If i had any common sense i would keep quiet because i will get sliced and diced...Perhaps i will be labeled by Steve as a WOF follower since he seems to leave no room for anything other then believing God tortured a blameless man and murdered his family for God's glory or if you think otherwise you simply must be a WOF follower.
I hope you shall not be torn to shreds by anyone at this forum. However, you asked a lot of questions. I hope you won't consider the presentation of sensible and true answers to be a destructive activity.
I have not said anything about whether you are a Word of Faith follower or not. You have sometimes claimed that you are not. I accept a man's testimony about his own beliefs. The only reason I am responding, here, to the Word of Faith teachings is that they are the best known source of the views represented in your posts. Perhaps you reached your conclusions entirely apart from any contact with the Word of Faith teachers. What matters is that we represent the truth, and correct error when it is presented.
In your statement above, you give the impression that I am the one who is guilty of writing the statements contained in the Book of Job, and you blame me for its teaching. I am simply a believer in the Bible (including the Book of Job), and consider it my responsibility to exegete the scriptures honestly—rather than letting my emotions decide in advance what I will and what I will not allow them to teach. I have simply pointed out what the book actually teaches, and its agreement with the rest of scripture. If anyone has a quarrel with scripture, there is not much I can do about that. If someone can find a flaw in my exegesis, I am always eager to see it, since I actually have no emotional stake in making it teach one thing or another.
All the earmarks of what happened to Job is exactly what Satan is described as doing in the NT, exactly. Torture,killing,persecution and deception are all attributed to Satan in the NT yet we read Job as if the NT does'nt exist.
We must not read Job, nor any part of scripture, as if the New Testament did not exist. In my previous posts, I have quoted from and alluded to numerous New Testament passages which confirm the teaching of Job. What Word of Faith teachers do is interpret a few verses of scripture as if the bulk of the Bible did not exist.
Of course the things that happened to Job are the very things that the New Testament attributes to Satan's activity. Perhaps you didn't notice...the Book of Job
also attributes them to Satan's activity. In that, you should find sympathy with the Book of Job. However, that sympathy cannot be selective. If we allow the book to speak to us about the devil, we must also let it speak to us about the other characters it describes—including God and Job. This is what you do not seem to be comfortable with.
As I said, the Word of Faith exalts the power of Satan, and earthly well-being (health, prosperity, and longevity). Once you have these things elevated to the level to which they are exalted in the Word of Faith, then about 80% of the Bible stops making any sense. On the other hand, when you place these things in their proper biblical perspective, alongside the rest of the biblical teachings, the whole picture makes very good sense.
There is an irony in the comment about interpreting Job as if the New Testament does not exist, because the experience of the New Testament's central figures (especially Jesus and Paul) present very much a counterpart of Job's experience—and they also teach the same doctrine. It is the Word of Faith that treats Old Testament passages (e.g., on the topic of health, wealth and longevity) as if the New Testament did not exist. The many examples and teachings in the New Testament that present sickness, poverty and early demise* as the common experiences of faithful men are entirely lost on Word of Faith people. Ironically, in the New Testament, it is Satan who urges Christ to seek food, wealth, miraculous deliverance and long life (Luke 4:3, 7, 9-11; Matt.16:22-23).
In Judaism they look at Satan as God's servant and that God is the cause of everything which is why so many jews became atheists after the holocaust. I looked up Job in my Tanach and at the commentary and it mirrored Steve's explanation
Why do you suppose that would be? The concept is very counter-intuitive, so you would not expect it to arise from anyone's sentiments. I believe that the Jews (and I) have reached that opinion out of reverence to the plain teachings of scripture.
if we are tortured by God, if our family is killed by God we must rejoice because we know that torture and killing by God will glorify God, it must be his plan.
Of course. How would you prefer to see Christians act when they are tortured and killed? Doesn't the New Testament repeatedly command us to react in just this manner? (Luke 6:22-23/ Rom.5:3ff/ Phil.1:12, 18, 23/ Heb.12:5-11/ James 1:2-3/ 1 Pet.1:6-7; 4:12-14) I gave some of these scriptures in a previous post. It would be well for you to read them before deciding I am wrong. They
are, after all, the Word of God.
i thought Jesus came to reveal God to us and Satan to us and i thought he called Satan the thief,destroyer,sinner from the beginning,murderer,liar and deceiver.
Jesus did indeed reveal these things. This agrees completely with my theology (see my above posts) and with the teaching of the Book of Job. It does not conflict with anything I have suggested here.
If Satan is only a puppet of God , why warn us, why even bother with him after all Satan is little more then a flea.
God must warn us because He does not want us to be deceived or fail the tests that Satan is there to provide. If a professor says, "You had better learn this material, because there will be a test," would we assume that the professor is opposed to the students being tested?
If God wants to torture us, apparently we should rejoice because it's God's will.
Since you object to what the Bible instructs on this very point, I am wondering what alternative attitudes you would recommend for Christians when they are tortured?
If God makes us sick we should'nt go to doctors because we are fighting God's will. If God kills our family we should be grateful. That's what Calvinists say and that's what Steve said.
As for doctors, one might as soon say that when we get a flat tire we should not fix it, since God's will was for us to get the flat. I would think it more sensible to say that, though God may have permitted the flat tire (and may even have willed it), yet He probably did so in order to get me to repair it. To recognize God's hand in every event of life does not mean that He has nothing that He wishes for us to do about those events. I am pretty sure that it is God who made the grass to grow in my lawn, but I do not see it as a violation of His will for me to mow it. There is a certain stewardship that God has given mankind to manage and order the world—but it is not we who make the world spin. What we can and should do to improve things, God wishes for us to do. For the things over which we have no control, and which cannot be changed by our best efforts, He expects us to trust Him.
As for God killing our family, one should realize that God will eventually kill all of our families and ourselves as well. It is the wages of sin. Of course, it is Satan who has been made the executioner, but we are very unfaithful to the teaching of scripture if we consider that Satan can kill a person whom God has not delivered into his hand (Ex.21:13/ 1 Kings 13:26/ Acts 2:23). We might as well, then, worship Satan, rather than God, since Satan is, on that view, more powerful to destroy than God is to deliver. I would say (along with the Word of God) that, when Job responded with the words, "The Lord gives and the Lord takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord", he spoke rightly of God, and provided a model for all believers.
God never explained anything to Job, God could have simply said "all this was for my glory" but he did'nt so we assume it's for his glory.
It is true that God didn't give Job any explanation of why these things happened to him, which makes it not surprising that He did not explain that it was for God's glory. However, He did tell us this, by providing chapters one and two. The challenge posed by Satan was essentially that God could not be loved for Himself, apart from His blessings of health and prosperity (it seems that the Word of Faith teachers actually agree with Satan on this libel), but God allowed Job to prove Satan wrong. That is for the glory of God.
One of the things that touched me so much when i became a believer was how much God loved us that he sacrificed his Son for us while we were yet sinners...and i for one can not reconcile Jesus the exact image of God with what God supposedly did to Job a blameless man.
Why the disconnect? The two things are the same in principle. God allowed His blameless Son to suffer immeasurably for the glory of God and for a blessed outcome; He also did so with Joseph, Job, Moses, David, Jeremiah, Stephen, the apostles and later martyrs, etc. These things are not in tension with each other. They are all of a piece.
Shall we think that God's dealings with Jesus are unlike His dealings in general? Was it good that Jesus be sacrificed, but not good that His followers should be sacrificed like Him (see 1 John 3:16/ Col.1:24)? Can we possibly think that Jesus should be crowned with thorns, and that His followers should be crowned with roses—that Jesus cannot be made perfect or learn obedience without suffering (Heb.2:10; 5:8), but that we
can be made perfect and learn obedience more easily and without suffering?
I know that some teachers feel that Jesus suffered for us, in order that we would
not have to suffer. However, the Bible tells us the opposite. Christ suffered for us,
leaving us an example, that we should follow in His footsteps [of suffering] (1 Peter 2:21). It should have been obvious that the God who would sacrifice His Son for the world might see a good reason to make additional sacrifices for His purposes, as well. Job was such a sacrifice. So am I. So are you (Romans 12:1).
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* e.g., Gal.4:13-15; Phil.2:26-27; 1 Tim.5:23; 2 Tim.4:20; Luke 6:20; Mark 10:25; 1 Cor.4:11-13; James 2:5; Matt.16:25; 2 Cor.4:16-18; Rev.12:11; etc.