argument, is ad hominem. For instance, IF I were to assert that you were too lazy to take the time to do proper study and too stupid to discern the truth even if it snuck up and sank its teeth into your gluteus, and besides all that, the fact that you drive a Ford makes your theology unreliable, then I would probably be engaging in ad hominem nonsense, which does nothing to support my position. It brings us back to the realm of spitting and sputtering.

I hope this clarifies for the readers what is and is not ad hominem.

Well said!

Praise God!

sky :)

October 27, 2012

Kevin Straub said:

"Jesus is clear. When the disciples thought they would be on-track by calling fire down from God to burn up the Samaritans who refused them hospitality, we are told that He was PAINED at their lack of understanding of God. "The fact is," He told them, "you don't get God at all. Satan is the one who would burn up His enemies. I did not come to kill, but to save." We need to step back and give our head a good shake, realizing that this is truth."

Doug Yowell responded:

"Or perhaps actually examine the Biblical evidence. When Elijah called for fire from heaven it DID burn up those 100 men and their leaders. Hailstones from heaven killed many Amalakites during Joshua's battle. Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by two of God's angels with the same fire that Jude says will be used to destroy the wicked.The angel of the Lord killed the firstborn in Egypt,Ananias and Sapphira did fall over dead at Peter's word,ect...ect... "

Kevin replies:

I did give the Biblical evidence, from the standpoint of Christ, Who is the most clear revelation of the Character of God both in word and deed. We have to interpret all things in the light of Christ. So, we begin with the principles and interpret the words accordingly. Jesus gave the principle and I shared it with you. To ignore this and go back to the Bible language depictions in refutation without explaining the apparent dichotomy is not helpful, giving us no ground to advance upon in our discussion. I really want to look at how people are interpreting; upon what evidence they are formulating this hermeneutic for a dual principle of operation in God's dealing with sin and sinners.

Yes, there is the story of Elijah and the fire, and all of the other stories. We can look at instance after instance and never get to the end of it, because we would have to go through the whole Bible and all of its instances of God's destructions and whenever we come to one that we can't show another Bible text or texts that explain what really happened, the standard view will seize upon such as evidence that God destroys proactively. But this is what we would call an "argument from silence" and such is not admissible. In such cases it is usually seen that human opinion rushes into the vacuum. So, instead of being filled with opinion all around, we need to be filled with the Word of God, so that when these vacuums are encountered, it will be the principles of God's Word that will rush in to fill the void of understanding.

There is nothing wrong with looking at instances, but we need to stay away from this trap. It is best to take an instance where the Bible evidence is given, revealing the mechanism behind the "God-did-it" language and derive a principle from it, then taking that principle and applying it over in the instance where the curtain is not drawn aside in revelation, showing the actual mechanism by which wrath was executed. So, it would be my suggestion that we approach it this way. Let's take one instance where God is depicted as doing some destructive thing and where the curtain is drawn aside. The death of Saul is a perfect example.

God killed Saul. The language is straightforward:

1 Chron. 10:14 And inquired not of the LORD: therefore he slew him, and turned the kingdom unto David the son of Jesse.

God did it. The Bible says so. But how?

1 Sam. 31:3 And the battle went sore against Saul, and the archers hit him; and he was sore wounded of the archers.

31:4 Then said Saul unto his armourbearer, Draw thy sword, and thrust me through therewith; lest these uncircumcised come and thrust me through, and abuse me. But his armourbearer would not; for he was sore afraid. Therefore Saul took a sword, and fell upon it.

31:5 And when his armourbearer saw that Saul was dead, he fell likewise upon his sword, and died with him.

31:6 So Saul died, and his three sons, and his armourbearer, and all his men, that same day together.

So, we apply the principle of God hiding His face. God gave Him over. He was given up to the results of rejecting God.

1 Sam. 15:23 For rebellion [is as] the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness [is as] iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from [being] king.

15:24 And Saul said unto Samuel, I have sinned: for I have transgressed the commandment of the LORD, and thy words: because I feared the people, and obeyed their voice.

15:25 Now therefore, I pray thee, pardon my sin, and turn again with me, that I may worship the LORD.

15:26 And Samuel said unto Saul, I will not return with thee: for thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, and the LORD hath rejected thee from being king over Israel.

Now, we take the same principle and apply it in an instance where the mechanism is not revealed. It does not matter whether the earth opened up and swallowed the impenitents (a sinkhole--they happen today, too, just google it and see how in modern times people and cars and buildings fall into them) or whether fire came down or floods of water or otherwise. They are ALL the result of God removing sustenance and/or protection, as a direct honor to the free choice of individuals, towns, nations, churches, etc. In another realm, God gives over for the cause of His witness, as in the case of Job which, interestingly, lost his sheep and servants to the "fire of God" (Job 1:16), remembering that God gave these over to the hand of Satan. It is not always that we can point to common chaotic natural occurences to fulfill instances of God's wrath. Sometimes there is more going on than we can easily explain in naturalistic terms--at least that which occurs under well-known natural phenomenon. God's withdrawal at the atomic level enters into some deeper expositional work, such as the rocks of Elijah's altar going to dissolution. There, we must get into an in-depth discussion of the fires and these are not always the same thing as ordinary fire. We have done some extensive work on this, a little of which is also in our book, "As He Is," chapter 39.

Over.

Again, well said.

sky

October 27, 2012

Indignus--I continue to ponder your statements which are made with sincerity, as you read Scriptures for their "plain statements." As I look at your amazing conclusion, "Let us rejoice that He has given us this incredible gift [of violence] with which to vanquish our enemies!" I need to seek for a clarification. I can understand your making this statement with regard to ancient Israel and their use of the sword in carrying out the civil code, in putting down internal dissensions, and in overcoming national enemies. My question is how does this apply to us in our day and age, in the Christian era? I am very interested in your response.

"It is true that the rule, 'Eye for eye, tooth for tooth,' (Lev.24:30), was a provision in the laws given through Moses, but it was a civil statute. None were justified in avenging themselves, for they had the words of the Lord: 'Say no thou, I will recompense evil.' 'Say not, I will do so to him as he hath done to me.' 'Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth.' 'If he that hateth thee be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty give him water to drink.(Proverbs 20:22; 24:29,17; 25:21,22). The whole earthly life of Jesus was a manifestation of this principle. It was to bring the bread of life to His enemies that our Saviour left His home in Heaven. Though calumny and persecution were heaped upon Him from the cradle to the grave, they called forth from Him only the expression of forgiving love." Mount of Blessing,70,71.

sky

October 29, 2012

Kevin wrote:

The Great Controversy cannot close without the revelation of His character and this specifically has everything to do with how He deals with disloyalty to His government, rebellion, and sin.

____________

So true. Concerning those who are to give the last message of mercy to the church and to the world we read:

"In order to endure the trial before them, they must understand the will of God as revealed in His word; they can honor Him only as they have a right conception of His character, government, and purposes, and act in accordance with them." The Great Controversy,593.

In the book of Jeremiah, chapter 30, verses 23,24 we read:

"Behold, the whirlwind of the Lord goes forth with fury. A continuing whirlwind; it will fall violently on the head of the wicked. The fierce anger of the Lord will not return until he has done it. And until he has performed the intents of his heart. In the latter days you will consider it."

In chapter 23, verses 20 we read,

"The anger of the Lord will not turn back until he has executed and performed the thoughts of his heart. In the latter days you will understand it perfectly."

We are living in the latter days and not only are we to consider what the anger of the Lord is but we are to understand it perfectly.

Compare 1 Chronicles 21:1 with 2 Sam.24:1.

In these passages Satan himself is revealed to be the anger of the Lord and the verses we have just read from Jeremiah are speaking of the time when probation shall close and Satan shall have entire control of the finally impenitent. Just another way of saying that at that time the wrath of God (anger of the Lord) will be complete. (Revelation 15:1)

Hence, when probation shall close, the Lord will say to His angels,

"No longer combat Satan in his efforts to destroy. Let him work out his malignity upon the children of disobedience; for the cup of iniquity is full. They have advanced from one degree of wickedness to another, adding daily to their lawlessness. I will no longer interfere to prevent the destroyer from doing his work." R&H, Vol.4,335.

Satan will have entire control of the wicked and he will plunge the inhabitants of this world into one great final trouble. (G.C.674)

Thus we are made to understand that "God does not stand toward the sinner as an executioner of the sentence against transgression." Great Controversy,36.

sky

October 29, 2012

Sky,

You bring up that Satan will be turned loose and Sister White thought it would be back then closer, but I wonder what she would state todsy, Here is a little different quote from her,

"This time is right upon us. The Spirit of God is being withdrawn from the earth. When the angel of mercy folds her wings and departs, Satan will do the evil deeds he has long wished to do. Storm and tempest, war and bloodshed,--in these things he delights, and thus he gathers in his harvest. And so completely will men be deceived by him that they will declare that these calamities are the result of the desecration of the first day of the week. From the pulpits of the popular churches will be heard the statement that the world is being punished because Sunday is not honored as it should be. And it will require no great stretch of imagination for men to believe this. They are guided by the enemy, and therefore they reach conclusions which are entirely false." {RH, September 17, 1901 par. 9}

"Satan will bring in pleasing fables to meet the minds of all who love not the truth. With angry zeal he will accuse commandment-keepers. Furious because he cannot pervert their faith, he will vent his rage upon them. He will give to his angels the work of hardening wicked men against the truth. Knowing that he has but a short time, he will work with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish. In the form of friends who have died, fallen angels will come to the children of men, just and unjust. Thus Satan will deceive those who, had they honored the law of Jehovah, would have been barricaded against temptation." {RH, September 17, 1901 par. 10}

Then the culmination,

Da 12:1 And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.

1Jo 4:4 ¶ Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.

October 31, 2012

Alright, Indignus, I'm not going to belabor this any more than a few quick comments and then lay aside our discussion. You believe it is a hands-down no-brainer that God is violent and go so far as to suggest that there is a call for the use of violence in His service today, or will be in the future; at least I am not hearing you deny that idea. To try and consider my viewpoint, which runs diametric to your own, you are not willing. That is human and it is understandable.

It is really difficult to try and share what we have learned from inspiration, not from following our hearts, when there is a hard resistance to hear and understand what we are saying. I understand that Bible language is hard to deal with, for starters. But the fact is that God is represented as doing that which He allows, or that to which He gives over. There is no Biblical evidence for creating two modalities of operation when it comes to God and violence, one where He gives over and the other where He does it proactively. All of it must be interpreted by His law and His character, which are one and the same. Love. So, where the curtain is not drawn back (as in "God" killed Saul according to the language--but Saul killed himself according to the narrative) we do not have legitimate grounds to fall back on a proactively destroying God. The God-did-it language is the case in both cases; our interpretation changes when we don't have the curtain drawn aside. I am simply asking for the evidence to go on that would allow us to create two modalities.

Then the realm of God's commands regarding use of violence is the clincher that many can't get past. The texts I have shared are not obscure by any means and had hoped they would merit a better response than you have offered. However, I will always maintain that Jesus is our primary picture of God and we must derive our hermeneutic basically from His testimony.

I am, by the way, educated and trained in the Bible, in Adventism, and in principles of interpretation and I graduated with high honors, second in my class. I am not sloppy in my research and my work has been reviewed by scholars more highly trained than myself. If you had read the reviews to our work As He Is: Issues in the 'Character of God' Controversy, you would find commendations by two major theologians, Dr. Herbert E. Douglass, Th. D. and Elder D. Douglass Devnich, former president of the Canadian Union, as well as other theological writers, Dr. James Said and M. M. Campbell. I am not saying that formal training or endorsements by qualified individuals is a test of truth, but I am trying to show you that I am not coming out of left field with a wild theory. This understanding of God's character and the great controversy has been at the forefront of reformation theology for about thirty years. It has been obscure for most of that time, but in recent years has been coming to the forefront through a number of teachers and ministries independent of each other. Some work within the pale of the denomination, others are supporting independents and some are simply independents, like myself. I would highly recommend that you go and listen to Herb Montgomery, SdA pastor, at www.renewedheartministries.com and in particular please take in the series "The Active Non-violence of Jesus" on the podcasts page http://www.renewedheartministries.com/Podcasts.aspx

Now, with regard to all that you have raised, it is required that we deal with the entire paradigm of permissive will. I would spend a great deal of effort to prove many things to you, but you are insistent on your opinion that my work is flimsy and unscriptural no matter what I bring. So, I am not going to work with you in detail on this. I will give you a really bare-bones nutshell of how we arrive at a non-violent God giving instructions in the use of violence.

It was not God's will that He should have led His people to the conquest of Canaan by their use of the sword. His deliverance would have taken the "purer" form, if I may use that term, of giving over, instead of permissive paradigm. In reality, however, the permissive paradigm is also "giving over" in that God winks at ignorance. What I mean is that in their ignorance of God's ways, they thought Him a violent Deliverer. They were in gross darkness in every way, hence the giving of the law. Another discussion. So God, in giving over to their paradigm, saw them pick up weaponry from the mail-clad bodies washed up on the shore. They got their arms from the dead Egyptians. They came out of Egypt unarmed and there was no other way for them to have obtained weapons. This reveals that they intended to fight their enemies their way. God worked with them in their own modality, for as long as they still had not entirely cast Him off, He was able to stay in the picture. The hands of Deity were tied, so to speak. It is God working with their own choice. Permissive paradigm is not the place to remain. God intends to bring us up out of it. They would not. That is why they rejected Christ. They wanted a military deliverer who would thrust through the Roman oppressor with the sword of slaughter. This is why Jesus told Peter to put up his sword, that the way of the sword ends in violence. They were desolated. God destroyed them by giving them over to their choice, "His blood be on us and our children, we have no king but Caesar."

Permissive paradigm is akin to parents giving instruction to wayward children who are coming of age. A parent may have every intent that a son or daughter remain sexually chaste until marriage. However, there are some that choose to have a partner or partners before marriage, casting off the counsel of the parents. A parent can kick the child out and entirely give them over to whatever results will come or they can sit that child down and give counsel as to how to conduct themselves within their poor choice. They can advise with regard to the use of prophylactics to avoid pregnancy and disease. They will tell them that it saddens them to see them go in such a direction, but it is better that they avoid complicating things by pregnancy or disease. Also, keeping them in the picture rather than turning away from them entirely will enable them to continue to have influence and hopefully get through to a time when they will have matured and come back to their senses. They will likely have emotional scars, but at least will not have to care for children on the scene who have one young parent and are missing the other, and will not have ongoing health repercussions from contracting STD's. Now, an onlooker might say that that parent was condoning premarital sexual activity by recommending condoms, but the reality is, that parent would never have done any such thing. All that they were trying to do was to mitigate the negative consequences of bad choices while praying for the repentance of their child.

So it is with God. Jesus came to set the record straight. He reminded them of their bent to violence and desire for eye for eye justice while saying that God's perfect will was to love one's enemies. Yes, God "gave" those eye for eye instructions, in the sense that He also gave them a king. In anger, or in giving over to their own poor choice. (See Hosea 13:11.) The civil code was but an advancement, or a step up from the Babylonian Code of Hamurrabi. The systems of law in the heathen nations were all eye-for-eye justice systems. The Hebrew version was not nearly as harsh. (We have written on this, Ch. 18 in our book, As He Is, my wife doing most of the research on that topic.) Moving on, we find Jesus saying that divorce was not God's perfect will, but "Moses" allowed it. Again, God allowed it through the civil laws under Moses. Why did He allow it? Jesus says that it was because of the hard heart of man. In other words, because man insisted on it. So God regulated it. The fact of divorce was not ever established by or allowed by God. Same with polygamy. Or slavery. And we are saying, "also violence." Those were all things of ignorance. God winked. Permissive paradigm. But now calls men to repentance.

There was never a call for men to exercise violence. That all came from the hardness of men's hearts. There is no call now for men to ever exercise violence. I could work this all through with you using the Bible and Spirit of Prophecy, but why? I will suggest that in support of your claim to the principle that the Almighty gave us violence as a gift with which to vanquish our enemies that you do a search for yourself on the gentleness of Jesus and the use of violence or anything harsh in the way and manner of Christians. Bring it back for me if you think you have something. My belief is that you will come up with a fat ZE-RO for anything pro-violence. My friend, you will likely still disagree with me, even if you did such an exercise. There is no more that I can say to help you. Put away your guns. He who lives by the sword will die by the sword. As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.

Amen!

sky

October 31, 2012

Originally Posted By: Kevin Straub

I have brought the word. You avoid the Word, but rely on proof-texting. Why not deal with the Word that I bring you in response to your proof-texting? You cannot deal with what I bring, according Biblical keys, principles, and Jesus Christ Himself. But have only your proof-texting.

You are scolding me for choosing the Word of God over the word of Kevin. Think about what you are saying, my friend. It pains me to see you so lost and buried under a pile of fabricated theology.

Originally Posted By: Kevin Straub

I am going to post the first draft of a paper I just wrote for publication. Read it. No comment required.

Do what you will. Remember, God is watching you as you distort the Bible in his name.

From what I have read so far, I have not seen any evidence that Kevin is guilty of distorting the Bible. On the contrary.

I have everything up to page 10.

Reading page 11 now.

sky

October 31, 2012

I have brought the Word. I meant to capitalize "word." Not the "word of Kevin." I meant, you need to deal with the Word on the basis of proper exegesis, not proof-texting. I have clearly shown in the numerous lengthy posts in reply to various individuals on this particular discussion, that God's wrath is hiding of His face and the "giving over" principle is what operates in all instances of destruction as attributed to God in the Scriptures, even in that of His commands to Israel, which are also a "giving over" to their paradigm of taking up the sword to fight their enemies, put down internal dissension, and in the adoption of bloody civil law which derived from codes of the surrounding nations. I posted an eight page article in four parts which works with this a little bit. Our book has five chapters covering permissive will. It is all based on the Word of God and on the inspired text of the Messenger to the final generation, Ellen White.

Do you believe in Ellen White's testimony? I note that you didn't answer my question about being a Seventh-day Adventist. Are you SdA? I ask it again. If not, you may be in the wrong place. We don't believe in taking our theology from departed spirits because we believe that these are actually devils.

Please deal with the WORD!:

The Bible:

Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence (John 18:36).

Don't tell me this only applies up until Constantine. If you say such nonsense, you need need to bring the Word of God to support it, not the word of "Indignus" whoever that is.

The Spirit of Prophecy in our time:

"'Whereunto,' asked Christ, 'shall we liken the kingdom of God? or with what comparison shall we compare it?' Mark 4:30. He could not employ the kingdoms of the world as a similitude. In society He found nothing with which to compare it. Earthly kingdoms rule by the ascendancy of physical power; but from Christ's kingdom every carnal weapon, every instrument of coercion, is banished. This kingdom is to uplift and ennoble humanity. God's church is the court of holy life, filled with varied gifts and endowed with the Holy Spirit. The members are to find their happiness in the happiness of those whom they help and bless" (Acts of the Apostles, p. 12, par.2).

This principle as taught by Christ, did not only apply to a three hundred year span of time in earth's history. God does not change. The principle of non-coercion and repudiation of all carnal weapons (force and deception) stands for all time, even in the Old Testament. This is hard not only for you, who holds extremely violent views, but for Seventh-day Adventists who generally also have violence in their minds when it comes to their picture of God.

I must comment a little on your outrageous statement earlier, that violence was not used in the centuries prior to Constantine, because they (the Christians) would have been crushed. My thought here is simply this: By what you are claiming, it seems that Christians are to rise up in violence only when they are up against a weak power, or when they can enlist the state as their whore. When you appeal to this principle as having the successful result in history, of establishing the Christian religion in the Western world, you reveal the colors of your theology, as that of the BEAST, for it is the beast system that has established the so-called Christian faith, which is not Christian, it is apostate. That which was established was so terrible we call it the "Dark" Ages. Protestantism's reformations called men back to the light of truth and freedom, but became apostate in their rejection of further advances in reformation light in the mid nineteenth century. This apostate Christianity will join hands with the great apostate, the Roman power (and with Spiritualism) to effect the greatest violence on God's people ever known in the history of the world. This will be the final crisis and what will be shown are the contrasting principles of God's law vs. Satan's rule; that of coercion vs. freedom of conscience.

___________________________

Amen.

sky

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