Featured How should we respond to the shooting at the H/S shooting in Colorado?

Whatever you feel about the people at the bar, I hope you give some props to the retired army platoon leader who took down the assailant. He is a hero.

Army Veteran Went Into ‘Combat Mode’ to Disarm the Club Q Gunman

 

That very thing happened after the Pulse Nightclub Shooting in Florida. Two of the survivors, Luis Ruiz and Angel Colon formed a ministry called Fearless Identity. Florida Overcomers They have given their testimonies in many ways for several years now and even made a documentary about the shooting and how God used it to bring them back to Faith in Christ.

Sadly what you wrote is very true. Many Churches do not believe God is mighty enough wash away the sin of homosexuality, and to justify and sanctify a believer who once (but no longer does) believed that he had to be loved by and had to love a person of the same sex in a sexual manner to lead a fulfilled life.

But, even the Bible testifies to the truth that God can even save a person who is exclusively attracted to the same sex. Read 1 Cor. 6:11. For such WERE some of you . . .

 

Baptist Board has no control over which ads are run on this website?

 

The man who first tackled the shooter was not homo; he fas a wife & children. One of the vics was his daughter's boyfriend. Why they were in a LGBTQ-favoring place, I dunno.

Billy Graham once preached about homos. He said thatthey're lost long as they practice that lifestyle, but they're not automatically lost with no chance for salvation. He reminded us that we heteros must practice restraint, not attempting to have sex with any member of the opposite gender, and saved homos aren't automatically 'cured', but they must also practice restraint, not seeking to engage in homosexual affairs.

The acceptance of LGBTQ as 'normal' is part of the great falling away prophesied in 2 Thess. 2:3. The rest shall be fulfilled soon; the "man of sin"(the beast/antichrist) shall come to power soon, likely during this generation.

 

why would we delight in people being killed. no matter who they are.

was their no hope of redemption? I know many a former lesbian or gay people who have repented and come to christ, and are now happily married with children, who have repented of their former lifestyle. some even are deacons or church leaders.

what if they were killed when they still lived that lifestyle. would that be justice?

and people wonder why the church is so hated...

 

The AP is reporting that the assailant says he (they) is non-binary (neither male nor female) based on the defense attorneys first legal response. This young man's upbringing seems tragic, which points to the tragedy stemming from abuse as he grew up. It adds a layer to this sad event and removes the story that this event was a hate crime against the LGBTQ community, but rather a more intimate despair caused by the LGBTQ community upon this young man.
In any case, @Reynolds is correct, the wages of sin is death.

Defense: Colorado gay club shooting suspect is nonbinary

 

If they did, they should wonder why anyone in their church survives from week-to-week.

Of course not. Human beings are made in the image of God. Lives lost are a tragedy.

The murderer comes from a Mormon background. I'm not sure why so many Christians want to isolate themselves from the killer. There are many in evangelicalism who have spread the message of contempt for sinners that it is inevitable that some unstable person would act out on it.

Obviously. Otherwise we should not claim to be Christian.

A better question is, "Why do we allow this?"

Christians are responsible for their words and attitudes.

 

Allow? Nothing happens unless God ordains it.

Otherwise, one is advocating for a form of Deism, that God just sits back and whatever happens, happens, unless God decides He will intervene, but maybe He won't.

If some people want to believe they live in a creation where the Creator is not totally absolutely sovereign, go ahead. I no longer live in such a belief system, where the clay can form itself into whatever it wants instead of the Potter.

 

Maybe because they didn't have anything to to with the killer? Why is it that when someone who is a Christian tweets "They're coming for our children", that is a message of hate that causes this stuff, yet when one of their own advocates tweets "We're coming for your children", that doesn't count?

Don't let yourself fall into the typical rhetoric where something like this happens and automatically everyone is supposed to give up all our beliefs as some kind of virtue signal. I bet if you ran a survey on here almost everyone would say that as soon as the gunman was proven to be the one who actually did this thing he should be executed. What in the world else are we supposed to do?

 

If all of us were killed while we were in rebellion, it would be justice from God to kill us. The wages of sin is death. God placed his justice upon Christ Jesus as our ransom to justify us before God by faith.
Yes, our death would be completely just. But, God...even while we were dead in sin...made us alive with Christ. God's mercy toward us is so very hard to understand. We deserved death (that's justice) but instead we received reconciliation (that's mercy and grace). All praise and glory be to Christ Jesus our Lord!

 

God ordained the outcome of sin and that the master over sin could kill these people. Read the book of Job to see how God rules in these affairs.

The master of sin is far below God and never to be raised up above his station by us.

 

"God's will determines all the choices and circumstances of his creatures, so that nothing is up to man's "free will." In fact, because God is completely sovereign, man has no free will:

All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. (Psalms 139:16)

The LORD works out everything for his own ends – even the wicked for a day of disaster. (Proverbs 16:4)

In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps. (Proverbs 16:9)

A man's steps are directed by the LORD. How then can anyone understand his own way? (Proverbs 20:24)

The king's heart is in the hand of the LORD; he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases. (Proverbs 21:1)

All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him: "What have you done?" (Daniel 4:35)

Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that." (James 4:13-15)

All things are decided and caused by God – nothing is free from his control, and he has not chosen to forego his control on anything. The doctrine is repulsive to those who abhor the rule and honor of God, and so they oppose it. But the doctrine is a source of comfort and celebration to those who love him. Why would we want it any other way, than for God to rule over all things? And what better life can we wish for, than to be ruled by God?

The doctrine contradicts the religious tradition that God does not decree evil or that he does not cause evil. Of course God does not make decrees against his other decrees. Since God is not insane, he has only one will, one desire. However, there is no problem for him to issue a decree that causes his creatures to violate his precepts. Whereas decrees are declarations of intentions about things that he would cause to happen, precepts are declarations of definitions, not intentions, and do not overlap with the decrees. It must be true that God decrees and causes events that are contrary to his precepts; otherwise, there could be no evil, but there is indeed evil. Therefore, God must be the metaphysical author of sin and evil.

This does not mean that God himself is evil. To metaphysically cause evil and to morally commit evil are two different things. One is a matter of ability to cause something, while the other is a matter of conformity to a principle. The Bible teaches that God is the one who defines right and wrong, and that sin is a transgression of God's law. Therefore, for God to commit evil by causing evil – for this to be bad or wrong – he must declare a moral law that forbids himself to decree or to cause evil, that is, to decree or to cause his creatures to transgress his law. There is no biblical basis to suppose that God has declared such a law against himself. Indeed, the Bible teaches that all that God says and does are right and good. If he says it, it must be true. If he does it, it must be good. Therefore, since God is sovereign and there is evil, God must be the cause of evil, and since he is the cause of evil, it must be right and good for him to be the cause of evil.

There is no divine law that says God would be wrong if he were to be the cause of evil. Why, then, do men assume that it would be evil for God to be the author of sin? What law would God transgress? He would transgress the law of men, or what men have imposed upon him to define what a righteous God must or must not do. This is the sinister truth behind the religious tradition that says God is not the author of sin, for if he were to be such, it would mean that he has transgressed a law that men has declared against him. The necessary conclusion is that the doctrine that God is not the author of sin, or that it is blasphemy and heresy to say that he is, is itself the real blasphemy and heresy. Unless God is the author of sin and evil, he is not completely sovereign, and he is not God. Therefore, to deny that God is the author of sin and evil is to deny God.

The Bible teaches that God's decrees and actions are always right and good. Since he is completely sovereign, and there is evil in this universe, this means that he is the one who decrees and causes evil in this universe. But since his decrees and actions are always right and good, then this means that it is right and good that he is the one who decrees and causes evil in this universe. The very fact that he decrees and causes evil means that it is right and good for him to do so. There is no authority or standard higher than God by which to condemn him. If he thinks that it is good for him to cause evil, then it is good for him to cause evil.

This does not mean that evil is good, which would be a contradiction. Sin is defined as a transgression of God's moral law, and when we say that God is the author of sin, we are saying that God is the metaphysical cause of a creature's transgression of God's moral law. God transgresses no moral law, since there is no moral law against what he does, but he causes the creature to transgress. Morality relates to moral law. But there is no moral law against sovereign metaphysical power. It is right and good for God to metaphysically cause evil, just because he does it, and because he has not declared himself wrong for doing it. It is wrong for man to morally commit evil, because God has declared man wrong for doing it, although it is God who metaphysically causes man to do it. Therefore, God remains righteous, and the sinner remains evil. The distinctions are clear. There is no paradox or contradiction, and also no biblical or logical basis for objection against the doctrine.

Does this make God a tyrant? If the word simply means, "an absolute ruler," then of course God is a tyrant. And since he is the sole moral authority, the very fact that he is a tyrant means that he ought to be one, that it is good and just for him to be one. The negative connotations of the word apply only to human beings, since no man is worthy of absolute authority or capable to wield it. But God is "an absolute ruler" – that is what it means to be God."

- excerpt from Vincent Cheung's Systematic Theology

(emphasis mine)

 

if this is true, all the atrocities of Hitler. Stalin, and the other evil dictators where God's fault.. Because these men had no free will. they did what God told them to do.

 

Psalms 130:3 If thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?

 

Exactly my thoughts.