Help, Deuteronomy 13 and the Omphalos hypothesis

@3nme Did you post this in the wrong thread?

It still implies that God could test people by deceiving them.

Yes. God will test us. We need to read the Text Book to find the answers. Surely you will not die if you eat the fruit. Come on, don’t be a square, everyone is doing it. Resist the devil and he will flee.

original post

But the test was to not turn from God. How does this apply to an ancient earth?

2 Likes

Have you studied Hebrew linguistics? You can’t do proper translation with Strong’s and an interlinearized text. Trust me, it’s pretty hard to do translation with a highly trained team of native speakers, the best exegetical software available, and several years of master’s level training in linguistics, anthropology, and translation theory.

Just because it occurs in idiomatic expressions in some places does not make that a valid translation choice for every situation. Yom is not being used idiomatically in Genesis 1. There are pretty extensive technical discussions on this topic here if you are interested. You have to wade through some excess blah blah.

1 Like

God puts the evidence there to test if people will turn from God or not

How about this. God can test people through acts which happen in history, which is not the same as making up lies about a false history. Not a perfect answer, but it’s the best I can think of.

So I’m backing up a bit. There are lots of confusing things in the world that mislead us–from wrong teachings and writings (from Scientology to animism to Raelians and wrong books). Does God mislead us by letting those occur? If we are born into those wrong teachings, does He blame us for following what we think is right?

Then, if He is God, does He actually lead us into the wrong way because He let us see those things? What’s the difference between that and actually sending us a false prophet? There is a nuance of difference, but at the end, it really matters whether God is just and will judge us according to what we know or not.

I think that God knows our hearts, no matter what. I really like The Last Battle quote by C S Lewis, in which Emeth, who thought he was doing right by serving Tash, found he had been serving Aslan all along. It reflects what my hopes are that God is truly the Just Judge.:

“Then I fell at his feet and thought, Surely this is the hour of death, for the Lion (who is worthy of all honour) will know that I have served Tash all my days and not him. Nevertheless, it is better to see the Lion and die than to be Tisroc of the world and live and not to have seen him. But the Glorious One bent down his golden head and touched my forehead with his tongue and said, Son, thou art welcome. But I said, Alas Lord, I am no son of thine but the servant of Tash. He answered, Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me. Then by reasons of my great desire for wisdom and understanding, I overcame my fear and questioned the Glorious One and said, Lord, is it then true, as the Ape said, that thou and Tash are one? The Lion growled so that the earth shook (but his wrath was not against me) and said, It is false. Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites, I take to me the services which thou hast done to him. For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted. Dost thou understand, Child? I said, Lord, though knowest how much I understand. But I said also (for the truth constrained me), Yet I have been seeking Tash all my days. Beloved, said the Glorious One, unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek.”

Better. Just like God can use crappy things that happen to us to further our sanctification and reveal his love and care. I recently had to fly home to the U.S. for emergency surgery and have spent much of the last few months in a lot of pain on my back on the couch. During the same time period, our truck broke beyond fixing and the city we live in was on the brink of armed conflict in the streets. Many well-meaning people said things to me like, “God caused this all to happen because he wanted to teach you X.” (insert your favorite lesson)

I don’t believe that God breaks our bodies (or vehicles, or communities) to teach us lessons. But I do believe that there is something profound about suffering that allows what God wants to teach us to be more visible and more easily learned. God works in the midst of our circumstances, even the crappy ones, to make us more Christ-like and to demonstrate his love and provision. But I don’t think you have to attribute the crappy stuff to God’s intention in order to see God’s hand making a way for you through the messes.

Light shines into the darkness, and sometimes the contrast makes the light seem so much brighter and noticeable. So maybe the idea is that God can even work through the idolatry of his people to glorify himself, because upon “testing” (being held up next to the true God for comparison), it clearly comes up lacking.

2 Likes

Good insight. Sorry you have been ill! Best wishes for improvement.

Thanks! I’ve been away from my family for six weeks, but I fly back on Friday.

that’s the worst. We’ve run into that lots in the mission field–best wishes.

1 Like

I tried to respond last week but I posted a response too many times as a new member and was not allowed to respond for three hours so i lost interest. this is what was still up when i came back . – Yup, it’s a good way to see who is loyal. God also disciplines His children. Love is Obedience. He warns us of eternal punishment. The Fear of the LORD is the beginning of Wisdom. For lack of knowledge My people are destroyed. Be wise a serpents but harmless as doves.

No. The passage does not say that God has raised up these false prophets any more than God carried out all the torments upon Job. These did not come from God but from the devil. God simply allowed these things to happen and did not interfere.

The evidence for an old earth is the entirety of the physical universe which God created, therefore your suggestion is that God created the physical universe in order to deceive. God is not the deceiver, that is the devil. Which do you worship?

Yes Reggie, God could have invented all the evidence for an old earth to test our faith. And I have even less doubt that God also invented all the Gospels in order to test our faith in Muhammad PBUH.

On a more serious note, Reggie, how on PLANET EARTH do you interpret that verse to be saying that God is doing the inventing? And your answer can be answered with a question. Can a perfectly good God lie?

HaSatan in the OT is a servant of God. Compare 1 Chronicles 21:1 to 2 Samuel 24:1.

1 Like

No, not exactly. He is originally an angel, and the angels are indeed spiritual servants/tools by nature being a product of the design of God. Furthermore God assigned Lucifer/serpent to the role he has now. He remains a tool, but it is no longer the case that he is a servant of God – that is incorrect. Nor is he any longer a sole product of the design of God. He is now at least partially a product of human choices and he is the personification of evil. But he is not the origin of evil and he is also a bit of a scapegoat. To be sure God can remove the devil from existence and he plans on doing so, when the role he plays is no longer needed. But to say that he is a servant of God is fundamentally wrong.

In fact 1 Chronicles 21:1 shows the basic absurdity of such a claim. For the suggestion in the text is that the people of Israel are the servants of God. But this is only true in their better dreams and ambitions. The same goes for Christians and all the other religious. They may hope to serve God and God may want them to serve Him, but the reality is that more often than not, they do NOT serve God.

But even this much is not true of Satan. He does not seek to serve God, but rather quite the opposite. The most you can say is that His existence serves the plan of God in a rather indirect manner for the redemption of mankind. His purpose just like the scapegoat is to draw to himself the evil within us and among us, so that in the end all evil may be destroyed along with him.

@Reggie_O_Donoghue and @mitchellmckain, I think we’ve discussed this sort of thing somewhere before, but what about 2 Chron 18:21, where God uses a lying spirit to mislead Israel? "
"‘I will go and be a deceiving spirit in the mouths of all his prophets,’ he said. “‘You will succeed in enticing him,’ said the LORD. ‘Go and do it.’”

This is in the same category as the passage where it says God hardened Pharoah’s heart, which I do not believe is anything like interfering with human free will. It is just that sin (bad habits) diminishes free will and makes us rather predictable. When this is the case then I think we are fair game for whatever manipulations God cares to make for the greater good.

1 Like