My wife is having major surgery on Monday and recovery will take a couple of months. So I will be very scarce for a while. But I want to continue exploring this, so I may pop in now and then.

our prayers and thoughts are with her.

Regarding #116691, this is a different subject. I spent quite a time talking with MM on this subject. I posted a story about the father of a hunter which deals with these issues. I don't know if you saw that or not.

As I pointed out to MM, I think there are four issues of increasing difficulty to understand:

1.The atonement.
2.The judgment of the wicked.
3.The violent acts which God performed in the OT.
4.The violent acts which God commanded others to perform in the OT.

It seems to me impossible that if one has the wrong ideas about 1 that this won't permeate the others. This would agree with Ellen White's statement:



I think she's right, and one of the deficiencies I've seen in our studies have been posts with no apparent thought in regards to how the principles of the cross fit in; at least, I haven't been able to detect any connection.



So if God tells us to cause someone excruciating pain, then it's OK. I think we're back to the inquisition question I asked a couple of weeks ago. There was nothing wrong with what the people in the inquisition did (i.e., their actions considered alone); their only error was in thinking they were doing God's will. This is what I was trying to get at in this post. This is what I thought you thought.

If you disagree with my conclusion here, you can point that out, but it certainly seems to me to follow logically that if it's OK to cause people pain if God tells you to do so, then what I just said above follows.

Ok. Best wishes for your wife.

This is not a subject I was discussing. I was discussing causing excruciating pain in the form which the plagues describes.



I think quoting what I actually said would be helpful, which I'll do shortly.



Yes, no straw men! Agreed! I said nothing about your not thinking that God is not loving, as can be readily seen by reading what I wrote.

Teresa said, "God's actions can be shown in a gentle, loving manner for those of us who believe such."

You responded:



I responded to this by writing:



Since you wrote, "The Word of God is symbolized by the Sword of the Spirit. Those who are limited to teaching by the feather of the Spirit, hoping to tickle everyone death" etc., I can only assume that your sarcastic, deriding remarks were directed against what Teresa wrote, since you quoted what she wrote, and then posted your comment immediately following that.



I think a better choice would be to read things more carefully. I at no point said anything about your thinking God is not loving. What happened is Teresa said something, and your responded to that, and I responded to your comments, pointing out that I disagreed with your comments regarding what Teresa wrote and why. Teresa said that, "Gods actions can be shown in a gentle, loving manner for those of us who believe such." and you appeared to be taking issue with that. I took issue with your criticism of her comments.

Thanks.

I'm talking about greater pain than that. Worse than the physical pain of the plagues, God's truth causes the pain of cutting away sin, pain unto death.

I wasn't talking about this in the thread that spawned this one, but about inflicting pain and death in the form of plagues.

In regards to your point above, however, from my perspective, it is sin that is responsible for the pain that the wicked will feel, not the truth. Here's an analogy. If one smokes, one can damage oneself to the point to where breathing even pure air could be painful. I wouldn't blame pure air for causing pain, but smoking.



This says that Satan, and his followers, place themselves so out of harmony with God that His very presence is to them a consuming fire. I think this is the right way of looking at it. It's like saying, "Those who smoke damage themselves so much that merely breathing pure air is to them a consuming fire."

So the pain they feel is not result of something God does to them, but the result of what they have done to themselves. This looks to me to be the point of DA 764.

Tom, correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you view #3 above in terms of holy angels withdrawing their protection and allowing nature or evil angels or evil men to cause death and destruction (as opposed to holy angels causing it themselves)?


She qualifies herself by coupling "can know" with "needs to know". It is very obvious that Jesus never resorted to the "withdraw and permit" principle of commanding or permitting death and destruction while He was here in the flesh. Yes, He spoke about doing it in the future, but He didn't demonstrate it while here in the flesh.

ive missed the point here every time it has been brought up over so many pages.

im also missing how the "needs to know" qualifies the "can know".