[ZNPaaneah]

Originally Posted by Jo S

Yes, and Lucifer was good in the beginning. Then out of his own free will, Lucifer sinned and darkness entered him.

The mistake in thought you're making is that you're making sin a created thing. Cold isn't a property, it's the absence of a property. Heat however is a tangible thing.

The same is with light. Light is created, darkness (sin) is not.

You ask "where does darkness come form?". "Come from" implies a created property confined to time, space, and matter. Darkness is a void or vacuum and isn't a measurable tangible thing that requires "creating" therefore sin did not "come from" anywhere. It's just the absence of light or God's presence. You're making an assumption and concluding darkness and sin are from the same substance as God's Word (light and good).

Wow, this is some really deep philosophical stuff. So in the previous post you said that Hitler and these others "partook of the darkness", yet like the Phantom Toll Booth, they weren't actually partaking of any thing but the absence of something, they were eating minus signs? Woah??!!

So if darkness is nothingness, and Lucifer "became" evil from this nothingness does that mean that evil was created from nothing? Sounds like some kind of alternate God you have going on there, like the alternate superman.

Originally Posted by Jo S

God created Adam and Eve, He created them in His image. This image is what we refer to as the soul. God created this image (the raw material in my laptop analogy) but He is not the creator of the end result of a soul that chooses to partake in darkness. Therefore God is not responsible for the end result that is Hitler, Stalin (or the laptop).

But God didn't manufacture darkness and He doesn't lobby for sin. He's not responsible for our choice to live a life apart from Him. By saying God "created " evil men, is saying that He created evil to be carried out by these men. He did not because this is not who He is.

We are all born with an evil heart, it's not a choice we got to make because none of us were born out of God's very substance or Word, only Jesus. We were born our of the will of man in God's image along with the result of fallen men (John 1:13). That doesn't mean our parents "created" us from nothingness but out of our parents we were inherently born into darkness. God did not create any of us with darkness in his mind because what He creates is only good. We were the result of God's created image tainted with the result of humanities sin.

OK let me try to summarize. We were all created by God. We were all born with an evil heart. But that evil heart was not created by God. The problem is that Man (created by God) was "tainted" with evil but that evil did not come from God. So where did it come from?

Originally Posted by Jo S

He didn't foresee that it "would" happen. That's an assumption. We can say the God forsaw it "could" happen. "Would" renders free-will null and void. "Could", however, does not.

This also is an assumption. We know that God foresaw that man would be fruitful and multiply. It is not unreasonable to say that God could foresee millions, even billions of men on this earth. Since free will can logically assume millions of choices, a few evil rebellious ones mixed in is certainly a logical assumption. Yes if I flip a coin a million times it is fair to say that I foresaw it "could" have a heads in there. But it is also fair to say that based on the law of averages it would have a heads in there.

Originally Posted by Jo S

He cares but that does not mean He will interfere. Omnipotence allows God to take action or restrict His presence and part of that hinges on the free-will He chose to give us.

Did you just nullify the power of prayer? Why on earth would anyone pray if they thought God would not interfere. What about intervene? What about intercede? I thought the Spirit intercedes for us praying in words we don't understand? None of this is Biblical, simply your poor reach of mind.

Originally Posted by Jo S

ZNP, I'm familiar with these beliefs because I had a friend that was raised in a Christian household but became a eastern mystic later on. He had the same pantheistic views concerning God as you do.

I am not the one who is claiming there are two different creators, that is you. I am proclaiming one God. I am also not the one proclaiming that there are multiple Lords, I am proclaiming there is one Lord, now, yesterday and forever. You are the one that says He is "hands off" until the finish line allowing all kinds of evil to take place that He is not responsible for. I am proclaiming one creation. You are proclaiming that this one creation did not include evil, you have some hokey way of saying that evil came into the creation, tainted the creation, yet don't explain how it was created out of nothing (darkness).

Originally Posted by Jo S

It makes sense because the LC's are a blend of eastern mysticism and biblical doctrine. But ultimately the belief that God "created" sin and evil men is a sly and crafty attack on His character. The further you take this belief, the more you get away from a loving Father into a god that's universal indifferent "force".

To deny the word of God as being the word of God is the true "crafty attack". Saying that I am pantheistic (when I haven't said one word that would support that) and then saying this makes sense because the LC is rooted in China is confirmation bias. You believe what you want to believe and then take bogus evidence to support your bogus assertion. However, ad hominem attacks like this are typical of some within the LC. Perhaps that is where you learned to behave like this.

Originally Posted by Jo S

God is love and there is no darkness in Him. Therefore because darkness is not in Him, it could not have come from Him.

Exactly. So then, where did it come from? Because all things came from the word and apart from the word nothing that has come into being has come into being.