Mtu Biz wrote:
@ Proverb - spare 10 minutes.
Some time ago, i had beef too.
Mainly with prosperity preachers and their ilk.
Then.... i lost a dear loved one.
My beef turned to God..
How can a loving all powerful God not intervene?
How can a loving all mighty God not answer my prayer?
How can a loving God possibly let such a thing happen?
I have learned... that God does bad things as well as good.
Case in point.
1. Lazarus - The picture of total hopeless poverty. In the eyes of the simple, the chap would be dismissed as cursed. Surely... wounded, crippled, hungry, dogs licking his wounds, yet when he died he was carried by the angels to Abraham's bossom.
2. John the baptist- herald of the anointed
one, unjustly beheaded so the king can honor some twisted bet
3. Job- God authorized the horrendous circumstances that befell the man.
4. Abraham - What was that he was to do again?
sacrifice who?
5. Jesus - He who had no sin, became sin. Forsaken by the father, murdered for our transgressions.
Isaiah 53:10 "Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, "
-Some translations render it, that it pleased the father to crush him....
@ ProverB
You see, the same God who loved us so much that he came in the fleash to pay the penalty for our sin, is the same one who will have those who rejected his grace burn for all eternity in hell.
If you want to have beef. Have beef with God.
Mtu biz, I beg to differ with you on some key points you raise.
Death now is just sleep. At some point in future all the dead will be raised up. If your loved one chose not to believe in Jesus, and hence ended up on the other side, will you be angry at God?
Us who are still alive are no better than your loved one who passed on. I know I will go to sleep one day and taking a nap from all these worldly troubles is not something to fear.
Lazarus in Abrahams lap was a parable. It had lessons to be learnt. John the baptist himself was not bitter at how fellow human beings treated him. Why do you want to be bitter on his behalf? If anything, be bitter to the one who made those men do what they did to him. Yes.
You cannot blame God when a fellow human being hurts another. That fellow human being has free will and he chose, by himself, with influence from satan to hurt you and others. God has no role in that.
And about bibles, I have come to be suspicious of many versions. I have realised that some compilers of some editions have hidden agendas and they choice of words they use betray that fact.
Case in point John 3:16. If your bible states 'God so loved the world that he gave his son that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life....' or something like that, then it is one of those twisted bibles. Because we are also sons of God but God sent his only 'begotten' son for that purpose. The deliberate blurring of that fact, by deleting that word, should make keen readers smell a rat.
And please, it is a lie, designed to make people see God as cruel, that people will burn for all eternity in hell. Yes, people will burn, because no one can see God and live, yet he will be visibly around. Go figure.
If you will not be transformed when he comes, you will burn up and be no more. There will be new heaven and a new earth. There is no mention of new or continued hell.
There is no need to have beef with God. Because it is easy to does not make it right.