Unbelievers - You're dead and before God on Judgement Day

[billie]

What I mean is that we do have horrible death and destruction that we have created on this earth, the millions of babies that have died the wars that have killed so many innocents, on and on. Without God, those people are dead and in hell, for hell are but the grave, eternal doom, the blackness of darkness forever.

If there is an earthquake, it is not anyone's fault. Nobody made the earthquake happen.

During the earthquake, a building collapses and a 6 month old baby is trapped and takes a day to die. In pain and agony. Broken bones. Starvation. Thirst.

The baby is innocent. God could have done so many things. he could have had the baby's mother take it for a walk. He could have had a beam fall strategically, forming a barrier to protect the baby till the rescuers came.

It's a hypothetical baby, but something like it has happened. In differing ways, in differing circumstances.

The point is that there is needless suffering of innocents. Caused by no-one. And not prevented by the omniscient, omnipotent God.

And. If ever I am before him. I will want him to explain it to me before he condemns me.

Stew, have you ever read the Book of Job?

[Guest Blueblade]

God allows bad things to happen, even to believers. There are many reasons, some we may understand, some we can never know. Based on some arguements here, it seems some of you think that a perfect God, a good God, would make sure that the world was perfect and lovely and peaceful. In order for that to be the case, he would have had to create beings with no choices to make; no real freedom. God gave us "minds of our own" so that when we come to Him, we are sincere. He didn't want robots. Why? It was His good pleasure.

One point I want to make is this: It's a common arguement from nonbelievers that a good God should not allow suffering. But that is a human arguement, seen through the eyes of a lifetime. A human life is short in light of eternity. Even the worst suffering in the world is, now hear me out, not that big of a deal. If we think in terms of this life being all there is, then, yeah, suffering can ruin our only chance at happiness. But suffering ends rather quickly, and then we have eternity; either in perfect joy or perfect torment. Is that fair? It's the way God made it, yes. And God does have a plan for that perfect world, free from suffering. He reserves that for those who did not deny him in this world. Again, is that fair? Yes.

Someone mentioned the unfairness of going to hell because you don't believe in something that has no evidence. There are plenty of books on the subject, but let me tell you the evidence weighs heavily in FAVOR of God. It takes alot more faith to believe in evolution and other scientific explainations. In part, the evidence is all around us. If you remove the stubborn biases and take an honest look, it's really hard to believe that everything in the universe just "happened" with no one at the helm.

I struggle with the "fairness" of hell. My mother does not believe. She is a good person. It tortures me that the world and satan have made it so difficult to believe the truth. It is all too easy to ignore God's existence. But who are we to say what is fair? We think our arguements have validity...we think we have the mental capacity to understand; to make sence of it all. We don't. We will never fully understand God's plan and purpose; His reasons. We must, by faith, accept some things without explainations that we can grasp. But when you take an honest look, it's hard to deny the truth. God is very real, He loves us very much, and all He asks is not much at all.

[Guest Blueblade]

Another Christian fallacy: Praying for people to get "saved".

If you can pray for people to get saved, that means that God could make them believers at his discretion. There are so many problems with this. If it is at his will, why doesn't he just make everyone a believer? If praying to him to save someone will make him save someone, does that mean that God only saves people who have other people praying for them? It's just so ridiculous.

This can only mean that God doesn't want everyone to be a believer, since if he did, he'd just make everyone a believer. Christians admit he can do this by "praying" for people's salvation. So the only explanation is that God wants to make it intentionally hard to "weed" out the people who don't "truly" love him. Which once again contradicts him wanting everyone to go to heaven.

Either that, or it's a fairy-tale with many holes and fallacies, with the intention of scaring people so that they could be controlled.

Praying for someone to get saved can only bring things into there life to steer them in the right direction. They will not be saved apart from their own decision to be saved. God can "make it happen" by making it hard to deny the truth, but He never saves unless we make the choice. He won't "make" us believers because he wants sincerity. Forcing someone to love you isn't really love at all.

[secondeve]

What I mean is that we do have horrible death and destruction that we have created on this earth, the millions of babies that have died the wars that have killed so many innocents, on and on. Without God, those people are dead and in hell, for hell are but the grave, eternal doom, the blackness of darkness forever.

If there is an earthquake, it is not anyone's fault. Nobody made the earthquake happen.

During the earthquake, a building collapses and a 6 month old baby is trapped and takes a day to die. In pain and agony. Broken bones. Starvation. Thirst.

The baby is innocent. God could have done so many things. he could have had the baby's mother take it for a walk. He could have had a beam fall strategically, forming a barrier to protect the baby till the rescuers came.

It's a hypothetical baby, but something like it has happened. In differing ways, in differing circumstances.

The point is that there is needless suffering of innocents. Caused by no-one. And not prevented by the omniscient, omnipotent God.

And. If ever I am before him. I will want him to explain it to me before he condemns me.

But don't you see Stewart, without God, that baby IS indeed in the death of hell, gone forever. With God, the baby has life, eternal life even with that earthquake. This earth today is only a tiny percentage of our life, and yes it does contain some suffering. But most of our life, the vast vast expanse of our time will not be spent on this earth, and neither will that baby, who is now with Christ.

This makes no sense to me. The baby couldn't have accepted Christ, and so it would go to Hell. At the very least, there was no reason to make it feel pain before it died; one swift blow to the head would've been kinder than agony.

But back to the point about Hell. Christians have said to me that babies don't go to hell, because the Bible says that God excercises judgement on who goes where, because he is Just. But the Bible also states that the only way into Heaven is by accepting Christ. This means one of two things: either the judgement verse is meant generally only, so babies and other innocents go to hell, or it is possible that God might excercise a similar judgement on behalf of an adult non-Christian and let them into Heaven, which means it's a lie that the only way to Heaven is by accepting Christ. Come to think of it, that verse is still a lie if he lets babies into Heaven. The point being, that's one whopping contradiction to me. Either God is cruel (and therefore unJust) and lets innocents burn in hell for eternity, or the Bible contradicts itself. I can't see any way around that.

Stew, have you ever read the Book of Job?

I've always found the Book of Job pretty terrible. There's just no good reason for why God torments him so - the man was devout. God should have had no need to prove himself to Satan, nor should he have needed to torment Job in order to find out whether he was truly pious if he actually was omnipotent. On top of that, this is essentially God killing innocents - Job's family - to prove a point to the devil. How is that either Just or Merciful?

[Guest Blueblade]

I'm not sure of the exact scripture, but I believe the Bible says that "babies", or anyone else unable to make the decision for Christ, will be saved. I assume that would be true of some mentally disabled people as well. Anyone who can validate or refute this, please do so.

Edited November 1, 2006 by Blueblade

[Guest Blueblade]

I've always found the Book of Job pretty terrible. There's just no good reason for why God torments him so - the man was devout. God should have had no need to prove himself to Satan, nor should he have needed to torment Job in order to find out whether he was truly pious if he actually was omnipotent. On top of that, this is essentially God killing innocents - Job's family - to prove a point to the devil. How is that either Just or Merciful?

God doesn't need to prove anything to satan. He can if He desires to, though. But I think the life of Job teaches us about faith, and maybe that's why God let it happen; not for the benefit of satan. God did not torment Job, btw, He merely allowed satan to. And as far as his suffering, and his family's suffering: no biggie, they are with God now.

[billie]

I've always found the Book of Job pretty terrible. There's just no good reason for why God torments him so - the man was devout. God should have had no need to prove himself to Satan, nor should he have needed to torment Job in order to find out whether he was truly pious if he actually was omnipotent. On top of that, this is essentially God killing innocents - Job's family - to prove a point to the devil. How is that either Just or Merciful?

Hi, Eve!

Actually, it's Satan who does the tormenting.

God wasn't proving Himself to Satan. He was proving Job's faith to Satan. He knew what Job would do. He wanted to show everyone else(Satan, Job, you, and me)what Job would do under all the pressure.

Again, Satan's the one who kills Job's children, not God. The book assures us that Job's children go to Heaven(or Abraham's Bosom, to be precise)by telling us Job offered sacrifices for them regularly.

Additionally, it tells us that Job was restored double everything that Satan took from him during this ordeal.

Love ya, Eve!

[billie]

I'm not sure of the exact scripture, but I believe the Bible says that "babies", or anyone else unable to make the decision for Christ, will be saved. I assume that would be true of some mentally disabled people as well. Anyone who can validate or refute this, please do so.

The place where most people get this idea from(which I totally agree with, by the way, seeing it's Scripturally sound)is the story of David's first son. David had committed adultry with Bathsheba, and she became pregnant. David had Bathsheba's husband killed and married Bathsheba. Because of this sin, God took David's baby. After the baby died, David doesn't mourn. His men ask him why. He tells them,"I will go to him. He shall not return to me."

[cjrose]

What would you say or do before the Supreme Judge who holds you accountable to His holy standards? Hypothetically?

I would probably be sobbing and on my knees begging for forgivness and permission to enter the gates of Heaven. That being said I am assuming you are speaking of our Father in Heaven, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.

I suggest more specifics.

[undone]

First, I apologize for all that have been attacked on this thread. Let's face it, one of the biggest problems in Christianity is that of theodicy.

I would encourage all of you to read Christian Theodicy in Light of Genesis and Modern Science.

The reason is that it provides a good reason as to why God has allowed evil to exist. It certainly is not an end all and the author (some of you will be familiar with Bill Dembski) is developing it into a book. However, I give you the article because I can answer questions on it and more importantly it gives a good foundation.

I would then encourage another article by him entitled The Reach of the Cross This is written in a speaking format (it was a sermon) but also explains why God allows for evil. You can read either first (the former is much shorter than the latter), but I encourage you to read both.

I sure hope some of the unbelievers participating in this thread take AK up on this. I am interested to see where he goes with it.

Edit: I've just read the first 10 pages of the first one. So far, it is very relevent to many of the posts that are within this thread. I've got to write a five page paper in the next two days so I'll have to get back to this later.

Edited November 1, 2006 by undone