God loves the sinner... that is why He moved on your heart. He also moved on other non-believers.
I think you need to qualify that statement....God loves the sinner but hates the sin. This is why he sent Jesus and his disciples out to preach to the "lost sheep"....not to tell the sinners that they were welcome sin and all, but to show them how to repent and turn their lives around. If God loved the sinner, then why tell the Pharisees that they were bound for "gehenna"?
He forgives sinners only if they repent. Repentance means making real effort not to repeat the sin.
But didn't God tell them - don't go back to King Herod? WHAAAAT? Talking to non-believers? Or were they believers as they offered gifts to what was going to be King Jesus? Why were they "wise" Maggi's? Because they were followers of Satan? I don't think so.
What does this demonstrate? That satan can use even sincere ones to carry out his agenda unwittingly.
The fact that God warned the Magi not to go back to Herod is proof that they themselves had no evil intent but were merely carrying out a custom among their own people...that of bringing gifts to royal children.
They came in to the child and offered their gold, frankincense ans myrrh.....and did obeisance to this new "King of the Jews"...they did not "worship" him as a deity, nor was there any mention of them becoming Jewish proselytes.
So, you are really making broad assumptions. Who knows, maybe Daniel converted a lot of people?
There is no way to ascertain whether Daniel managed to convert anyone. Even the majority of the Jews themselves who were exiled in Babylon, did not return to Jerusalem. As prophesied, only a "remnant" did so.
You could say "No, Ken, you are making assumptions" and that would be fine because there is simply not enough information and certainly nothing that says that the devil sent them. We do know that they were "wise", God spoke to them in a dream, and they came to honor Jesus.
None of these things point to being of the devil.
They were dupes, used by the devil to facilitate the death of Jesus before he could become the Christ. Satan should have realized that God was always a few steps in front of him.
Just to be clear....no one said that the Magi themselves were evil...only that they were not worshippers of the true God, and that the devil used their customs and religious beliefs to achieve his own ends. Deception is what the devil does best...but you knew that, right? The devil is the 'sower' of all false religion, including the false beliefs of Christendom's 'weeds'....Jesus warned us about this.
Absolutely not. Nor is God responsible for the murder of the people of Moses' time because God sent them to Egypt.
Hang on, are we talking about the 10 plagues?
Why was Israel's (Jacob's) family in Egypt to begin with? How did Joseph get to be the Prime Minister to Pharaoh back then when Israel was in its infancy?
The Pharaoh who presided over a nation of slaves didn't know Joseph and had no soft spot for his family members who had grown to great numbers in that land. He put them to hard labor.
God was most certainly responsible for the execution of those who refused to obey him. Did the Egyptians know that Jehovah their God was with Israel? Didn't Moses and Aaron demonstrate God's power to him in the hope that he would relent? But by his stubbornness, he fought God at every turn, pridefully refusing to let Israel go and bringing the punishment for that refusal on himself and his nation.
The only good thing that came out of all that calamity was that many of the Egyptians, seeing God's undeniable power, marched out of Egypt with Israel.
You can't compare that with Herod's murderous course. It was his idea to kill those babies, not God's. Nothing good came of it.
Not sure how this is applicable... at the most, it covers both you and me equally.
It sure does....that is why we have to examine what we believe very carefully. Knowing that Jesus and the apostles foretold an apostasy to occur after the apostles got to be "out of the way", we see that a counterfeit form of Christianity emerged after those first century apostles died.
Christmas was part of that apostasy, as was Easter....both of these are the important events on Christendom's calendar....not because they are true, but because they bring people into the church which means money in the coffers. Its amazing what corrupt people will do for money....they will sacrifice truth for mammon.
I hate seeing that happen.