Some are prepared to believe that, during the six millenniums of the great controversy, God will have withheld His righteous hands from slaying anyone or destroying anything. But they are not prepared to go so far as to believe that He will continue this course at the final showdown. Then, they believe, He will arise to personally exterminate the wilfully unrepentant. They reason on this basis. During the six thousand years He restrains Himself to give the wicked opportunity to display before the universe their utter defiance and ingratitude. When the inhabitants of other systems see the full perversity of the human race, God will be free to cut them off without being regarded as cruel or unjust. Moreover, they will have become so incensed with this despicable behaviour that they will expect and even require God to destroy them. This is the position held by some.

This reasoning, if true, makes God a politician Whose policies are determined by public opinion. This is to belittle God; to reduce Him to the level of scheming men who study the temper of their fellow humans, and then formulate their policies and procedures accordingly.

But God is not like that. He is motivated by righteousness, not by the feelings of His creatures. Before the great controversy began, throughout all of its duration, and in its final resolution, God has and will act with unvarying consistency.

The reason for God's willingness to enter into the great controversy with the devil, was to demonstrate that the principles of His government were perfect, and that, no matter what the pressure upon Him, He would act only in accordance with them. Accordingly, no matter how wicked men have been in the past, how extensively their destructive ways have desolated the earth, or how violent their insolence against Heaven, God has not raised a finger to obliterate them. They have perished as the fruitage of their own evil seed-sowing.

To believe that God has never destroyed during the course of the great rebellion, but turns to do so in the end, is self-contradicting. It would mean that God, Who has spent seven thousand years demonstrating that He is not an executioner of the sentence against transgression, will undo all He has worked to establish by turning into an executioner for this final judgment. What a tragedy that would be!

During the long defection, Satan and his hordes have worked with relentless determination to provoke God into raising His righteous hand to destroy the rebels, but He has passed every test without defect. In the last showdown He is afforded His final opportunity to confirm that He is not an executioner, that He has given to all, the freedom to choose what they want, and that He will not interfere with that choice.

To make the least concession then, after so perfectly demonstrating the contrary over the previous millenniums, would nullify all that has been achieved. It would be as if a man spent a lifetime building a splendid edifice and then burned it to the ground. It is certain that this is not what God will do.

There is no possibility of His having faithfully resisted every pressure to provocation for so long, only to give way to it at the last. The final eradication of the wicked will happen exactly as lesser decimations occurred in human history.

As Jerusalem was overthrown by the Jews themselves, as Sodom and Gomorrah perished as a harvest of their own seed-sowing, as the flood came, not because God sent it, but because He could not prevent it without violating His righteous principles, so the final end will come. It will not be because God sent it, but because He cannot prevent it without taking away people's freedom to choose what they want.

These principles are poorly understood by earth-dwellers, most of whom have gone to their dusty beds with distorted understandings of God's character. This is not God's fault for He has provided in nature, in His Word, and in the revelation given by Christ, all that is necessary for understanding His righteous principles. Therefore, in His great love and mercy, He will especially raise up every human being so that once more, they can be shown God's workings and their own rejection of them.

This time, they will have no arguments with which to counter the witness of God. Every person from Satan down will acknowledge that God has been just and that the loss of their own souls is their own doing.

After one thousand years during which there will not be a living soul upon this earth apart from the devil and his evil angels, the wicked of every generation will be raised up for this final showdown. They come up resuming "the current of their thoughts just where it ceased. They are actuated by the same desire to conquer that ruled them when they fell." The Great Controversy, 664.

sky

God is not concerned about clearing His name for His own personal interest. He is not proud. He does not take personal offence. But He does understand that His character and the principles of righteousness are one and the same. Therefore, the justification of one assures the establishment of the other.

He further knows that the eternal happiness and security of the universe depend on the vindication of those principles. Inasmuch as His everlasting and infinite love for all His children will not permit Him to provide anything less than the perfect best for them, He is determined not to permit the ultimate desecration of righteousness. He will establish it eternally.

Because of this, every person who has ever lived must be assembled for the final showdown in the great controversy. Every principle upon which the kingdom of God is built and operates must be revealed in sharply defined contrast to the principles of Satan's government.

It follows then that if it was important for God never to violate the laws of His government during the six thousand years of active controversy, then it is of multiplied importance that He strictly adhere to them in the final showdown around the city after the thousand years have expired.

This is my first post on Club Adventist. I haven't read every page on this thread. I hope you don't mind me jumping in and participating.

I believe "war in heaven" is real and not metaphorical. Whether it was a war of words or weapons or both I don't know. I suspect it was both. The evil angels were, after all, cast out of heaven. I doubt they left willingly. To this day, under certain circumstances, evil angels flee the presence of holy angels. I suppose it's because they are afraid, and I doubt they are afraid of words. Do they wield literal swords? I don't know. Do "swords" symbolize weapons? Probably. But I can't say what kind or what it looks like.

Has God ever destroyed sinners? Ellen White thought so.

You are more than welcome to the Forum and to this discussion. Feel perfectly free to jump right in and comment whenever you want to. We appreciate your participation no matter what your viewpoint is. :-)

Is it right to infer that another needs to sit at the feet of Jesus, just because they disagree with you Sky?

I am sitting at the feet of Jesus my friend.

I just do not agree with what you are presenting.

It is a half truth in my mind, presented as the whole truth.

Have you considered that it is because I am sitting at the feet of Jesus that I cannot accept what you are saying, because it is error?

In love,

Mark :-)

I think you are being very generous to call it a half truth. And I believe your generosity comes from sitting at the feet of Jesus.

Amen Archie, and welcome to the forum!

You seem not to understand the concept of proportional punishment for the finally impetanent, even though you said earlier (I believe) that you agree there will be proportional punishment for the wicked. That is a principle laid down in Scripture-- that the wicked will suffer according to what they have done in the body. Ellen White shows that this "portion that the wicked MUST suffer" is "decided" by Christ in union with the righteous during the 1000 years at which time they will closely examine the lives of all the wicked. This also has the support of the Scriptures. The decision is not arbitrary but according to "strict justice," i.e., the laws of God. It is not left up to someone's feelings or to desires for revenge. God is not out for "revenge." Ellen White speaks of the punishment being "meted out to the wicked according to their deeds." This does not describe anything arbitrary. We can trust God not to do anything arbitrary in the punishment of the wicked any more than He rewards the righteous arbitarily. In the final analysis, the whole universe will have no doubt that God is fair and just in His dealing with sin and Satan.

It seems to me that you are judging God by human standards, but this is a mistake that many people make. Both the Bible and Ellen White speak to this very issue, and there are quotes on this topic that I've given before on this thread, so I won't give them here again. If you don't know what those are, ask me, and I'll be glad to post them again. God is able to do infinite justice in a way that it would be wrong for people to do. He is the lawgiver, Judge of the entire universe, and He created everything that exists. He certainly has unlimited control over the works of His hands, to do as He pleases, and no man has a right to ask His maker, "Why are you doing this?" (See Spiritual Gifts, vol. 4, page 50-53.) God wants the universe to watch what He does, but God is not asking criminals to tell Him what He ought to do.

I believe that God's punishing the wicked according to their sins is perfectly right for God to do. In fact, the concept of God's justice is that He would not be "moral"-- that is, in harmony with God's own standards of justice-- if He didn't punish the wicked proportionally for their sins. Far from being immoral for God to punish the wicked by making them suffer proportionally, it is actually an essential aspect of God's "morality." It is also an essential aspect of man's morality. Who think that it would right for a court to punish a shop-lifter, for instance, the same as it would punish a murderer? I doubt very much if anyone would think that's moral. Well, Satan and his angels are mass murderers if there ever were any.

It's important to keep in mind that Ellen White says that some will be destroyed as in a moment. So, you are right that God will allow those who deserve it, to pass out of existence without any physical pain at all. He is a just and loving God who is not out to see that anyone suffers any more than their sins merit.

If you think that the second death is not "punishment," or "recompense," or "payment," and that God should simply allow Satan and the rest of the wicked to merely fall asleep in death, you do not understand the character and dealings of God. I didn't make this up--- they are the words of Ellen White. See ST, Jan. 6, 1881.

Let me know if you need any more explanation on this question. I'll be happy to try harder and, if necessary, to state things more clearly and in greater detail. :-)

You are wrong to measure everyone by yourself, Robert. Not all read the Bible and Ellen White as you did or do. And not all respond to Ellen White's writings or to Joe Crews the way you did. I suspect that you reacted the way you did, partly because of your personality, and probably to a large degree because you were living in the flesh. I think you realize that at that time you were like the man of Romans 7. I know because I was like the man of Romans 7 myself for most of my life. This happens when we have things in our life that we know are wrong but we want to keep them and not give them up to Christ so He can cleanse of all unrighteousness. When we have sins in our life-- I mean sins that we are consciously practicing and do not want really desire to give up-- then that sin will dominate our life and prevent Christ from coming fully into our lives the way He wants to. Why? Because by holding on to conscious sins, we are saying to Jesus that we love sin more than we love Him. In that way, we are really not giving Jesus permission to rule as King and Master of our lives.

They may hold this, but it would be, as shown already, against much biblical evidence. No one can deny that God destroyed the world by a flood and Sodom or the Egyptians in the Red Sea. The only way anyone could deny it is if they re-define "destroy" in a way that makes it impossible for God to have destroyed them. You say, for instance, that God merely withdrew his protecting care from Sodom, so that a volcano destroyed the people whom God would otherwise have protected by keeping the volcano from destroying them. You also say that God could have kept the elements from destroying the world with a flood, and that God merely allowed the waters of the Red Sea to return to their original postion before He performed the miracle of separating the waters. To you, these things show that God didn't destroy anyone. But I beleive reason will show you that this is not true.

If I am taking care of a child and I allow the child to be killed by refusing to do what I could have done to save it, that is the same as destroying the child. If I have a big dog that wants to kill someone and I allow it to happen by opening the door of its pen knowing it will kill, am I not fully responsible for the victim's death?

God knew what would happen when He allowed the elements to self-destruct, just as He knew that volcano-- assuming it happened that way-- would destroy the people. He also was fully aware of the consequences of making the water return to where it had been while the Egyptians were in the sea. In fact, valid evidence has been shown that God knew ahead of time that the Egyptians would be destroyed in the water and that He planned to destroy them there. At least that is the Bible's picture. See Ex. 14: 16-18. The language of the narrative shows clear "intent" because it says Moses was commanded to put forth his staff "in order that" the waters would return over the heads of the Egytpians.

So I don't see how anyone looking at the evidence can reasonably conclude that God never destroyed anyone. It certainly was not the devil who did those things.

God forced Adam out of the Garden. The Scripture say that God drove him out. Ellen White says God sent angels to make him leave. It wasn't because of "natural" consequences that he left. Adam didn't want to go, but God told him that he had to leave. Why? Because God was too wise to allow sinners to eat of the Tree of Life and become immortal. For the same reason God had angels guard the way to the Tree of Life so that Satan and the evil angels could not partake of its fruit and immortalize sin.

This last example is proof positive that God has used force before--- unless, again, we refuse to acknowledge the normal definiton of "force" and redefine it in such a way that God could not possibly be said to have used force irrespective of what He did.



Will God personnally pronounce the death sentence against each wicked individual? See Ellen White's description in GC 665-666. It is Jesus who personally "decides the portion that the wicked MUST suffer" and it is Jesus who personally "pronounces sentence upon the rebels against His government and EXECUTES JUSTICE upon those who have transgressed His law and oppressed His people."

Why do you resist these statements and why do you believe that if we take these statements literally, they make God like the devil?

It seems to me you have not yet come to terms with these kinds of statements.

Please explain what the above statement plainly says.

You are quite right that God is not motivated by selfishness or merely thinking of his own personal interest.

But He certainly is concerned about clearing His name--- since "name" is the same thing as His character. And God does care about showing the universe that He is right in the Great Controversy. In
fact, the entire security and peace and safety of the whole univese depends on it, and God knows it.

I agree with the rest of what you have written here. But it is for those very reasons that He will destroy and execute judgment upon the wicked. Their destruction will not be left up to arbitrary forces but will be due to God's unlimited, wise, and loving control over His universe. When the controversy is finished, every intelligent creature will declare that God's judgment have been just and right, and all-- even the wicked-- will acknowledge that those who are destroyed first destroyed themselves by their daily choices. No one will say God is like the devil because He "executed justice upon the wicked."

Please read again GC 665-66.