Vicious Killer God

[Nicodema]

What the "Left Behind" series is really all about. This is very eye opening so be forewarned. Don't read it unless you really want to know "what manner of spirit ye are of" (or rather, these stories are of).

http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2005/12/what_the_left_b.html

[aldona]

Thank you for posting that link, Nico...what an article.

These are probably the same people who look for backward messages and hidden meanings in music, books, poetry and other art forms as "proof" that they are "of the devil."

This is what the Christian culture becomes when the mere flash of a bare nipple on TV, or the sight of a mother breast-feeding her baby as God intended, provokes howls of outrage and cries of "pornography", but born-again Christians sit through the most graphic and gruesome violence and murder and do not even bat an eyelid.

If this blood-thirsty scenario is the ultimate fulfillment of earth's history that Christians are taught to look forward to, then I want to change to some other religion.

aldona

[LifeHiscost]

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aldona said:

If this blood-thirsty scenario is the ultimate fulfillment of earth's history that Christians are taught to look forward to, then I want to change to some other religion.

aldona

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[:"red"] "But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, This man doth not cast out demons, but by Beelzebub the prince of the demons." [/] Matthew 12:24 ASV

The fact that some saw Jesus as deriving power from Beelzebub doesn't make Him any different than Who He really is.

[:"red"] "And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth" [/]

Exodus 34:6 KJV

[:"red"] "I and the Father are one." [/]

John 10:30 ASV

[:"red"] "But there are some of you that believe not. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who should betray him.

And he said, Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father.

From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.

Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away?

Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.

And we believe and are

" [/] John 6:64-69 KJV

<img src="/adventist/images/graemlins/DOVE.gif" alt="" />

[Naomi]

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Nicodema said:

What the "Left Behind" series is really all about. This is very eye opening so be forewarned. Don't read it unless you really want to know "what manner of spirit ye are of" (or rather, these stories are of).

http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2005/12/what_the_left_b.html

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I have read the series and, as with other popular books, it was a series of good novels: Fiction. It's only redeeming value, IMO, is that it did make you think about your own walk with God.

Because our personal existance could end, at any time, without warning, it makes one aware of the necessary to be 'right with God'.

[Nicodema]

I think you missed the point of the article, Naomi.

[Nicodema]

I wonder if anyone here really READ the article and gave it THOUGHT, besides me and Aldona?????? How in the world can people be so complacent about this? If I were in Judaea I'd flee to the mountains ... but I don't know what either of them represent.

[Naomi]

Yes, I did read Joe Bageant’s comments on the “Left Behind” series, and believe I got the point.

IMO, it did not require additional comments.

For the sake of discussion, I will comment.

Firstly, perhaps I move in different circles, but the series is yesterday’s news. Most people that I personally know who read the series became bored with it about half way through.

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Christians eagerly await and celebrate an End Time when everyone who disagrees with them will be murdered in ways that make Islamic beheading look like a bridal shower.

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There is one obvious difference; the Islamic beheading is to be done by the hands of the followers. Most of which will loose their lives in the hope of receiving some glorious award. .... awarded virgins for eternity, etc.

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Jesus -- who apparently has a much nastier streak than we have been led to believe -- merely speaks and "the bodies of the enemy are ripped wide open down the middle."

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Which text does the Bible speak of bodies being ripped wide open, down the middle?

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Since then I have spoken to others raised in fundamentalist families who had the same childhood experience of coming home and thinking everyone had been "raptured up." The Rapture -- the time when God takes up all saved Christians before he lets loose slaughter, pestilence and torture upon the earth -- is very real to people in whom its glorious and grisly promise was instilled and cultivated from birth.

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This is impossible for me, personally, to identify with. I was not raised to believe in the rapture. “Every eye will see Him.”

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Sales figures aside, it is entirely possible that the Left Behind series is as important in our time and cultural context as was, say, Harriet Beecher’s Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin in its time, wherein Lincoln called it "the little book that started the big war." The truth is that LaHaye is among the most influential religious writers America ever produced and is the most powerful fundamentalist in America today.

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While it is easy to understand how it would anger christians and non-christians, none of which makes LaHaye correct, right, or a Biblically correct leader of Christianity. Many will be deceived …

Aside from Mr. Bageant’s apparent inability to write without using profanity, he is one person with one person’s view. Everyone has an opinion. We were created to have our own minds and how we view things is an individual choice.

Naomi

[Nicodema]

The ripped open thing was quoted from one of the LB books, not bible.

i have my own mind and i think it is downright heinous and disgusting for anyone to call themselves "christian" while taking delight in the slaughter of others, regardless of who does it. it is downright disgusting for any one to call themselves christian and be bloodthirsty and vengeful. it's hypocrisy and it stinks to high heaven and if God himself is not offended by it, He isnt who he's said to be.

[Naomi]

<img src="/adventist/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> Yes, I realize it is from LB books, not from the Bible. I was making a point and did it poorly. My point, that 99% of what is in the books is fiction. He was smart enough to hire a really good author and weave together a few texts from the Bible and turn it into a multi-million dollar "business" People who have been to his church in San Diego tell me that his church is run in the same manner. Don't know that this is a true statement as I have never been there.

I believe that God is offended by all hypocrisy. However, he is a just God who has, and shall continue to give every person, every opportunity, to come to Him.

[Nicodema]

I find it most unjust that He favors and protects those chief and foremost in driving others AWAY from Him, simply because they mouth His name, while allowing those driven away to be injured, battered, assaulted, lost, destroyed as if they never mattered -- and then arranging for all blame to fall upon them for it, as if they were the stench in the cesspool.

[Pockey]

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Nicodema said:

I find it most unjust that He favors and protects those chief and foremost in driving others AWAY from Him, simply because they mouth His name, while allowing those driven away to be injured, battered, assaulted, lost, destroyed as if they never mattered -- and then arranging for all blame to fall upon them for it, as if they were the stench in the cesspool.

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How do you know He favors and protects those who drive others away from Him? How do you measure who is favored and protected?

[Nicodema]

He lets them get away with it time and time again. Their voice prevails. Their will prevails. Their way of things prevails. And all along there is naught but destruction in it -- sickening toxic lies, the molestation of delicate spirits. Those driven from Him cry out in agony and are squelched and silenced, traduced and maligned, by those whose real motivation is only their own comfort zone and to have things their way, who will not widen the table nor share the banquet. Time and again Our cry ascends to Heaven and is ignored. Time and again the filth are allowed to prevail, and insult to injury, do so in His name, and lie before the sons of men that the Great Name of the Most High is theirs, and they its representatives. And He does nothing. NOTHING!!!!

[Bravus]

My own response has been to move away from the idea of a highly interventionist God - one who touches and tweaks and effects everything in the world all the time - toward the idea of a God who lets free will and consequences play out in almost every situation, but occasionally intervenes miraculously.

Under that view of God and life, the response to the question of 'why pain?', including 'why pain inflicted by those claiming to be inflicting it in God's name?' comes down to 'because free will'. These people get away with it because they choose to, and others choose to follow and support them, and we choose not to find ways to stop them or counteract their influence, or don;t have the power to do so. But under that view they do *not* do as they do because God wills it, or even specifically allows it, but because God allows almost all of the consequences of human decisions to play out (including genocidal human decisions).

It's not a comfortable place to live, and no doubt some here will take issue with it, but it's the only response to the questions Nico raises that I have been able to find that lets me keep on believing in God at all.

[olger]

There is no real problem of evil, for the man who has never accepted the Christian revelation.

I,as a believer in God have to face as the unbeliever does not, the mystery of the existence of evil. But here is the other side of it.

The unbeliever has to face as I, who believe in God, do not: the mystery of the existence of good. And his problem is definitely more insoluble than mine.

olger

[Bravus]

{deleted - speechless}

[Nicodema]

...God allows almost all of the consequences of human decisions to play out (including genocidal human decisions).

It's not a comfortable place to live, and no doubt some here will take issue with it, but it's the only response to the questions Nico raises that I have been able to find that lets me keep on believing in God at all.

Bravus, with all due respect, in my book that is just begging the question. My question is how/why He can sit there and do NOTHING and LET it. In a sense, my question presupposes your answer, and therefore is not answered by it.

That is not to say I don't value your input. I do. But only to point out the proper cart-horse order here.

And my question here is a bit different from just the standard "why is there pain & suffering". It is a step past that, beyond that. It's the 200 or 300 level of that whereas the standard question is the 100 level so to speak.

[LifeHiscost]

The reason the thumbs down on seeing the article is because the comments made, at least as far as I read, come from the imagination of folks who appear as if they have no idea of Who God says He is, and that is love. And secondarily there appears to be no knowledge of the Sripture, or if they have read it they didn't believe what it said. At least none of what God said about Himself.

"Love endures long and is patient and kind; love never is envious nor boils over with jealousy, is not boastful or vainglorious, does not display itself haughtily.

It is not conceited (arrogant and inflated with pride); it is not rude (unmannerly) and does not act unbecomingly. Love (God's love in us) does not insist on its own rights or its own way, for it is not self-seeking; it is not touchy or fretful or resentful; it takes no account of the evil done to it [it pays no attention to a suffered wrong].

It does not rejoice at injustice and unrighteousness, but rejoices when right and truth prevail.

Love bears up under anything and everything that comes, is ever ready to believe the best of every person, its hopes are fadeless under all circumstances, and it endures everything [without weakening].

Love never fails

" 1 Cor 13:4-8 AMP

"

He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love." 1 John 4:8 ASV

"Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked? saith the Lord Jehovah; and not rather that he should return from his way, and live? " Ezekiel 18:23 ASV

"Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord Jehovah, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?" Ezekiel 33:11 ASV

[Nicodema]

Whatever. Maybe some of us haven't had that lovely of an experience. Maybe we'd like to but have been denied. Maybe you can't understand that.

Maybe I've already said too much.

[Bravus]

LHC - the question in this thread is more 'If God is, indeed, love, then why are his servants preaching hate and reveling in destruction?' *That* is the question that hasn't yet been seriously addressed, let alone answered.

[Robert]

LHC - the question in this thread is more 'If God is, indeed, love, then why are his servants preaching hate and reveling in destruction?'

John 16:2 “A time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God. [Why?] 3 And these things they will do, because they have not known the Father, or Me."

[Nicodema]

Robert, good answer! But that answer itself still begs the question for me. Know what I mean? It's like saying, "Why X?" and you have answered, "because it is foretold, X!" which only reaffirms the existence of X, which I have already established, but does not answer the question why.

Still, yes, John 16:2 is one scripture indelibly impressed upon my conscious awareness.

[Bravus]

(King) David basically struggled with the same question - there are several Psalms that are all about the 'why do the wicked succeed?' question.

[Nicodema]

But now we're back to the 101, aren't we Bravus? Because in David's time the "wicked" he referred to were openly enemies of God -- at least to the Hebrew mind. Not fellow Israelites.

[LifeHiscost]

Originally Posted By: Bravus

LHC - the question in this thread is more 'If God is, indeed, love, then why are his servants preaching hate and reveling in destruction?'

John 16:2 “A time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God. [Why?] 3 And these things they will do, because they have not known the Father, or Me."

Thank you, Robert, for reminding me of that Scripture. I'm most impressed with the words, "because they have not known the Father, or Me."

If we are aware of Jesus attitude toward such a one with that frailty, as a result of ignorance, it tells me how we can even hope for their salvation.

"And Jesus said, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do."