Conference yukon::christian

    Eric,
    
    What is your current understanding of the Bible story?  What did you
    offer your son as an explanation?  If you didn't offer one, what do you
    think about this story  Have you ever heard it explained in Sunday
    School or a church service?
    
    Love in Him,
    Nancy

	Eric,

	Remember that God was testing Abraham's faith in Him.
This was a severe test, but the angel was there to prevent
Abraham from actually killing Isaac.  This was a foreshadowing
of the Atonement that Christ would later make at the *same*
location (Mt. Moriah).  Abraham's willingness to offer his
son Isaac as a sacrifice foreshadowed God's plan (which was
already in place before the foundation of the world) to offer
His own Son Jesus as the perfect Sacrifice and High Priest.

	HTH,
	Bob Sampson

    While I agree with what you have written Bob, I really think that what
    Eric is asking goes much deeper.  Which is why I asked him what HIS
    current understanding is on this.  Perhaps the real question to Eric is
    "Who is God to you?"  
    

	Well, you can't go much deeper than God's plan of redemption.
Perhaps you really mean "more personal", in which case I see your point.

    
    Let me try to explain because this question really isn't any deeper
    than how to talk to teens about tough to explain OT stories. 

    I guess I'm asking how to reconcile the apparent contradiction between
    the loving, caring, gentle God I know and a God that ask me to prove my
    faith by slaughtering my son. 

    Secondly, there is the animal sacrifice issue. After all it's those
    devil worshiping freaks who go around slaughtering animals in their
    bizarre rituals... I mean gross, right. Those violent blood thirsty
    occultists. Then we're presented with a God, our God, who demanded the
    same thing: the blood sacrifice of an animal. 

    In my own mind I can rationalize these stories, but I find it hard to
    put into words, *particularly* to a 14 year-old who, as anyone with a
    teen knows, is capable of reasoning for himself, albeit in the
    frustratingly highly charged way that teens with this new found
    capacity (argumentative reasoning) do.

    Eric

>    In my own mind I can rationalize these stories, but I find it hard to
>    put into words, *particularly* to a 14 year-old who, as anyone with a
>    teen knows, is capable of reasoning for himself, albeit in the
>    frustratingly highly charged way that teens with this new found
>    capacity (argumentative reasoning) do.

 
 Ooh, boy, do I know that, Eric!




 Jim

First and foremost, regarding the Abraham and Isaac story - don't try to
portray God as ONLY a "loving, gentle and caring God."  He is that, awesomely
so.  But He is a jealous God also.  I think the biggest piece of difficulty we
have in teaching our kids about things like this is that WE don't want God to
be jealous or angry or anything that seems threatening any more than our kids
do.  WE want God to be only loving and gentle and caring, so the difficulty we
have conveying the hard side of God to our kids is only a reflection of the
difficulty we have with it ourselves.  I think this might be what Nancy was
aiming towards when she asked you what *you* thought.  I'm just more blunt than
she is.  :-)

God is Himself.  And He's not always just the way we'd like Him to be.

About the animal sacrifice issue, a big piece is that LIFE - how people lived
day-to-day - was much different then.  People lived with animals all the time,
and killed them for food all the time.  It seems horrible-yucky-gross to us to
kill an animal and let the blood run out, but that's only because it's all done
for us and we never see it.  We go to the supermarket and buy nicely shrink-
wrapped packages of animal parts.

Killing an animal was simply no big deal to the people of that day.  They
slaughtered animals regularly for their own food.  Doing that in the Temple was
just doing what they always did anyway, only offering it to the Lord.

A big difference between the Temple sacrifices and the Satan-worship sacrifices
is that the Temple sacrifices were, as I said, the offering of their
sustenance.  Their sheep and goats and bulls were their livlihood - they were a
measure of wealth on those days.  And those animals were to be killed for food
anyway.  It was an offering to God of their livlihood.  Satanic sacrifices are
simply about death.  They sacrifice cats or dogs or sometimes people, simply
for the act of putting them to death.

There is also an aspect to blood sacrifice in the Temple that has deeper
significance (otherwise Satan would not be likely to seek to mimic it), but
that is often difficult for adults to understand, let alone kids.

Paul

|    I guess I'm asking how to reconcile the apparent contradiction between
|    the loving, caring, gentle God I know and a God that ask me to prove my
|    faith by slaughtering my son. 
    
    The loving, caring, gentle God we know comes in later on in Genesis 22
    and makes it known that He will provide Himself the Lamb.  God often
    puts us in uncomfortable situations or tests to prove our love and
    faith in Him.  Deuteronomy 13 says He sends false prophets our way to
    prove our love for Him.
    
    The difficulty is that while God is a loving, caring, gentle God, He
    also can't tolerate sin in His presence.  Sin and the unredeemed will
    be judged.  God created Hell for Satan and the fallen angels, not for
    humans.  Unfortunately, people choose to go there by rejecting The Lamb
    that was provided.
    
    Mike

  Hi Eric,

    Yeah, the story with Isaac is a tough one.  It is of some comfort
    to me that God was testing Abraham and would not allow Isaac to
    die, but still, why ask Abraham to do something that is wrong???
    I mean...killing your kid is wrong, right?

    Well...

    One thing I thought of is that this death, in a sense, is not really
    death.  Its merely an interruption of life.  There is a resurrection
    of both saved and lost.  The dead will again have life.

    Hebrews 11:17-19
    By faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who
    had received the promises offered up his only begotten son.
    of whom it was said, "In Isaac your seed shall be called," 
    accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead
    from which he also received him in a figurative sense.

    I get a lot from this text, including two things.

    One, Isaac is termed "his [Abraham's] only begotten son."  Clearly,
    he is a type of Christ and Abraham is a type of the Father.  Thus,
    the request to Abraham is similar to the request the Father made
    of Himself.  This then suggests that God produced, in Abraham, His
    own image and Abraham's willingness to offer Isaac mirrors God's
    willingness to offer up His only begotten.

    There is something there in this willingness of Abraham that softens
    my heart!  My what God can produce in sinful humanity!

    Two, Abraham's faith did not see *final death* in Isaac.  Thus, the
    Father was not asking Abraham to "give up" on Isaac even were his life
    to be laid down.  He was asking Abraham to believe in life for Isaac
    in the face of that life being laid.

    "Except a seed is cast into the ground..."

    These two things, the fact that Abraham/Isaac are a type of the Father/
    Jesus in a way in which exposes the most sublime example of Divine 
    love that we know of and the fact that Abraham was not asked to give up
    on Isaac in hopeless despair but to believe in ultimate life for Isaac,
    give much comfort to my soul!

						Take Care and God Bless,

						Tony

  reply: .7

  Hi Paul,

    Count me as one who believes God is the character of the cross
    from time preexistent to time postexistent for all of His creation.
    There is no shadow of turning with God.

    I think scripture defines words differently than Webster sometimes.

    I offer these as definitions...

    wrath/anger - The wrath of God refers to His allowance and facilitation
    of a process that causes a person to bear the pain involved in the 
    seeing of one's own sinfulness.  The saved so that they can see their
    sin and give it up in repentence and the lost so that the demonstration
    of their destruction by sin is a testimony for the saved to benefit
    by as they see, in clearer and fuller lines, the exceeding awfulness
    of sin.

    judgment - The judgment of God refers primarily to the production of a
    testimony that vindicates Him and silences His accuser (Satan).  This
    testimony is produced by God's work of judgment which is the revelation
    of His character in His last day saints (which perfects them) as well 
    as the last day lost and the lost after the millenium (which destroys
    them).

    judicial penalty - Judicial penalty refers to any pain that is borne
    that is a result of God's work of judgment, i.e. God showing human
    beings His word/character.  This revelation exposes sin and causes 
    the recipient of that word to bear the pain inherent to seeing one's
    own sin.

    justice - The justice of God refers to His requirement to work within
    the realities inherent to sin and righteousness.  God would be unjust
    if He circumvented that reality.  Presently, this reality is taking
    place under very peculiar circumstances which are that His glory is
    largely veiled.  God's justice also requires the eventual unveiling of
    His character throughout the entire universe.  That is, there must come
    a time when, from that time on, His glory is no longer veiled.  This
    must be the eventual state of the universe (I believe) according to 
    justice.

    For just a couple of markers (of which there are hundreds), Psalm 7
    is a psalm describing God's justice/judgment/wrath.  In this psalm,
    the lost suffer 100% inherent penalty as a result of God's love exposing
    sin.  Sin destroys the lost *AS* God fully shows them His love.

    The lake of fire reserved for the devils refers to the torment they 
    endure as a result of God showing them how much He loves them.  This
    will fully expose their sin and destroy them.

    The righteous are the only ones to eternally dwell in the everlasting
    fires.

    Isaiah 33:14-15a
    The sinners in Zion are afraid; Fearfulness has seized the hypocrites:
    "Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire?  Who among us shall
    dwell with everlasting burnings?
    He who walks righteously and speaks uprightly.

    Songs 8:6-7a
    Set me as a seal upon your heart, As a seal upon your arm; for love is
    as strong as death, Jealously as cruel as the grave; Its flames are
    flames of fire, A most vehement flame.
    Many waters cannot quench love, Nor can the floods drown it.

    The lost are destroyed in the fiery furnace (Matt 13:40-42) at which
    time the saved will "shine forth as the sun" (Matt 13:43).

    Why?  Because the word exposed all their sin and they gave up the
    sin and the word was to them an elixer of life unto life.  Even a
    furnace-like revelation of the unveiled love of God/of His word.

    Psalm 12:6
    The words of the Lord are pure words, Like silver tried in a furnace
    of earth, Purified seven times.

    Heaven is primarily an experience, the experience of beholding the 
    glory of God.  God gives to all men the message of the cross.  To
    the righteous who receive that word by faith, it transforms their
    heart.  To the lost who refuse to receive it by faith, it ultimately
    exposes all their sinfulness at once and destroys them.  (Psalm 73)

    The cross is given to all of us.  What it produces depends on the
    nature of our response.

    God is a revelation of infinite cross-like love to all for all time.
    He doesn't change.

    God *IS* love.

						Tony