Stillin » David should have been stoned to death for his liaison with The bathing lady. If Jehovah always preferred that there should be one husband and one wife, why didn't He say so? Why were there false prophets? Who could say which was which? Did people have to die before they realized that it was a false prophet?
Yes, David was guilty of murder and must suffer in Hell for his sins. He writes: "Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth: my flesh also shall rest in hope. For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption." (Psalm 16:9-19) We don't know the entire extent of his punishment, but this scripture indicates that either 1) Hell does not last forever, or 2) God lets some people off, but not others. Logic dictates the former. In one of our scriptures, the Lord states: "David's wives and concubines were given unto him of me, by the hand of
Nathan, my servant, and others of the prophets who had the keys of this
power; and in none of these things did he sin against me save in the
case of Uriah and his wife; and, therefore he hath fallen from his exaltation, and received his portion; and he shall not inherit them out of the world, for I gave them unto another." In short, he paid a substantial price for his sin.
Being an animal enthusiast, what was killing animals at the temple really about? Could there not have been some better way to show your love for God?
Killing animals bothers me, too, as I'm a big animal lover. That said, animals have spirits, just as we do, and the Lord uses them as teaching tools to symbolize the death and sacrifice of His Son. The lamb without blemish and the fatted calf -- all point the way to the sacrifice of Christ. I choose not to second guess the Lord as I don't know all the facts leading into the stories of the Bible. And in the ones I do, the Lord has always been more than exonerated.
Because mankind is being tried and tested, much of what he's expected to learn on Earth is to love and help his fellow man, to offer him a hand up. The Lord can intervene when he chooses, but how and why he does that is something he keeps to himself, and it's not our place to sit in judgment of God; however, he can sit in judgment of us because he knows all the details and he knows what's in our hearts and minds. To attempt to judge God when we don't know all the facts, is to put us in danger of the judgment ourselves.
Island Man » There is another text in the NT where it mentions the qualifications for elders and it says that if a man does not have children in subjection then he is unfit to serve as an overseer in the congregation because if he can't manage his own household then cannot manage the household of god. This scripture again highlights the hypocrisy of the god of the bible. The bible shows that god cannot manage his own household because a third of the angels rebelled against his authority.
Again, we have no idea of the details leading up to the war in Heaven. We know that the Lord respects free agency and we also know that those of our brethren who rebelled were thrust down to the earth as spirits while the rest of us came here to live out our lives and then return. Those who rebelled made their choice and God respected their free agency. But they lost their place in Heaven and their future opportunities.
God has managed his household in a fair and equitable manner and two thirds of us chose to continue on, while a third rejected God's plan and are paying the price. It wasn't that we didn't understand the issues; it had nothing to do with God's rulership over us.
