Yahweh's "Plan Of Salvation"

by Kenneth W. Hawthorne

Here is an excerpt from the local Church-of-Christ preacher's weekly bulletin--showing an amazing absence of any critical thought:
 

3. He [Yahweh] does not know a better plan of salvation

            than His. 

              a.  He didn't spare His Son (Rom. 8:32).

              b.  He had eternity past to plan it (Eph. 3:8-11; 

                          2 Tim. 1:8-9; Titus 1:1-2).

              c.  If He knew a better plan, He would have used it.

So we have an all-powerful, all-compassionate all-loving, full of mercy, complete and perfect Father, Son and Holy Spirit in eternity past. None of the three need anything. There is nothing that they have to do. Only they exist. The Father has the idea that he might do some creating. He, of course doesn't have to create--he doesn't have to do anything. There is no outside force twisting his arm to create man. There is nothing forcing him to create man or create a particular kind of man--he's the sovereign God!

In his alleged ultimate wisdom, he decides to create a human race who has the ability to displease him (he calls it sin). This, despite the fact that he knows he's a bit testy and gets offended at the drop of a...well, at the drop of anything. Now he is a bit of a braggart. He likes to claim that, as we've already noted: he's all-powerful, all-compassionate, all-loving, full of mercy, sovereign, and complete and perfect. And one that I left out, he's also all-knowing. Now here is where it gets a little tricky. He decides to create what he knows is a very flawed humanity.  (Imperfection coming from perfection? yeah, I know what you're thinking) He knows that all--that's right all will displease him (sin). For some reason known only to this matchless, all-loving, all-compassionate, all-powerful, sovereign, all-knowing God who is full, absolutely full, unimaginably full of mercy--he has (?) to create what he calls an eternal hell for all of these beloved humans who die in a state of being unpleasing to this wonderful God.
 

But, he has a plan to rescue these flawed, sin-prone wretches who are bound for his eternal hell. (You know, you just knew the all-loving, all-compassionate, full of mercy part would kick in!) Not to worry, humanity will not have to suffer forever in the flames of hell! He will send the Son to earth to save man. The Son will have to suffer a few hours of pain on earth and then have his spirit separate from his body and return right back to where he was in all his blissful completeness--really not much to ask of the Son to avert the eternal suffering of multiplied billions of humanity--apples and oranges really. But, alas, this "plan of salvation" that he had all eternity past to come up with is a big flop! (Matt 7:13-14). Oh well, these billions of lost souls can take consolation in the fact that this was the best he could do--because [I]f He knew a better plan, He would have used it."

Omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, perfect and complete, omniwise, sovereign? And preachers keep on preaching this old, old story! How sad.

 

 

What Would It Take?

What would it take for a skeptic to believe in Yahweh, the god of the Bible? I know the following would do it for me. So, is it Yahweh's will that I perish or not, 2 Peter 3:9? I'm ready to believe and repent. (From the Errancy discussion list, January 2, 2007):   SPENCER-DAVIS God could move stars around in the galaxy to create a new constellation that plainly spelled out "JESUS IS LORD", visible throughout the northern hemisphere, say. If God did that, which sceptic would dare to say that there was a naturalistic explanation? I'm sure I could think of a great many miracles that would be accepted by every sceptic on the planet (even Farrell!) as evidence of God's existence. Couldn't you?

 

TILL
I could. I have lived in the same house for 40 years on the edge of town. There is an empty field of about 30 acres behind my house, which is planted each year in corn or soybeans. If I woke up one morning and found all of this acreage filled with skyscrapers 40 to 100 stories high and clouds in the sky shaped to spell,"God did this," I think that would be pretty compelling evidence that a miracle had happened during the night, because common sense would tell me that all of these buildings could not have been put up overnight by natural means. An even better miracle would be if the skyscrapers suddenly appeared out of nothing while I was standing in my back yard looking over the empty field.

Farrell Till



David Killed Goliath Twice?

1 Samuel 17:49-51

New King James Version (NKJV)

⁴⁹ Then David put his hand in his bag and took out a stone; and he slung it and struck the Philistine in his forehead, so that the stone sank into his forehead, and he fell on his face to the earth. ⁵⁰ So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone, and struck the Philistine and killed him. But there was no sword in the hand of David. ⁵¹ Therefore David ran and stood over the Philistine, took his sword and drew it out of its sheath and killed him, and cut off his head with it. And when the Philistines saw that their champion was dead, they fled.

1 Samuel 17:49-51

English Standard Version (ESV)

⁴⁹ And David put his hand in his bag and took out a stone and slung it and struck the Philistine on his forehead. The stone sank into his forehead, and he fell on his face to the ground.
⁵⁰ So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone, and struck the Philistine and killed him. There was no sword in the hand of David. ⁵¹ Then David ran and stood over the Philistine and took his sword and drew it out of its sheath and killed him and cut off his head with it. When the Philistines saw that their champion was dead, they fled.

An Example Of Rational Thought

“If one wants to insist that God inspired the very words of scripture, what would be the point if we don't have the very words of scripture? ... It's a bit hard to know what the words of the Bible mean if we don't even know what the words are! This became a problem for my view of inspiration; for I came to realize that it would have been no more difficult for God to preserve the words of scripture than it would have been for him to inspire them in the first place. If he wanted his people to have his words, surely he would have given them to them... The fact that we don't have the words surely must show, I reasoned, that he did not preserve them for us. And if he didn't perform that miracle, there seemed to be no reason to think that he performed the earlier miracle of inspiring those words."

--Bart Ehrman, "Misquoting Jesus: The story behind who changed the Bible and why"

Josephus's Jesuses

From the II Errancy discussion list, January 9, 2002:

HELEN
I once took the time to count up all the Jesuses listed in

Josephus from I think it was 100 BC to 50 AD. It was a

relatively large number, like 40-50 of them. Most of them

were minor political or religious leaders. I think there
were several Jesuses listed in the Talmud for the same

period. There are even at least two possible passing references

to other Jesuses in the NT for heaven's sake. In some very

old manuscripts of the gospels' Barabbas (Aramaic name

means "son of the father"), a supposed revolutionary political

leader, has the first name of Jesus, and there is a Jewish

magician with the Greek name Elymas and a Hebrew name

of Bar-Jesus (son of Jesus) who Paul out magics in Acts

chapter 13. It is not hard to imagine that stories from
either of these two men's lives or any of the other Jesuses

could have added to the gospels' myths. When it is considered

that the gospels were written at least 30-40 years after the

events they describe and there were all these Jesuses

running around doing things that were being remembered

in folk tales, I would think that it is reasonable to suspect

there was far more than one human Jesus that inspired

the stories of the gospels. If you add to this possibility

that any good story about a Jewish religious teacher who was
addressed in the story by his followers as simply "Rabbi" might

also have mistakenly become part of the Christian mythology,

I think the idea that no one "Jesus" of the gospels ever existed

is very reasonable.

TILL
It's rather odd that Josephus, who was born shortly after the

time Jesus was allegedly crucified, would have mentioned

so many obscure Jesuses but mentioned Jesus the

miracle-worker and resurrected one only in two short
statements whose authenticity has been challenged by

many scholars.

Farrell Till

Luke, A Historian "Par Excellent"[sic]? (2)

From the Errancy discussion list, August 18, 1997:

TILL
Otsen has cited the amazing historical accuracy of Luke as an argument
for biblical inerrancy, as if he somehow believes that because one
biblical writer was accurate in some geographical, political, and social
matters, he was therefore right in everything he wrote and that the entire
Bible must, as a consequence, be inerrant. In an earlier posting, I listed
over two dozen references that Luke made in the book of Acts to
extraordinary events. I challenge Otsen to present to us some kind of
extra-biblical evidence to prove that at least some of these events actually
happened. Until he can do this, he is in effect arguing that because Luke
knew the geography of the region he wrote about and the names of some
public officials and such like, we can thereby know that Luke was also
accurate in his reporting of the various miracle claims found in his gospel
and the book of Acts.

Luke, A Historian "Par Excellent" [sic]? (1)

From the Errancy discussion list, August 17, 1997:

TILL

Otsen has posted the trite fundamentalist argument about Sir William

Ramsay, who was presumbably a biblical skeptic until he studied the

writings of Luke, after which he was so impressed by Luke's historical

accuracy that he became a dedicated Christian.  When Ramsay was

discussed earlier on the list Steve Carr noted in a posting to Errancy

date May 10th that Ramsay was actually a "Bible-believing historian." 

Carr made the following statement in his posting:

"In Ramsay's book, he describes how as a young man at Oxford ( a place

which *did* not accept religious sceptics), he studied the 39 Articles

of Faith for his Divinity exam. He corresponded with Bishop Lightfoot.

He spent months studying the NT and the OT (which he described as life-

giving). He describes the Epistle to Galatians as especially moving. He

was reminded often of his mother's love for Paul."