@moonbus
The God of the OT is an angry, wrathful God who is constantly testing the Israelites as a people and a nation.
You are not touched at God's faithfulness to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph?
Do you see any mercy God had on other nations in books like Amos?
There are also 150 Psalms. Have you read any of those? Would you say in those 150 Psalms there is absolutely no patience, forebearance, mercy, forgiveness, and kindness in all those Psalms?
Even in the
Genesis and
Exodus and
Deuteronomy there is love, kindness and mercy. Have you read
Ruth. Have you read about Rehab the harlot and the mercy God showed to her? What about Esther?
Do you see no grace in any of the major prophets like
Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel?
Have you read
Song of Songs? I don't think you're taking enough of it in.
The ancient Israelites did not consistently believe in a life after death or an immortal soul; they were ancestor worshippers, they believed in posterity, in succeeding generations venerating the ancestors. That is why progeny was so important to them; the whole bit about Sarah bearing children so late in life etc. etc.
I think you are taking in a lot of biased propaganda.
Paul thought the end-times were within the lifetime of some of those who were present during the life of Jesus, so, for Paul, there will be no need for progeny, better to remain celibate. It's a totally different mind set, a totally different eschatology, artificially grafted onto the OT. Best not to conflate them.
Not necessarily at all. He HOPED for the Lord's eminent return. Like Peter he prepared his audience for the long distance run not the sprint. He ministered with the thought in mind that the torch would be carried on long after their life time.
What parted lovers do not long to be quickly re-united? In that sense what they HOPED was one thing. How the lived and prepared others to life was another.
You're being hyped with some crappy Internet infidels misinformation.
Elsewhere your summary of God's revelation amounts pretty much to - "The Bible
stinks so don't read it." At least you leave little to NO room for people to take the Bible in.
Is that why you come to the Spirituality Forum, to make sure no one takes the Holy Bible seriously? You drop in to make sure you have your say that the Bible is not worth anything?
I am glad I graduated from this nonsense skepticism and touched the reality of the living God.
There are two sorts of mysteries: objective ones and artificial ones.
How the universe got started, or whether it never got started but has existed eternally, is an objective mystery about the universe.
Of all the people in history, if one was a candidate to have been the Author of the universe WHO in human history do you think would most likely have been qualified to have been that person?
How God can know what a human with freewill will do or not do, believe or not believe, whether a human with freewill will ultimately be saved or damned (even before he is born, as in the case of Esau), is an artificial mystery, engendered by a paradoxical juxtaposition of two theological ideas, namely infinite mercy and infinite knowledge. You might as well ask what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object. The correct answer is: don't trouble yourself about such questions. It's an artificial mystery not worth the bother.
Translation: " Leave me alone. I like my life in sin as it is. "