[TruthTalk] Love or Rebuke?

[jandgtaylor1]

From: "David Miller" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> David Miller wrote: >> Is sin the object of God's wrath or are people the object of God's wrath?   Judy wrote: > God's wrath is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness > of men (so it is against men's sin)   I feel like you are misunderstanding my question. Sure, God is upset with sin.  God is angry with sin. I think that is what the verse is saying.  But what is the OBJECT of his wrath?  Who does God take out his wrath upon?  My point is that God casts the sinner into hell, not the sin.  God does not separate the sinner from the sin and say, "I love you sinner".    **Jesus did this when he went to the cross for us and he also did it when he asked the Father to forgive the ones who were responsible for they didn't know, or were unaware of what they were doing.   The Catholics have come up with purgatory to teach that he does this, and the Mormons have come up with different levels of heaven, but what confidence is there that either of these theories of men are correct?  Aren't they really inventions to tickle the ears of us who cannot face the cold hard facts that God is awesome and fearsome and holy and does not put up with sin?   **I believe as Paul taught that once God winked at sin in the days of men's ignorance but now (since the cross) He commands everyone to repent.   I was taught this same doctrine in the institutional churches I was brought up in, and one day I read a sermon by Jonathan Edwards that made it crystal clear that the object of God's wrath is the sinner not the sin.  It was always staring me in the face in Scripture, but it was like I had a veil over my eyes because I believed that we love the sinner and hate the sin.    **Jonathan Edwards sermon was said to be effective in that day but I don't know that presenting a God of terror is all that good; and this was not the way Jesus presented Him.    Add to this concept the word of Scripture which cannot be broken, that God hates the workers of iniquity (Psalm 5:5), and also David's comment that he hates the enemies of God with a perfect hatred (Psalm 139:22), and it suddenly becomes clear that I was made a sissy by the propaganda of Christianity.   **What about other scripture that can not be broken which says that God so loved the world that He gave His ONLY begotten son so that whosoever believed on Him would not perish and what about the scriptures that say God is married to the backslider and God is not willing that any perish but that all come to the knowledge of the truth. Mercy triumphs over sacrifice etc....   Now I surely don't claim to fully understand all this yet.  I cannot say as David that I hate those who hate God with a perfect hatred.  But I see enough to know that this is a shortcoming on my part, a weakness, and not a strength.  It is just hard to unlearn what I have been programmed with all my life.   **I don't call Truth a 'weakness' - something is either truth or it is not.  David was an Old Covenant man, who was living under the 'eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth law' - Whereas we are living under the New Covenant and Christ's blood and we have two Commandments to follow on which hang all the law and all the prophets which are: Matthew 22:37-39. So we don't have that option.  We are to obey Jesus, not David.   Judy wrote: > and is stored in heaven against the day of wrath and the revelation of the righteous judgment of God (Romans 2:5).  > This day is in the future, it's not now.   You have mixed two passages here, but you don't seem to realize that this Romans 2 passage speaks of the soul of man as being the object of God's wrath.  But unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, Tribulation and anguish, UPON EVERY SOUL OF MAN THAT DOETH EVIL, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile; (Romans 2:8-9 KJV)   **I understand that the blessings and curses are still valid David but this warning is for all of us, not just 'those sinners out there on the streets.'   Now this particular passage does speak of a future day when the wrath of Jesus Christ will be manifested, but the criptures also speak of God's wrath abiding upon the sinner even now.    **Yes in the pew and in the choir as well as on the street but the ministry gifts Jesus left to the Church are for the building up and edifying of people in Him so that they can do the work of the ministry - not to beat them down in shame, rebuke, and condemnation.   He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him. (John 3:36 KJV)   **Right.  It's already there so we don't need street ministry going out and adding to it.   Judy wrote: > As for hell, it was originally prepared for the devil and his angels and was not supposed to be for mankind.    Are you suggesting that God did not know when he made hell that he would one day cast sinners into it?    **No I'm not suggesting that at all. God put Adam and Eve in the garden knowing they would fall didn't He?   Judy wrote: > People do not need to go there unless they refuse to love the truth and insist on holding or clinging to the lie. We will > spend eternity with whoever we serve.   You make this sound like some kind of automatic thing that God has no control over.  Do you believe that God in anger and wrath casts the wicked into hell fire as punishment for how they lived on earth?  This is an important question I hope you answer.  It kind of sounds like you might have trouble answering yes to this question.   **God is sovereign and has set everything in motion so I am certainly not saying that He has no control. However, His Word is forever settled in heaven and He can not go against it.  We have been given a measure of time on this earth to get it together and so the choice is ours, we don't have to be punished in hell fire and if we are it is our choice rather than His will.   Judy wrote: > DaveH does not teach the same doctrine I do because I don't believe what you state above.  I have stated on this list more than once that All humanity are not God's children and that the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man is a doctrine of Freemasonry. What's more I believe that there is a hell to shun and a heaven to gain.. you are misunderstanding what I am saying DavidM   Thank you for taking the time to clarify.  Thank you for your patience. There does seem to be some similarity. Ok, he does not believe in literal fire, but you do.  I guess that is one important distinction. But you seem to have the same popular notion as he does that a loving God does not DIRECTLY, out of anger, punish people with pain for all eternity.  You sort of make it sound like the sinners choose to go to hell instead of heaven.   **This is what I believe.  How can you read "It is NOT God's will for any to perish but for ALL to come to the knowledge of truth any other way?   Judy wrote: > How can you love people when their sin stands out like a huge neon sign and you see it and them as one and the same and believe/teach that God hates both?  This is doublemindedness.   I don't see it as double mindedness.  I certainly understand that if a person rejects his sin, then he can be saved.  But if that person holds onto that sin, I see that he has the wrath of God abiding upon him right then.  That's why his prayers do not get answered.  That's why he is separated from God.  God has a different attitude toward the believer than he does toward the unbeliever.  He does not love them in the same way.  Do you agree?   **I believe that God's grace works with the believer in a different way but sin is sin and God hates it just as much in the believer as He does in the unbeliever because it is destructive and separates both from Him.   Judy wrote: > Jesus has made it possible by his DB&R for us to separate them; we are to hate the sin but love the person. ... We LOVE God, ourselves, and others because LOVE fulfills God's law. Is there something wrong with this? Something you find unscriptural? There are some difficulties I find with walking this out.  For example, at the next "Gay Pride" march, try to practice this.  Put your arms around these men and women and tell them that you love them and God does too.  They will receive it.  But they just continue on in their perversion, making even more perversion by opening up churches and Bible studies as places to pick up more homosexual partners.   **LOVE is an attitude of the heart; noone in their right mind would counsel a man to go hug other men at a "gay pride" affair.  IMO it's best to leave them until they get far enough into the depths of despair to start looking up and some do; then it is time to speak the truth in love to them which is that they will have to forsake this sin and receive Christ to be saved and delivered.   I had a friend who had some problems with my approach, but she went to the "Gay Pride" thing with Christians who were passing out tracts to let them know that God loves them.  She came back telling me, "David, I have to tell you.  Your approach is much more effective.  It made me sick being with these people all day.  It was a total waste of time."    **I agree with her - that it is a total waste of time to go out there amongst such hardened sinners. Let satan work them over for a while and just be ready ... to love them in God's time.   I remember you saying that the churches need more rebuking of sin WITHIN the church.  Don't you see that this idea here that you express is what breeds a church that looks the other way when sin happens?  People are never truly held accountable in a system like this where you "love the sinner but hate the sin."   **Maybe not in your experience David but that's not what I'm talking about. I don't mean sweep the sin under the rug, I mean deal with it in an atmosphere of love and trust.  People will not open up about their deepest needs in the "church" because they fear rejection.  However, we are all working through the same kind of stuff and we can accept people who are going through the process as we are because God has said in His Word that He will cause us to overcome and Paul writes that Jesus can cause us to stand.  I have no problem with a brother or sister so long as they hate their sin (not just everyone elses) and are moving on in the Lord.    I think we have to see that when a person sins, he brings upon himself the anger and hatred of God.  That is what the Bible seems to teach, even though it is counter intuitive to what we have been programmed with in society and our Christian culture.   **Sadly our society and our 'so called Christian culture' have permeated the Church and it is mixture. We need to lay it all on the shelf and allow the Holy Spirit to teach us the More Excellent Way...   Judy, I hope I'm not wearing you out.  I'm still struggling with many of these concepts.  Talking with you helps the thinking process.   **No problem, I'm always blessed to talk with believers about the things of God, it's a learning experience for me also. I am still trying to understand the concept of the Church out there on the street (am not there yet but I haven't rejected it).   My street preaching began without any notions of God hating the sinner. I had compassion for the poor and homeless in Tampa, and when the city council there cast us out of their meetings as we were trying to seek their help and guidance, a message was burning in my heart so I took it to the streets.  That was more than 10 years ago.  My message was not one of "God hates your sin" but rather how we had become a very wicked city and that we should be loving our neighbor.  I preached to corporate executives as they passed homeless people on the street, urging them to reach out to their neighbor in love.  As I prayed about what God wanted me to do, the Spirit spoke to my heart to preach in three areas rather than one.  I was to preach to the downtown business men during their lunch break, to the Ybor City night club district on weekend nights, and certain days preach at the university to the students there.  These other two venues caused me to realize that I had completely lost touch with our society.  I could not believe the reaction, the way that people thought about certain issues, and the hatred towards God.  It was through these activities that I began to understand how God looked upon the wicked with anger and hatred.    **They hate God because they are walking in their old Adamic fallen nature which is in fact, the nature of the devil. God understands this and He doesn't hate them, if He did Jesus wouldn't have been as a lamb slain from the foundation of the world.  I can understand your reaction though.   Some years ago, some street preachers on TruthTalk brought up passages about how God hated the sinner and so should we.  I had never looked at this before from a theological perspective, but it challenged me.    **I can not say I've never had this mindset myself. I have seen those scriptures and when I was angry in the flesh it was comforting to think that God was on my side. However, we can have things working in us such as resentment, unforgiveness, an unloving spirit etc. that we need to take to the throne of grace and this will color our view. Think about it, if God really hated the sinner Jesus would never have gone to Calvary for him.    It still challenges me, because when I look upon most of these people while I'm preaching, I have nothing but a pure love for them.  I can't explain it.  I see how for the most part it has all happened to them through ignorance.  Nevertheless, there have been a few times where I have seen the hearts of some being so hardened, that I spoke to them in the most angry of tones.  It was not a personal hatred toward them, but some kind of vicarious thing.  I can't explain it exactly, but I could see them as being enemies of God and spoke to them accordingly.  If the guy had come over to me to slug me I would have still hugged him and turned the other cheek because what I was seeing and how I was acting was not personal. It was truly a way in which the Lord was working through me.  I remember one night preaching and this very perverted looking homosexual starting prancing in front of me.  I don't know what overcame me, but I got right in his face and rebuked him in the harshest of terms.  I thought he might just clobber me, but he didn't.  He seemed surprised.  The next week I was preaching again in this same spot and the man returned.  The Spirit spoke to my heart and told me to be gentle, to not answer him.  The man got up in my face then, spitting on me (and I am certain he had AIDS), and cursing me.  I softened my look toward him and did not answer him according to his anger.  I preached to the others and he tried again, but my reaction toward him made him unable to take his next step of aggression toward me.  I smiled and looked down.  I spoke a quiet message of mercy, not directly to him, but looking away from him.  His anger toward me subsided.  I was preaching alone both these nights, and I think this was the Lord's way of protecting me.    **Just a thought but - could be you rebuked the homosexual who was prancing because he was actively distracting ppl from hearing the Word you were preaching and I do believe that the Lord takes care of His own.   I've only met Kevin once I think, but I have preached with some of his guys from New York on several occasions.  I have not yet met Dean, but I know him from the list like the rest of you.  I have preached with Ruben many times over the last five years or so.  I can tell you that I am very comfortable with what Ruben does.  He mixes a lot of humor in with his message, but he is a no-nonsense guy who speaks the truth in some very wicked places.  I feel greatly honored just to be his water boy.   **I'm glad to hear such a good report, I just can't agree with the God hating sinners doctrine that they all seem to be walking in ..   So as you can see, they can probably better explain the wrath and hatred of God thing better than I can. Nevertheless, I don't think I am completely without understanding.  I'm just trying to say, try to hear the truth of what is being said, and mix it with the truth that you know.  Cast down any ideas that you might have that are not really Biblical.  In the end, we ought to achieve a balanced understanding.   **I want to lay aside anything I am hanging on to that is not scriptural but the Street preachers have yet to show me In God's Word that He hates any man's person.  Their actions and attitudes yes.  But He loves us enough to have given us a measure of time to grow in grace and to be conformed to the image of His Son.... and this is the Good News we are to share.   Grace and Peace, Judy