A few thoughts on the Divine revelation.
Everything we know about God is based upon His revelation to us. Apart from that we wouldn't
even know He exists. The same goes for WHAT we know about Him. Just knowing He exists is
only a spring board that launches us into the system of doctrines that inform us of the
substance of God's charactar, intentions, modus vivendi, modus operandi, etc.
Unfortunately, far too many Christians find out that He exists, and a few sketchy facts,
and take off on a tangent of one sort or another, usually sponsored by an established
religion.
Something I have to remind myself frequently is that we are so puny beside The Almighty. Our
capacities are so miniscule as to be non-existent in comparison to His infinite power and wisdom. Yet
man is in the habit of reducing God to human proportions, rather than recognizing that no single
act of God can be defined in human terms.
Take the command of God to annhialate the Amalekites, for example. If a human were to wipe out a
people, women and children included, then it would almost always be barbaric, inhumane. But any
command or act of God is consistent with all of His attributes; righteousness, justice, love,
truth, and so on. While we may be chagrined at some of the things God commanded in the Old Testement,
we can't lose sight of the fact that we are heavily influenced by our extremely limited perspective,
and the charactaristics of man that would enter into such an act.
Let me explain;
God's foreknowledge (omniscience) enters into such a command. He knows that the Amalekites are a pagan
people and He further knows the entire life of each man, woman and child in every detail. If He sees,
father down the road, that those peoples will persecute Israel, for example, and interfere with His Plan,
or that their degeneracy will lure even one human being away from the gospel, and prevent their being saved,
then He will take action to prevent it.
If there is even one Amalekite that would believe He will provide for that as well.
His love enters into the equation in two ways. First, He prevents some tragedy from happening that these
people would have caused. Second, every child that dies by the sword before they reach the age of accountablity
will automatically be saved, so He harvests hundreds, or thousands of souls that would otherwise have gone to
hell.
His justice is involved in the judgement of a human act(s) of evil that is the result of personal volition.
Each human being is responsible to God for the working of his volition, and when we make a willful decision
to commit an evil act then we are subject to Divine intervention in behalf of am innocent party.
Notice I stipulated "evil act", not "sinful act". "Evil" in this context is defined as a sin which falls
into the category of a crime, when another human being is a victim of violence. The Biblical definition of
evil is generally "ra" in the Hebrew, and refers to the policy of Satan as a whole.
If man were to undertake the slaughter of thousands of people in a situation that did not involve war then
there would certainly be flawed motives and a less than righteous agenda.
You can see where the conflict bewteen human and Divine action comes into play. We must always evaluate an act
of God with His perfect nature in view, and far too many times that doesn't happen.
The converse of this principle is also true, that no human being exercises the prerogative to execute Divine
judgement apart from His specfic instruction. Take the wacko clergyman that murdered the abortion doctor. Even if
abortion was murder, which it is not, no man has the right to act with Divine fiat. That minister should be
tried and executed for 1st degree murder, according to the law of God, "a life for a life".
The rationale that accepts the act of the minister elevates his stature to that of God, just as, in the
reverse, they assign God human charactaristics and judge Him accordingly.
It requires one hell of a lot of doctrine to be able to discern the manifestation of Divine attributes in
everything He does, especially if it involves violence and/or suffering.
Take the murder of 7 million Jews by Adolf Hitler, for example.
From a human perspective, those are allegedly God's people, are they not? If so, then why did He allow such
a horrible thing to happen to them? I've read that the Jews, themselves, actually tried Adonai Elohim in those
prison camps and found Him guilty of abandonning them.
The answer is not an easy one for a Jew to accept, but it is true nonetheless. Had those Jews lived they would
have prevented other Jews, probably not even born yet, from accepting Jesus Christ as their Savior, and God will
never allow that to happen. Normally, He will allow an unbeliever to live a long life, but only when His
intervention will neutralize their negative influence.
In the case of the Jews they were almost unanimous in their rejection of Christ, and their children would have
been persuaded not to believe in Him. God will not allow even one soul with positive volition at God consciousness,
to slip through His fingers. "He wills that none should perish...", and if that means that millions of unbelievers
must perish, then so be it.
Rest assured, any soul who was potentially positive to the gospel was spared.
Also keep in mind that even their negative volition did not warrant such barbaric treatment. God would probably have
handled the sitution differently, like a plague or some such, but their absence of faith precluded any possibility
that He would intercede for them. Such is the finality of the Law of Volitional Responsibility. If you reject God,
an unbeliever, then He will leave you to your own designs, regardless the suffering. He can not do otherwise, for
he establishes freedom as His policy, and He honors that policy without exception. Unfortunately, most human beings
don't understand the gravity of their error in this regard.
Had they been believers it would have been different, even if they had been degenerate. Once saved we are the
children of God, and He will intercede for us many times on that basis alone.