I post some simple, genuine questions and in response I get implicitly accused of being a scoffer, a mocker and an evangelical atheist. This forum has indeed become a harsh place.

Bear, you have officially lost it I am very sorry to say.

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Todd

I went back and edited all my comments, I'm sorry old sluefoot ever was able to lure me into this thread, may God forgive me.......

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Bill

RE : /// As for cancer, disease is part and parcel of a dying world, nothing to do with judgment, although there have been men "eaten up with worms,"///

Disease as a judgement seems to be the context of the majority of the verses I find in the Old Testament concerning disease : Exodus 15:26 Deuteronomy 7:15 Deuteronomy 28:60 2 Chronicles 21:18 etc.

Now in the New Testament the context of disease seems to be used in a different context and that is of healing in the majority if not all of the verses I looked at :
Matthew 4:24 ,Matthew 9:20, Matthew 9:35 ,
Matthew 14:35 , Acts 19:12 , Acts 28:9

I wounder if something has changed between the Old Testament dispensation and that of the New ?

Yes proudpapa...you bring up a good point.

The Old Testament was the dispensation of the Law.

The New Testament is Jesus coming to bring grace and truth.

Jesus even told Peter, when he was asking to command fire to fall on the people like Elijah did, that he didn't realize what Spirit he was of, because the Son of Man didn't come to destroy men's lives but to save them.

We must not desire judgment but mercy, because we are still in the day of grace. We must desire people to be saved from the wrath to come.

Blessings....rbanks

Continuing from last post...

The Bible tells us that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness...it even tell us that those that do not believe in Jesus, that the wrath of God abides on them. We must understand that at one time the wrath of God was abiding on us as well.

It is dangerous to desire judgment because we are to love our neighbor as ourself. What does the Lord require of us but to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.

Blessings...rbanks

••• For it is time for judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God?••• 1 Peter 4:17

••• For we know Him who said, "VENGEANCE IS MINE, I WILL REPAY." And again, "THE LORD WILL JUDGE HIS PEOPLE."••• Hebrews 10:30

The verses above tell us that God will judge His church. God will judge His people.  This is in the New Testament.  But someone will argue was not judgement taken care of at the cross. Why is God going to judge His people.

The Lord Jesus Christ is seeking a pure bride to take home to be with Him.  He is desiring a holy bride.  If anything the American church is far from being pure and holy in the eyes of Christ.

Thus God will send judgment upon the American Church to purify her and refine her.  These judgments may be in the form of persecution, an economic collapse, natural disasters in the form of hurricanes and earthquakes, perhaps even an invading army.

Yet many will argue this is preposterous. God would never judge His American church.  We are covered by the blood of the cross and we are under grace. To say that an economic collapse or an invading army or a hurricane or an earthquake is a judgment on the American churche is of Satan. Those who would dare to speak such are of Satan. 

Then please explain the versus above.  The hearers of 1st Peter and Hebrews were all under grace and covered by the blood of Christ. Yet the writers of those letter said that God would judge the people who follow Christ. If they were judged particular in the persecutions they endured. Are we so arrogant to think that we too will escape the Judgment of God.  Do we think that we as an American Church in our self-centeredness and our sin are pleasing to Christ.  If we think such then we are surely deceiving ourselves. That deception will surely lead to the eternal destruction of our souls.

God must judge the American Church to bring forth a holy remnant.  Judgement in America will begin with the American evangelical church. To deny this reality is to deny the very word of God itself. God must judge the American Church to bring forth a holy remnant to himself.  And that judgment could very well be in the form of hurricanes, earthquakes, an economic collapse, or an invading army Whatever it takes for God to purify for Himself a holy remnant.

If anything can be said about these storms God is wanting His people to repent. He is wanting His people to turn back to Him.  He is wanting His people to be holy as He is Holy. He will do this through whatever means He deems necessary to purify His church.

Let us not despise the judgments of God as He judges us. Let us be on our faces before him repenting of our sinful life. Let us ask him to help us to live a holy Life as unto Him.  For God is purifying His bride in America through judgments.


Bro Blaine 

1 Peter 4:17-18
17 For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?
18 And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?

James 2:12-13
12 So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty.
13 For he shall have judgment without mercy, that hath showed no mercy; and mercy rejoiceth against judgment.


Brother Blaine,

You talk about one that fears God...brother you have no way of knowing how much I fear God. I fear God more than most people I know. The fear of the Lord is to depart from evil. There are many things that other so called Christians do that I want do, because I have been saved, baptized in the Holy Ghost, and sanctified unto God. I could give you a list of the things God has done miraculously in my life but I want because I am nothing. He is everything to me and His Word is my delight but I hunger for more. I feel so inadequate at times and desire to be formed to Christ completely.

I witness to people, I preach repentance, the altar, the blood. and the Cross of Christ. I believe that the majority of the churches in the USA is full of tares instead of wheat. I believe that one must be born again to enter the Kingdom of God and many are not born again. I want to see people saved and filled with the Spirit to live a victorious life in Christ.

It does not thrill me that many in the churches of the US as well as the world are no truly saved. It does not make me happy that many are going to experience the wrath of God, if they do not turn to Christ with all their heart. I must preached the truth in love and I must warn others in love. This world is already condemn but yet Jesus did not come to condemn but He came to save.

We must not condemn others but leave that to God to do in His time. It is not his desire for any to perish but that all would come to repentance. We are not to take the place of God, he said vengeance is mine says the Lord. We must desire mercy because it rejoices over judgment. If we judge then we will be judged on how we judge others. We are to judge righteously in order to help a person come to repentance. We must treat others the way we would have them to treat us.

We must love our neighbor as ourselves. When women, children, sickly, elderly people are suffering, some even to death because of a hurricane or other disasters, we must not be approving of it unless we want this to happen to us. We must understand that we were once children of wrath ourselves. We must lay down our lives for others as Jesus did. We love Him because He first loved us. He suffered on the Cross for the ungodly. God gets no pleasure out of the death of the wicked. You know he gets no pleasure out of the death of babies or children. Why should we as Christians claim that we should not pray that people would be safe from disaster.

Blaine, would you beat up one of your children to within an inch of their Life and killed the other one. Then go to the funeral and cry over the one you killed and then the one you almost killed, spend all your energy and money to nurse the one back to health. Does this make sense to you? Many Christians are praying and spending money working hard to help their neighbor recover from these disasters because it is the Christin thing to do because we are to show God's love.

I don't know where you live Blaine, but if it was somewhere that a tornado was going right toward your house that would tear up everything you owned and would leave you paralyzed from your neck down, even though you had fell into a temptation that you where now living in sin and I knew it. I would still pray for you that the tornado would not go there, I would pray that you wouldn't be harmed because of God's love. I would pray that the goodness of God would lead you to repentance. I would pray that you would get a vision of Calvary and the love of Jesus for you. I believe it's the goodness of God in offering His Son to suffer and die for your sins that bring people to repentance, not bringing disasters on people.

Blessings...rbanks

Amos 3:6

Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD has not done it?

Evil here is not the commission of iniquity, but the pressure of distress. Consider the Lord's agency in the infliction of evil, in contradistinction to —

I. CHANCE. The truth is, chance is a mere term of human ignorance. The only rational meaning of the word is that we are in ignorance of the cause or causes of the event. There is an atheism which denies the existence of a God altogether. And there is an atheism which admits the existence, but denies all superintendence of human or created beings," and of their respective concerns. We might as well have no God as no providence. The sentiment of the text is the reverse of this. It is, that there is a God, and that He directs and governs all things. In what strong and delightful terms is the doctrine of a universal and particular providence expressed by Him who " spake as never man spake" (Matthew 10:29-31).

II. DISTINGUISH THE AGENCY OF JEHOVAH FROM THAT OF IDOLS. There is a tendency in man to two opposite extremes, atheism and superstition. Superstition is the offspring of guilty fears; and the general character of the gods of the heathen, in many cases indicated by their very forms, accords with the nature of their origin. Again, there has discovered itself, wherever the knowledge of the true God has been imparted, a mournfully consistent propensity to forget Him, to overlook His superintendence, to leave Him out of our thoughts.

III. DIVINE AGENCY MAY BE REGARDED IN CONTRADISTINCTION TO AN EXCLUSIVE ATTENTION TO SECOND CAUSES. How frequently is something called Nature deified! And second and subordinate causes are so contemplated and insisted on, as to indicate an exclusion from the mind of the great originating cause of all being, and the supreme uncontrolled Director of all events! In accounting for our calamities we are in imminent danger of this kind of atheism. All second causes are under the unceasing and sovereign control of the First. Thus it is with the elements of nature. There are laws; we forget that they are His laws. We have not done enough when we have accounted for disease from the state of the atmosphere, for the desolations of the storm from the theory of the winds, for deficient crops from blight and grub and mildew. We must go higher. We must rise to Him by whom all these, with every other power of mischief, are commissioned to work their respective effects. The same great general truth applies to men and to the events of history, in which men are the agents. Learn that the existing national evils or calamities, though inflicted by a power which we cannot resist, are not inflicted in caprice. It is painful to hear the inconsiderate manner in which many speak of the Divine "sovereignty." While God may retain in His own mind the special causes of particular visitations, He has not left us in ignorance of the great general cause of all suffering. Natural evil is the offspring of moral evil. All good is from God; all evil is from the sinner himself. All evil is of the nature of punitive, righteous retribution.

Ralph Wardlaw

Savannah-

I have read this post carefully. It is obvious the writer holds to an idea of meticulous sovereignty which would make God directly responsible for the most horrid evils such as the sexual abuse of infants.

I am not sure if the point of this article in regard to the discussion at hand. It seems to be that while God is directly responsible for this hurricane it may not actually be a "judgment." But I am just guessing.

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Todd