Reuben Hick

I think I was pretty clear about why this discussion is pointless. Whatever the Bible clearly says, you deny it. I stopped reading when you invented out of thin air this differentiation of the "natural man" by this new "human being". The Bible speaks of the natural man and the regenerated man. There is no third man, nor fourth man or whatever man you need to conjure up to muddy the waters for your infinite regression of nth man. This whole thing sounds like a cheap rip off of the Masons and the degrees one progresses through. The fact of the matter is that the natural man doesn't seek God, doesn't desire to please God, because he loves his sin and hates God. The natural man can't even understand the Bible and considers it all foolish. Now since there is no motivation to be anything else; not even an ability to do anything else but be this natural man, you just perform the magical hand wave of denial and invent a third person that the natural man allegedly desires to become (again, without explanation as to why or the mechanics of how it is done). One of the many problems with that third man is that no where in Scripture is this taught. Another glaring problem is that you don't rectify the problem of why the natural man would even care to depart from his sinfilled ways. The OT prophet also says that even as the leopard can't change his spots, neither can the natural man change from his evil ways. So designing a third man doesn't nullify that basic fundamental reality. Christ says that the natural man is a son of Satan and does whatever Satan wants. In contrast Christ says that those adopted into the Kingdom become the Father's children and want to please the Father. There is no orphanage or a foster parent intermediary taking in nth degree children. You have to make that up - a process that we all have come to expect from you. Even if there was this unicorn of the nth man, why would the nth man be any closer to loving God than the natural man? Again, you have to make that up and declare it to be true. Now why would I, constrained by the facts outlined in Scripture, find any fruit in discussing theology with someone who finds their half-baked ideas superior to God's Word? Its like playing poker with someone who keeps changing the rules mid hand. "Yep, even though these cards look like a random collection of unrelated suits and low numbers, they really are all aces of spades." I'm sure you are probably a great person to hang out with and rap about stuff, but I stopped heavy drinking long ago and probably can't enjoy the nuance of your dynamic scriptural adaptations.

I hear that desperate cry! Help is on the way! UFO simply means that the observer can't tell what that floaty thing is he is looking at. Ignorance is not proof, let alone evidence of extraterrestial beings. IOW, if you see something darting around in the sky, it is totally unwarranted to claim that little green men, or demons are piloting it. You make this claim that you have made some serious inquiries yet you still believe it might be possible. Well let me increase your inventory of knowledge on the matter by providing a simple, but to the point, feasibility study of inter-stellar travel: For a spacecraft to acquire a speed of c/10, or one tenth the speed of light or to circle the earth in over a second, the kinetic energy needed is given accurately enough by the non-relativistic formula of mass multiplied by velocity squared. For a extremely small unmanned spacecraft of 10kg (22 lbs) this is 4.5 x 10^15 J or approximately the whole world's electricity production for a month. Now scale that thing up to a spacecraft weighing several tons and you now have an energy equivalence of all the energy ever generated since the beginning of man's history. Forget trying to figure out what a city-sized spacecraft from the movie Independence Day would require. But we aren't done! Once you have the thing up to speed, you eventually need to stop it, and the energy to stop it is the same as the energy to get it going - so double that weight requirement. Oh, and the visitor probably needs to go back home, so double that number again. Now lets just pretend that our space travellers have perfected complete conversion of matter to energy of the famed e = mc^2 fame (if even possible) This is the Star Trek famed antimatter engine. One ton of antimatter could annihilate one ton of ordinary matter to produce 1.8 x10^20 J, and this is the maximum amount of energy that could be produced from a given mass of fuel. Remember, we are only talking one tenth the speed of light with Alpha Centauri a mere 44 years away at that speed. Are you beginning to see that the math doesn't support this proposition? You also need to calculate the fuel needed to power this trip back and forth. For if you need two tons of matter/anti-matter to get you going, you also need to factor in the energy needed to accelerate and deaccelerate the fuel that you are hauling. I don't know of too many anti-matter fuel stations between our solar system and the nearest system that would allegedly support life. We also have some defensive issues to consider, and that is on the matter of kinetic energy. Lets say that there is a speck of dust 0.1 gram in weight in our flightpath. Calculating from the spacecraft's reference frame we are talking 4.5x10^10 J of energy when impacting that 0.1 gram spec which is the equivalent of exploding ten tons of TNT on that one tiny spot on the spacecraft. I have watched MythBusters and how a little bit of high explosives goes a long way - particularly on that cement truck. What kind of shielding would vent off a c/10 speed projectile as tiny as one tenth of a gram? So you can see that the math prevents interstellar travel - your UFO occupants either need to be human and work for the Air Force or you need to change your meds. Then there are the theological matters. Genesis says that the stars are for light, signs and seasons. Nothing about fostering alien lifestyles. Even still, when Adam sinned, Paul tells us that the entire Universe fell under the curse. Wouldn't it suck to be a little green man, just having a good time, and all of a sudden a putz on the other side of the universe ate a fig and now everything is falling apart on your own planet? One day systems are all go, the next - its all cursed? Things aren't looking too good for this alien spaceship theory... But lets continue this Smackdown. The scene is during Christ's ministry, our LORD is approaching a cemetary where in the distance he sees this nude man tatooing and piercing himself. This dude is something else, the local authorities have been trying for some time to capture and subdue him but he is able to bust off any chains - just like OT Samson. As soon as our LORD and his posse are within sighting distance, a demon, within the man shouts out and the demons within the man start worshipping Jesus. Jesus then asks the man his name, the man is mute yet the demons speak for him by answering "Our name is Legion for we are many." A simple negotiation takes place because the demons know that they are seconds from being exorcised - they beg to be released into a nearby herd of swine. Our LORD obliges and off they go into the swine, the swine now possessed by demons go and destroy themselves. What lesson can we learn about demons? Of the many that could be made, a clear one is quite evident - they need a living host. This doesn't speak well for demons having opposable thumbs, five axis milling machines, and abundant mining and manufacturing centers to cobble up this high tech gear that you fantasizing. Now if you want to enter the wonderful world of kookism, then there is a way to generate living hosts that don't have souls so that the body can be inhabited by demons without fear of being served an eviction notice by the Holy Spirit. This would be called "clones". I'll let your creative mind run wild on that thought - remembering that several states recently have passed legislation recently to fund clone research euphemistically called "Stem cell Research" so as not to P.O. bioethicists like Christians. Imagine billions of dollars plus demons looking for a body, and you have modern day Nephilim. I have one last comment regarding your choice in looking for the wierd... A very long time ago there was a historian/philosopher/playboy named Plutarch who traveled the world in search of fun and trouble when he ran across some priests of the various Greek gods who were saddened because their Oracles no longer spoke to them. The result of this is the interesting article "On the Cessation of Oracles". In Augustine's "City of God" several chapters were devoted to dealing with the silence of the gods. We also have biblical evidence that the demons played all kinds of havoc before they were bound (Rev 20). For instance, Jannes and Jambres duplicated several of Moses' signs, and the priests of Baal were so confident due to previous experience to call down fire from heaven that they gladly took up the contest with Elijah. So we have all kinds of evidence, in Scripture, in Greek and Roman mythology, and the legends of heros in religions from around the world. But in the first century of Anno Domini, things started to change and the Oracles no longer spoke and heros no longer did mighty miraculous works, and the power of the Egyptians went away. Why? Had it to do with the apostles spreading across the world binding demons and preaching the glorious Gospel? Well as Rev 20 continues, we learn that the Church Age has no first hand experience with an unbound Satan, yet we also read that just before Christ's return, for a short while, Satan will be released and will be able to resume those signs and wonders that preceeded the Church Age. I guess what I am getting at, is that your best approach is to support the UFO theory is to think Amillennial in your eschatology and postulate that you are presently in the generation that will see the Last Day up front and in person. What this means is that you will see, for the first time in Church History, is all kinds of demonic signs and wonders that, as Scripture warns, will be enough to even fool the Elect (that is why God intervenes). You just have to believe Rev 20 talks about a Satan being bound so that the gospel can flourish.

Do you really want to be drawn into an argument of semantics with your opponent? How about this simple question: When the stone was rolled away, where was the body? Afterall, if the resurrection was not physical in any way, then a body should still have been found in the tomb.

Well, there should always be a remnant. I'm thinking that this statement is consistent with two previous instances of God's Judgment. In Noah's day, Noah was told to prepare an Ark with a known passenger list. It was to be chock full of critters, and the human manifest counted to only eight. Now considering that God told Noah at the very beginning who was to be aboard the Ark, and considering that among that list Noah's father was not listed, then either God never intended for Noah to include anyone but his wife and their descendant, or Noah got this message and built the Ark in fewer than five years (Noah's dad died five years before the Flood). So well over six-billion people perished during that forty day rain storm, and out of that number only eight survived. Moving forward to the day when Lot entered into the city of Sodom in the plains of Shinar, we read that Abraham negotiated with God, but when it came right down to it, only three survived the destruction of the five cities. Notice in the narrative that Lot went out to his sons-in-laws (presumably his married daughters were there also) and they didn't believe him and so they were destroyed. Out of the huge number of people living in that area at the time, only three survived. Well, here we are approaching the same number of people who were living on the earth as in the days of Noah - why would we expect anything different since BOTH of these events are specifically identified as similar examples as to what we should expect and what conditions precede the Judgment. Luke 18:8 fits in perfectly. So how does this work, especially when we see one Big Box Hallelujah House after another cropping up like mushrooms after the rain?` The answer is simply, that these places must be apostate (or future versions of them are apostate) in accordance with Scripture. We are told that in the last days false teachers, denying the Lord will be rise up in response to the heightened demand of the growing number of people who cannot and will not endure sound doctrine. Now if we quickly turn to Romans 10:17, we discover that "faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of God". It is important to note that false teachers, by definition, don't teach the true gospel. Therefore they can teach all day and all night before throngs of millions and if the true gospel is not taught (meaning the truth, all the truth, and nothing but the truth) then the divinely enacted manner of obtaining the gift of faith is not accomplished. Note the passage doesn't say "faith comes by watching a movie or hearing a feel-good sermonette". Likewise, you can have the best jamming band in all of the universe, you can have people swaying, praying and throwing beach balls for Jesus yet since it isn't the gospel preached, it won't bring faith. Spurious conversions possibly, but not saving faith. Now death happens. As those who are old school and came to Christ through their fire and brimstone preacher die off and the legacy of sound biblical doctrine is no longer sought after by succeeding generations, then it follows that not only the raw numbers, but the density of believers will diminish. As fewer people know the true God but know some vanity religion that doesn't save, then they don't have a legacy to pass on. As seminaries focus on institutional management, directed growth and community outreach rather than understanding hermeneutics, sermon planning and original language mastery, there will be fewer opportunities for anyone to hear the gospel faithfully preached. Instead, we will get these packaged humorous anecdotes, self-help motivational speeches, and helpful hints on how to negotiate with God for toys, benefits and temporal goodies. None of these bring faith. Some post-millennialists are looking forward to a revival. I would love to see a revival, but the underlying foundation isn't there. I can easily count the number of great theologians of the previous generation, and now I see the greats of our generation approaching retirement. I have watched great men of God go home, people like S Lewis Johnson, Dr. James Boice, John Gerstner. I'm watching men like Sproul and MacArthur age with no one really following in their footsteps. There are no brilliant and inspiring men of God with that kind of notoriety waiting in the wings like every generation before us has had. The seminaries aren't cranking out knowledgable men of God in quantities that would support any form of revival. The environment for open expression of faith is no longer around. In short, pseudo-Christian activities are somewhat acceptable, but try talking about Calvinism, Sin or God's Judgment and watch the long knives come out. The only religion is the Plush Toy Genie Jesus religion where God is everyone's cosmic butler and economic/emotional safety-net. The saints are going home, instead we get folks like Joel Osteen, Rick Warren and Jeremiah Wright. (sigh) Yep, when He returns, will He still find the faith? I think the rhetorical question has a sobering answer.

Yes, a plain reading of this passage could allow the uninformed reader to assume that we can alter God's timetable. But we all know better than that because we know that God does everything by His own Pleasure and in His own time. A little foray into speculative theology... For instance, we read in Rev 12:1-6 "Now a great sign appeared in heavens: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a garland of twelve stars. The being with child, she cried out in labor and in pain to give birth... she bore a male Child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron. And her Child ws caught up to God and His throne..." This can only be the birth of the Messiah. For the sake of argument lets stipulate that "great sign in heaven" was an astronomical phenomina. If this was the case, the appropriate constellation would be Virgo, and the twelve stars would be the crown over the constelation's "head". At the time of Christ's birth, Jupiter, the planet recognized by both the Romans and the Jews as the "Planet of the Messiah" was located in Virgo's "womb" and standing still. The "clothing" is an annual event lasting around 20 days where Virgo is superimposed by the Sun. The key is the moon, which the apostle says was located under her feet. The year 3BC all of these factors came together for less than two hours on September 11th between 6:15pm and 7:45pm local time. As an added bonus, Sundown on September 11, 3BC was the beginning of Tishri 1 in the Jewish calendar - Rosh Hashanah, the Day of Trumpets. The stars were set into motion on day four of the Creation Week. Now tell me that God doesn't have events planned down to the mere hour. The margin notes of this hastening are such: "hasting the coming", (Greek: speudoo) means to urge on, to hasten; and then to hasten after anything, to await with eager desire. The state of mind which is indicated by the word is that when we are anxiously desirous that anything should occur, and when we would hasten or accelerate it if we could. Since we can't the context is such where Peter is saying we don't dread the coming of our LORD, rather we look forward to it. Curiously, on Glenn Beck's TV program where he interviewed the authors of "Left Behind" he eventually put forth the point-blank question asking both of them individually if they looked forward to Christ's return in their lifetime. LaHaye admitted that he is getting up in the years and the prospect is not so great that he would experience it himself. Jenkins answer was refreshingly honest yet dead wrong. He said that he didn't want the Lord to return anytime soon (hopefully for unselfish reasons), because Jerry wanted the Lord to tarry giving every man the opportunity to exercise his free will and be saved. Under this theory, which is consistent with Free Will Theology, every Free Will Apologist should want to put off our LORD's return for as long as possible if the Free Will Religionist truly loves his neighbor and truly wants to see each man saved. 2 Peter 3:12 has it exactly the opposite, we have Peter exhorting his readers to deeply desire an early return of Christ, the earlier the better. IOW, Peter, if he was with these three men during the filming of the show, would have jumped across the table and shook Jenkins and yelled - What is wrong with you, man? The orthodox view is that God has known and numbered His Elect in eternity past when He was considering who he would grace with His mercy and include into the Book of Life. What this means is that the number of those who will be with Christ are finite. It is not open ended as if God keeps the polls open, people will continue to wander on in and continue to vote for His salvation. Now the gathering of the elect is likened to a harvest where the wheat and tares are separated by God's angels. It is also likened to separating of the sheep from the goats. Once the harvest has been accomplished, there is no need to stand around and watch the empty field and pastures. Likewise, once the last of the Elect of God's comes to repentance, there is no practical need to continue on with this world as we know it. If the fields are ripe for the harvest, tarrying doesn't improve the crop. One could wait forever and the tare will not transform into wheat, the goat will not transmogrify into a sheep. Once the last of the Elect has been regenerated and has then repented, its the End. How much more sin is truly necessary before God is justified in bringing forth Judgment? There is also significance in the fact that when queried, Jesus didn't lay down a calendar for when the events would take place, just like there was no calendar advertised regarding His birth (yet the Magi seemed to have figured it out - there is a lesson in there somewhere). Who knows if there is an astronomical event that will correspond to His returning. From the statement that no man knows the day and the hour, it would seem to argue against that kind of calculation. Instead, our LORD describes the signs that will be seen before His return. Since lawlessness and sin are supposed to increase, exactly how is the Christian supposed to act in order to hasten our LORD's return - encourage sin and lawlessness? Most things are out of our hands. Rev 20 says for a "short period" before Christ's return we will see Satan unchained so that he may resume deceiving the world as Satan was freely doing before the apostles starting rounding up and binding the demons during the Great Commission. We are told that there will be great signs and wonders during this time. I bet. The point being, is that there are many other players in this, and those with much more invested interest in the outcome. If that day is to be manipulated, it has already been accomplished by the Alpha and Omega. My advice, do as Peter suggests and eagerly await the coming of the LORD.

The word hate in the Bible does not mean the same as it does in modern english. In the Bible it means "to love less." so God "Loves all workers of iniquity less." So Psalm 5:5 could read "The foolish shall not stand in thy sight: thou 'lovest less ' all workers of iniquity. Can you prove that? Seriously. I have many theological dictionaries, language workbooks and other resources, and NONE of them say that "sane'" OT:8130 means "loves less". rather I see "enemy", "foe", "utter hate". Surely you didn't make this up, you must have some sort of authority that justifies this. Here is something I found in the "Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament." OT:8135 "The term 'saneh' has the same meaning in Ugaritic (UT 19: no. 2449). The verb 'sane' and its derivatives have the root meaning "to hate." It expresses an emotional attitude toward persons and things which are opposed, detested, despised and with which one wishes to have no contact or relationship. It is therefore the opposite of love. Whereas love draws and unites, hate separates and keeps distant. The hated and hating persons are considered foes or enemies and are considered odious, utterly unappealing." (from Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament. Copyright

The passage means what it says. Those who reject God's Sovereignty in the heart of man (aka Free Will Apologists), can't handle this passage, and for the many years that I have asked them their view on it, without exception they deny the passage of its central meaning and gratuitously divert the hatred on to something other than what the passage clearly teaches. Sort of the in same mold as hoplophobes project sin and evil on the firearm, banning it rather than dealing with the perp who misuses the otherwise inanimate, unconscious metal object, or blaming the alcohol and not the driver in a DUI death. You might as well ask them why God hated Esau. (Ro 9:13) Without reading any of the other posts I can pretty much say that "hatred" will devolve into something that is not hatred. In fact, they will completely turn around the passage and say that God really loves them. I honestly don't know how folks can live with that kind of cognitive dissonance unless they just flat out reject those difficult passages in Scripture. And when I mean "difficult" I am talking about those many passages that argue against their bogus Free Will soteriology. The usual rhetoric occasionally calls for the red herring approach, that is, someone will point out that this is an imprecatory Psalm, as if there is something disqualifying and inherently wrong about praying for the demise of one's enemy. They might even go as far to say that David was blaspheming by projecting David's personal contempt for sinners on to God (who allegedly loves all men). Then comes the deflection, so while you are thinking about the nature of the Psalm you are then fed a line that says that either hate doesn't mean hate, or it isn't the doer (as the passage clearly says), but it is the sin (which the passage doesn't say). In either case, you are made to feel guilty about having a low view of God's enemies, then while you are told that David was just having a bad day, you get the lie, from that point, anything goes. If one explores the core of Free Will Theology, there is no divine hate, and logically there is no divine love. The Free Will Enthusiast will deconstruct "love" so much that it is completely devoid of all meaning. They will say that God's love for the Saint is the same as His love for the Sinner. Never mind the Prodigal son's father did not coming running out of the house and demonstrating love towards anybody who wandered up to the residence. Never mind Hebrews that teaches that God chastens whom He loves. Erase from your mind the passages in Romans that teach that God works things out for those who love Him. Forget all of the passages that convey a pattern of active love towards those who God considers His sheep/children. Certainly don't ask why God's love is poured out on His Elect or why that is even taught in Scripture, for afterall, if there is no distinction between the love God has for His own, and the alleged "love" God has for the reprobate, then why is it constantly represented in Scriptures? The Free Will Enthusiast doesn't want you to ask those questions. The anthropocentric warm fuzzies surrounding an empty "love" on all mankind trumps orthodox theology and God's revealed character. Remember, God allegedly loves people straight into eternal destruction and damnation. We are told that God poured out His love for the Sodomites when he rained down fire from the heavens without warning. We are supposed to believe that wiping out billions of people during the Flood was a divine act of exhibited love for the antediluvians. And surely God must love the generations of people who lived and died never having heard the Gospel. Why God even is supposed to love those who He deliberately blinds and keeps in darkness so that they will not believe. (John 12:40). This so-called "love" is supposed to be indistinguishable from the love God has for His Elect. Under Free Will Theology, where everyone is supposed to have an equal shot at setting themselves straight and making the correct choice, God must love everyone head-for-head, and that is why the word 'kosmos', or 'world' as we read in John 3:16, cannot mean 'those from every nation' (which is consistent with all of Scripture) but must mean 'everyone head for head' (which conflicts with many passages, particularly Ps 5:5). The Free Will Enthusiast has two options: 1) Deny or deconstruct the Scriptures that conflict with the anthropocentric Pelagian doctrines, 2) Talk about paradoxes, conflicting visions - as if contradiction is a good and noble thing.

Impossible. (Mt 26:19; Lk 22:8,15) says that Jesus Christ ate the Passover meal. There is no way that a high priest of the temple would have slaughtered the lamb outside of the two hour window (3pm-5pm) on the Day of Preparation (Ex 12:6). I have read many of the posts on this topic (in the various threads) and quite frankly I am stunned by the contortions made to satisfy a non problem. Lets be clear on two matters: 1) To be in the grave "three days and three nights" and only three days and three nights, no more, no less, would also be completely impossible since we are plainly told in Scripture that He was buried before sunset on Passover Friday, and He arose around sunrise on Sunday. Even if you take Friday and Sunday out and replace them with any other day of the week, you can't possibly have a 72 hour period because sunset and sunrise are twelve hours apart. If you seek for a literal 72 hours in the earth, then you have the parts of two other days making for five days in the tomb and He is in for an additional 12+ hours to cover the time difference between sunset and sunrise. Therefore, to literally interpret Mt 12:40 as a literal seventy two hours rather than the Jewish colloquialism that it is, is folly. Therefore there is no problem concerning the dates. simply the last part of Friday before sunset is day one, all of Saturday is day two, and the part of Sunday prior to sunrise is day three. There is no two thousand year old conspiracy to make Friday the day of Christ was crucified - for why would Thursday be so damning that generations of theologians would purposely deceive their congregations into thinking its Friday rather than Thursday? Has anyone asked the Thursday crucifixion kooks this question? 2) Jesus Christ ate the Passover Meal, which meant that the lamb He ate was slain by the High Priests between 3pm and 5pm on Thursday. The gospels show that Christ gave up His life around the ninth hour on Friday (Mt 27:46) which would put his voluntary sacrificial death as the Lamb during the sanctioned slaughtering hours of 3pm-5pm. So the only problem seems to be is how can there be two Passover meals and two sanctioned times for performing the slaughter. The answer comes in simply recognizing that from Josephus, the Mishna and other Jewish resources we discover that Jews in the northern kingdom (Christ and all the disciples but Judas originating from Galillee or the northern kingdom) and most of the Pharisees reckoned their days from sunrise to sunrise. Thos in the southern kingdom and the bulk of the Sadducees made their division at sunset. The Pharisees and the Sadducees were theologically similar as much as Protestants and Roman Catholics are, thus though the "time zone" difference between the north and the south may have posed certain problems, it also served to separate the two, double the time in which the chaotic slaughtering of the lambs could take place in the Temple, and it virtually doubled the room for observing the Passover meal in Jerusalem by having a Thursday and Friday shift. It was Providence that made for this difference. Those who try to find some special demarkation of time by going back to Genesis are only fooling themselves. When during the Creation week we see the enumeration of the days, we read "evening and the morning were the _____ day." This phrasing does not sanction the evening nor does it specify the morning as the official Godly method of dividing the calendar. I speculate that it is for the purposes of silencing the deconstructionalists who erroneously apply the "day is like a thousand years" BS to the Genesis narrative by saying "evening and morning" or a literal twenty four hour day, not some secret decoder message to reckon the division of the calendar. Ths calendar is OK, there is no need to cause dozens of problems and introduce contradictions by struggling with finding seventy two hours. Its not necessary. Parts of two days and one whole day still add up to three days. Enjoy your Resurrection Sunday.

Genesis 1:29 "See, I have given you every herb that yields sees which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed..." Genesis 2:16 "Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat..." Those two passages answer your question. The first shows that God gave everything to Adam, that would include the Tree of Knowledge. When you get to 2:9 we read that every tree was pleasant to the sight and good for food. This is confirmed by Eve in 3:6. So we go to the second passage and we see that the only thing that made this tree different from the other trees is, not that it was God's, but that God simply said "Don't eat of this tree". Without going into what it meant to not eat of the tree, it is sufficient to note that this passage cannot be used as a passage regarding titheing because God didn't lay claim on tree, only on Adam's behavior. God isn't so much interested in things, rather He is interested in our obedience. In terms of titheing, it is well covered under the Mosaic Law, with the foreshadowing of it with Abraham and Melchizedek. Furthermore, titheing was based on a percentage (Lev 27:30-33) the production of the land and the money was collected for the operating expenses of the priests and the temple (Nu 18:21-32). Jacob vows to tithe all of the increase that God would give him. (Ge 28:20-22). Dt 12:5-19 tells us that the tithe was to be taken to the the place where the Lord would cause His name to dwell and no where else. Here is the kicker: It was to be eaten, with rejoicing, by the household of the one bringing the tithe. (vv 7,12,18) Do you see a conflict here with the Tree in Eden? I don't see a doctrinal connection with the tree in the garden. For extra credit I submit that the fruit of the tree of Knowledge was the fig, and this time of year is an excellent time to say it!

Hmm... How exactly does any of that square with the gospel? What you are suggesting is that people are essentially posse non Peccare (able not to sin) and sin only because they are puppets of Satan. Yet the Bible plainly teaches that everyone is non posse non Peccare (I cannot not sin). If everyone is magically transformed to be without a sin nature, what is the point of government and the need for anyone to "rule" ? (public works can and have been accomplished throught the mechanism of private incorporation). If your doctrine does NOT teach that Satan is the cause of our sin (thereby relieving us of any moral responsibility), then what do we do with all of those passages in Scripture that define the nature of man to be constantly at war with God? Personally, I don't think that this fiction of World Peace because Satan is bound has been thought out very well, it seems to be the product of semi-literate romanticists. FWIW, the orthodox understanding of Satan being bound isn't this "world peace" folly that has zero Scriptural support, but with the reason why plainly stated in Rev 20:3 "...so that he should deceive the nations no more..." Review Mark 3:23-27 where Christ foreshadows the Great Commission by saying that in order for the gospel to be spread to the world, the "strong man must be bound". Ask yourself why the gospel didn't reach anyone prior to the Great Commision? Mark 16:17-18 shows that the apostles were given power to bind demons. (Mt 16:19;18:18). The world did not receive the gospel because the Deceiver prevented them from hearing the Word. (2 Co 4:4) but after a long period of time (roughly the entire length of the church age) Rev 3:3 says that "he must be released for a little while" which I figure is the global apostasy that is ordained to come just before the Last Day. What about the parable of the sheep and the goats? How does it differ in the Wheat and the Tares? Where do any of these parables talk about sinners meriting "entry into the thousand year reign"? Again, this Chiliast's dream of a thousand year reign isn't very well thought out. It seems like a global version of the movie "Highlander". What do we have, Zombies? People can fall off ten story buildings and not die? Also, the idea that sinners who hate God and know that they will ultimately spend eternity in Hell are reproducing an army yet are not doing anything to combat God or thwart His alleged thousand year reign. Satan has spent his entire temporal existence fighting God, yet man, who hates God with a total passion; man who loves his sin more than anything; man who can't please God nor even care to, is somehow going to be some docile benign entity who can't die? I would love to see how the Free Will Dispensationalists explain thousand years of pacificism when ALL of human history is nothing but "each man doing what is right in his own eyes." wars, and violent strife. How about, men are judged on account of their sin? That one seems to have a Scriptural backing. Another not so well though out scenario. I know, that this is all Dispensationalist Dogma fully explained in a multi-volume set of fictional books, but good grief, do you have any idea of what it is like? Now the greek says "stadioon doodeka chiliadoon", or 12,000 stadia. A stadia is undefined in the sense that we can't really find a good conversion because stadia literally means "a stade or certain measure or distance". The KJV translators figured it related to a stadium or horse race so they said "furlong" which modern English translations guestimate 1400 miles (which eliminates the significance of the number 12 (dodeka) and 1000 (chilias)). So lets not pretend we are being literal here. Now this building, if it is indeed 1400 miles high would put those standing on the earth in danger of getting hit by still orbiting satellites. IOW, the air is a bit thin there, and flying over 21,000 feet, or five miles up, requires supplemental oxygen. Yet we have this city with an additional 1395 miles in height. There are certain lighting and air control and critical infrastructure problems within a building this size too that is beyond the scope of this post, yet remain. Heck, take a globe and a square stone or something heavy that you can glue to the side of the globe so that it maps out to this 1400x1400x1400 mile wart. Go to a large enough tub that you can float this thing, we will let gravity act as the sun's natural attraction to Earth, and orient the globe in the tub any way you want, and give the globe a spin. Look at how the globe's spin is altered by the heavy wart that unbalances the globe and causes all kinds of vector shifts which would translate out to roughly global cataclysms that would make Noah's flood look like a mere inconvenient shower. Has anyone even considered the material stresses that would exist supporting a building of that size? The mantle of the earth is only so thick, particularly around the Med Sea which is already criss crossed with faults and fissures in the Earth's crust. Isn't a large earthquake supposed to be on the Dispensationalist's time table? Now I suppose that this all can be answered by the Magic Jesus explanation which is nothing more than a wave of the hand denial of these very serious problems by saying, in effect, that God will change all of the physical laws of the universe to accomodate this thing. Just let that roll around in your head for a moment. I mean, if using the Magic Jesus trick, then the issue of transportation from one end of the building to the other is solved, but it then asks an important question, why even have this city in the first place? If every single problem is solved by just changing all physical laws of the universe, why not just skip the whole thing and be spirit beings rather than implementing a Plan B physical architecture that really serves no purpose other than an attempt to literally materialize an obvious symbol in Revelations? Does God now have locality? That is, we have God physically cornered in a room somewhere in the building? Are we going to be tucked away in this while the Zombies storm the castle? How many hundreds of miles will the average person be away from a window, possibly spending an eternity locked up like a sailor in the engine room of a submarine that never surfaces? (edited by moderator)

Unred is in red, mine are in black.

Sorry for the italicized red font to represent the previous post - ran dry the quote quota. Rhonda Lou's previous-previous post is preserved though. God chose and elected that those who follow Christ would be saved. Then it wouldn't be "election", it would be "divine recognition". God chose Abraham (Dt 10:15), Jacob (Ro 9:13),David (2 Sa 6:21). Note, it was the people who chose that failure of a King Saul (1 Sa 12:13) He chose a specific people but not as individuals but according to each individual