the whole purpose of this life?

[marie glen]

I was reading 2 Corinthians 5:5 of Paul's letter to the Corinthian believers. It wasn't bad enough there were disputes among them, some following Paul and some following Apollos.. which Paul pretty much said "was Paul crucified for you?" (But man loves teachers. Who have their place of course.. but the word is Truth). But they were also proud.. Super saints! lol. Even though, Paul said they should have been grieving because a member was sleeping with his mother in law! So Paul said "hand that fellow over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh!"

If you've looked up the greek word "flesh" (sarkos) it doesn't mean only the body or matter.. But spiritually means the lower nature.. lower character.. the selfish part of us.

Basically, it was hand the person back over to Satan, yes? Since the rebellion within Satan was fully ripe even when God created man! Obviously God's engineering. And patience! Waiting for such exact time to create man and woman and put them in that innocent garden. The whole human race vulnerable. It seems logical to me, done in just that way, in order so "all in heaven and earth" would learn to understand good and evil, all together, at once.

Wow the patience of God! Why is the selfish nature exorcised, not when there was 'only' the Father and His Spirit as all, and the Son (only straight out from God One) and the angels? Likely not so much to go astray about? So waiting.. waiting.. Knowing all things of course. Seeing the first rebel seed of thought occur - as it is/was bound to sooner or later(?) in some able to think being. Likely sooner or later in every one.

I know there's all the debates, but if some angels left their first place/position/orbit (according to the Greek) then angels - as well as man, must be endowed with the ability to think ..to ponder and reason.. with the ability, sooner or later, to make choices.

"Hand this one over to Satan for the destruction of" the foolish, selfish, lower character and personality. The selfish part of him ruling. Which cannot be pleasing to God. But which doesn't mean of course that God hated that man, didn't "love" him. What with His being love!

Sure God in all likelihood was a bit put out with folks when they were happily pounding drums (tophets) to drown out the screams of babies and children as they burned them alive to Molech. But maybe I'm straying..

Although! If you're going to exorcise all (in heaven and earth) completely - of every speck of lower nature and character of self-ish-ness, maybe you have to let that very thing, even some of the very worst of the worst type of fruits of it, run its course. Choices other than His, that is, allowed to exist and run their course.

Then in the end all can so very plainly see the two fruits of the two trees/ways of life. Which surely we can say the two ways are - life lived toward Him, or life lived going the other direction, away from Him. Which paradoxically (?) to live life toward self, thus self interest as THE prime motive - is the way of life that is a progressive traveling away from Him. (Who is life!(?)

Now, I don't know about you (dear one) but I am very convinced that God is life itself. And I believe He convinced me. If "in the beginning God.." what else would be? What else is the energy, force, spark and breath of life? Which spark (and individual spiritual dna) "returns to God who gave it"!) And remember, as life, itself, He (surely?) suffers, experiences, and lives through all sufferings. Through all bad, even horrible things which ever occur!

Now I am straying! But I've been feeling such a sense of urgency lately! Maybe the key to understanding that feeling is the word "progressive"! Every thing is progressive.. starts as a tiny seed.. But Revelation chapter seven talks about last days believers having no lie/untruth, not one, in their heart - thus on their lips. Wow. I can't help it. That sounds like a mandate.

Let me point out how originally, it was "dust you are and to dust shall you return" (God said 'because now selfishness is going to rule (you) so you will be barred from the tree of life everlasting'.. It's not the life spark that quits.. It's the access to it.. It was Satan who said - using the at the time, harmless serpent - "surely ..you won't ..die?"

It's not merciful, not good to let the corrupt, rotting fruit rule forever and ever. Same with the flood of Noah, the judgment of the Canaanite nations, and anything else the world judges God over. It can't actually progress forever and ever, but is of course the black hole. Where does 'away from God/Life' progress to? To ruin. In the case of the flood for instance, "every thought of man was continuously and only evil"! Not merciful to let it continue. And the inevitable self destruction (apocalypse) would have occurred long (long) ago.. And obviously God is creating many. Very, very many. :HeartThrob: Of course a lot of the church is going around saying "don't worry about any of that.. apocalypse is only metaphor.. it never happens.. the world has right to the tree of life never fading".

To not even mention the pre and nonBiblical idea of 'hell' that is spoken and passed on. Or a less than 100% victorious and "perfect" end result of all this!

After all, "perfect" makes no mistakes, cannot lose anything!

I'm just saying, more people could understand truth and how unbelievably "good" the heavenly Father, and thus what He is creating, is - if there was more understanding of just what it is He is doing. And why.

How do you have a just universe if there is selfishness? How do you create genuinely able to think and reason beings, AND, keep paradise/perfection intact?

Now let me get really, really what some would call negative, for that one tiny nation, Israel - which ancient ethnicity Jesus said would not fade away from the world or age - why was crime dealt with by stoning? Is it because every speck of selfishness and actually imperfection, is like a virulent contagious disease? And is a bottomless pit of potential? Being the OPPOSITE of God/Life who "is perfect" thus perfection? (Matthew 5:48.) By stoning, no one has to come in contact with the contagious disease.

Let me mention that "survival of the fittest" cannot end nor progress well.

But! That's what it's all about! "Hand him over to Satan for the destruction of the  flesh/selfish character"! Because the fruit of it - of every generation and of all history - fully reviewed on 'day' of judgment? - will convince "all".

So that "ALL" can LIVE happily ever after.. Able to have access to the tree of Life. Which, or who "is Love". And "love never fails"! (1 John 4:8 and 1 Corinthians 13:8)

[1 Corinthians 15:22-28! John 12:32, Ephesians 1:10, Colossians 1:20, 1Tim.4:10, and SO many more..]

..maybe should have posted this in the Book of Revelation forum.. :doh: :Peace2:

[Song]

Now let me get really, really what some would call negative, for that one tiny nation, Israel - which ancient ethnicity Jesus said would not fade away from the world or age - why was crime dealt with by stoning? Is it because every speck of selfishness and actually imperfection, is like a virulent contagious disease? And is a bottomless pit of potential? Being the OPPOSITE of God/Life who "is perfect" thus perfection? (Matthew 5:48.) By stoning, no one has to come in contact with the contagious disease.

To preface, the Lord made specific laws for the Israelites under Moses. Leviticus 10:11. As a disclaimer, since we are not under that law, there is no commandment for us to stone people in the way the nation of Israel would stone people. We are under the Law of Love now  :HeartThrob:

With that said, marie glen, you make a good point about sin being disease. Was searching the forum for the topic of "stoning" since it's been on my mind. The way I see it, God is perfect. However, sometimes our own human brains, it can be tricky thinking of a justification for things that the LORD has done. Part of my own human brain thinks "Why would a loving God stone people to death", so the other part of my human brain is jumping in here to provide a justification to myself.

Numbers 15:32 talks about a man gathering wood on the Sabbath day. Later in the chapter

Numbers 15:35-36 Then the Lord said to Moses, ?The man must die. The whole assembly must stone him outside the camp.? And all the congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him to death with stones, as the Lord commanded Moses.

Since during OT times, following the Sabbath rules was the Law of God, Ezekiel 20:19.

But look how they stone him "outside of the camp". It's like if someone has an infectious disease, you have to stay away from them biologically or else you would get infected. Maybe a modern example, but it's like how people would quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic.

If the Lord were to kick him out of the camp and not kill him, then that man may starve to death in the wilderness. So the "stoning" may be mercy killing. That man would have lived with guilt for their sins, and since this was before Jesus Christ came, without a permanent way to wash away those sins. There was animal sacrifice, but that man by himself, it would be hard.

Also, that man may have gotten taken by other nations as a slave. (God does not allow slavery, verses in the Bible talk about God trying to have slave owners punish their slaves less ultimately to no punishment at all, but it's a gradual process). Joined them to do evil, maybe as revenge against God.

Maybe God knew that the Israelites wanted to kill that man anyways and they would have thought up a more torturous painful method of killing people, like a crucifiction.

https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/4782-crucifixion
Start quote The act of putting to death by nailing or binding to a cross. Among the modes of Capital Punishment known to the Jewish penal law, crucifixion is not found End quote

What's very interesting is that crucifiction is not found anywhere in Jewish penal law! In fact, based on this site, it was from Aurelius Victor C?sar under Roman penal law that crucifiction was used.

Yet, during OT times, God knew about crucifiction. Psalm 22:16 "they pierce my hands and my feet." https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%2022&version=NIV

So God could have commanded the Israelites to crucify people if He wanted to, yet He didn't. Why is that?

I think God chose stoning over crucifiction so people would die quickly. For the Eternal Torment crowd, stoning is hard to justify. Because if someone dies, then oops, guess that was their last chance and they're tortured forever. That's cruel.

Even with the Conditional Immortality crowd, where, if someone dies, oops, guess they're destroyed forever. That's cruel.

For the ET and CI people, they ultimately have a cruel version of stoning towards this Numbers 15:32 man.

But for us, the Universal Reconciliation crowd, we know that people who die go to Sheol in the OT. And post-moterm salvation exists. Yes. everyone in Sheol will believe in Christ to be made clean of their sins.
Psalm 16:10 You will not leave my soul in Sheol.

But this man, who went into Sheol, maybe he was sleeping until Christ died and resurrected? Beds exist in Sheol, so when people die, they may simply be asleep.

Daniel 12:2 And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth
Psalm 139:8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!

As the Lord can predict many events, maybe He predicted that this man would have suffered more being alive. The Lord may keep people alive if their suffering on Earth can be useful for other people or themselves. But it seems like, for this man, the Lord had accomplished what He wanted to and thus made the command for the Israelites to stone him to death.

Surely the Lord knew that people would wonder in the future "Why was this man in Numbers 15 stoned to death?" If the Lord wanted to, He could have not written it down, yet here it is right in the Bible. So the Lord does not hide it. The Lord is confidant that what He did here was truly a good commandment.

I think, maybe the reason the Lord killed this man was to send a message? Specifically, that sin = death. For us here, that may be an obvious fact already. But for the people who lived thousands of years ago, that might have been a steep learning curve. So the Lord used this man as an example.

Maybe this man was going to die anyways. Maybe biologically he would have had a heart attack that killed him for the stress of his guilty. Maybe the Israelites would have killed him in a more brutal way. That part of my brain I mentioned above likes to think about different justifications to show that the Lord is good. Because the other part of my brain knows the truth that the Lord is indeed good.

To be honest, we won't know for sure until the Lord tells us. I look forward to that day, I certainly have a lot of questions to ask Him. But, any confusion with issues, I liken that to my own brain which is biologically flawed due to the decay of life just from sin in general.