Subject: I just started reading the Bible and.... |
Bible Note: Pete, Sorry for the interruption, I exceeded the maximum characters. Here is the rest of my letter: You also asked, "why didn't God kill Lucifer way back in time before all of this mess began?" This goes back to the beginning of God's plan, and why did God, who knows the end from the beginning, ever create Lucifer in the first place? (?!) A parallel question would be, Why did God even put that tree in the midst of the garden if Adam and Eve were not to eat of it? Again, God knew beforehand exactly what would happen. These questions lead up to this: "Why did God even give us the Freedom of Choice? Without the alternatives I just mentioned, would there be a Choice? Could we possibly choose not to sin if sin did not exist, and therefore there was no temptation? Could we ever make a valid decision for ourselves? The answer is quite simple to understand, If there was no choice, there would be no true Love. We would be as robots. God could have made us into holograms that walk around saying, "I love You" all day long, (but I think you get my point.) You also stated, "The Mosaic law of not killing applies to everyone, so to use the argument that we are no longer under the law is baffling." Yes, baffling is a good word here. But Sometimes the laws are broken for the greater good, such as putting a murderer to death. I always try to remember that God is sovereign, He created life, and it is up to Him to decide if a certain life should continue or not. What we look at as a horrible tragedy might be a good thing in the big picture of God bringing His will to us. This is hard, I know, but His ways are higher than our ways. (Isa 55:9) On the other hand, being no longer under the law, I was referring to Jesus' 2 greatest commands. As Jesus said, If ye love me, keep my commandments. (John 14:15) There is no way we can keep the commands of Jesus and break one of the ten commandments at the same time. You mentioned your quote about Mark 10:21, "sell all that you have, give to the poor, follow him" and then you comment, "He died for all of humanity but only the Jews need to sell everything they own" This, again, needs to be looked at in context, what is God's purpose for that line being in the Bible. If we each interpret this passage on our own, well then we end up with as many interpretations as we have readers. God's Word is much more truthful than that. The context of this verse is a person coming to Jesus with a question: And a certain ruler asked him, saying, Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? (Luke 18:18) Jesus responded as He did, because the man was asking what he could DO to inherit eternal life. Do you get this? There is nothing that we can DO to inherit eternal life, so Jesus gave this ruler something to do that Jesus knew was beyond his capabilities. That salvation by works is something that is beyond human capabilities is the message that Jesus is teaching to us all in these words. And also, any time we take Jesus words at face value, we are likely to interpret Him falsely, this is intentional, our Lord explains in Matt 13:15: For the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, And their eyes they have closed, Lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, Lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, So that I should heal them.' I hope that many of your questions are sufficiently addressed, the ones that are not, are solved by using many of the same principles. Notice how I keep referring back to the Gospel of Matthew? May God continue to Bless you in your studies, keliy I have written this letter longer than I should, because I didn’t have the time to make it shorter. -Pascal |