And this corresponds to the point I've been making about the Tree of Life. Would it recode back the DNA to its original form? Even if you answered that question, "yes," surely you don't think it would change a person's thinking from sinful to righteous. Free will wouldn't allow for that. So the moral and mental degeneration would continue, worse and worse and worse.

Indeed. Truth is not determined by your need for God to be violent, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ, who perfectly revealed the Father. How violent was He? Did He teach the theory of "judicious killing"?

I've been attempting to make this same point. I'm requoting this here because I think this is very clearly put.

It sounds that way to you because of your mind-set. To your way of thinking "judicious violence" is a good thing (or "judicious killing," which is what your actual words were).

The way we view God impacts how we interpret spiritual statements, whether from Scripture or the SOP. To someone who views things the way you do, "Sounds indeed like justified and deserving, Divine ‘wrathful’ judgements to me" is what comes naturally to mind. Someone who views violence/killing/coercion/use of force to get ones way/etc. as contrary to God's character, sees something different happening.

Immediately before the statement you cited, we read:



Earlier in the chapter she explained:



Enumerating what happens:

1.In that fearful time the righteous must live in the sight of a holy God without an intercessor.

(This is the problem! There is no more intercessor to defend against the attacks of Apollyon, the destroyer.)

2.The restraint which has been upon the wicked is removed, and Satan has entire control of the finally impenitent.

3.God's long-suffering has ended.
(Let's see what happens as a result)

4. The wicked have passed the boundary of their probation; the Spirit of God, persistently resisted, has been at last withdrawn. Unsheltered by divine grace, they have no protection from the wicked one. Satan will then plunge the inhabitants of the earth into one great, final trouble.

She concludes the paragraph with a comparison to the destruction of Jerusalem, which she explained in the same terms that she is here explaining the pouring out of the last plagues.

Again, here's what Ellen wrote about it:


She clearly says God was testing, proving Moses. Which plainly means He did not intend to destroy Israel. Otherwise, if Moses had failed the test and God had destroyed Israel, it implies God would have raised up a nation through a man who failed the test of his faithfulness.

Tom and APL, again I see we have reached an impasse. I cannot have a discussion where what I have said/linked is outrightly ignored so I won’t be commenting on your decided oblivious views on the “War in Heaven”. You all can read this SOP proof for yourselves whenever you feel like it. You all are, manifestly, “regalingly”, thinking that you are merely arguing against my view, however your are arguing against direct revelations and statements of the SOP. Suit yourselves. I cannot force you to click on a link.

In regards to God and His judgments, including the plague, you are a painting Him like a hypocritical Mafia don who feels guiltless and clean because he sent his capo soldiers out to do his dirty work and that simply by saying something disparaging and understood as an execution command to his captains or underboss.

The Bible is clear that God both directly execute judgements and also at times leaves this to the work of nature, peoples or directly Satan. Trying to “launder” the wrath of God clearly expressed in the Bible is implicitly claiming that God would have been doing something wrong, just like a judge sentencing someone to the electric chair or the officer one who flips that switch are doing something wrong.

And please, spare me the spurious quibbling, peripheral knit-picking. I don’t have time for that. And frankly it is like dealing with vexatious little children. (Take it as you surely will.) You all just prove that you only answer what you think you have an answer to but just wholly ignore whatever you can’t answer which disprove your view and of course never admit this. Having a discussion with people who are thus ‘still seeing a forest despite all of the felled trees’ is not at all worthwhile for me.

And my view of God is not eisogetical, but exegetical. Do these studies for yourselves. This GC is not and has not been a stoic and bloodless conflict, especially for God. So whether direct or indirect, God is ultimately responsible for all that has occurred and been allowed to occur in this world. (GC 35-37 is only one type of God’s destruction = the indirect one.) The operative issue is “why has He allowed this to be the case.”

Have you not also read...:

...or is this fact to be “best-knowingly”, selectively, excised from the Biblical record to uphold your view of what God should really be like???

And Gen 3:22-24 along with the tangible water of life view is unequivocally clear to me. If God said it would happen, then I believe it over man’s rationalization simply you cannot accept that this could be the case. You all, particularly APL, are looking a natural answer, e.g, TE’s or even Satan injected-coding for something that is entirely “supernatural.” Instead this is were I now see and understand is the epicenter crux of the dividing and still open issue in this ongoing GC: i.e., 'why can’t people who choose not to observe God’s law, even only breaking one, even if replacing it with an alternative law, (= “good sinners”) be allowed to live.' Doesn’t EGW similarly say somewhere something in the line of: ‘whereas Satan priorly in the GC wanted to make such a point upon the entire Law, following the Cross, i.e, in the NT Church Age, he has instead focused that GC issue solely upon the (and seemingly arbitrary, as most Christian implicitly believe) Sabbath commandment!! Seems to me that the issue involving the other 9 commandments have been already demonstrated prior to the cross. As I see it, the last 6 by the time of the Flood, and the first 3 during especially the times of Ancient Israel, at least in the religious realm, i.e., without God’s help by making Him their God and respecting Him, other evil nations would route God’s professed people.

As I said, I see it that God instead, through indeed this testing, raised up a mercy option which was not there before because of the absence of an intercessor. And for this to be genuine. He had to veil it as He did. Then with now the option to pardon, whereas before he only had the option to destroy, God, through also the good points of Moses, chose to pardon Israel. Again a faithless nation is completely useless to God given the supernatural feats needed to establish this otherwise helpless and vulnerable nation of poor slaves. So this destruction would have just been an acceleration of what was sure to occur otherwise, (e.g.., surrounding nations coming against them and routing them), if such faithlessness persist or even because of this great unforgiven sin of the Golden Calf.

Notice also, as I previously stated that there was not divinely hinted opportunity for the sin on the borders of Canaan, and protracted judgement did follow, albeit only on the supposed-to-be responsible adults.

There are other incidents in Scripture where this very thing happened. For example, God looked for someone to repair the breach of the wall. If He had found someone, things could have been different. In Moses, He did find someone, and things were different.



It does imply that. But people have failed tests of faithfulness and gone on to be great followers of God, of which Abraham, the very father of the people whom were discussing, is an example.

The reason Israel wasn't destroyed was because of Moses' intercession. God wasn't kidding.

...and it is readily seen that it is when God no longer desires to have mercy (e.g., with the “unmixed”/undiluted 7 Last Plagues) that He steps aside and let’s Satan have His way. OF course Satan follows through in order to take advantage of this “no mercy” green light, because if He does not, God will, though, “mercifully, do this indismissable judgement Himself, and Satan wants both people to hate God and also wants to take vengeance on God’s creation, especially since he now has nothing left to gain by continuing to pretend to be a well-wisher for these rebellious ones.

NJK - I suggest listening to a recording of a Sabbath School class on the book of Revelation, speaking about retribution. You can find it here: http://goo.gl/2yPSW.

As always, it is best to hear the whole thing. But starting around 35 or 36 minutes, speaking about the topic of retribution the speaker (Tonstad) speaks about doing the exegesis. He says has done it in his writings, and he will win the discussion based on exegesis - "narrowly". But you can't win the Great Controversy narrowly, you need to win it in a big way. And he is speaking of Friedrich Nietzsche, who was not a friend of Christianity. And I'll leave it there. Listen at your own risk, should you dare.