Welcome to visit my Site.
Allan Svensson, Sweden

Why does the revival tarry? It is because God’s
people tarry to obey the powerful command of
the Lord in Rev. 18:4. This is the most powerful
revival message of the Lord to his people in our time.

Regarding my beliefs, once one stone was removed and I started examining others for cracks, the entire wall of faith fell down: I realized that few of the stories in the bible made sense or were relevant, it was riddled with contradictions, and there was no evidence for God anyway outside of wishful thinking. I dabbled with other religions for a while but once the wall was down, there was no building another in its place; religion, gods and superstition became superfluous. It turned out my faith was a bit like the biblical “house built on sand”, only the structure (Christianity) was unstable, not the ground (myself).

And what a fantastic thing too! Finally I was free — a bit like a prisoner, once the wall crumbled, I found that I could explore in any direction. I’m so happy for the awful story of the bears, because if it weren’t for that, I might still be a prisoner.

HIS said: “That our Holy God of moral perfection, the God whom Jesus is equated with, would send a couple of bears to maul anybody, be they children, thugs, hippies, whoever, just for taunting a prophet just cannot be harmonized with our God of Love and Mercy.”

It is lopsided and inaccurate to describe God in the form of just two of His attributes … yes, He is Love and He is merciful, but He is also wrathful and just. He accounts for each and every sin and none will go unpunished. Since every one of us has sinned against Him, we all deserve death … and each of us will, in fact, die someday and face judgment.

Is God sovereign over everything? Yes, according to the text, He is … that means He will declare the number of our days and He will determine the means of our death. Not one person dies without His decree and permission. When we die, we will die with hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of sins attributed to our accounts. In light of this, do we dare say to God, “I didn’t deserve this?” Physical death is not unjust on the part of God – it is deserved. On the contrary, each day that we live is an act of delayed justice and the extension of grace on His part. He desires that none should perish, but each come to a place of repentance.

Having said all that … is dying in a bear attack any worse than dying in a car accident? Or slowly dying over years from cancer? Why should we be offended by the bear attack? If you’re offended in a general sense by the concept of death as a punishment for sin, fine. But the bear as a means of death is not the issue. I would say that any manner of death is shocking and difficult to swallow. Yet we cannot avoid it, nor can we control it. God is sovereign over our departure from this life.

These “young lads” (or whatever) had sinned by taunting God’s prophet … but if you think that’s the sum total of their debt for sin, you’d be wrong. I guarantee these lads had racked up their share of sins and they too were deserving of death just like you and me. God simply chose that moment to execute justice. So what’s the problem? Don’t we admire swift retributive justice if the judgment is correct and the punishment is fair?

HIS also said: “And if that is God’s idea of justice, then Falwell, Robertson and Hagee are absolutely correct when they say that God punished New Orleans via Katrina for its sin.”

Falwell, Robertson and Hagee were wrong in their statements because they assigned a direct correlation between Katrina and the sin of New Orleans without the benefit of special revelation from God. We dare not make such a claim on God’s behalf because we simply can’t know the mind of God in specific circumstances today. However, we can say (in a general sense) that Katrina and other “natural occurrences” are used by God to accomplish His purposes. This is supported by the biblical text … God sends calamity upon the earth for reasons which we can’t see in our finite condition.

Look, death is a reality. We all deserve it. We will all face it. If God exists and He is the Judge, none of us will be able to shake our fist at Him and claim that He is unfair or unjust when He pronounces His sentence. It doesn’t matter if it’s by bear or by old age. Just be ready … because justice will come some day.

The court of “public opinion” has been on the right and wrong side of so many issues throughout the day. I don’t think they (whatever they means) are a solid source of scholarship, given that “they” have been wrong just as much as they’ve been right.

When I’m talking about public opinion, I’m talking about the basic standard of justice and decency in today’s modern, secular society. Can you imagine the reaction of any religious leader who pulled something like this today in response to an angry mob of protestors? The Pope, James Dobson, Mullah Omar, the Dalai Lama – let them try it. Why does today’s society hold itself up to a much higher standard that god seems to in the bible?

You are starting from a place of absolutes (god is good because the bible says god is good and the bible’s true because it says so in the bible) and trying to tinker with the text to make it “fit” your presumption, instead of approaching the text objectively and looking at what’s actually there.

Gosh, you have good questions.

Thank you. I do my best.

Given the state of the world, I think humanity is the last species to go about judging justice.

But then how do you determine that the God you are follow is in fact what he claims to be? Such as just? Ultimately, what I see in these discussions is that it gets reduced to “God is just because God/the Bible says so.”

This is a far far different example than 2 Kings though, as the president is not a spokesperson for God or a prophet (no matter how some in the media say otherwise). Apples and oranges.

But this still puts us in the position of judging the act based on the characters, not the act itself. THe mauling becomes “okay” or “just” because God orders it. If this same situation were in the Qur’an, would you still find it okay? I would say you wouldn’t, because you’d find the act to be horrific. The only reason I can see for finding it okay here is because the Christian God is involved. In one case, it’s the “orange” ordering it, in the other case it’s the “apple.” But what’s being ordered is the same.

It’s interesting how when reading this story, everyone is taking it from the point of view of the younger folk (however old they actually are). Why is that?

For me, it’s because I would expect the Christian God to be above such behavior, honestly. This behavior mirrors something I’d expect to find a Greek God do, or any other God of ancient myth.

The text mentions nothing about morality.

But can’t we still determine whether the action is moral?

I will add one thing, however, for HeIsSailing’s orginal post – it’s not only Bible teachers who are taken at their word, it’s a common practice throughout our culture – people are rarely as questioning as they should be of various media, authors (I’m thinking of how many people thought “The Divinci Code” was fact), and even pop-scientists.

Lastly, I once was slotted to debate an Atheist publicly on a topic related to this post: “the Bible is Obscene”. To the shock of my atheist opponent, I publicly sided with him: it is obscene, and sadly the majority of the public, particularly the church, is blind to it’s offensiveness. I personally think that the obscenity of the Scripture is what our complacent, middle-class lives need to be shocked out of our dull, self-satisfied lives, and I love the ‘Word’ for cutting me like a ‘double-edged sword’. He thought we would do better just do without the book. That is very simply where we differed. It was an enjoyable discussion, though!

I beg to differ. No matter what the age of these individuals being ripped apart for calling someone bald-head is an atrocity.

On top of that, if you try to define God as “loving and compassionate,” it’s a stretch to do that when he’d have you ripped apart for making fun of a prophet.

Paul