Subject: Studying O.T. is creating problems. |
Bible Note: Dear Free Thinker, You sound so angry. This is not a debate and it is not exactly what you imagine. God loves you and Jesus His Son died for you.I cannot defend God, He is able to defend Himself. I will try to explain better and you do with it what you will. In order for mankind to have a free will...he had to be able to freely choose. Otherwise mankind would be robot-like and God apparently wanted more for us. It is not a matter of good deeds/bad deeds. And in fact our good deeds, even if they outweigh our bad deeds, do not fix our problem. The inherited twisted, sin-loving nature is the problem that we inherited. It is not like well, our Daddy murdered someone and we are taking the blame for his actions. It is a matter of an apple tree only naturally bears apples (unless we unnaturally graft in the bough of a pear tree). So, humans can only be made up of a nature that delights in sin because that is the ingredients we are made of. We still have a free will, but we do not have a remedy for our ingredients. You know, originally Eve fell for the libelous lie of the Devil who accused God of withholding something good from her and if she ate of that which God was withholding, she would be a threat to God and be as knowledgable as He was. (Gen. 3:4-5). Be careful you are not falling for the same kind of lie. God, the Father could have destroyed the initial couple and started all over again but He chose to redeem us all. He redeemed us at a great deal of cost to Himself...His only begotten Son. I don't know if you are a person who is married and has children but if you are or if you have any understanding of the nature of little children, you would know that they are consciously quite innocent even though they may do some really outrageous things. That is what often endears us to them. They love to say "no" to everything we tell them, they lie about the candy with chocolate all over their faces, they take everything in sight and think they are entitled to it all. Yet, all these little antics are wrong...we are twisted, perverted, from the beginning. It is our sin nature appearing as soon as we are able to do independent acts. As soon as we know what sin or evil is, that does not stop us. We actually get worse. This is not because of something an ancestor did. It is our own doing. We can choose not to do these acts, but by the time we can make that choice we find we have already done wrong and even though we make that choice, we can not hold to it perfectly. So, in the end, we are responsible...no longer Adam and Eve. Rom. 3:10-18). And Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth and the light. No one comes to the Father but through Me." (John 14:6)Like it or not, understand it or not, Jesus is it...the one and only remedy. We can choose to take it or leave it because our free will still remains intact. There are answers to all of your questions in the Bible if you would only read it with an open mind and ask the Holy Spirit to open your understanding. In His Word God tells us that we will find Him if we seek Him with our whole heart. If you really want the truth, God will not withhold it from you, but if you like a good argument you will forever be arguing never coming to a place of settled satisfaction. Concerning the episode with Noah getting drunk after the flood. This is just my thoughts and observations because the Bible in NO WAY SAYS what I am about to give you as food for thought but these are my thoughts because I know the Lord and I have pondered this particular question with my personal understanding of my Savior and so these are some of the conclusions that I have come to on this topic in my own mind. I believe that the earth had a different atmosphere before the flood. We can tell from what the Bible tells us that mankind originally was vegetarian and the Bible tells us that mankind also lived a longer life. I believe that the earth had a different atmosphere and that the produce of the ground had more nutrients prior to the flood. And so, after the flood there may have been changes in the atmosphere and changes in the nutrients of the vegetation and so mankind's life was shorter and now it was necessary to eat meat also to obtain enough protien to sustain healthy life. There is no sense that God was upset with Noah for getting drunk, neither is there any sense that Noah did this on purpose. It is quite possible that fermentation was not possible prior to the flood.It may never have rained previoiusly but was watered by a mist (Gen.2:6). We do not come to God by our understanding; we come to Him by faith and He will then give us understanding. He does not condemn us, we will condemn ourselves. Seek Him with your whole heart and you WILL FIND HIM. Sincerely, Itiswritten |