A STUNNINGLY simple question about JOHN 3:16 "For God so Loved the world."

by Terry 384 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  darth frosty

  Ahh yes! Two of my favorite poster's to debate the great arguments of our time's. I classify myself as a spiritual atheist. I recognize the inherent need for man to either continually search for a higher power or to question it.

  If you believe in God I only have this question...Why does he fail so badly when it comes to sentient creatures? If there is a god I will grant that he did a marvelous job on the Universe and its ever expanding solar systems. But, why does he fail so miserably when it comes to sentient creation? His first failure was with the angels. Than he fails with mankind. What type of flaw exist in him that the sentient creatures he creates have a tendancy to revolt from his rule?

  This was a response I made a few months ago. http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/12/152196/1.ashx Thing is the bible clearly does represent God as suffering from some sort of multiple personality disorder. Please dont get it twisted. I respect everyones desire to believe whatever they want to. I enjoy earnest discussion about such differences of opinion. The thing is, it is a simple question. If God really did love the world so much and care for mankind so much, he could have long ago removed the problems that plague mankind (namely satan.) Justice demands that soon as reasonably possible, an instigator or source of evil and corruption needs to be dealt with. Real One wrote

  God does love the world. He created it. The purpose of mankind is to wonce you realize you need him and he does not need you you are well on your way. we live to do his will not our own. I look at Satan again and continue to wonder why he fell. orship God. Jehovah God. No other god. When God asks us to do something he expects us to obey him.OBEY, this is becoming my favorite word to use in connection to God. ...once you realize you need him and he does not need you you are well on your way. we live to do his will not our own. I look at Satan again and continue to wonder why he fell.

  Like I said above it was not just satan. A third of the heavens is said to have resented gods leadership and abandoned him. This isn't a third of ten or a hundred angels, This is a third of myriads times myriads of angels.
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  Perry

  The bible clearly uses the word vanity. It was replaced by modern translations with the word futility based on the thoroughly corrupted work of Wescott and Hort.

  John Gill's Exposition of the Bible

  Romans 8:20

  For the creature was made subject to vanity…
  This designs the vanity and emptiness of the minds of the Gentiles, who were without God and Christ, and the Holy Spirit, without the law and Gospel, and grace of God; also the vain conceits they had of themselves, of their wisdom, knowledge, learning, and eloquence; likewise their vain philosophy, particularly their gross idolatry, their polytheism, or worshipping of many gods; together with their divers lusts and vices, to which they were addicted, to such a degree, that they might be truly said to be made subject thereunto, being under the government of these things, slaves unto them, and in such subjection, as that they could not deliver themselves from it; though it is said,

  not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in
  hope.
  Though they were willingly vain, yet they were not willingly made subject to vanity; they willingly went into idolatrous and other evil practices, but the devil made them subject, or slaves unto them; he led them captive at his will, and powerfully worked in them, by divine permission, so that they became vassals to him, and to their lusts; for he seems to be designed, "by him who hath subjected the same", and not Adam, by whom sin entered into the world.
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  Deputy Dog

  Perry

  The bible clearly uses the word vanity. It was replaced by modern translations with the word futility based on the thoroughly corrupted work of Wescott and Hort.

  As a believer, I have to side with BreakingAway on this one. We can't blame Wescott and Hort. The Greek word is the same in any text. Strong's:

  G3153 mataiote¯s ; from G3152; vanity, emptiness: - futility (2), vanity (1).

  I find this makes perfect sense, if we ask the question; Did God create Adam so that he could sin or would sin? If God is sovereign, the answer has to be, so that he would sin.
• 

  Perry

  Both the word and it's root seems to relate more to moral depravity due to vanity according to Strong and IPD Lexicons

  (and to the 47 world renouned Greek Scholars of the King James Version)

  Strong:

  3153.

  mataiovthß mataiotes, mat-ah-yot'-ace; from 3152; inutility; figuratively, transientness; morally, depravity:--vanity. 3152. mavtaioß mataios, mat'-ah-yos; from the base of 3155; empty, i.e. (literally) profitless, or (specially), an idol:--vain, vanity. And this from the Internet Public Domain Lexicon:

  Strong's Number: 3153

  Original Word Word Origin mataiovthß from 3152 Transliterated Word TDNT/TWOT Entry mataiotes 4:523,571 Phonetic Spelling Part of Speech mat-ah-yot'-ace Noun Feminine

  Definition

  what is devoid of truth and appropriateness perverseness, depravity frailty, want of vigour

  Strong's Number: 3152

  Original Word Word Origin mavtaioß from the base of 3155 Transliterated Word TDNT/TWOT Entry mataios 4:519,571 Phonetic Spelling Part of Speech mat'-ah-yos Adjective

  Definition

  devoid of force, truth, success, result useless, of no purpose

  Here's my source :

  http://www.onlinebaptist.com/biblesearch/

  Just type in scripture and click on any word you like in English to get the two Lexicons to pop up. It's pretty cool.

  I find this makes perfect sense, if we ask the question; Did God create Adam so that he could sin or would sin? If God is sovereign, the answer has to be, so that he would sin.

  Futility makes no sense because God at no time subjected the human race to a "hopeless" situation. Even before passing sentence he spoke the prophecy of hope at Gen 3: 15. Man was however subjected to vanity by the fall. Man no longer looked to God but to himself. As a result of this imploded tunnel vision, man is depraved....being unable to "see" God and only able to 'see" himself.
• 

  myelaine

  dear Auldsoul...

  "Terry loathes the stupidity of people who support the deity he questions"

  Terry is stunned...he probably doesn't even know what day it is...heheheh

  love michelle
• 

  Perry

  And yes, our occultic scribes, Wescott and Hort are the culprits.

  They went against the 47 scholar peer reviewed KJV on this. There has never been a greater collection of greek scholars than this bunch.

  They (Wescott & Hort) didn't even believe in the substitutionary atonement for heaven's sake. In other words, they weren't Christians at all. When they came out with their "revised" master greek text, the ESV was simutaneously birthed.

  English Standard Version

  Romans 8 Read This Chapter

  8:20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope

  English

  The Revised Standard Version

  Romans 8 Read This Chapter

  8:20 for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope;

  The King James Version (Authorized)

  Romans 8 Read This Chapter

  8:20 For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope,

  Way of Life Notes:

  The NASB is built upon the English Revised Version of 1885 and the American Standard Version of 1901 (which was the American edition of the English Revised). At least three Christ-denying Unitarians were on these translation committees (George Vance Smith, Ezra Abbot, and Joseph Henry Thayer). The committees also included many men of modernistic views, such as Philip Schaff (twice brought to trial for heresy), William Robertson Smith (who was evicted from the Free Church Theological College for his modernism), B.F. Westcott and F.J.A. Hort (both of whom denied the infallible inspiration of Scripture and Christ’s substitutionary atonement and believed in evolution), and Anglican Broad Church members William Moulton, George Milligan, R.C. Trench, Edward Bickersteth, Benjamin Kennedy, A.P. Stanley, Robert Payne Smith, William Humphrey, and John Vaughan.

  Matt 12:38

  And he said unto them in his doctrine, Beware of the scribes... - Jesus
• 

  trevor

  Terry starts some interesting threads. Alas I tend to approach the main point of them by analysing the motivation behind them rather than addressing the issue raised. Slap wrist. Here is something more relevant to terry’s original point, taken from my notes of thoughts I had during my twenties:

  Time to walk and ponder. Looking at the people and children playing in the park, I began wondered if all these people were really going to be slaughtered soon because they were not in The Truth. How could a just and righteous God commit such an atrocity.

  I felt compassion for them and at the same time a growing sense of outrage. I had never tolerated the misuse of authority or bullying but here I was claming to love a God who was planning to slaughter all these innocent people, including me if I failed to please him.

  He was certainly capable of such an act. I knew my Bible off by heart and had read of the flood in Noah’s day when a world of unrighteous people had been destroyed. Then there were the Israelites who God arranged to be taken into slavery for two hundred years and then rescued them, killing many Egyptians in the process. He then made them wander in the wilderness for forty years and claimed that he owned them because he had rescued them from the captivity he had put them in.

  There were many more accounts of this God’s deeds and they all seemed to involve retribution, revenge and death. I was having difficulty understanding or justifying his reasoning. I had been told many times that God’s way are higher than man’s but this all seemed very low. How could the God of love behave in this spiteful way? Did I want to live forever in a world run by this God Jehovah? I was supposed to love him but I felt a growing disgust towards the whole idea. He had created us so was it really our fault he had made a mess of it?

  The more I read about this God of the Bible called Jehovah the more uneasy I became. Whenever Jehovah was mentioned there was so much talk of fear and darkness. He was portrayed as a violent, angry male who could switch from feeling love to feeling regret and then throwing violent tantrums. Surly God should be more mature and above making mistakes, I reasoned?

  As I examined what I had always accepted as truth, certain contradictions began to appear. None of the Bible writers had ever met this God or spoken to him, yet they claimed to know his innermost thoughts and plans. What if he was nothing like the petulant tyrant he was portrayed as? What if the writers had made God in the image of man and the earthly rulers they had known?

  If that was possible then it was also possible that this God Jehovah did not exist at all. The idea was not new but I had closed my mind to anything that did not support the fixed view I had always held. Now I began to recall some of the comment that people that I called on, had made.
• 

  hamilcarr

  To put Terry's question to you: On what basis do you cherish individual lives?

  The evolutionary endowed need for cooperation. Throughout mankind's history, one may remark a broadening of the sphere with which one cooperated, from family, tribe, nation to entire humanity and for some even entire creation. Organised religion got stuck in the tribal-national phase (a fortiori those who accept the OT as a divine revelation).
• 

  hamilcarr

  Your "clear moral norm" is an invention of your mind and is, as with all humans, inextricably paired with your "clear moral abnorm"; that immorality peculiarly yours that you don't talk about nearly as much in polite social circles.

  I wouldn't agree with this. The "clear moral norm" is a reality on which our civilisation is built. Morality isn't the product of our culture and civilisation, but rather the opposite: civilisation is the result of our biologically rooted moral potential (which may be emprically confirmed by comparative behavioral studies).
• 

  Deputy Dog

  Perry Wescott & Hort didn't change the Greek word in this case. It doesn't matter what English word you use, the important thing to see here is, they were "made subject" by God "not willingly".

  Futility makes no sense because God at no time subjected the human race to a "hopeless" situation.

  If the situation wasn't hopeless what do you need Jesus for? All men could would save themselves.