The False Security of Certainty

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#42

Those who think the actions of the Sanhedrin are analogous to opposition to WO clearly do not understand either. I can believe you think that WO is a moral issue, even an important one, but to think it rises to the level of worst sin in the universe, that of creatures killing their Creator, shows how off the rails you are.

The use of this analogy shows an imbalance of the mind on this matter. Those two just do not come close. If God had said, DO WO, OR IT IS HELL FOR YOU OF THE WORST SORT!!! Well, I could see the point. But it is not even mentioned in scripture!

So, John, temperance is in order. You discredit yourselves by making this analogy.

#43

How could those that fulfilled roles in the events leading up to Jesus’ death have committed the worst sin in the universe when Jesus death was God’s plan all along?

Based on that logic, if they’d done the right thing and not sinned, then Jesus would not have died. And then there would be no Jesus-following movement and no birth of Christianity. Christianity would not have taken over the Roman Empire and we’d likely all be Pagans now.

Seems to me that Judas and Pilot and the Jewish leaders who banded up to stop Jesus played right into God’s will - did exactly what he wanted. According to the story and teachings of the church.

#44

Interesting comment.

The assumption is that God manipulated them in a sense to do his will. That they did their own will and did his at the same time, but his will to save the human race by the death of his son, does not lesson their guilt.

A deeper question is whether God manipulated Satan to kill Jesus through the Sanhedrin etc. Did the most impressive intelllect aside from God let himself get duped? Was he played?

Would God have killed his son himself if no one else would have been willing?

Or was Satan just following his own will, that will to be above all, and saw this as the way to do it? Kill the king, and the kingdom will be mine? Jesus is in my grasp, now’s my chance!

Jesus on the cross shows the utter absence of manipulation on God’s part. Why would anyone manipulate reality so that they could die on a cross? And if you COULD manipulate things, certainly that would not be something you would manipulate to happen. If you could manipulate, you would even make salvation available through some other means.

No, the cross was Satan’s idea, and he carried out his plan. That God took advantage of his actions to save the world does not lessen his guilt, or the guilt of those he used to effect his end.

#45

That’s not my assumption. I believe in free will.

Who has guilt? Pilot? Jesus didn’t deny the accusation that he had claimed to be the King of the Jews, a crime against the state, and so Pilot responded with the standard punishment. I have read that from the Roman POV, all Jesus likely had do to was say that he didn’t claim to be the King of the Jews and Pilot would probably have let him go, as Pilot had no interest in Jesus religeous teachings.

Does it matter how he ended up before Pilot to face this accusation?

I don’t think that’s a deep quesiton at all, but a non-starter. If God can manipulate Satan, then the entire Great Controversy is a fallacy. We must all have free will, including all of the heavenly beings, or there is no point in what the church teaches, that we are here so that all beings in the universe can see what sin causes and how fair God is and so on and so on.

Well that’s just the point. Christians teach that the OT points to a Messiah that would die for our sins, that this was the plan that God and Jesus came up with as a solution for sin. In order for the plan to work, it seems God depended on the players in the plan to do what they did.

Just as Assyria was the rod of God’s anger against Israel in Isiah 10:

Ah, Assyria, the rod of my anger—
the club in their hands is my fury!
Against a godless nation [Israel] I send him,
and against the people of my wrath I command him,
to take spoil and seize plunder,
and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.

Similarly, the Romans were God’s tool in the story of Jesus’ death.

The Assyrians were not chastised in the bible for attacking Israel. Neither were the Romans, who executed Jesus for crimes against the state. Both did the will of God as revealed in the bible.

Satan didn’t kill Jesus. The bible teaches he was not allowed to raise a finger against him, but could only tempt him directly.

I never wrote that God manipulated anyone, nor to I believe that to be the case. The church teaches that God and Jesus came up with this plan, that Jesus must die for sins. I don’t really think it mattered how he died, and the Cross was just a favorite Roman tool of terror.

Well I don’t know. I’m not God. The church teaches that Jesus’ death was required for salvation. I’m not sure I have ever really understood how that works, as it doesn’t really make sense to me. But that is generally the position of Christianity. Not just that he did die, but that he had to die. That is what I was taught.

The specific method of Jesus’ death is irrelevant. It doesn’t make any sense to suggest that Satan was involved in God’s plan for salvation, unless he’s just a really good sport or something. If Satan understood that Jesus’ death was the key to his defeat (which seems the case given the NT account) then he’d have done everything he could do to stop it.

That is, assuming he could manipulate people to do his will, which I don’t accept any more than I think God manipulates people to do His will.

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#46

Of course this is your opinion only… Well, you and some others. Certainly it’s not a universal opinion nor is it necessarily a correct opinion. It’s simply an opinion that’s open to question. Those who have not learned to question are also those who are self-deceived.

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#47

Hmmmm… Alan, I am shocked at how off the rails you are on this one. To deny another person their conscience before God is a sin. Sin, by its very nature, is an act of killing the Creator of the universe. This fact is not disputable.

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#48

It would be easy to conclude from your statement that Jesus’s death was directly a result of the combined actions of the political and religious regimes of His time (or as you put it “Satan’s idea”) and that as an aside or an unexpected gift, God was presented with a convenient situation in which He could apply a theological application of a salvation story that was too tempting for Him to pass up. Is this how you see it?

#49

For some strange reason, He only said “DO MO,” (yes, male ordination only!)
And the Biblical proof is right here: Galatians 3: 31. And I think that there is another verse that is clearly conclusive on this as well: Titus 3:16.

Therefore, I rest my case.

#50

You are right again!!!

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#51

Exactly! Who can deny the truth contained in those verses? Headship has just been proven, its authority comes from those two verses very clearly. I finally get it, and I am glad I found the headshipers’ main source of support for their solid belief. :+1: :+1:

Edit:

And I just found another interesting one, where is says that discriminating against women is not only allowed, but expected from all male Christians. Here: “Two” Corinthians 6:23. (But only in the NIV!)

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#52

Yes. The NIV captures it so succinctly and yet…poetically!

TW :bearded_person: is vindicated!

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#53

I always suspected that Kevin Paulson had a Biblical foundation for his defense of headship. And sure enough! I finally found it, the secret is now unsealed!

Now I have to search for the foundation of LGT. There must be one as well. Let’s look for it! There is certainly hope! :wink:

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#54

Gee, I wished I had a fine the-illogical edgecashun like yew, George! :nerd_face:

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#55

Really, though, I don’t think Adventist doctrine is wrong so much as naively literal, and stubbornly certain.

It could develop and expand rapidly if Adventists had the faith to let go a bit.

But that’s the thing, when you’re dealing with a violent, dangerous God, you don’t dare mess with creativity—it could get you killed—literally.

(See the Leah Remini A&E program on Jehovah’s Witnesses—so many parallels to Adventism.)

If Adventists could get free enough to be creative, you’d be a wonder,

The world would beat a path to your door step.

You wouldn’t have to worry about hiring expensive PR firms and fiddle with branding and trademarks and lawsuits…and compliance committees…

Everything depends on our view of God.

#56

…and when everyone’s view of God is different, it creates animosity and the result is chaos. (different kind of Kaos, @GeorgeTichy)

Well, maybe more than chaos… bloody war, bloody, bloody war.

This is our world today.

I do not think the answer is for everyone to have “unity” on their view of God. I don’t even think that everyone in the Seventh-day Adventist church should be required to see the same view of God.

God is an Elephant. Just because you see one small part of Her, it doesn’t mean that you control the picture.

"It was six men of Indostan, to learning much inclined,
who went to see the elephant (Though all of them were blind),
that each by observation, might satisfy his mind…
…
…And so these men of Indostan, disputed loud and long,
each in his own opinion, exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right, and all were in the wrong!

So, oft in theologic wars, the disputants, I ween,
tread on in utter ignorance, of what each other mean,
and prate about the elephant, not one of them has seen!" John Saxe

God is an Elephant. Full disclosure-- it is a parable that helps me understand that I fully don’t understand…

I’m not willing to take the easy path and waste my life. I have no doubt that Love is everything that it is cracked up to be. I’m willing to risk everything to know more of God.

1 Like
#57

The reason I brought up manipulation is you seem to feel that since it was God’s plan to “sacrifice” his son, he had to get someone to do it.

I, too, believe in free will.

Did Pilate kill him? Pilate tried to spare him, but acquiesced to the Jewish demand for his death. He even came out and announced, “I find no fault in him.” And this after Jesus said he was a kind of king. (See John 19). Plate was forced, and for political reasons, gave in.

The Sanhedrin, OTOH, very much wanted Jesus dead. And so forced the issue in spite of Pilate.

You mention free will, and that Satan and all of us have it. I agree, so why the issue with how Jesus was killed? They freely did it. A simple reading of the gospels shows that Jesus was under threat from the very beginning. Herod, the people of Galilee, the Nazerites, etc. all tried to kill him. In a way, God had all kinds of volunteers lining up!

Rereading your post, it seems what concerns you is that God would hold the perpetrators responsible if it was his will that Jesus die. Is that it?

That is why I spoke of manipulation. I think they are responsible. How could that not be, especially since you don’t agree with manipulation, as I do as well?

Since we are free, and responsible for our own actions, I can’t see how the Sanhedrin did not commit the greatest sin, and that Satan was behind it pushing it. This in spite of the fact that God used it to provide for humanity. There was no manipulation.

We do not know the mind of Satan except as it is revealed in his actions and what the Bible says, an unfriendly source. But from the temptations it seems he wanted to get Jesus to deviate from the plan he had come to fulfill. In other words to abandon his mission. I think that was his plan all along, that is to become in reality the ruler of this world, not as it was then, with God over him, but completely independent of God. He would then rule here for eternity, God haveing failed to dislodge him. Killing him after that would have put in jeopardy God’s rule over the univese. There would always be a question of the legitimacy of Satan’s accusations. I

So, Satan’s goal was merely to get Christ to deviate form the plan laid from the foundation fo the world. It may not even have been his plan to kill Christ, but just push him to the limit so that he decided the world was not worth the trouble. He may have unintentionally crossed the line to killing him, even by mistake. So I don’t see Satan cooperating with God. He had an agenda that involved getting complete control over the world, and this was his one chance, It was do or die. Fortunately for us it was die.

#58

Interesting way to put it!

I think that in all these happenings those involved freely did as they wished. Now sin is a type of slavery, we become slaves to it as we continue to indulge, and sin drives its adherents to ends they might not have foreseen at the beginning. I think that was the way it was with Satan. He did not think he would go so far as to kill God, but in the end, that is what happened, and he freely did it. Alcoholics are responasible when they kill someone, even if they did not intend to do it when they took the first drink.

If we are free to do as we wish, then our actions are ours, even if we do not foresee the consequences.

Did God “take advantage”? You could look at it that way. Was Judas, then, responsible for the plan of salvation? Should we thank him for betraying Christ so that we might live? Jesus said that it would have been better if he had not been born. So, I don’t see it quite that way.

I see it this way. Christ would die, because in the end, Satan would do it. None of us, such as the Sanhedrin, and Judas or Pilate needed to be a part. God even sent a dream to Pilate, to convince him to have nothing to do with Jesus. He could have refused to cooperate with the Jews, and Jesus would have died in another fashion, or some other way. God was trying to keep him from terrible sin, but Pilate did not have the courage to stand. Pilate would not take the advice sent by God himself in a supernatural way. Politics was too important. So, he, too, became partly responsible for the death of Jesus.

#59

Clever, George.

MO is not done by command, but by example. That is Jesus and Paul both did it, so we may as well.

However, as you again have failed to provide a text commanding WO, I need not comment about that issue.

#60

Has TW set up some goon squads that I am not aware of? Usually when someone disagrees with the group, they decide they no longer wish to stay. Happens all the time. No hit man necessary.

And I don’t know about you, I server a very loving God, who only abandons those that refuse his help.

Really? I see two wats to look at theis.

  1. Jesus was most creative af all, and he did die.
  2. Those who invent theology may for a time receive accolades and many followers, but in the end mostly it collapses. Scientology comes to mind.

SDA’s do not need some gimmick. (And by the way, the church is growing pretty well, thank you.) Certainty and truth are enough. ( I said that to poke you, but there is some truth to it. The certainty you so disdain actually gives people assurance. Those that are uncertain cannot give succor in these troubled times. What matters really is whether you are telling the truth or not.)

But as we are struggling with today, “What is truth?”

#61

Yes Allen, you can skip commenting about that issue.