How Can God Kill And Still Love?
Mike,
I want to tell you what a blessing you and the iswasandwllbe site are to me. The truths that you see in the word of God constantly amaze me. I pray frequently that the Lord will open my eyes to see the truths hidden in His Word. It seems to be a slow process. As I look back on things I didn’t understand, but now do, such as where the dead are, the trinity, eternal hell, the meaning of Christ living in you, I realize one part of me wasn’t buying what I was being taught, but I couldn’t prove it otherwise. I now know I can show somebody specific scriptures to prove what I believe, whether they see it or not.
I have always been a very physically oriented person which has also included my understanding of the bible. I am just now beginning to see that Christ’s words are spirit and not just physical. I have begun to read to my daughter the bible story books you gave me from the worldwide church. I have to edit them as I’m reading because of the error in them. They start out in Genesis with the creation story stating that Lucifer was created a perfect angel but fell taking a third of the angels with him. causing a rebellion and destruction with God having to rebuild the earth, I know you have heard this theory before. As I get to the story of Noah and the flood my daughter begins to ask me questions that I am ill equipped to answer. They are the same type of questions that have come up in the last few months in discussions with my wife or with my brother in law and sister- in- law. And to be truthful these are things that have bothered me and have made me have doubts about Gods love and my (no doubt carnal reasoning about His ways). Here is where I need help in my understanding. Some examples: from my daughter “Daddy, why did God make so many people and then kill them in the flood; doesn’t He love them? Will He kill me too”? From my wife after watching the movie Slumdog Millionaire and seeing orphans eyes burned out to make them more efficient beggars “How can God allow that”? (she understands God’s sovereignty). From my sister in law “How can Jesus say to love your enemies in the new testament and have men women and children slaughtered in the old testament”? “What about the verses in the bible where God says follow my ways and I will protect you”. Mike, I don’t know how to answer these things. I have prayed for answers or direction. What answers do you have that are simple and understandable to people that may not be given to understand the mysteries of the Kingdom? People can understand that Jesus died for their sins; how can they (I) understand His contradictory killing loving ways?Thank you for your listening ear,
K____
Hi K____,
Thank you for your encouraging words. I am always grateful when anyone tells me they have been edified by what is on IWWB. I am especially encouraged that you are becoming your daughter’s spiritual leader. You will never regret a minute of the time you spend with your family in God’s word. I’m also pleased that you are able to detect and weed out all the false doctrines which are in those WWCG Bible Stories.
Thank you, too, for your question concerning why God seems to hate His enemies in the Old Testament and then tells us to love our enemies in the New Testament?
You ask me:
What answers do you have that are simple and understandable to people that may not be given to understand the mysteries of the Kingdom?
I think you already know that if “it is not given to them to understand the mysteries of the kingdom of God,” then there is no “simple and understandable” way to answer any of the questions they pose.
God’s answer to your question for those who are given to understand, is “the flesh profits nothing, the words that I speak unto you they are spirit and they are life.” As far as those who think that the flesh does profit something, there will never be an answer to any of the questions you pose in this e- mail.
Orthodoxy has most of mankind going to an eternal hell- fire simply because they were created and born in sin.
Psa 51:5 Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.
No one “in Adam” asked to be “shapen in iniquity, or conceived in sin.” That was all the work of the great Potter whose hands do the shaping of every man who has ever been born, including the men who put out children’s eyes so they can be more effective beggars.
Jer 18:4 And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it.
All flesh of all men “He made of clay” is “marred in the hand of the Potter.” So how can a loving Father consign to eternal, literal fire in hell, the weak marred flesh which He has so made.
Rom 7:17 Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
Rom 7:18 For I know that in me ( that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but [ how] to perform that which is good I find not.
Rom 7:19 For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.
Rom 7:20 Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
Twice Paul affirms “It is no more I that do it [ sin], but sin that dwells in me.” If Paul and you and I and all of mankind, are not the ones who sin, then why would a loving heavenly Father consign anyone to eternal hell fire?
Well, we both know that he does no such thing, and yet all orthodoxy simply shifts the blame for their horrendous and monstrous false doctrine of eternal torment over onto the poor, helpless piece of clay who was deliberately “marred in the Potter’s hand,” and “shapen in iniquity and conceived in sin,” and tells us that we have been given free will by an all knowing, all powerful God who could have prevented all of this by not giving us a free will.
My flesh cannot understand the need for the pain and misery which has been endured by the waves of humanity which have come and gone over six thousand years of mankind’s history since the first Adam. In the not too distant past, just like your daughter, your wife and your brother and sister- in- law, I too questioned God’s love. But God was merciful and did not harden my heart against Himself. He showed me that “the vessel of clay that was in the Potter’s hand” is the “flesh which profits nothing,” and is even now in the process of being “made again, a new vessel as seems good to the Potter to make it… raised a spiritual body.”
1Co 15:44 It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.
1Co 15:45 And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam [ was made] a quickening spirit.
1Co 15:46 Howbeit that was] not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual.
1Co 15:47 The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven.
“The second man is the Lord from heaven.” We become “the Lord from heaven” in Christ. That is the fate of all men in the long run. In the mean time we must all live in the flesh, which flesh, we are told, “profits nothing.”
If the flesh “profits nothing,” then its destruction is a good thing, because its death is predestined and certain. In spirit of all the false doctrines to the contrary, there is no such thing as “spiritual flesh,” except as the flesh is contrasted with stone to be made a type of the spirit.
Eze 36:26 A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.
Eze 36:27 And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do [ them].
A new heart and a new spirit will replace a heart of stone. The “heart of flesh” means “I will put my spirit within you…” It does not mean there is any such thing as the false orthodox doctrine of an unscriptural body of “spiritual flesh.” Christ told Nicodemus it would never be so:
Joh 3:6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
So if it were not for the last part of that verse in Jer 18:4, “So He made it again, a new vessel, as the Potter saw fit to make it,” then I would have to agree with your daughter, wife and in laws, that yes God seems to be contradicting Himself when He tells the nation of ancient Israel to “destroy every thing that breatheth.” But God is not sending any one to eternal hell fire. He is in the process of saving all who are “in Adam,” and He is doing it in the same manner in which He placed us all “in Adam.”
1Co 15:22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Chris t shall all be made alive.
1Co 15:23 But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming.
1Co 15:24 Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power.
“The end” is the fruit that is brought in at “the end of the year.”
Exo 34:22 And thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, of the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the year’s end.
Exo 34:23 Thrice in the year shall all your men children appear before the Lord GOD, the God of Israel.
The yearly cycle of harvests are God’s symbol of how He is saving all men of all time. It is a three harvest process, based on the barley harvest in the spring, the wheat harvest in the summer, and the grape harvest “at the year’s end.” “Then comes the [ year’s] end.” That is when “all in Adam while be raised and given life.
Christ is the barley harvest, His firstfruits are fifty days later at Pentecost, and all the rest of mankind is “the end… at the feast of ingathering at the years end.”
Christ explains to us that “The flesh profits nothing,” but to demonstrate its own futility and weakness, all the atrocities which are manifested daily before our very eyes, serve only to demonstrate that if God really does love all mankind, then it is incumbent upon Him to “destroy every thing that breaths,” because if He does not do so, then this suffering of flesh at the hands of flesh will never end. It is a “marred vessel,” designed for destruction, and intended to be resurrected in “that which is spiritual.” Only then there will ever be an end to all of this suffering, and yet mankind recoils at the end of all flesh, because mankind values the flesh above the spirit.
Why has He permitted this so long? Why has He permitted it at all? I hate to have to be the one who gives you God’s answer, but that is what I have been given to do. It will not appeal to “people who do not understand the mysteries of the kingdom of God,” but it is the truth, and it is God’s own answer:
Rom 9:16 So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but [ it is] of God that sheweth mercy.
Rom 9:17 For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth.
Rom 9:18 Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.
Rom 9:19 Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?
Rom 9:20 Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?
Rom 9:21 Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?
Rom 9:22 What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction:
Rom 9:23 And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory,
Where is the fabled “free will” which puts the onus on the poor creature in any of those inspired words? Of course it’s not there because “God is working all things after the counsel of His own will.”
Eph 1:11 In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will:
… and as Paul rhetorically poses the question above, no one can resist His will:
2Ch 20:6 And said, O LORD God of our fathers, art not thou God in heaven? and rulest not thou over all the kingdoms of the heathen? and in thine hand is there not power and might, so that none is able to withstand thee?
“It is not of him that wills, but it is of God who either shows mercy or hardens our hearts… none is able to withstand Him.”
That is the doctrine of scripture from Genesis to Revelation. I hope you can see and simply accept the fact that when it is not given to them to understand the mysteries of the kingdom of God, there is nothing we can do to reverse that fact.
Your brother in Christ,
Mike
Other related posts
- Will Satan And His Angels Be Saved? (March 28, 2009)
- Why Was Israel Given Both Sin And Trespass Offerings? (July 1, 2008)
- Why Was Eve Deceived but Not Adam? (July 21, 2014)
- Who Was Cains Wife? (May 23, 2011)
- Who Is My Brother? (October 5, 2008)
- Where Did Cain Find His Wife? (March 6, 2008)
- Was Adam Made Subject To Vanity? (May 26, 2005)
- Was "The First Man Adam" Made In God's Image? (August 17, 2017)
- The Trespass Offering (September 1, 2010)
- Names In Scripture (October 6, 2008)
- Mortal Adam And The Two Trees In Eden (April 20, 2005)
- Made In His Image (April 18, 2005)
- How Can God Kill And Still Love? (April 21, 2009)
- Four Stages Of Mans Free Will (November 7, 2008)
- Foundational Themes in Genesis – Study 19 (October 4, 2013)
- Foundational Themes in Genesis – Study 15 (September 20, 2013)
- Ecclesiastes 3:1-11 "To Every Thing There Is A Season, and A Time To Every Purpose Under The Heaven" (August 19, 2013)
- Did God Give Adam Dominion Over His Flesh? (November 21, 2015)
- Can Mankind Love God Without Free Will? (March 28, 2008)
- Are We All Failures? (November 18, 2009)
- Are The Seraphim Evil Spirits? (June 3, 2009)