God on trial

@Carazaa Wait a second. Did you just flat out say that the Holocaust was justified?

@LordShadowfire ME too 👍👍

@Carazaa While the Holocaust was by no means Christian, the shocking truth is it could never have happened without the centuries of Church persecution of the Jews which came before it and a theology that demonised them. The Holocaust is a prime example of the evil humanity is capable of perpetrating. We may not know the reasons why God allowed this. Yet God shared the suffering of His chosen people. He was not distant. However, we find ourselves to be inclined by nature toward selfishness and sin. So in this view He is God the omnipotent, the all-powerful Creator, but He is not omnibenevolent because He did not create our souls in a way that predispositioned us all for salvation. Nicholas Wolterstorff, writing against the grain of centuries of Christian theology, states the seemingly obvious: “Given that all human actions are temporal,” he reasons, “those actions of God which are ‘response’ are temporal as well.”

@val70 Please... Do not attempt to say that christians or the church had anything to do with the holocaust!
Hitler was demon possessed and hated christians and made fun of the Bible. There are lots of witnesses of his mockings!

@val70 The Lord warned the Jews over, and over, and over in the old testament and us too if we follow him we will be blessed and if we don't we will be cursed
Deutoronomy 28

Blessings for Obedience
28 If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully follow all his commands I give you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations on earth. 2 All these blessings will come on you and accompany you if you obey the Lord your God:

3 You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country.

4 The fruit of your womb will be blessed, and the crops of your land and the young of your livestock—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.

5 Your basket and your kneading trough will be blessed.

6 You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out.

7 The Lord will grant that the enemies who rise up against you will be defeated before you. They will come at you from one direction but flee from you in seven.

8 The Lord will send a blessing on your barns and on everything you put your hand to. The Lord your God will bless you in the land he is giving you.

9 The Lord will establish you as his holy people, as he promised you on oath, if you keep the commands of the Lord your God and walk in obedience to him. 10 Then all the peoples on earth will see that you are called by the name of the Lord, and they will fear you. 11 The Lord will grant you abundant prosperity—in the fruit of your womb, the young of your livestock and the crops of your ground—in the land he swore to your ancestors to give you.

12 The Lord will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands. You will lend to many nations but will borrow from none. 13 The Lord will make you the head, not the tail. If you pay attention to the commands of the Lord your God that I give you this day and carefully follow them, you will always be at the top, never at the bottom. 14 Do not turn aside from any of the commands I give you today, to the right or to the left, following other gods and serving them.

Curses for Disobedience

15 However, if you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come on you and overtake you:

16 You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country.

17 Your basket and your kneading trough will be cursed.

18 The fruit of your womb will be cursed, and the crops of your land, and the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.

19 You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out.

20 The Lord will send on you curses, confusion and rebuke in everything you put your hand to, until you are destroyed and come to sudden ruin because of the evil you have done in forsaking him.[a] 21 The Lord will plague you with diseases until he has destroyed you from the land you are entering to possess. 22 The Lord will strike you with wasting disease, with fever and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew, which will plague you until you perish. 23 The sky over your head will be bronze, the ground beneath you iron. 24 The Lord will turn the rain of your country into dust and powder; it will come down from the skies until you are destroyed.

25 The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You will come at them from one direction but flee from them in seven, and you will become a thing of horror to all the kingdoms on earth. 26 Your carcasses will be food for all the birds and the wild animals, and there will be no one to frighten them away. 27 The Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, festering sores and the itch, from which you cannot be cured. 28 The Lord will afflict you with madness, blindness and confusion of mind. 29 At midday you will grope about like a blind person in the dark. You will be unsuccessful in everything you do; day after day you will be oppressed and robbed, with no one to rescue you.

30 You will be pledged to be married to a woman, but another will take her and rape her. You will build a house, but you will not live in it. You will plant a vineyard, but you will not even begin to enjoy its fruit. 31 Your ox will be slaughtered before your eyes, but you will eat none of it. Your donkey will be forcibly taken from you and will not be returned. Your sheep will be given to your enemies, and no one will rescue them. 32 Your sons and daughters will be given to another nation, and you will wear out your eyes watching for them day after day, powerless to lift a hand. 33 A people that you do not know will eat what your land and labor produce, and you will have nothing but cruel oppression all your days. 34 The sights you see will drive you mad. 35 The Lord will afflict your knees and legs with painful boils that cannot be cured, spreading from the soles of your feet to the top of your head.

36 The Lord will drive you and the king you set over you to a nation unknown to you or your ancestors. There you will worship other gods, gods of wood and stone. 37 You will become a thing of horror, a byword and an object of ridicule among all the peoples where the Lord will drive you.

38 You will sow much seed in the field but you will harvest little, because locusts will devour it. 39 You will plant vineyards and cultivate them but you will not drink the wine or gather the grapes, because worms will eat them. 40 You will have olive trees throughout your country but you will not use the oil, because the olives will drop off. 41 You will have sons and daughters but you will not keep them, because they will go into captivity. 42 Swarms of locusts will take over all your trees and the crops of your land.

43 The foreigners who reside among you will rise above you higher and higher, but you will sink lower and lower. 44 They will lend to you, but you will not lend to them. They will be the head, but you will be the tail.

45 All these curses will come on you. They will pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the Lord your God and observe the commands and decrees he gave you. 46 They will be a sign and a wonder to you and your descendants forever. 47 Because you did not serve the Lord your God joyfully and gladly in the time of prosperity, 48 therefore in hunger and thirst, in nakedness and dire poverty, you will serve the enemies the Lord sends against you. He will put an iron yoke on your neck until he has destroyed you.

49 The Lord will bring a nation against you from far away, from the ends of the earth, like an eagle swooping down, a nation whose language you will not understand, 50 a fierce-looking nation without respect for the old or pity for the young. 51 They will devour the young of your livestock and the crops of your land until you are destroyed. They will leave you no grain, new wine or olive oil, nor any calves of your herds or lambs of your flocks until you are ruined. 52 They will lay siege to all the cities throughout your land until the high fortified walls in which you trust fall down. They will besiege all the cities throughout the land the Lord your God is giving you.

53 Because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege, you will eat the fruit of the womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you. 54 Even the most gentle and sensitive man among you will have no compassion on his own brother or the wife he loves or his surviving children, 55 and he will not give to one of them any of the flesh of his children that he is eating. It will be all he has left because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of all your cities. 56 The most gentle and sensitive woman among you—so sensitive and gentle that she would not venture to touch the ground with the sole of her foot—will begrudge the husband she loves and her own son or daughter 57 the afterbirth from her womb and the children she bears. For in her dire need she intends to eat them secretly because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of your cities.

58 If you do not carefully follow all the words of this law, which are written in this book, and do not revere this glorious and awesome name—the Lord your God— 59 the Lord will send fearful plagues on you and your descendants, harsh and prolonged disasters, and severe and lingering illnesses. 60 He will bring on you all the diseases of Egypt that you dreaded, and they will cling to you. 61 The Lord will also bring on you every kind of sickness and disaster not recorded in this Book of the Law, until you are destroyed. 62 You who were as numerous as the stars in the sky will be left but few in number, because you did not obey the Lord your God. 63 Just as it pleased the Lord to make you prosper and increase in number, so it will please him to ruin and destroy you. You will be uprooted from the land you are entering to possess.

64 Then the Lord will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship other gods—gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your ancestors have known. 65 Among those nations you will find no repose, no resting place for the sole of your foot. There the Lord will give you an anxious mind, eyes weary with longing, and a despairing heart. 66 You will live in constant suspense, filled with dread both night and day, never sure of your life. 67 In the morning you will say, “If only it were evening!” and in the evening, “If only it were morning!”—because of the terror that will fill your hearts and the sights that your eyes will see. 68 The Lord will send you back in ships to Egypt on a journey I said you should never make again. There you will offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you.

@Carazaa How do you account for the Catholic Church and specifically the Pope, who did not speak out? They knew who was in those trains and where they were headed, and they aided some of the Nazis by hiding them or helping them escape to S. America and some hid in the US.

@JSul3 I am a born again christian, not catholic. There were definitely christian attempts to kill Hitler.

@Carazaa Even by some within Hitler's inner circle.

@Carazaa Interesting how out of one side of your mouth, you say that Christianity had nothing to do with the Holocaust, and then out of the other side, you say the Holocaust was God's punishment of the Jews.

@Carazaa Gosh, was the Roman catholic then not christian then? I can't see that your defence of christianity going any further then than our own experience or thought about it

@val70 Many Catholics are indeed antisemite.

@JSul3 Oh yes, I know. For the record: I'm not German nor Roman Catholic :-)

@val70 So please answer my questions or have the courage to admit that you have no answers.
It's easy if you try.

@JSul3 What question? The central one why God did it happen? The Jews in the picture believed that it was because they sinned. How? Because they weren't knocking on God's door any more. I'm trying to simplify this all for you. But go again, there's the picture to view too :-)

@val70 One last time....YOUR opinion/answer, not a dodge or deflection on what any others think/thought. YOUR answer:

Why did god sit back and watch horrific events like the Holocaust take place, and not intervene, as he used to, by turning one into pillars of salt or drowning mankind in a flood?

If you don't have an answer, simply admit: "I don't know."

@JSul3 Because the events on this earth are temporal and God is universal. Because the evil that mankind commits it does by free will. Because this world isn't the place that's been promised for those who believe. Because the Jews in the picture were indeed praying going to the gass chamber because they knew that God would hear them eventually and make His convenant with their people still right. Because true christians believe that love for God and love for ones neighbour is the only thing that matters. Because we know that the only place for a christian is under the cross of Jesus Christ Himself. Because ultimately there's nothing someone truly penitent is for before God needs to fear God for it. Because I believe that that key offering of His only son like God did for the salvation of mankind isn't because he isn't there, nor is it because He's a bad parent. Because God is indeed the Father, the Creator and the Righteous One. How about that? Oh yes, and then there's Voltaire's own raisoning for the existance of religion too. Without the constraints that a well established religion offers evil will grow and expand no end. Hatred is like that. Ban religious believes and then anything else that will make the other differ will be persecuted instead. I guess that's why it was and will always happen when evil covers itself in a cloak

@val70 Nice dodge. You gave other opinions, not yours.
Voltaire also said:
"Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

@JSul3 Oh yes, he said that too. Absurdities like that there's nothing at all out there :-)

@val70 I for one am waiting for you to provide evidence that he's out there. So far, all you've done is insult people who don't believe in him.

@LordShadowfire Oh gosh, it must sting then that cap you have on 🤣 nice cloak!

@LordShadowfire

God warns us of evil. Hitler was evil and God warned them that if they worship "gods" who don't hear their prayers, then he won't hear when they are in trouble. They left God so God scattered them, and evil men killed them.
God is against murder !
Take note if you pray to your ancestors, or the sun, molek, shintu, buddha, or mother nature, then when the flood comes God will not hear your prayers!

@Carazaa God evidently ignored the prayers of the Jews as they went into the ovens.
Why did god not intervene?

@val70
What? He said to the Jews "I divorce you! "He was distant, after he was crying after they had played the harlot and prostituting in front of him over and over, and he cried and begged and begged for them to stop. They didn't stop so he scattered them, like he scatters us too when we prostiture ourselves to other gods! He says "he doesn't hear our prayers". But he loves them and hopefully they will realize it and return to the Lord, Jesus The Messiah who died for them!

@JSul3 He plainly tells them! I will quote his own words! Just a second!