by Trent from March 06
One of the questions that KEEPS coming up at Yahoo Answers is typified by this one:
QUESTION by remag15:
I am agnostic, so I only need Christian responses that truly answer the question. I can't even picture how the nicest person in the world could get away with killing somebody, without everybody changing their minds about the person. Oh and its different with God.
He kills everybody! Not only that, but sends some to HELL! Where is your reason for this Christians??? God cannot be pure love.
Well, I finally bit and produced an answer to this type of question. Here is what I wrote
Yeah the Lord Jesus destroys the damned in the second death, but He also sustains their current existence without any obligation. Worlds come into existence and then are snuffed out in the next super-nova, everything in the cosmos in is flux ... it is going from "dust to dust." Just as you currently exist, your existence is temporary, like a scream in the silence that is soon effaced again by silence.
In short, all of creation has come to being as God (who is a consuming fire) moved aside to allow it to exist, even if only for a short amount of time. He does not owe it to anybody to keep them around any longer ... for all that has a "first" day, will have a conclusion .. and end. Only God is unbeginning and unending, and He does not owe it to those that have a beginning to keep them around indefinitely. It is enough that He sustains them currently, and we don't even have the right to demand that.
So, yes a last day looms over creation and the only thing that will survive the last day is God Himself.
The miracle of the Gospel is that God's own being can be transplanted into the undeserving souls of men, so that when God is all that remains, they will remain by virtue of their oneness with God's Spirit. And also by oneness with the Spirit of God, they can rise above the strife of this world through simply letting this Spirit impact their thoughts and actions ... letting Jesus LITERALLY live through them. This is exactly like taking in water that you know nothing about, and never thirsting again, rather your soul becomes a spring of Living Water ... bubbling over and constantly overflowing to Life.
So, to say that God is love, is to say that He has currently moved aside to allow you to exist currently. But God's Eternal Love is for Himself, and for Him to love Himself in You ... you must take and eat of the substance of His being (the Holy Spirit) and be transformed into the true likeness of God ... be made godly by His Spirit.
All sin is sin and requires forgiveness, which is equal, as is the reward equal, given freely to all who ask. ~ God [Letters from God and His Christ - Volume 2 - Let the Lord Lead, You Only Need Follow...Let Go of Your Pride]