Beryllin wrote:
Diamondeye wrote:
By that logic, the entire world should be going straight down the shitter, since practically every nation is neck-deep in some kind of sin or other, including those that seem innocent but want to self-righteously lecture the others.
God stopped holding nations responsible for sin after Christ. Yes, I know its the same God. The change in methodology was all part of the plan from the beginning. Nations, ultimately, do not have souls. God is relatively unconcerned with them.
Not so. Was Babylon less sinful than Israel in the days of Jeremiah and Isaiah? Not likely, yet God allowed Babylon to prosper so He could use them as an instrument in His hands. Just because God does not punish every nation the same way at the same time, does not mean God is not working to implement His will.
Yes, it is so. We are not in that era anymore. You keep assuming that God is working His will in the same way as He did in the Old Testament, when He quite clearly planned all along to abandon the "chosen people" method and open things up to everyone. God abandoned concern for nations with Christ. That was the will he was working to implement throughout all that OT stuff you're talking about. That's all done now.
Back then He sent prophets with warnings to one specific nation and the actions he took were in terms of that nation. There are no prophets now, and that nation exists only as a scattered people and a namesake nation on roughly similar land. The OT times are over; God is at a different point in His plan.
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You think what's happening in the nation today exists in a vacuum? A man I respect greatly said in Bible study on Sunday morning several years ago that he believed the U.S. is not mentioned in Rev. because we'll no longer have the financial ability to be a player in the Middle East at the time of Armeggedon. Several years ago he said it, and look at what's happening now.
This is a guy you respect greatly? Aside from the fact that by trying to tie our current financial situation to the end times you're forgetting that no one knows the day or hour but the father, the vast majority of nations are not mentioned in Revelation either. Where are Britain, France,Germany, Japan, Russia, China, South Korea, Argentina, Mexico, Iceland, Canada, Australia?
Obviously it must be for something other than his aility to read and understand Scripture that you respect him because that claim is asinine. Not only that but it's irrelevant to my point that all nations are sinful and so therefore all should be failing. You might respond that that's why none are mentioned in Revelation, but there's no particular reason to think that's the case either.
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I do not believe that we've gotten the Presidents and Congresses we've had over the last few decades by some coincidence. To paraphrase the same man I mentioned: "As our national sin has grown (the 60's, the sexual revolution, and Roe-v-Wade being examples of this), so also God has removed His hand of protection over our nation." We are reaping what we've sown, and people want more of the same.
When was the hand of God's protection over our nation and how has it been removed? This man apparently is simply viewing the past as some rose-colored fantasy. Is he not aware of how Indians were treated? Slavery? The treatment of workers during the Industrial Revolution?
This nation is no better and no worse than any other. Claiming that "sinful nations get punished" is silly; all it does is result in these claims where any negative cycle is seen as a sign of the end times or punishment, or the removal of a "Hand of Protection" or whatever. People, and therefore nations, are always sinful. There's little reason to think God spends His time meting out punishments and blessings as if He were Santa Claus; even the punishments you cite were really just to bring about the situation for Christ to appear and to make it clear why He was needed.
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And even though I responded to this in a different way a few posts ago, I would be remiss if I failed to mention that according to Revelation, all the nations do end up in the crapper in the Tribulation.
Well, duh. What need will there be for them after that?