Sorry Jos, been sidetracked on other threads.....so to answer your questions...this is how we see things.....
Why couldn't God just create new individual humans without a sin nature?
Understanding free will, means that those observing (other free willed angels who had not yet decided to join satan in his rebellion) were watching to see what God would do about this situation This had never happened before, so it was something new and disturbing.......how God handled it would determine everyone's future....the angel's as well as man's. There was a lot riding on the outcome that would impact us all forever.
If God had simply allowed the now imperfect humans to live and made a new batch of sinless ones, imagine where that would have led? If the new batch had remained sinless and the old batch stayed as they were, then the human race would have become a 'mish-mash' of sinful and sinless individuals. How would that have achieved anything or answered satan's bold accusations?
Or if God had wiped out all three rebels and started again....what was to stop another "satan" (resistor) from demanding a response to the devil's accusations? Those issues had to be settled once and for all. So right there in Eden, God uttered his first prophesy in Genesis 3:15. The players in this prophesy remained a mystery for thousands of years but as they got closer to their fulfillment, God released more and more information to clarify his long range plans to rescue Adam's children from the sin they inherited from him. He would provide a "seed" who would deal the devil a mortal head wound, but not until satan had delivered a heel wound. As time went on, things became clearer and clearer. (Proverbs 4:18)
Where did he indicate this?
1 Corinthians 13:8-13....
"...But if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away with; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away with. . . . . When I was a child, I used to speak as a child, to think as a child, to reason as a child; but now that I have become a man, I have done away with the traits of a child.. . . .Now, however, these three remain: faith, hope, love; but the greatest of these is love."
Paul likened the miracles as something to attract spiritual "children" .....he said that the miracles would give way to more mature aspects of spirituality..."faith, hope and love". They did not have the complete word of God back then, but once that complete word was in the hands of Christ's disciples (i.e. the Hebrew scriptures along with the gospels written by the apostles as well as the letters of Paul and others) they would have a fuller understanding of God's purpose.
So it's sinful for believers to heal themselves?
I don't think "sinful" is the word.....since the miracles were for the benefit of unbelievers to draw them to the Christ, it would have been "inappropriate" to use them selfishly. I could liken it to the donations people make to charity being used up by administration costs. No one should be able to profit from charity....it is inappropriate. If people get paid, it is a business. If they volunteer, its a charity. Same with people donating to a ministry...if the Pastor uses those funds for personal gain, that is inappropriate.
How exactly do proponents of evolution use this tactic? If evolution is true then they wouldn't need to use this tactic.
Bingo! They have to use 'perception management' to sell their product. Most people who are raised with a belief in God need some kind of persuasion to eliminate him from their lives. He is a very strong presence, depending on your upbringing. Some are not raised to see God as a loving Father, but as a harsh judge who demands that we comply with his wishes, or he will fry us in hellfire forever. Do such people love God or are they just afraid of him? Who wouldn't want to come out from under that suffocating blanket? They need little convincing.
But the ones raised to see God as a loving Father will hang onto him because they have a relationship with him. So many people just go through the motions of being "Christians" without having any real relationship with their Creator or making any real commitment to him.
At Hebrews 11:6 Paul wrote..
."Moreover, without faith it is impossible to please God well, for whoever approaches God must believe that he is and that he becomes the rewarder of those earnestly seeking him."
Faith is a requirement, so how can you have faith in someone you don't know? We have to believe that he
is.....not that he might exist....but to "know" that he does. We cannot do that without personal interaction. The rewards he hold out to thank us for our love and loyalty are not pipe dreams.....they are solid promises made by the one who created everything. He made us to be incentive-oriented. We live for rewards if you think about it. Every time we sit down to a favorite meal, our taste buds reward us. Every time we see something beautiful, our minds are flooded with chemicals that affect how we feel. Every time we endure a painful operation, the success of that operation makes all the pain worth it. We go to work for the paycheck.....we embark on a career because we hope it will reward us with a decent lifestyle. Do you see...?
Science uses what it knows to sell what it can only suggest. Men of science are held in high esteem by the academic world and academia is the producer of the world's greatest minds...or so we are told. But when you have men like Richard Dawkins and his ilk, using ridicule and derision to make their opponents feel like uneducated fools, then he is playing on people's egos, not promoting science at all. (a read of the creation V evolution threads will tell you this) Evolution on the scale that science claims is a deception designed to make God go away. He never will.
I get that but why command and Eve to have kids knowing it would lead to a perpetuation of original sin and all these negative effects on humans of later generations?
It was part of his original mandate. He had to settle the issue of who is the world's better ruler, or else just wipe them out and start again with no guarantee that it wouldn't happen all over again, and again. It would be admitting that free will was a mistake.....so was it a mistake? Or is it a gift to appreciate? Was it a curse to be eliminated? By our own choices we would show God that we either appreciate his gift.....or demonstrate what an ugly curse it really is. This is two sides of one coin......heads or tails? Our choice.
Intresting but I was taught He was a personal masculine force... Isn't the Holy Spirit, God's spirit?
God is a spirit. He also has a powerful impersonal force that emanates from him that he uses to accomplish his will...his holy spirit. He can give it to whomever he deems needs it, or is worthy of it. As in the case of Moses, he gives it in due measure. Does that sound like its a person. People were filled with holy spirit....that would be odd if the person that is God could fill 120 people all at once as occurred at Pentecost.
When Stephen was being stoned to death, he was said to be "filled with holy spirit", as he gazed into heaven to see God and his son standing at his right hand. Where was the holy spirit? Was it missing because it was busy filling up Stephen? Why is the holy spirit never pictured at God's left hand?
God's spirit is masculine only because of the grammar, not because spirits have gender.
Till next time.....
