Is death just another life?

Derf

Well-known member
Do you realize that your claims destroy the plan of salvation? If God breaks his own law by deceiving people why did Jesus have to die on the cross?
Is manipulation always deception? If so (and I'm not sure I agree yet, as you haven't presented evidence for the claim), is deception always wrong? Is God being deceptive when he tells the Israelites to set up an ambush for the people of Ai?
Joshua 8:2 (KJV) And thou shalt do to Ai and her king as thou didst unto Jericho and her king: only the spoil thereof, and the cattle thereof, shall ye take for a prey unto yourselves: lay thee an ambush for the city behind it.

What about when he will send a "strong delusion"?
2 Thessalonians 2:11 (KJV) And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:

If he's not being directly deceptive in the first, at least he's being manipulative in the second.
 

Gary K

New member
Banned
Is manipulation always deception? If so (and I'm not sure I agree yet, as you haven't presented evidence for the claim), is deception always wrong? Is God being deceptive when he tells the Israelites to set up an ambush for the people of Ai?
Joshua 8:2 (KJV) And thou shalt do to Ai and her king as thou didst unto Jericho and her king: only the spoil thereof, and the cattle thereof, shall ye take for a prey unto yourselves: lay thee an ambush for the city behind it.

What about when he will send a "strong delusion"?
2 Thessalonians 2:11 (KJV) And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:

If he's not being directly deceptive in the first, at least he's being manipulative in the second.
I hope I can explain this to you in a way you can understand.

I'm going at this obtusely so you can understand my frame of reference. There are two ways to "know" a person. First you can read about them. Second you can meet them personally and get to know them. The first is head knowledge as it is all intellectual. The second is what I call heart knowledge because it is first hand experience in which we actually get to know the person in our heart whether they be good or evil.

Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass became friends. After Lincoln was assassinated Douglass said Lincoln was a great friend to the black man. How could he say that so positively? Because he had heart knowledge of who who Lincoln the man was. Douglass knew what was in Lincoln's heart because was born a slave and experienced slavery, hatred, and bigotry first hand and his experience with Lincoln told him that nothing of the sort existed inside Lincoln.

The same holds true for getting to know God. Because I know God personally I know what exists in His heart and no desire to deceive exists within Him. He has brought me through experiences in my life that kill almost everyone. The emotional abuse I experienced growing up was off the charts cruel. I had no one to turn to look for sympathy and kindness. My grandpa and I got along but I only saw him once every few years so speaking to him about what was happening to me just wasn't possible. Over and above that my old man hated his step dad with a never ending passion so calling grandpa was out of the question and telling him what was going on even more impossible because my old man would have sat and listened to every word. He would have beaten the tar out of me for even attempting to tell grandpa. And my mother and older brother had the exact same attitudes toward me. Until someone has heart knowledge of that it's really impossible to know the damage it does. Oh, someone with the right training can understand with their head, but still not fully.

My old man would scream at me and tell me that I was the one responsible for everything that ever went wrong for the family. He heaped the guilt on me. My brother understood that and manipulated the old man into saying/doing those things to me even more than he would have on his own. My mother went along with all of it and added her own frustrations onto the mix. My chances of growing up normal were zilch. I was filled with self doubt, self loathing, and anxiety beyond what you can imagine. I was fully bent on destroying myself by the time I graduated from high school. I got into drugs knowing they would eventually kill me because that is what I wanted. I wanted out of this hell called life.

When I finally started talking to God I was a burnt out. spaced out wreck, and yet God listened to me attentively, kindly, and merifully. He answered my prayers the same way. He intervened in my life in such a way that he brought me out of my mental illness, my sel loathing. and brought the love of life back into my heart. This was not an over night experince because the changes he brought about in my thinking, expectations, ability to trust, etc... have taken decades to develop. So I know God at a heart level far beyond what most people can.

that's not bragging. That's just the reality of how far the devil had dragged me down in life. I was worthless, use less, and stupid when God began working in me. He has restored much of my original intellectual capabilities. I don't know how He ever saw anything worth saving in me. I still don't. That's just who God is. He doesn't ever manipulate anyone. He always meete us head on with love, kindness and sympathy. He's straight forward and honest in all his dealings with us. Look at the conversion of Paul. He want from someone consumed with hate to someone who after three years in the wilderness was the greatest missionary ever known. Also look at Baalam. God never deviated from head on honesty, kindness and understanding with Baalam. Yet Baalam still went the same way Judas did and for the same motivation. That is the mystery of iniquity.

I met a guy in my mid twenties who was a part of a very large family. He had aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews, all over the area I lived in. This family was not poor by any stretch of the imagination and they were all nice people. Yet this guy was considered a lunatic by all his relatives. I had known of him for a decade or so until he walked up to me in a bar one night and asked me to talk to him. I agreed because I was really curious about him. It soon became obvious that he was just as curious about me. He bought us a couple of drinks and then turned to me and asked my why I was in the bar. I was experiencing a lack of faith as my anxiety levels were off the charts at the time. My mouth fell open and I asked him what he knew about me. He said he knew enough to know that I should never have been in that bar that night. As this guy had a real reputation for being evil my moutj continued to hang open. Then he explained to me that he knew God but enjoyed being evil and knew I did not. Thus his questions to me. We talked for another half hour or so and I couldn't believe me ears. He was thoughtful, intelligent, and articulate. I had thought he would be slobbering creton from the things he was known to have done to his own mother. That was the only time I ever talked to the guy. A couple of months later he died in a house fire with several of his friends. People that were at the fire said he was walking around going from room to room until he finally collapsed and died.

I think of him every once in a while and ponder the mystery of iniquity. He knew God and saw nothing wrong with God. He just loved evil more than he liked God. It's beyond my ability to understand.
 

Gary K

New member
Banned
Oh, and God helping the Isrealites sgainst their enemies is not manipulation. These people were out to destroy the Isrealites. God didn't put that in their hearts. His great enemy did.
 

Derf

Well-known member
I hope I can explain this to you in a way you can understand.

I'm going at this obtusely so you can understand my frame of reference. There are two ways to "know" a person. First you can read about them. Second you can meet them personally and get to know them. The first is head knowledge as it is all intellectual. The second is what I call heart knowledge because it is first hand experience in which we actually get to know the person in our heart whether they be good or evil.

Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass became friends. After Lincoln was assassinated Douglass said Lincoln was a great friend to the black man. How could he say that so positively? Because he had heart knowledge of who who Lincoln the man was. Douglass knew what was in Lincoln's heart because was born a slave and experienced slavery, hatred, and bigotry first hand and his experience with Lincoln told him that nothing of the sort existed inside Lincoln.

The same holds true for getting to know God. Because I know God personally I know what exists in His heart and no desire to deceive exists within Him. He has brought me through experiences in my life that kill almost everyone. The emotional abuse I experienced growing up was off the charts cruel. I had no one to turn to look for sympathy and kindness. My grandpa and I got along but I only saw him once every few years so speaking to him about what was happening to me just wasn't possible. Over and above that my old man hated his step dad with a never ending passion so calling grandpa was out of the question and telling him what was going on even more impossible because my old man would have sat and listened to every word. He would have beaten the tar out of me for even attempting to tell grandpa. And my mother and older brother had the exact same attitudes toward me. Until someone has heart knowledge of that it's really impossible to know the damage it does. Oh, someone with the right training can understand with their head, but still not fully.

My old man would scream at me and tell me that I was the one responsible for everything that ever went wrong for the family. He heaped the guilt on me. My brother understood that and manipulated the old man into saying/doing those things to me even more than he would have on his own. My mother went along with all of it and added her own frustrations onto the mix. My chances of growing up normal were zilch. I was filled with self doubt, self loathing, and anxiety beyond what you can imagine. I was fully bent on destroying myself by the time I graduated from high school. I got into drugs knowing they would eventually kill me because that is what I wanted. I wanted out of this hell called life.

When I finally started talking to God I was a burnt out. spaced out wreck, and yet God listened to me attentively, kindly, and merifully. He answered my prayers the same way. He intervened in my life in such a way that he brought me out of my mental illness, my sel loathing. and brought the love of life back into my heart. This was not an over night experince because the changes he brought about in my thinking, expectations, ability to trust, etc... have taken decades to develop. So I know God at a heart level far beyond what most people can.

that's not bragging. That's just the reality of how far the devil had dragged me down in life. I was worthless, use less, and stupid when God began working in me. He has restored much of my original intellectual capabilities. I don't know how He ever saw anything worth saving in me. I still don't. That's just who God is. He doesn't ever manipulate anyone. He always meete us head on with love, kindness and sympathy. He's straight forward and honest in all his dealings with us. Look at the conversion of Paul. He want from someone consumed with hate to someone who after three years in the wilderness was the greatest missionary ever known. Also look at Baalam. God never deviated from head on honesty, kindness and understanding with Baalam. Yet Baalam still went the same way Judas did and for the same motivation. That is the mystery of iniquity.

I met a guy in my mid twenties who was a part of a very large family. He had aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews, all over the area I lived in. This family was not poor by any stretch of the imagination and they were all nice people. Yet this guy was considered a lunatic by all his relatives. I had known of him for a decade or so until he walked up to me in a bar one night and asked me to talk to him. I agreed because I was really curious about him. It soon became obvious that he was just as curious about me. He bought us a couple of drinks and then turned to me and asked my why I was in the bar. I was experiencing a lack of faith as my anxiety levels were off the charts at the time. My mouth fell open and I asked him what he knew about me. He said he knew enough to know that I should never have been in that bar that night. As this guy had a real reputation for being evil my moutj continued to hang open. Then he explained to me that he knew God but enjoyed being evil and knew I did not. Thus his questions to me. We talked for another half hour or so and I couldn't believe me ears. He was thoughtful, intelligent, and articulate. I had thought he would be slobbering creton from the things he was known to have done to his own mother. That was the only time I ever talked to the guy. A couple of months later he died in a house fire with several of his friends. People that were at the fire said he was walking around going from room to room until he finally collapsed and died.

I think of him every once in a while and ponder the mystery of iniquity. He knew God and saw nothing wrong with God. He just loved evil more than he liked God. It's beyond my ability to understand.
Thanks for sharing that, ffree.
Oh, and God helping the Isrealites sgainst their enemies is not manipulation. These people were out to destroy the Isrealites. God didn't put that in their hearts. His great enemy did.
But you can see that the ambush tactic God told them to use was a deception, right?
 

Gary K

New member
Banned
Thanks for sharing that, ffree.

But you can see that the ambush tactic God told them to use was a deception, right?
As long as you can see it was not manipulation, yes. God simply doesn't ever manipulate us and that requires deception. The people of Ai got what they had coming when they went out to destroy God's people.
 

Derf

Well-known member
As long as you can see it was not manipulation, yes. God simply doesn't ever manipulate us and that requires deception. The people of Ai got what they had coming when they went out to destroy God's people.
Why is it ok for God to deceive the people of Ai, but not Judas? Didn't he have it coming to him?
 

Hoping

Well-known member
Banned
Why is it ok for God to deceive the people of Ai, but not Judas? Didn't he have it coming to him?
Don't you think it was the devil that deceived Judas?
"Then entered Satan into Judas surnamed Iscariot, being of the number of the twelve.
4 And he went his way, and communed with the chief priests and captains, how he might betray him unto them." (Luke 22:3-4)
 

Gary K

New member
Banned
Why is it ok for God to deceive the people of Ai, but not Judas? Didn't he have it coming to him?
God did not manipulate the people of Ai. This has been my point all along although you have consistently ignored it. The one who manipulated the people of Ai was the devil. He manipulated Balaam. Judas and and Paul too until Paul met Jesus. Meeting Jesus removed Paul's susceptibility to him.

I'd like you to demonstrate how a free moral agent cam be manipulated without deception. You have put the burden of evidence completely on me and now I'm asking for your proof.
 

JudgeRightly

裁判官が正しく判断する
Staff member
Administrator
Super Moderator
Gold Subscriber
Do you realize that your claims destroy the plan of salvation?

This is called question begging.

My claims do not "destroy the plan of salvation."

If God breaks his own law by deceiving people

He didn't deceive people.

Manipulation =/= deception

why did Jesus have to die on the cross?

To save mankind from their sin.

To do that, He came to earth with a plan.

To accomplish that plan, he needed certain things to happn.

And just like with Joseph:

But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive. - Genesis 50:20 http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis50:20&version=NKJV
 

JudgeRightly

裁判官が正しく判断する
Staff member
Administrator
Super Moderator
Gold Subscriber
What about when he will send a "strong delusion"?
2 Thessalonians 2:11 (KJV) And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:

My favorite "strong delusion" that God gave His enemies is when He gave the army of Midian a nightmare that they were being attacked by, hilariously, a loaf of bread!
 

Gary K

New member
Banned
This is called question begging.

My claims do not "destroy the plan of salvation."



He didn't deceive people.

Manipulation =/= deception



To save mankind from their sin.

To do that, He came to earth with a plan.

To accomplish that plan, he needed certain things to happn.

And just like with Joseph:

But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive. - Genesis 50:20 http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis50:20&version=NKJV
That is an assertion without evidence. Explain how to manipulate people by only telling them the truth.
 

Gary K

New member
Banned
My favorite "strong delusion" that God gave His enemies is when He gave the army of Midian a nightmare that they were being attacked by, hilariously, a loaf of bread!

You have taken that phrase completely out of context.

2Thessalonins 2"7 For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.
8 And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming:
9 Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,
10 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:
12 That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

Who works with all deceivableness of unrighteousness? Who gets the lost to not believe truth? Who manipulates them? The strong delusion comes from the devil as he convinces them not to believe truth. He is the master manipulator.
 

Gary K

New member
Banned
Here is where I leave this forum. When you clothe God with the attributes of the devil I shake the dust off my feet and depart.
 

Derf

Well-known member
God did not manipulate the people of Ai. This has been my point all along although you have consistently ignored it. The one who manipulated the people of Ai was the devil. He manipulated Balaam. Judas and and Paul too until Paul met Jesus. Meeting Jesus removed Paul's susceptibility to him.

I'd like you to demonstrate how a free moral agent cam be manipulated without deception. You have put the burden of evidence completely on me and now I'm asking for your proof.
Did you go back and read the Ai story? The Israelites, at God's command, faked running away from the army of Ai to allow the city to be taken. If that's not deceptive, what is it? I applaud your desire to maintain God's moral character, but somehow the story of Ai needs to fit into that character, without giving glory to the devil for the tactics employed.

You may feel this pressure of the burden of evidence because you've set yourself up for it. You made the claim that God manipulating someone is sin, and that manipulation is deceit, so you need to provide the evidence in the face of my evidence to the contrary.
 

Soul

New member
My position is that when someone is dead, they are dead--there's no life in them or any part of them, and they cease to function in any way and in any place, until they are resurrected.

God only made man in His image and likeness (Gen. 1:26) by giving a soul (Gen. 2:7), and it shows signs of the qualities characteristic of Him Who creates it. Therefore, it's intelligent, spiritual, free, immortal, like the Father Who created it.

Each living man has a soul. The soul does not die with the body, but survives forever. The idea of God, the Creator, who gave each man his soul, was that all the souls of men should be gathered in one place only, in Heaven, forming the Kingdom of Heaven, whose monarch is God and whose blissful subjects were to be all men, after a holy life and a placid limbo of expectancy.

Satan came to divide and upset, destroy and grieve God and spirits. He set sin in the hearts of men and with sin he brought death to the body at the end of its existence, hoping to give death to spirits as well. But the death of spirits is their damnation, which is still existence, but devoid of what is true Life and eternal joy, that is, devoid of the beatific vision of God and of His eternal possession in eternal light. — Jesus, Poem of the Man-God: Vol. III

Life is generated by death, meaning our present life is just the embryonal beginning of life, and that true Life begins when death gives birth to us to eternal Life.
 

Derf

Well-known member
Welcome to the forum, Soul.
God only made man in His image and likeness (Gen. 1:26) by giving a soul (Gen. 2:7), and thus it shows signs of the qualities characteristic of Him Who creates it. Therefore, it's intelligent, spiritual, free, immortal, like the Father Who created it.
But not omnipotent, omniscient or omnipresent? Why not? And if not, how can you be sure of the "immortal" part, especially when God said they could die? Doesn't "immortal" mean you either can't or won't ever die? Therefore, if immortality was part of God's image in Adam, it wasn't a very convincing part.
Life is generated by death, meaning that our present life is just the embryonal beginning of life, and that true Life begins when death gives birth to us to eternal Life.
That sounds pretty interesting, but where did it come from? I haven't read such in the Bible.
 
Top