WRONG, Tom: that Jesus dispelled deceptions is not in dispute, so give it up!

It says here, in that 2nd quote, that Christ obtained a right to act by having sacrificed himself. That's earning the right to forgive.

1SM 309
What right had Christ to take the captives out of the enemy's hands?--The right of having made a sacrifice that satisfies the principles of justice by which the kingdom of heaven is governed.

Colin, this is childish. How do you want me to respond? "No, you're wrong! So you give it up!"

Please, be reasonable.



This is easier to follow with the quote given:



You'll see that I was exactly right in what I said. It says nothing about Christ's earning the right for God to be able to pardon -- not a word. Also, my assertion that she is speaking in Christus Victor terms is spot on: "And thus He gained the right to take the captives from the grasp of the great deceiver." If anything is Christus Victor, this is!

Notice also that it speaks of the role of deception. How did Christ take the captives from Satan? By unmasking his deception.

I understand that you don't disagree that Christ dispelled deceptions, but you don't seem to give this much importance, whereas I believe it's preeminent in importance. She mentions that Satan caused the fall by deception. Therefore it stands to reason that the work of restoration is achieved by counteracting that deception. The Spirit of Prophecy emphasizes this throughout her writings, and it's an underlying theme in the Book of John.

For example, the SOP writes that the "whole purpose" of Christ's first advent (literally His "earthly mission") was "the revelation of God." (ST 1/20/90) John tells us that Christ came to show us what God is really like.

I know you'll agree that Christ did these things, but, again, we differ greatly in terms of how important this was. I agree with EGW that this was the "whole purpose" of His mission.

You'll notice in the Christus Victor thread that the author of the article I provided argues this same point.

And your logic misses the point!

Again, there is no dispute that Satan deceives: what are we saved from???? It's not only from the devil!! It's principally from God's own judgement of unbelief!!!

That's a legal issue, not just is God's character this or that...!

On this quote says, it starts with

If you don't understand that sentence and its relevance to our forgiveness, then you need to.

Try this one.

Thanks for sharing this emphasis Colin.
This is the essence. The principality of unbelief -- brings God's judgement. Jn 3:16 shows the opposite.

Or let's put it this way, the principality of rebellion. Unbelief = Rebellion, both brings on judgement.


The law is God's character and it cannot be changed, therefore eternal Life for all living creatures and even all matter(quartz to galaxies) depends on God's success to govern all these in harmony with love(no dictatorship or selfishness in this picture). So a heart of belief and dependancy on God is a must for eternal life for any living creatures. Like the bees who keeps the Sabbath.

The Cross, of course brings us back to the Creator, and will forever secure Eternal Life.

Colin, it seems *you* have missed the point, and have trouble with the concept of "start" . Here's the quote again:



You can see it starts with:



You left out a critical part.

What is the question that is being asked?



This is Christus Victor! This is *exactly* what Christus Victor is.

My point regarding this quote is two-fold:

1.The principles of the quote are Christus Victor. This is seen by the following:

a.What right had Christ to take the captives out of the enemy's hands? (Christus Victor question)
b.On the cross of Calvary He paid the redemption price of the race. (answer to question)
c.And thus He gained the right to take the captives from the grasp of the great deceiver (further answer to question)
d.who, by a lie, framed against the government of God, caused the fall of man, and thus forfeited all claim to be called a loyal subject of God's glorious everlasting kingdom. (explanation of the issue at hand).

So let's put this together. How did Satan cause the fall of man? By a lie. What did the lie involve? A misrepresentation of God's character. The question was framed against the government of God, but the underlying issue was the character of God. (See quote below, from DA 21, 22).

On the cross Christ resolved this problem, which is how He gained the right to take the captives from the enemy's hands.

Once again, this is precisely what Christus Victor is entailing. A better statement of the Christus Victor question could not be posed.

This establishes my first point.

2. My second point was that the quote says nothing about Christ's earning the right for God to be able to forgive. This is clear simply by reading the quote. It doesn't say that.

Here's the DA quote:



I'm glad you don't disagree with the points I've been presenting, in terms of the positive. That is, I understand the difficulty you have with what I'm saying has not so much to do with what I'm affirming, but with what I'm denying. However, a point that's being missed is that if what I'm affirming is understood, it becomes apparent that what I'm denying is both superfluous and contrary to what I'm presenting.

The superfluous part is a bit more difficult to see, but, basically, once one sees the real issues at hand, it is my belief that the non-real issues are seen as what they are -- non-real issues. To illustrate this point, I've brought up Lucifer's case, where the superfluity of Christ's death for non-essential reasons is made clear. Clearly if God is not able to pardon without Christ's death, this would have been the case for Lucifer as well. But God offered Lucifer pardon over and over again, so obviously He was able to do so.

The contrary part is easy to see, which is if a certain theory of the atonement presents God in a negative light, this is obviously counter-productive to God's disproving Satan's accusations against Him.

Before going on to more quotes, let's finish with this one, which can be done by recognizing that the two points I've made are accurate.

There's a really simple reason why you're limiting Lucifer's case, not seeing sacrifice as necessary. WHO IS MICHAEL, in the Bible??? You know whom I'm referring to as he's mentioned in key events and places and times, so: who & what is he?! He has relevance to your dismissal of God needing a sacrifice in order to forgive anyone.

Well, who and what is Michael?

Firstly your two points are not accepted.

You've avoided the legal issues completely: your "redemption price" is philosophical, not legal, and am not sure what it actually is, but it doesn't suffer God's judgement on sin and unbelief. Therefore the question isn't "who was deceived" etc, but who is condemned in Adam? Deception has its part in the story, but it's not the actual beginning of the story. God is the beginning, and even Lucifer faced God's law.

This EGW quote is about freeing from the deceiver, but that right of passage is a legal issue, which you don't realise or allow for.

These last four lines or so from the other EGW quote in my previous post couple up with the quote we're already discussing: it states that Christ's death facilitates forgiveness. That's God's wisdom as well as his character. That's the legal issue of the cross, as expressed for the youth, too.

Amen and thank you, Elle: God gets first dibbs, when I can help it.

because God forgave us, He made a plan that would pardon us from the consequences of our actions.

lets go back to the beginning.
Gen 3:3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. eve didnt seem to understand this to mean, I will kill you, or she would have stated it in those words.

and we have this amplification.

they were going to die as a result of eating the fruit, not only that the "penalty of their transgression", according to this, was a lifetime of suffering and pain because of evil until we exterminated ourselves. the reality of that happening can be seen in light of the nuclear bomb.

if God had not saved noah and the "holy line" in bringing the flood all righteousness would have been exterminated and then they would have exterminated themselves in a most awful bloodbath such as happened in jerusalem in 70ad. we have no idea of how many times we would have exterminated ourselves but for the intervention of God.

what the statement says to me is that because we were going to naturaly die as a result of having "sinned" Jesus took pity on us and died in our place. because He lived a perfect life and died we have a chance by letting that perfect life permeate us...He ripped us from satans claim on us to have the right to with us as he pleased.

"God's own judgement of unbelief". it sounds like you understand this to mean God saying, if you dont believe in me i will kill you.

by the way, since satan and his angels no longer have access to the tree of life how long do they have to live? adam lived to almost 1000 years without it. we dont know how long satan was in existence before he became prideful, how long he had access to that tree which could be a determiner of how long he has....or do we believe satan has the ability to live eternally on his own?

i know tom has some really radical understandings that can be shocking, but does he really needed to be treated like a dangerous enemy? i mean, if you look back at what happened to Jesus, who was attacking whom?

Why not? One point is that what EGW said in the quote were Christus Victor themes. The only way I can see that you would deny this would be by not knowing what Christus Victor themes are. If this is the case, I'd suggest taking a look at the thread on "Christus Victor."

The other point was that the quote said nothing about Christ's death being for the purpose of enabling God to be able to pardon. This is clear enough. Just read the quote. If you wish to dispute this, cite something from the quote that says that Christ died in order to enable God to be able to pardon.

I'll respond to your points in your response, but you haven't acknowledge either of my points, both of which are clearly true.
The points I'm making are narrow in scope and indisputable, it would seem. You certainly haven't produced any evidence whatsoever to dispute them. Otoh, regarding the first point, I have presented evidence, which you haven't considered, and regarding the second, you would have to produce evidence because I'm asserting the quote doesn't say what you're claiming. So far you haven't produced anything from the quote to uphold your position.

What you did present you did by cutting what she wrote in half, claiming this was the "start" of what she wrote, when it wasn't. You cut out the very part that made it clear that her quote was addressing Christus Victor themes. I guess you just didn't notice what you were doing. It doesn't seem like something you'd do on purpose.



You seem to be assuming there's only two choices: philosophical and legal. Also by "legal" I'm sure you have in mind "in accordance with penal substitution," as if that's the only thing "legal" could mean. Regarding what the "redemption price" is, if you'll read the Christus Victor thread, you should be able to see what it is.

Regarding God's judgment on sin and unbelief, I don't see why you think this can only be arbitrary. Why can't sin and unbelief result in negative consequences because they are evil in themselves? Why can't God's judgment be that the wicked are destroyed by the glory of God (God's glory being His character) who is love, just as Ellen White says in DA 764? (where she over and over again explains that the wicked receive the results of their choice, as opposed to being destroyed by an arbitrary act of power by God).



I think the question involves deception, as it is by deception that Satan achieved man's fall.



Satan's power is deception. I think that's the key issue. I think the truth is what defeats him.



I have no problem with classifying it as a legal issue, as long as this is kept in the larger context of the Great Controversy regarding God's character.



We can discuss this point later. My point was that the quote under discussion says nothing about Christ's dying in order to enable God to be able to pardon. It doesn't. If we can't agree about something that we can easily verify just by reading the quote, without even having to do any reasoning or interpretation, I don't see how jumping to another quote will be helpful.

Again, Colin, if you dispute that the quote says that Christ died in order to enable God to be able to pardon, quote where it says that.