A High Priest Of The Good Things To Come?

This is my reply to an article in a Church of Christ bulletin from 2012. Continuing his policy toward the omni God/eternal hell problem (even until now, 2014), the preacher never attempted an answer to my reply. My comments are in blue:

In eternity past, knowing man would sin, God planned to reconcile man to Himself (that is, bind man anew to Himself in a covenant relationship) in Jesus Christ, the eternal Word of God. (2 Tim. 1:8-10)

He knew: 1) man would sin; 2) all men would sin, Romans 3:23; 3) the vast majority would be lost, Mt 7:13-14; 4) therefore, that this "[plan] to reconcile man to himself" would be an utter failure. Yet he created man anyway, with this grotesquely flawed plan though it was not necessary that he do so (he is perfect and doesn't need anything from man, Acts 17:25). He allegedly loves man (as you know, a Bible writer claims that Yahweh is "...not willing that any should perish...", 2 Peter 3:9 NKJV), thus since he is allegedly omnipotent he could have (among other possible humane options) created man truly in his image, with free will and the inability to sin. So that his will that no man go to an eternal hell would have been a reality. And because of his sovereignty, who or what would have told him that he couldn't create man in this way? Please explain how it is that you can continue to believe this god exists with the knowledge of this clear contradiction.

Following man’s fall, God revealed His intention to reconcile man.

If Yahweh has all of the omni attributes he is alleged to have, his human creation wouldn't have needed to be reconciled to him.

God introduced the principle of sacrifice, and developed that principle incrementally, until such time that His love – as fully demonstrated via the sacrifice of His Son – could be appreciated...by man. 

Please explain how you are able to actually write such as this. There was no love involved in what this alleged God allowed to happen.
 

But Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation. Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. (Heb. 9:11-12)

Please explain how allowing multiplied billions of people to unnecessarily suffer forever in  a hell of his creation is a good thing to come.

Before Pentecost, the preaching of the gospel involved what God was going to do. After Pentecost, the preaching of the gospel involved what God had done. There was no difference between what God was going to do, prior to the cross, and what God had done, after the cross.

Actually, the enormity of what this "[g]od had done [i.e., initiated]" before creation is what you continue to ignore. What he did was allow the catastrophe of all catastrophes to begin, proceed and continue year after year, decade after decade, century after century, with more and more billions being added to the list of hell-bound humanity. Which, of course, he would never have allowed to happen if he has all of the omni attributes he is alleged to have.

The gospel is good news. It has always been about the fulfillment of God's eternal purpose.

About this "eternal purpose". Just what did this perfect God need that would warrant him creating man in such a horrific scenario? And how is multiplied billions of people unnecessarily being sent to this god's eternal hell "good news"? 

As Ricky Ricardo would say, "you've got a lot of 'splaining' to do". But so far, you've avoided this issue like it was a deadly, contagious disease. And I think that is a good analogy, because it is lethal to the validity of fundamentalist Christianity. I've brought all of this information to your attention, yet you continue to write such as is found in this article. What do you know that I don't know? Enlighten me, please.

I can't imagine what it might be. I can think of some rationalizations that you might come up with: 1)God is God! He can do what ever he wants. We're the clay and He's the Potter. Well, actually, no he can't do whatever he wants, because the alleged inspired writers limit what he can do by giving him all of these superlative and omni attributes that he therefore must exhibit and thus confine himself to. So that argument won't work. 2)Well, you might claim that His ways and thoughts are higher than our ways and thoughts and thus are beyond our comprehension. But that one won't work either, because if you give Yahweh the benefit of the doubt, then, to be intellectually honest, you have to give every other God "candidate" out there the benefit of the doubt who are also competing for our allegiance who also have similar contradictions in their behavior and their alleged omni characteristics. And they can't all be the one true God.Therefore, none of them can be the true God. 3) You might say, "well, Ken, it's your choice not to believe in Yahweh and thus be saved. You don't have to go to hell". Actually, that's similar to the advice you gave me years ago when I first mentioned this problem to you. You said something like, "just believe anyway and save yourself". But the problem with this is that belief is not a choice. Can you choose to believe that Santa Claus exists? Neither can I choose to believe that Yahweh exists. It's not that I don't want to believe he exists. It's that the evidence stands squarely in the way of me doing so.

Simply, his alleged omni attributes vs his behavior, especially in allowing the vast majority of humanity to suffer forever in his eternal hell, is impossible--he can't both have these omni attributes and allow the vast majority of humanity to go to his eternal hell.

Kenneth W. Hawthorne