The Glade 4.0

No, Beryllin, he has not argued that God cannot do anything, nor have I seen any argument that God hasn't "punished" nations in the past.

As far as the rest of the quote:



Never have I seen anyone argue that anything is not your opinion. I thought that didn't need to be addressed. /shrug

I'll just point out the glaringly obvious here, Beryllin:

If you are arguing one thing, and you believe someone else is arguing something different why not point that out plainly, clearly and concisely, rather than continuing on when you believe you are arguing about two different things?

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Wouldn't you think that something as important as incuring the wrath of God at a nation level (were it still a risk) be included in the Bible?

Since God could place the NT pretty much any time he wished, and had a pretty specific amount of "silent years" between the OT and the NT, the fact that he chose to pick a time when nations weren't doing a whole lot in the way of being destroyed speaks volumes.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

That's quite true; I don't know what I was thinking there, other than that Jonah came up yesterday at Sunday School and I may have crossed some mental wires.



Vindicarre already addressed the absurdity of this better than I could have. You didn't tie your post together in any cohesive whole, you didn't address my arguments, and several parts of your post were simply irrelevant or addressed points on which we already agree as if we didn't agree. It would seem you are unable to understand what my argument is and therefore have decided to address the same stock argument that I've heard as a strawman from so many other evangelicals; in fact I recall hearing these things back when I was an evangelical and thinking "something isn't right about that" at the time. I remain quite thankful that I didn't buy into this sort of thing, and I find it rather sad that people of obviously great faith can be so deeply rooted in their assumptions that they can't even tell they are making them.



No it isn't. A nation being destroyed is not necessarily evidence of God punishing them; I see no prophetic warning about the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 to compare with that of the warnings of the OT - disregarding of course that Jerusalem is not a nation.

Lots of nations have been destroyed in the interveneing 2000 years. Are you going to argue that the mere fact of them being destroyed is evidence that God punished them? That's a circular argument.

I haven't argued that God can't do anything. He can turn the entire world into Norrath if He wants right down to the respawn points. He, however, clearly does not do everything that He conceivably could.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I like to believe that He has better taste than to place us in Kelethin and Neriak. To include those designs would, I think, disprove the idea of a just and loving God.

I never had any problem with Neriak. Kelethin, on the other hand, was so horrendous that it demanded and answer as to why THAT wasn't an evil city.

Still, you illustrate the "can do" vs. "will do" point perfectly.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Some would argue that Christ did speak to the future destruction of Jerusalem, as recorded in several places, such as when He spoke of the total destruction of the temple, and the Romans did that very thing in AD 70:

Matthew 13: 1-2,

So we agree that God can destroy nations. We seemingly agree that God has done so in the past, to nations that have gone their own way and ignored what God has to say. The sticking point seems to be your belief that God no longer does that because we live in the age of grace. I'll try to address that.

First, salvation has always been by grace, through faith. "Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness." The age of Law really did not lead to salvation, since no one could ever possibly keep the whole of the law perfectly throughout their entire life, and that is the standard that God has for us to gain salvation by our own merits. So from Adam to the present day, salvation comes by grace, through faith.

That said, God declares some things to be sin, and He punishes sin. He has since the days of Adam and continues to do so today. For those who are saved by grace through faith, punishment for sin is still on the table, because punishment does not need to equate to loss of salvation. For instance, gluttony: You can be saved by grace through faith, yet eat too much, clog your arteries, and die at 47, rather than live a full life into your senior years and die peacefully in your bed at 98. Even if you want to argue that is not a punishment from God, certainly God allowed the consequences of sin to travel to their conclusion.

This same sort of explanation applies to nations, because God has recorded examples for us, for our instruction. It is recorded that God has struck down individuals because of sin, and it is recorded that God has struck down nations because of sin. When He brought His people out of Egypt into the promised land, He used the Israelites to destroy the inhabitants of the land. When David sinned with a census, God struck the nation with a pestilence and many Israelites died. Later, God sent His prophets to Israel to tell them to repent of sin. They did not, and the nation was destroyed.

None of that changed with the coming of Christ. Salvation is still by grace, through faith. God still punishes sin. Nations rise, and fall. God is the same yesterday, today and forever.

Even if you want to argue that God will not actively destroy us if we give official gov't sanction to sin, He will still allow the consequences of sin to travel to their conclusion, and the consequences are never good, for individuals or nations. My argument is that we as a nation should not put ourselves in such a situation. We've done enough already in the last few decades that it may be too late.

Some might, but that is hardly much of a prophecy of punishment of a nation. That is Jesus admonishing His disciples not to be overly impressed with earthly grandeur.



God didn't do it to "nations that went their own way", or at least, the fact that they did is not significant. All nations went their own way at one point or another. God did it in order to set the conditions He wanted before Christ appeared. Christ has appeared now; punishing nations is no longer necessary on any ongoing basis.



Yes, so? A person can also have the sme thing happen even though they eat wisely, just because of genetic problems.



You ignore the fact that every one of these examples is either A) Israel or B) some other nation interacting directly with Israel. There is no mention of nations in other parts of the world at that time. This is not because the people there sinned or didn't. In the case of Israel, they didn't all sin or not sin in equal measure at any of these various points. You're still aggregating the sin of individuals and calling it the sin of the nation, and you're ignoring why these particular nations are significant: It isn't to point out that God is going to punish our earthly political entities based on the aggregate behavior of their members; it's to explain the need for and path that led to Christ's coming.



Except that you do not know that God punishes sin while we are on earth. Your example of the fat man dying of arterial problems is perfect; letting someone suffer consequences is not punishing them unless you actually inflict the consequences. Nations rising and falling is not the same as God punishing nations. Revelation helps you not at all here; that is a specific instance where all individuals, and therefore all nations will be dealt with at once. It doesn't say anything about the U.S. or any other nation right now because there is no way to predict when that will occur. Even if it occurs tomorrow you still didn't predict it because no one knows the dy or the hour.



We're always in that situation, and it is never "too late" until Revelation arrives. In that sense it is always "too late". You're still trying to get away with a works-based theology by simply assigning the importance of works to "nations" which are just groups of people.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Kelethin may well have been a malevolent entity, lusting for the blood of lowbies. All we know is that the *inhabitants* were classified as "good." It may simply be that the feir'dal are nobly devoting their existence to guarding the dark entity known as "Kelethin" and preventing it from spreading its dark sentience and lust for blood across the rest of the world.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

At some point, Diamondeye, someone needs to step up and tell the glutton that if he continues down this path, there is the likelihood of negative consequences to his health. What he chooses to do is then up to him; he can continue to over-eat and suffer the consequences, or he can change his ways and live a healthier lifestyle, thus improving his chances of living a richer, more fulfilling life. Wisdom says to stop, and go another way.

So what? This really hasn't the first thing to do with the issue.

Changing his habits in this one regard will not make the glutton any more deserving of salvation. In the case of allowing gay marriage it isn't even as clear because if we allow the assumption that homosexuals marrying is sinful, allowing them to do so is simply letting them assume the consequences themselves.

Your argument boils down to the entire nation sinning by allowing individuals to sin if they so please rather than making a vain effort to prevent it (which prohibiting gay marriage is since it hardly stops gay relationships). It's silly. To apply this to the glutton example, if we don't force him to eat right, we're sinning.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

And you still totally miss the point. The point is not about forcing anyone to do anything. The point is about putting an official, gov't stamp of approval on activity God calls an abomination.

A) No, it's not a stamp of approval. The government isn't giving any stamp of approval to all the shitty straight marriages out there; it's simply allowing them and performing due diligence to ensure consent
B) God does not call homosexuality an abomination. He calls anal sex between males in ancient Israel an abomination and that prohibition is no more important now than that against eating shrimp. It was there to prevent male-on-male rape in the army, a common problem at that time.
C) Don't bother with Paul either; using Paul to claim that homosexuality is inherently sinful relies on the OT prohibition and flies in the face of Paul's other comments about how one should not place a stumbling block and how we should not condemn each other for eating or not eating meat. I'm sure you're going to engage int he usual literalistic screaming, but Paul is writing a letter to specific people; his comments about homosexuals are relating to temple prostitutes and people who use their sexuality to create trouble in the church. They are not to be taken as a blanket (assuming that what he said really translates as "homosexual at all, since not all translations have it that way) condemnation unless you think Paul A) totally contradicts himself and B) out of the blue establishes a new standard for Christians that didn't exist before.

I'm not missing the point at all. I'm just not letting you dance around all over the place.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Yes, it is a stamp of approval. It is an official declaration that the gov't views homosexual relationships as being the same as heterosexual relationships. Just because you don't want to see it that way does not make it any less so.

If this is true, then God has lied when He said He is just. And since "let God be true and every man a liar" is my stand on that issue, I (and the Scriptures) reject your assertion.



Only dancing being done is by you, because you have to dismiss Scripture to hold your POV.

Why shouldn't the government see them exactly the same - except for the fact that government shouldn't see because it should not care about at all - anyone's relationships.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

You know, I'm pretty sure that if the evangelicals got to make the decision homosexual conduct of any form would be totally illegal and those found practicing it would be imprisoned, institutionalized, or possibly even executed. They don't want to stop at banning gay marriage, they're just taking what they can get.

Then when the government grants the same tax and zoning exemptions (and so on) to a Buddhist temple as it does to a Christian church, it is an official declaration that Christianity and Buddhism are the same. But that doesn't seem to bother you.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

What was Khross's translation of Romans into the language of "Snark" on the old board? Something about how the origin of homosexuality is "If you turn away from me, I will turn you gay and kill you?"

Something like that. Just stuck with me because of how vastly amusing I found it. =)

If they ever succeed in creating the gay bomb, this will also be the motto of the USAF.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

I think if liberals were in charge, all Christians would be imprisoned, institutionalized, or possibly even executed.

Wait...you mean we weren't making outlandish, ridiculous, hyperbolic assertions with no evidence whatsoever? Sorry, I was confused.

Aren't the liberals in charge now? We have a liberal President and majority in the Congress.

I haven't seen any black helicopters coming for you guys yet.

That's because in the eyes of man-made law, they are the EXACT SAME THING.

Uh, did you read the rest of the post. you know the part about "outlandish, ridiculous, hyperbolic assertions with no evidence whatsoever", or did you have an agenda you needed to push?

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

No, I'm pretty much following logically from Beryllin's posts he's made on this forum. I don't think he'd advocate execution, but I'm pretty sure that if it was up to him homosexual conduct would be illegal, period. I do know of Christians that do advocate the execution of homosexuals. There's a Christian group near here that sticks their flyer on my car every month or so which advocates it.