Dake Bible Discussion Board ⇒ God's role in sickness - Permissive or Causative

[branham1965]

VW,
REALLY???PRAY TELL WHO KILLED THEM????
GOD KILLED THEM DEAD!!!!AS I QUOTED FROM DUET 32 GOD SAYS HE KILLS HE MAKES ALIVE.NO ONE CAN READ THE BIBLE ALONE ESPECIALLY THE TORAH AND THE PROPHETS AND BELIEVE THAT MODERN STUFF.WHO KILLED THE REBELS IN 1 COR 10???
THE LORD TELLS US numbers 14:28 "SAY UNTO THEM AS TRULY AS I LIVE SAITH THE LORD AS YE HAVE SPOKEN IN MINE EARS SO WILL I DO UNTO YOU .YOUR CARCASSES SHALL FALL IN THE WILDERNESS....V35 I THE LORD HAVE SAID I WILL SURELY DO IT UNTO ALL THIS EVIL CONGREGATION THAT ARE GATHERED TOGETHER AGAINST ME IN THIS WILDERNESS.THEY SHALL BE CONSUMED AND THERE SHALL THEY DIE.
GOD KILLS AND JUDGES AND CASTS PEOPLE INTO HELL FOREVER.REVEREND ANGLEY SAID ANY PREACHER SAYING GOD IS NOT A GOD OF JUDGEMENT NEEDS TO GET OUT OF THE PULPIT.I HEARD HIM SAY IT AND SAW HIM.

VW
thank you for your response.i think i might understand what you are saying.i attended Grace Cathedral on and off in Akron .i was stunned when Reverend Angley rebuked that popular notion from the Pulpit.He did not accept that teaching at all.not at all.He taught Mercy and also Judgement.and its frightening.
the LORD said through Moses He killed.He casts many into eternal death in matthew 25:41.yes???He killed both Annanias and Sapphira.He killed Herod.And He blinded Elymas.Paul sent His Judgement out on many people!!!!He kills much of the earth in Revelation.yes???
he taught on the Judgements of God.im not just talking.i know what it is to get waylaid by the LORD.

Hi BIlly

Saying that God killed Ananias and Sapphira is an assumption that cannot necessarily be proven from the text itself. Observe:

• And as he heard these words, Ananias fell down and breathed his last; and great fear came over all who heard of it.... And immediately she fell at his feet and breathed her last, and the young men came in and found her dead, and they carried her out and buried her beside her husband. (Acts 5:5, 10)

Nothing in the text that says that God killed them - especially not directly. As for Elymas, he was not made sick or diseased. He was simply blinded, and only for a period of time. Observe:

• "Now, behold, the hand of the Lord is upon you, and you will be blind and not see the sun for a time." And immediately a mist and a darkness fell upon him, and he went about seeking those who would lead him by the hand. (Acts 13:11)

That was not a sickness but a temporary blindness which should have led him to repentance. As far as Revelation is concerned, Rev. 6:11 which says, "And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellowservants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled."

I have in my personal Library a commentary by a professor of theology named Anthony Tyrell Hanson that is titled THE WRATH OF THE LAMB. I don't feel like typing up his full comments on this passage (besides, it could violate the "fair use" copyright laws), but here is a portion:

• In several apocalyptic works we read of the judgment of the Messiah, but nowhere in any of them do we meet so astonishing a phrase as "the wrath of the Lamb". Its very incongruity should make us look at it more carefully. Wrath in the rest of the book always means "the working out of history of the consequences of sin", and this is undoubtedly the meaning that it has here. But it is the wrath of the Lamb, the Lamb who is to us the living representative of the sacrificial love of God. "The Lamb" is no epitheton ornans in a writer like John. So the "wrath of the Lamb" is here the working out in history of the consequences of the rejection and crucifixion of the Messiah (Luke 23.30) - p. 170

Hanson is saying that God's wrath is exercised, not by personally causing the destructive events we read in Revelation six, but by allowing the consequences of man's rejection of Him to naturally play out. As a matter of fact, the first couple of verses in Rev. 6, according to Hanson, depict a cosmic warfare between God and Satan with the followers of Satan suffering.

I hope that this helps.

[Justaned]

God gave us the book of Revelation, which I think all of us will agree has not yet all been fulfilled and certainly wasn't when it was written. How did Jesus reveal these things to John unless he saw them to speak of them? Or is any suggesting they were figments of Jesus' imagination that one day God will manipulate time, events and man so they come to fruition?

I believe Jesus being God saw these events and allowed John to see them so that he could record them. If John saw them then it means they had to have occurred in his presence. Therefore Jesus being God transcends the limits of time the effect man.

[Ironman]

Eternity is made up of time. God is an eternal being, has existed throughout eternity and will exist eternally. God made the sun, moon and stars to regulate the times on the eternal Earth. We are in eternity now.

God lived somewhere else before He created the Heavens and the Earth. Where He lived He has not revealed, but He says He is from everlasting to everlasting (Ps. 90:2). God is from everlasting to verlasting what?

Everlasting time of course!

There was a thread on this in about Jan. 2012. When Did Time Begin?