BK>>  And God did *NOT* give them grief for that. I know the stories  may say
BK>> that, but I do not accept that God would kill people for  disbelief, and
BK>> esp not for marrying foreign women. Wasn't Ruth a  foreign woman?

BK>>  And remember the parable of the good Samaritan.

 BK>> Except that God does not work that way. My God doesn't,
 BK>> sorry bout yours.


 JS> Bob, both Biblical and secular history plainly reveal that
 JS> God gave the Israelites a lot more than just grief when
 JS> they turned their backs on Him, and adopted the false gods
 JS> of the heathen nations around them. This is something which
 JS> I have personally studied and written about in great detail.
 JS> Grief was just a small part of their punishment for
 JS> disobeying the Lord.

 Biblical history may say that, secular history may record the
 grief, but it does not ascribe that grief to straying from God.

 And if God gave people grief for disobedience then Jeremiah
 Wright was right, and his critics are heathen.

 JS> Every time the Israelites rebelled against the Lord, He
 JS> allowed them to be harassed, attacked, invaded, overcome,
 JS> defeated and imprisoned by their most hated enemies. From
 JS> the Philistines to the Romans, this was their sad story
 JS> time and again.

 That is the sad story of just about every people who ever
 existed. Sometimes you're the dog, sometimes you're the hydrant.
 Sometimes Israel got grief, sometimes Israel gave grief.

 JS> In the Bible, the two greatest foreign invasions and
 JS> conquests were by the Assyrians during the time of the
 JS> Prophet Isaiah, and by the Babylonians during the time of

 ...

 JS> Perhaps you have also heard of the "Seventy Years of
 JS> Captivity", during which time, in accordance to prophecy,

 Yeah, we went into that before.

 ...

 JS> The same thing happened a second time during the Roman
 JS> occupation in 70 AD,

 The destruction in 70AD was for rebellion against Rome, not God.
 It was more for *not* abandoning God.

 JS> after the Jews had for the most part rejected their one and
 JS> only Messiah, Jesus Christ. Jesus Himself prophesied this
 JS> very event about forty years earlier.

 Again, not true. The Jews did not reject Jesus, they had not had
 enough time to reject, or accept Jesus. Many were being
 converted, most Christians were Jews, All the first Christian
 leaders were Jews, and they did *NOT* stop being Jews.

 Acceptance of Christ *MUST* be volantary, and such punishment
 for not accepting Christ violates that spirt, and the very
 teachings of Jesus they are supposed to accept.

 JS> Again, Bob, these historical events were a lot more than
 JS> just grief. Many thousands of people either died, or were
 JS> imprisoned. The only way for you to deny these facts is to
 JS> say that the Bible is not true, and that secular history
 JS> has all been invented. Yes, we know that history is written
 JS> by the victor, but the basic facts of these accounts are
 JS> true.

 The events happened, your interpretation is not historical.

 JS> If you do not accept that God would kill people due to
 JS> disbelief, then you are basically calling the Bible a lie,

 Am I? Or are you misinterpreting it?

 JS> are you not? The Bible plainly states that God kills, heals
 JS> and makes alive, according to His own Will and Purposes. Do
 JS> you doubt this? Do you judge God?

 No, I do not judge God, but I do judge those who so arrogantly
 pronounce God's position as if they were the voice of God.

 JS> The Bible has some serious things to say about people who
 JS> judge and criticize God.

 Yes, and everyone who thinks he gets to judge other's standing
 with God should consider those things.

 JS> In the case of the Israelites who married foreign women, we
 JS> are told that following the "Seventy Years Of Captivity",
 JS> after Cyrus the Persian, (Koresh), allowed the Jews to
 JS> return to Jerusalem, they repented of their sins, and they
 JS> put away, (divorced), their foreign wives, because it was
 JS> partially a result of them marrying foreign wives, which
 JS> had led the Israelites to sin in the first place, just as
 JS> King Solomon had done in his old age. In fact, that sin

 Remember, the Ethopian Jews were tracable to Solomon's time, and
 are believed to be the result of Solomon's "sin".

 JS> goes all the way back to the time of Jacob and Esau. Again,
 JS> this is all in the Bible.

 JS> Yes, Ruth was indeed a foreign woman, and in fact, a direct
 JS> ancestor of Jesus Christ. However, you are leaving out one
 JS> very important fact. Not only did she follow her
 JS> step-mother Naomi back to Israel, but she ALSO adopted the
 JS> God of the Israelites as her own God. That is the big
 JS> difference.

 Then the sin was not marrying foreign women, but not bringing
 them into the community.

 Jesus himself was asked if a believer should put away his wife
 if she does not believe, and Jesus said no, the beliver
 justifies his wife.

 JS> The parable of the Good Samaritan does NOT negate any of
 JS> the history or lessons of the Old Testament era. Even the

 It is a lesson that the foreigner can be more acceptable than
 the member of the community. A lesson of every major religion I
 know anything about, back to the ancient Greek Pagan stories.

 JS> Apostle Paul tells us to look to the Old Testament, and to
 JS> learn from their mistakes of complaining and continual
 JS> rebellion against the Lord.

 Yes, Paul... And learn from does not mean I have to accept that
 God works that way. After all, are parables all true stories, or
 teaching stories?

 JS> Bob, you say that your God does not work that way. Well, my
 JS> God is the God of the Bible. Who is your God, Bob?

 My God is the one true God of all the monotheistic faiths.

 JS> It sounds to me like you want to use the Bible like a
 JS> cafeteria -- pick and keep what you like, and reject what
 JS> you don't like. That's not the way that it works, Bob. We

 It's not? If the Bible is not a cafeteria, what is the
 apocrypha? I believe several books of the bible were left out
 after Martin Luther's schism, because he was translating it and
 he had to move quickly, and did not complete the translation of
 those parts.

 If the Bible is not a cafeteria, why do we even have commissions
 of scholars who gather every so often to research and correct
 our bibles?

 If the bible is the inerrant word of God, why does it have a
 mathematical error? There is a cylinder described as being 10
 cubits across and 30 cubits around. That only works if Pi equals
 3.0.

 If the Bible is the inerrant word of God why are there different
 versions? Why is there a KJV, and a Douay? And why a NIV?

 JS> can't just force the Bible to say only what we want it to
 JS> say. We can't force it to just fit our personal belief
 JS> system.

 That's right, and that's why one should be careful in insisting
 that his interpretation is the official version. What we have of
 the Bible is much in question and dispute. Until it is all
 resolved, there is no reasonable basis for anyone to claim the
 ultimate truth of the Bible.




BOB KLAHN bob.klahn{at}sev.org   http://home.toltbbs.com/bobklahn

... When a person dies, a library closes.
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