Putney Swope

A lot would depend on timing. If this god-like creature had approached me when my boy was 16, then I would have done it in a New York minute.
Now that my son is well past that ungodly age, I'd tell that god-like creature to go peddle his wares elsewhere.

Heaven couldn't be all that great if god has to market it.

7thangel

The problem is who is the God you are speaking about, the false god or the true God? Because when we speak of the true God, there are implications about the godhead of the God in the question. When we speak of the true God, he would not command such without any very good reason. As a believer of the concept that it is God who makes our whole being, and predestines whom to be good and whom to be evil, and have the power to resurrect them who are dead, such representation of God is mere product of ignorance and bias. Please, before you call others lunatic, mentally ill, etc, do not expect a good answer from a stupid question.

JEST2ASK

(I had posted)
Most believers I have encountered basically seem to say whatever God says to do is right because it is God saying so. That is one reason they will not acknowledge that God & the Bible are contradictory. You (me) only think it is contradictory because you are not being led by the spirit.

(e.g.) Don't question God he is not to be put to the test ..... Yet Judges 6 : 34 - 40 has Gideon doing just that not once but twice/

Not sure if this is polite but 7thangel your posts seems to be an illustration of what I posted earlier.
especially **When we speak of the true God, he would not command such without any very good reason.***

August Spies

I don't think that I woudl believe that this person or being was a supreme god either.

oh come on, if GOD came down and wanted to tell you a new commandment he would be able to make you believe it was him.

What would you do if you somehow KNEW this was god, I think thats more interesting.

long winded fool

I don't see how the passages you've illustrated are contradictions. What if your dad says, "Don't question your father, he is not to be put to the test!" And then later you do question him and put him to the test and he decides to humor you and do nothing about it. He didn't contradict himself. You just disobeyed him and got away with it. There seems to be alot of that in the Bible.

The only knowledge any of us has of "God" is through the Bible. Any being which contradicted the Bible could not be the God described in the Bible, therefore wouldn't be God in the traditional sense. If God is omniscient then he can't make a mistake. Therefore how could he tell you to break one of His own commandments? This couldn't possibly be the God of the Bible.

I don't know how I would KNOW that an entity which claims to be God is God. However there is an easy way to know that he is NOT God. As soon as he does something ungodly. How do we know what "ungodly" is? Check the place where we get the concept of God from. Anytime he commands you to break a law that the God of the Bible told you never to break, then the entity is a serpent, whatever it looks like or claims to be.

malookiemaloo

This raises a number of difficult issues the least not being that God coninually asks people to do things they don't want to do. Just read how many times Moses at the burning bush tried to wriggle out of confronting Pharoah and leading the people out of Egypt. It is easy to say that we would always obey God-the reality is that we resist. Unless it sits easy with us or falls in with our plans.

However I agree with a number of other contributors who make the point that God would never ask anyone to do anything which is against his word. All which makes the Abraham/Isaac story quite difficult to understand.

However, there is a difference between killing a first born son and sacrificing him. For example, imagine you control the points at a railway junction. Your son wanders off and you see him playing on the rails. A train is coming. You have time to change the points or saving your son. You cannot do both. If you save your son the train crashes and kills hundreds of people. You change the points, the train passes through safely, but your son dies. You have not killed him but sacrificied him.



Alistair

Philosoft

What is a "good reason"? Is it good from our perspective or good from God's? This is important because the two perspectives don't always agree about what is "good."
Well, I don't agree that it's a stupid question because I don't think your explanation suffices. You are stuck with a nebulous definition of "good" - it's either an objective standard that God is bound to or a label arbitrarily assigned by God.

VivaHedone

I would ask 'god' to logically justify his position. Religions just take god's word that he is omnipotent and omniscient, with no proof of whether he is a good god, and telling the truth, or a bad god who is lying. A good god has no right to expect us to obey him unless he can justify his philosophy, as this is the only possible way we can know whether he is good and wise.

7thangel

Philosoft said: What is a "good reason"? Is it good from our perspective or good from God's? This is important because the two perspectives don't always agree about what is "good."

There is not only one instance where a life was required to be offered in the Bible. And here is the reason why:

God saved us according to predestination. Predestination teaches that all things come into being because of God’s purpose. That it is God who created good and evil to exist so that man can know His godhead, of his salvation through predestination. It also God who predestines men to be good, or to be evil. The doctrine of predestination liken us unto the computer in a computer-inventor relationship, in which, God is the inventor. And that in such like relationship, our value is dependent to God, like the value of the computer is dependent to the inventor. Abraham had this faith. Thus he had strength to offer Isaac. Experiencing that as God brought up Isaac from a barren and old woman, God could also be able to resurrect Isaac from the dead. On that belief he was justified for having the right faith about God.

Jephthah, on the other hand, having a thought that he could “please” God, swore with pride that he will offer anyone who will come out of the door of his house to meet him if God will make him victorious in the war. But, as I said before, our relationship to God is like a computer-inventor relationship, in which as the computer cannot please the inventor, and that the only way the inventor will be pleased of the computer is according to the inventor’s purpose on the computer. Likewise, God can only be pleased in us according to His purpose. And to show that it is not Jephthah who pleased God to win in the war but because of his purpose that Israel might exist until the coming of Christ, He put Jephthah’s daughter to be offered as burnt offering. Jephthah is sure that he had been dealing with God because of the miracles in his life, and realizing his mistake, he accepted the chastisement, fully knowing that God can be able to resurrect his daughter even unto eternal life.

All these things happen for us to know the godhead because we need to experience them to know them. The same reason when Christ came to be sacrificed in the cross. He himself said that God can send angels to fight against his enemies, but why does he need to suffer death? Because through his dearth and suffering we will understand more perfectly that our salvation is about predestination. That God is letting all things happen for us to know our salvation about predestination; that we do not have anything to do of our salvation.

One thing though, that it is the chosen who will only benefit in such a demonstration of godhead. The chosen are the only one’s who will come to understand, according to God’s predestination itself.

Philosoft said: Well, I don't agree that it's a stupid question because I don't think your explanation suffices. You are stuck with a nebulous definition of "good" - it's either an objective standard that God is bound to or a label arbitrarily assigned by God.

You see, the question begs of what really are the implications of being a true God. You have your own presuppositions of a stupid God, and you want us to contradict when we know ourselves that it is stupid. On the other hand, there are theists who understand the godhead where you drew your understanding of the godhead. I guess, for that I owe you my sincere apology.

malookiemaloo

The problem about questioning God is that we end up thinking that we know better than Him.

We then end up like the people who stood at the cross and said 'If you are the Son of God come down'.


Alistair