The Killing Fields

THE KILLING FIELDS

I heard a preacher say, “All things are for the glory of God”.  This quote may not be correctly worded by the preacher, but it began my thought process for the following report.  Perhaps I should have continued listening rather than thinking.

Attributes of God

God is said to be omnipotent, omniscient, eternal, the creator, and full of mercy.

Omniscient means that He knows everything about everything - the future from the past – the end from the beginning – every thought, action, and deed from the beginning of time to the end of time. 

Omnipotent means He is all powerful – there is nothing that He can’t do.  Nothing is done unless He allows it.

He is the creator of everything and prior to the creation of anything, His omniscient foreknowledge knew every aspect of every event even before it happened and the ramifications of all those events.

Mankind along with the current assortment of plants and animals were supposedly created approximately 6000 years ago.  Time allowed for our current pattern of humanity is almost expired and the Millennial Kingdom of God should be commencing within a few years.

Science adamantly objects to the information in the above paragraph as do some so-called Christians and the creationist or creation science school.  Science places the age of the earth at thousands or millions of years and life at several thousands of years (extremely more than 6000 years).

Where does one place the dinosaurs, whose bones have been dug up by archeologists?  Science says, “no problem, they lived and died out many thousands of years ago.” 

Creation science has different solutions.  One is the gap theory, that postulates there was a creation gap between the first and second verses of Genesis, in which the original creation, where dinosaurs were supposedly developed by angelic entities, was destroyed and a new one (the current one) was created in its place.  The second theory entails DNA experiments done by the Watchers, assigned angels, who decided among themselves to oppose their given assignment as Watchers and take human women as wives which produced giants.  The former Watchers performed DNA experiments on various animals and plants producing the dinosaurs and other Pleistocene living types.  All these experiments were destroyed and buried by the flood during Noah’s time.

We are also confronted with the supposedly early human types such as the Neanderthal (and many others with long names that will not be typed in this account).  Science states that evolution i.e. the survival of the fittest, took care of this issue over a long period of time.  Creationists don’t have an answer that I am aware of, other than the two explanations given for dinosaurs. 

The Genesis Creation

Whether you believe the first three chapters of Genesis are true or untrue, fact or fiction, myth or symbolism, let’s pretend for a moment they are true and factual.

God is credited with creating the heavens and the earth.  He then created animals, plants, and finally two human beings referred to as Adam and Eve.  The humans were said to be placed within a garden known as Eden which people have stated that its characteristics would be similar to the earth at the end of the Millennium.  Within this garden were two particular trees:  the tree of life; and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Some entity, created by God and usually referred to as a serpent i.e. snake (perhaps Nachash), came and tempted Eve, through flattery and half-truths, to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree of knowledge of good and evil which was said to be “off limits”.  Adam, when he observed the circumstances that Eve had gotten herself into, also ate of the forbidden fruit.  This act of rebellion suddenly changed the human couple from innocence incarnate to unlawful sinful people and God knew all this before it occurred.

They were both informed, by God, of their current state of affairs and of their changed nature, now mortal, which was prone to sin or acts of unlawfulness, and thus, anyone descended from Adam and Eve, which is everyone, would also be mortal and mortality induces unlawfulness.  The question is – all these events and circumstances were foreknown by God so why did He allow them to happen?  The future death of Abel by Cain was also foreknown – the Watchers and their human mating was foreknown – the overtly evil and sinful nature of all future generations which prompted the flood to kill all land life except for eight people was also foreknown – so what was the purpose of all this, why was it allowed, and why wasn’t it avoided?

Could it have been avoided?  Certainly, God is omnipotent and He knew it would happen because He is omniscient.  There have been many arguments and proof text explanations down through the ages and they appear (not necessarily unequivocally) logical to the Christian and ridiculous to the non-Christian (more on that later). 

Why did God create humans capable of disobedience?  Why was the forbidden tree in the garden to begin with?  Perhaps it is just a myth to explain why humanity has so many problems and sorrows – why some people are so evil – why nations form and people destroy each other – why people die of starvation, disease, birth defects, cancer, heart attacks, poisons, and natural disasters.  People are a total mess and the deathly effects of nature are not much better.

It has been said that God allowed humanity a certain amount of free will, however, others have said that humanity does not have free will but a proportion of authority. 

Even though God is sovereign, He has chosen to create authority, which is a limited form of sovereignty. The purpose of authority is to fulfill God’s desire (nature) for a double witness, without which any unity remains untested and therefore unreal. The creation of authority in the earth has confused many into thinking that God created free will, when in fact, He created authority. Free will is a philosophical concept, and the term is not used in Scripture, nor is it advocated. Scripture presents authority as a principle of spiritual law, not philosophical free will of the carnal mind.

Authority is limited by its very definition. Those limits are defined by time. Time was built into creation in order to subject man’s authority to God’s sovereignty and to limit man’s time of disunity and disagreement. The first large span of time is this 7,000 year period leading to the Great White Throne judgment. Men are given 7,000 years in which to exercise their God-given authority to choose between agreement or disagreement.

According to the above quote, a person can only make limited lifestyle choices and can also have authority over things within a person’s limited control.  A person’s choices and authority expire at one’s death. 

Wars and Death

With the rise of Nimrod’s Babylon, people have been killing each other in massive numbers.  After the language dispersal, people have formed nations and empires with nothing better to do than invade another nation or empire and attempt to destroy as many people as possible.  South American tribes and nations have destroyed each other, Chinese and Asian groups attack and kill other groups, the early Americans killed Indians and the Indians killed settlers.  The Bible speaks of several empires that deployed invasive rampages:  Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Media-Persia, Greece, Roman Empire.  Then came the Turks, the Mongols, the Arabs, and many others as prophesied by the Revelation written by John.  Europeans invaded North and South America killing vast numbers of people.  The growth of the British Empire also killed many people in Africa and Asia.  Next, there is the modern historical wars, in which I might say had no real purpose other than revenge, hate, and monetary profit for some people such as WWI and WWII.  Recent unnecessary wars include: Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and currently Syria.  There are many other past wars that have not been mentioned.  Jesus’ comment, “there will be wars and rumors of wars” was not an understatement. 

Estimates also suggest that there have only been 250 years of peace in over 3400 years of documented history.  Answers.com

There is a war occurring right now, mainly in the USA but it includes Europe and many other parts of the world, called abortion.  Planned Parenthood representatives claim that it is a woman’s right to have a child or abort a child.  Is it also their right to engage in sex if they abhor getting pregnant and delivering a child?  Biblically, sex is supposed to occur between a male husband and a female wife for the purpose of producing children.  It has progressed beyond this simple Biblical explanation but regardless, God never intended for it to be a recreational sport, which is called adultery and fornication.

Salvation

In the midst of this massive worldwide carnage, God put in place a plan of redemption and salvation.  However, this was an extremely long term plan and not a short one.  It began in earnest with the selection of Abraham who was given a promise that he would eventually bless the world and he was also given a birthright blessing and both were to be passed down from father to son.  Abraham blessed Isaac, who inadvertently blessed Jacob, who divided the two blessings between two of his sons, Judah and Joseph.  Judah was given the scepter or kingship promise while Joseph’s two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, were given the fruitfulness promise.

Jacob, his twelve sons and their families went to Egypt to avoid starvation from an impending famine.  These families eventually became Egyptian slaves for several hundred years until being led from slavery by Moses.  The Hebrews crossed the Red Sea and into the wilderness where they undertook several trials and tribulations.  When they finally reached the border of Canaan, the Hebrews refused to enter after hearing the testimony of ten of the twelve spies sent to survey the land.  As a punishment for their refusal, they remained in the wilderness until all died except for the next generation along with Caleb and Joshua, of the first group, who initially gave a good report of Canaan along with their faith that God would support them.  It has been said, if the people had entered Canaan with complete faith in God, a period of rest as in the nature of the Kingdom of God would have ensued.

The Hebrews fought their way into Canaan, destroying cities and killing many people.  They were at constant war with some group most of the time until Solomon ensured a certain amount of peace.  At the death of Solomon, due to increased taxes, the ten northern tribes revolted and formed their own nation called Israel.  Israel practiced idolatry from the very beginning and were eventually decimated with the survivors deported by Assyria to an area between the Black and Caspian Seas supposedly by the will of God.  The southern nation of Judah, although maintaining the temple, were equally as idolatrous as northern Israel.  They were eventually decimated with the survivors deported to Babylon also by the will of God.

The Judah deportees were allowed a return to the land of Judah and many (but not all) did so although they continued under the jurisdiction of Persia.  Later they would be under the rule of the Grecian Empire followed by being a buffer zone between two factions of the four part partition of the Greek Empire following the death of Alexander.  They were allowed a hundred year respite of the Maccabean rule before being conquered by the Roman Empire.

During the Roman rule, the Old Covenant promise of a Messiah, in the person of Jesus Christ, was fulfilled beginning at 2 BC until His crucifixion in 33 AD.  The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ initiated the New Covenant and the advent of His followers known as the Church.  Many Church members were harassed, jailed, and killed, mostly by the Jewish heretics who refused Jesus and the New Covenant.

As the Church grew and was accepted by the Roman government, the city of Rome became the nucleus and capital of the organization.  The book of the Revelation was a prophetic history of the church age.  It is now fulfilled as past history except for the overthrow of Mystery, Babylon and the Millennial age.  The symbolic metaphors in its prophecy describe invasions, wars, strife, and famines within the European and Eastern (Constantinople) branches of the Church.  The seven letters to the seven churches, at the beginning of the Revelation, constitute a dual prophecy: it first describes conditions of the early churches residing in the area of Turkey; and it also prophetically describes the seven continuous church ages.  The world has passed the Philadelphia, church of brotherly love, age and we are now in the lukewarm Laodicean church age and the current churches are definitely lukewarm if not pagan.

Conclusion

We must recognize that no man is born with a "sinful soul" or a "sin nature." In Romans 5:12 Paul explains this principle very clearly, though many church theologians have missed it:

¹² Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because [eph' ho, "on which"] all sinned-

Paul says that sin first entered the world through Adam's sin. The concept that was inherited from Adam was not Adam’s sin but rather it was the liability for Adam’s sin which is death, i.e. humanity inherited the liability for Adam's sin. Humanity is mortal because we are liable for a sin that Adam committed, and therefore, we die, not because of our own sins, but as a result of Adam's original sin. In other words - we are not mortal because we sin - we sin because we are mortal.  Paul says at the end of Romans 5:12 that "DEATH spread to all men," and because we inherited mortality, we commit sins.  Adam's original sin gave us transferred mortality to all, and this mortality is our genetic weakness and the cause of our individual sins.

Romans 5:12 says specifically that Adam's sin was imputed to all men, and as a direct result, "death spread to all men." 

Adam's sin was imputed to all humanity, making us all liable for Adam's sin which results in mortality. Humanity is not actually guilty of Adam's sin because we did not commit it.  However God in His sovereignty imputed Adam’s sin to everyone’s account, calling the things that are not as if they were (Rom. 4:17). This could be considered an injustice and a false accusation on God's part, except that Jesus came to impute His righteousness to our accounts as well. With this act, He entirely reversed the effects of this "temporary injustice", thus since "all men" died by the imputed sin of Adam, they should be saved in and by the righteous death of Christ.

Romans 5:18 NET  Consequently, just as condemnation for all people came through one transgression, so too through the one righteous act came righteousness leading to life for all people.