Murder victims & the time to die

I am glad you said, "...as I see it", because the Scripture explicitly says that a persons days are numbered before he is ever created. I even posted the Scripture and put it in bold letters. It is there for everyone to see.

 

I am pretty sure you don't have a choice at all concerning death. Also, dominion was to extend over the earth, not death. People can not muster up the ability to not die, Helen.

 

1. Since you start with this unprovable assumption, not even the explicit Scripture found in Psalm 139 will change your mind.
2. I posted Psalm 139, which is what this thread is about. You are trying to use this thread to give your anti-sovereignty propaganda. Deal with Psalm 139, Helen.
3. I did not do that Helen.

 

Jesus was murdered.

Was this not God's plan from the beginning?

 

Really?

Hezekiah was told he would die soon, to get his affairs in order. He pleaded. God allowed him to live longer. Check the story in 2 Kings 20 or Isaiah 38.

When I was dying, myself, after an emergency surgery, I knew I was dying. I could feel it happen. I was VERY aware of having a choice in the matter, and the strange thing is I didn't care. The internal infection had so sapped my strength in battling it that I was too tired to care anymore. My brother in his church and the women in mine were all praying for me that night. The next morning I was not only alive, but I sat up in bed and demanded the tubes be taken out. The doctor just about dropped his eyeballs when he saw me.

Or check 1 Corinthians 11:27-31 --

Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks wihtout recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself. Tht is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. But if we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgment.

'...that is why many of you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep...'

The clear implication here is that they brought this on themselves and that it could have been avoided.

Consider also what God says in 1 Kings 3:14 -- And if thou wilt walk in my ways, to keep my statutes and my commandments, as thyfather David did walk, then I will lengthen thy days.

God has given man free will. God interacts with man and responds to him. This does not in any way deny or impinge upon God's absolute sovereignty, only with the understanding some have about it.

 

No, Aaron, He was not murdered. He gave up His own life. Check the text.

edited to give the texts:

Matthew 27:50 -- And when Jesushad cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.

Luke 23:46 -- Jesus called out with a loud voice, "Father, int your hands I commit my spirit." When he had said this, he breathed his last.

John 19:30 -- When he had received the drink, Jesus said, "It is finished." With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

John 10:17-18 -- "The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life -- only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father."

[ December 23, 2002, 01:46 PM: Message edited by: Helen ]

 

Helen, I checked the text. It is as Aaron said.

Acts 2:23 -
Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death .

That is definitely murder unless "put to death" means something else.

 

Helen: God has given me a love and caring for people who are most probably not Calvinistically elect. Why would God give me a love for them if He does not love them?

Gina: What people are you talking about that are probably not "Calvinistically elect", and how would you know if they were? Why would God hate someone who isn't elect? Does he hate the unsaved?

Helen: Nor is it a matter of God not being sovereign. It is a matter of there being a dimension He has allowed which we may or may not understand.

Gina: Exactly. That is why this is such a touchy issue, we DON'T and cannot fully understand.

Helen: I truly do believe that in John 3:16 when it says God so loved the world that that is exactly what is meant. I truly do believe that in 1 John 3 when we read that God is not willing that one should perish but that all should come to repentance, that that is exactly what is meant. I truly do believe that abortion is not part of God's will regarding a human life.

Gina: It does mean that. How does that in any way prevent one from accepting that saving faith comes from God alone?

Helen: And I truly do believe that God has allowed us freedom of choice regarding obedience to Him and to the consciences He gave us.

Gina: How can a spiritually dead person make a spiritual choice? Left on his own, do you truly believe that any man would choose good over evil?

Helen: I cannot pretend that I do not care about suffering if the person is not 'elect'. I do care. God has given me a tender heart in that respect. Why would He do that if He did not care about them?

Gina: Who said that God doesn't care about the suffering of people? How would you know that God isn't using you as a means of bringing a person to the realization of their calling?

Helen: What I am reading here from some is implying that all those hundreds of baby boys who were slaughtered by Herod when Christ was a baby were supposed to be slaughtered. If that were true then no one would have a right to be horrified.

Gina: Enter that other dimension. Yes, we are horrified. On the other hand, God could have stopped it. He didn't. If my faith in him is to continue I must believe that He had a good reason not to, that man wasn't capable of ruining God's plans. Otherwise I give man power to control God, and that just doesn't work.

Helen: No Christian should be at all upset about 6 million Jews and a few million others slaughtered by Hitler and Co.? After all, they were supposed to die at that time and in that way anyway!...

Gina: Same answer as above, with the restatement of what I said previously-the people who committed the sin will still be responsible for what they did.

Helen: I reject that with every atom of my being. The God I know has a character of love and compassion and caring along with justice. The God I know said to let the little children come to Him, and He was not referring to "by means of slaughtering them." Nor did He say "let the elect of the children come to Me..."

Gina: Is this the same God who drowned men, woman, and children before they could die naturally? What if some of them would have accepted Christ later in life? Were there no children in the whole city of Sodom, or in Gomorrah?
I don't get it either. God wanted the Israelites free and he provided the way to do it, yet still Pharoh sinned. Did he sin of his own free will? Could he have NOT sinned? Could God have provided a way for the Israelites to leave without Pharoh's involvement? Why did he choose to have Pharoh asked, does this mean God is responsible and the cause of his disobedience toward God's will?

Helen: The idea that the murder victim should not be dead but that God allowed it is not an oxymoron. There is only One who was born to die, and die He did, horridly, on the cross, after immense suffering and humiliation. But He died because the rest of us were born to live. We can choose to die, and we can choose to kill, but we were born to live and to care for life -- after all, isn't that part of taking dominion of the world?

Gina: Death makes us sad. Violent deaths make us angry. Yet most humans still show an apathy to violence, an unwillingness to do what is needed to stop it. That in itself speaks of a possible reason for it's existance. When God shows us our sins, we will be without excuse. We've been shown the lowest in human nature and we still do not turn to him. That's just the tip of the iceburg, and a possible simple beginning to even try to understand.

Helen: God is sovereign absolutely. And in the end He will fix everything and help us understand everything.
But to demand that our understanding must be the judge of what He is doing now is arrogant in the extreme. And in the meantime, His perfect will and His permissive will are two different things. He can permit the murder without it being in His perfect will that it should have happened.

Gina: What is your scriptural backup for the existance of a permissive vs. perfect will?

Helen: To claim anything else is, as I see it logically, to claim that God is directly responsible for sin and evil. And that I also reject.

Gina: It's simply still what we don't understand. If we see a person beating a child on the street we may be charged with a crime for not intervening if we were capable. God is not held to our standards though. I don't understand it either.

 

Helen, we are aware that Christ laid down his life. Those passages do nothing to contradict the view I (and others) have given.

Are you saying that Peter was wrong in his assessment?

Divine Sovereignty (that can never be overruled) and human responsibility (which is always in submission to God) are both taught throughout the Bible.

 

No, Aaron, He was not murdered.</font>[/QUOTE]Yes, He was.

Acts 7:52 Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which shewed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers:

Now, wasn't this the plan from the beginning?

The answer is, Yes.

There is an account where they tried to murder Him earlier, but He passed through their midst because it was not yet His time.

In Jerusalem it was His time. So God delivered Him into the hands of murderers and betrayers.

[ December 23, 2002, 06:58 PM: Message edited by: Aaron ]

 

This is what I want to know as well ,Helen - some here obviously have not heard Jesus` new commandment - John13:34

 

p.s. As He loved us ..... completely, unconditionally, whoever we are.We must love and care for each other, and if that loving and caring saves lives, He determines that as well.

 

bump

 

All the love and care will not save the terminally ill. I'm not following this train of thought.

 

To say that dying and terminal illness is happenstance, is to say God is out of control.

Or no such thing as Divine Providence.

Merry Christmas!

 

Aparently the clear testimony of the Scriptures state that Jesus was murdered. That point being incontrovertibly established let us now go on with the fatal inconsistencies of the "compassion" arguments.

Knowing now that Christ was foreordained to die at the hands of murderers and betrayers, why would God have brought such swift and certain doom upon Judea?

We care for the destitute because we are commanded to, and because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. We do not do so out of a sense of desperation, or despair thinking that somehow without us they would prematurally slide into eternal torment.

Neither do we execute the justice of God upon the lawless because they have made us angry. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. I will repay. We bring malefactors to justice because it is the glory of God to do so.

The Calvinist God, far from being uncompassionate, is love. For if any of us were really getting what we deserve, we would all be in hell right now. If you look out your window, all you see is the love and compassion of God daily shown to undeserving bags of stinking worms, and no amount of suffering inflicted upon the flesh can compare to the suffering awaiting those who die in their sins.

But I ask, how can you offer any comfort at all to those who have lost a loved one to a murderer by suggesting that the loved one somehow stumbled outside of God's providence?

Jesus knew and understood when He told Pilate, "You would have no power over me were it not given you by my Father." It is true also for Christ's brothers. What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? The understood answer to that is only those to whom God gives power to be against us. We're told the AntiChrist will be given power to overcome the saints.

But what comfort to the sorrowing mother to know that the Captain of her salvation was also murdered. What power is given to her to forgive when she realizes that God isn't simply turning something wrong into good, but ordained it for good to begin with.

And death comes to pride when the sorrowing mother realizes in her heart, that God has the right to take away those things that He has given. Remember the patience of Job. Remember Joseph who could forgive his murderous brothers because he learned that God intended their ill treatment of him for the salvation of many souls.

 

with respect - I was not refering to the terminally ill but to those who may, if it is Gods will, survive with help , as per my quote originally posted by Helen

 

John 10:17-18 -- "The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life -- only to take it up again. No one takes it from me , but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father."

 

Gwyneth,

Do you think that somehow contradicts Stephen's judgment of their actions?