Ah, loving the sinner while hating the sin is the rule of thumb these days, as then, but you should perhaps refer some questions - such as this issue - to your local pastor as well.

Theocracy practices were divinely hardline against open sin and idolatory: Christians aren't in a theocracy, to say the least. "Executing fags AND disobedient kids"? Say again?

i think they said it was Deuteronomy 21:18 thru 21 about stoning disobedient kids.

i guess what i don't get is what parts of Bible we are to follow and what parts not to follow because they may be illeagle to follow.

Hi Colin,

The Evangelical gospel is the same as the Catholic gospel in that the good news is that Jesus saved us from God (God’s law, God’s wrath, God’s divine integrity, however you want to say it). They teach that God is too holy to be in the presence of sinners and that sinners are not welcome or safe in His presence. They teach that Jesus’ finished work was to appease the wrath of an angry God so that He would acquit them from the punishment of sin. The Evangelicals teach that Jesus solved a legal problem for men. Jesus never taught this.

Jesus, however, taught us that God saved us through His Son. Jesus taught that to know God intimately was eternal life and that we needn’t be afraid of Him. Jesus brought God close so that we could see His beauty and devour His flesh and blood (symbolically speaking of course) which is to accept the grace we see in His incarnation and death. Jesus taught us that sin has separated us from the Father so the Father sent His Son and entered our reality to demonstrate His love and win us back to a loving trust. God so loved the world . . . . Jesus hung with sinners and seemed to be much less offended by them than He was with the self righteous.

Jesus tore down the walls that separated Jews from Greek, men from women, slave from free and He invited all men into His family of Saints (saved sinners). Jesus taught that the only healing for the sinner was in the presence of God. Jesus veiled His supernatural glory in our flesh so that we would not be afraid, and then stealth-fully brought us to the knowledge of the Father. Jesus taught His finished work was to reveal the Father to Humanity so that they could fall in love and become one with the Father. Jesus never taught that we had a legal problem with God, but that we had a heart problem not knowing God and that if we would just open our hearts to His love we would find Him with arms open wide to receive us.

The Mormon gospel is the exaltation of the soul where a man starts as an ignorant little spirit child and then is given a path of experiences and tests to see if they are worthy to become God’s and create their own worlds to live and die for. Jesus never taught this.

What Jesus taught is the gospel, not what theology has made it. God loved us! He would do everything to save us! He sent His Son to bring us back to a love of His Goodness. He willing saves everyone who will trust Him and respond to his love. That, in a nutshell is the true good news. The problem I see is that we are very much like the Jews in that salvation is very simple, but in order to make it exclusively ours we make it complicated. Jesus tore down the walls to let everyone in and religions continually attempt to rebuild them to make sure everyone comes to them for salvation. The Catholics have their sacraments to keep people coming back for salvation and we SDAs have our Sabbaths.

scott

Hi new!

Follow the entire Bible, but remember that everything has its place and not everything is written for us to mimic. The justice system of the OT was given to hardened slaves used to getting a beaten for doing nothing. It was so harsh that if someone stole their hand was to be cut off. Before people are converted they have a hard heart and demand justice rather than being willing to forgive. God might have saved all of Israel from Egypt, but He certainly hadn’t convinced them that love and forgiveness are the best way to do business.

So in order to keep these unconverted heathens in line, while He was teaching them right from wrong, He allowed the leaders of Israel to use methods of control and fear. These are not principles of His government, but it is all they understood and all they would respond too. God had to stop the killings, rape, incest, and adultery before He could sit down quietly with them, and explain what love is, like He did in Matthew 5. Sometimes a teacher has to grab a child by the arm and drag them to the principle’s office before she can get their attention to teach them anything. We have to remember that they agreed to this violent arrangement. In fact Christ made it clear that these arrangements were made not because of God’s ideal or God’s choice, but because of the hardness of their hearts.

So God place Israel under a strict law so that He could bring them to Christ where they would find forgiveness, peace, and rest through the understanding of God’s character.

Understanding the principles behind the violence found in the bible really helped me to see how hard sin and rebellion are to stop, much less heal from.

scott

There's a lot to this sentence! One can hardly imagine the heartache of God and the genius required to figure out someway to fix things.

I believe that in the judgment it will be seen that God brought sin to an end as quickly as possible. At every moment, since sin erupted, God has been working to bring it to an end. If it only depended upon Him, or if it were an issue that could be decided by force, then He could have ended it long ago, but the issue is one of truth, not force.

Amen Tom,

We continually ask God, "how long", but when our eyes are finally opened we will see clearly that God did everything He could do, within His holy principles of love and freedom, to solve this problem with the least collateral damage.

We will determine that God did what was right because that is just who He is.

scott

The idea of "collateral damage" is interesting. God could have just allowed Adam and Eve to die. I wonder what impact that would have had in solving the Great Controversy. I suppose God would have had to have illustrated the principles of the principles (pun intended) in some other way.

One gets the impression in reading the SOP that God simply loved us too much to allow us to be lost. Had he allowed Adam and Eve to perish, it wouldn't have just been those two, but all those who could be their offspring.

It's especially incredible to consider that God was willing to do this at the risk of losing His Son, a fact most don't consider.

That text is certainly about executing rebellious kids - NOT just "disobedient" kids: kids in need of social punishment, turning from both parents and not repenting under corporal punishment - which would be traditional, Biblical "chastisement", were and are social outcasts worse than eg. gangs today...kids today turn out of their homes without corporal punishment. That's definitely extreme, and God's lessons were for a nation also one generation out of extreme slavery - by the time they reached the promised land.

The other factor here that allows us discretion in interpreting Deuteronomy 21 (the chapter starts with dealing with suspectless manslaughter...) is that God himself was governing this people through elders, priests, prophets and eventually kings, with the written rule book: God as head of state made Israel a theocracy, God's country, which Christians clearly aren't today. Today we use domestic and social solutions using God's original guidance and discipline principles, within the church community, but there are debates over that too.

Moral law was really tight then, linked with criminal law while it was linked to civil law until 10 years ago. In the UK the law prevented schools promoting homosexuality in the classroom, but that was scrapped when the current ruling party came to power in '97. Times move on, but the standards remain in our conscience, not so? Love the sinner, hate the sin, for the sin remains.