Originally posted by paxnatus
No it's not. what I am saying is the scripture that is being asked about was taken out of context. The OP did not take time to read the scriptures
before or after the verse in question which changed the meaning of the scripture.
God's Word is the Truth. I didn't say so He did. Ask anyone who knows Christ, not only in an intellectual way but knows Him in their heart. They
will tell you the Holy Spirit is the truth and must be present for you to have a personal relationship with God the father.
It does not matter to me if you believe me or not. I know the Lord Jesus Christ as my personal Savior and you cannot know Him without the Holy Spirit
to reveal to you who God is. He has left his word to reveal to everyone on earth the Truth. Some will receive it, others will not.
God gave man free will. Ultimately, the choice is yours. Will you choose Life?
You said "Gods word is the truth." I assume you mean contained in the pages of the bible... and yet, what sort of truth is it?
If it is THE TRUTH, which can only be ONE TRUTH.. .then how can there be 34000+ different christian denominations?
First of all, I said exactly that this would happen. People would start coming in here and hollering "Context" about that verse. But quite
frankly, as I said above, there IS NO CONTEXT for it to be taken out of. Where is the context?
The Israelites were commanded to massacre the Medianites, destroying them utterly. Every man, woman and child. Genocide of an entire nation.
Context? What more context do you need? What, with all logic and the "love of god' could ever justify such an act? If such an atrocity took place
today, here and now, the nation that did so would be condemned for their crimes against humanity.
And yet, since it is in the bible and was justified by "gods command", no one bats an eye. Well I am batting.
Then the verse in particular being discussed. Again, justify to me, context or not, where the taking of the virgin women, to be kept for the people
of israel "for themselves" is justified.
You have a huge number of women, most of them still children (in one translation it says girls, in others it says "women children".. no context
there, my friend), who have just watched their fathers, brothers, mothers, friends, all of their nation murdered by these people, and are now taken
captive. They are led off to be either slaves, concubines, or forced into marriage, all of it being pressed upon them by the very hands that murdered
everyone they knew.
Are you going to sit there and try to "righteously justify" such an act? And to do it so frivolously and offhandedly as saying, "Oh, you're not
seeing the CONTEXT!"
And then comes the part of making everyone feel guilty for even questioning such things, and tossing out the fact that we are all sinners in the hands
of an angry God and need to come to Jesus.
I was a Christian for many years, even to the point of studying to be a pastor. But I could not, upon seeing a great amount of things that are
sitting in that book, justify to myself following such a thing anymore. I just could not, in good conscience, do it. I prayed, my friend, to the
point of blood, to have god let me see past these things and to fit back into the fold.
Do you know what answer I recieved? Being shown even more within the pages, to push me further away from what was written there.
A long period of night passed for me, but I am now finally back into the day, and into the light of a much clearer and better understanding of who and
what God is, and even who Jesus was/is. And I am eternally grateful for it.
But I will tell ya, it was not found in that book of horrors, surrounded by marshmallow goodness to hide the dirt. Some of the truth is there, yes...
but just like every religion out there, none have the full story, and none ever will.
Because God is much higher, and much bigger, than any one book could ever contain.
