i apply the same skepticism just about everything.
I do not agree but I will not suggest you are being dishonest. This is a matter of opinion.
the timing tells me everything. why wait? why not send his son as an offering before the floods, or all these wars in order to hold people accountable for their actions?
Have wars decreased since Jesus came? He was sent to pluck brands out of the fire not put the fire out. He will eventually put the fires out but not until his appointed time at the end of things. His crucifixion was retroactive and applied to the people of the old testament and was based on faith as well. That was the symbolic purpose of the blood of bulls and rams. It was a symbolic act that pushed sins forward until Christ came and actually removed them.
the midianites had infants that were slaughtered because they were boys....the virgins were kept...for what purpose?
The infants went straight to heaven instead of toiling on the earth for 50 years and being taught to worship a false God and winding up seperated from God for eternity. Like I said the virgins do trouble me but I will investigate.
these are evil acts justified by god...
First you have no capacity by which you can determine this in any meaningful way. I, being cooperative with allow that you don't accept this fact and will try to once again illustrate it. The infants went to heaven so no issue there, the virgins I will find out about. As for the rest the Cannanites in particular were so evil as I have stated before they made their children walk through fire for false Gods. They walled them up alive in building foundations for luck I suppose. The Midionites you mention just so you know I do not make up the things I claim I will copy a paper on the subject.
God later instructs the Israelites to deal harshly with the Midianites: "Be hostile to the Midianites and strike them; 18for they have been hostile to you with their tricks, with which they have deceived you in the affair of Peor, and in the affair of Cozbi, the daughter of the leader of Midian, their sister who was slain on the day of the plague because of Peor," (
Num. 25:17-18). Later, when Moses meets the returning Israeli army he was angry because he saw the Medianite survivors. "The Midianite women, he said, should have died because they were directly culpable in Israels sin at Baal of Peor. All the women except the virgins were then sentenced to death along with all the boys. This insured the extermination of the Midianites and thus prevented them from ever again seducing Israel to sin....The virgins were spared because they obviously had had no role in the Baal of Peor incident nor could they by themselves perpetuate the Midianite peoples."
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Some may object that the Israelites then married the virgins, the daughters of those whom they had killed and that this would be a horrible thing for the virgins. Perhaps it was a horrible thing for them. But, their lives were spared. Also, in that culture at that time, warfare and plunder was a necessary evil. The reality of taking women as wives was unfortunate but true.
Why was God so harsh with those in idolatry?
We must understand that God dealt very harshly because it was through the people of Israel that the Messiah would later come. Satan, in his perpetual effort to oppose God, sought to have the people of God fall into false worship and through intermarriage with other people, to destroy the messianic line and make not only the promises of God null and void, but destroy means by which the Messiah could be born. If this could be accomplished, then none would have any hope of deliverance from sin. Therefore, we see in the Old Testament God being very harsh and strict according to the Law.
Why were only the virgins left alive among the Midianites? | Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry
You can clearly see that if God's message is true then he had plenty of justification for what he did. It is a waste of time to define or judge God based on our own limited experience alone. If his purpose is assumed then his actions make sence. If we substitute our purposes for his they do not.
and there no way anyone can determine what gods purpose unless they abandon what they use every day in their decision making process...
rationality. that is the double standard i am talking about.
I do not find it much of a sacrifice to place as secondary the judgement of a fallable, finite mind and substitute the primary position with a perfect infinate mind if I believe him to be real.
the fact that there is more than one covenant proves god is not consistent.
There was never a promise to only provide a single covenant. The different covenants all result from the same consistent nature. However I do not doubt thay are contradictory in your head. They are at least no less consistent than a father treating his children differently as they grow up. God's nature never changes his actions might for our sake. Almost none of of your claims regardless which way they are answered have any effect an whether God is real or not.
i don't try to define what god is...as i said before no one can, and that includes me. i question the definition of what others define god as
I agree to some extent that no man can fully know God. That is why God gave us suffecient information concerning him in detail. All we need plus some he has given.
