Christian based commentaries and observations.

Quote of Note

Billy Graham's Prayer For Our Nation



: 'Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask your forgiveness and to seek your direction and guidance.
We know Your Word says, 'Woe to those who call evil good,' but that is exactly what we have done.

We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and reversed our values. We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery.

We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare.

We have killed our unborn and called it choice.

We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable.

We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building self esteem.

We have abused power and called it politics.

We have coveted our neighbor's possessions and called it ambition.

We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression.

We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment.

Search us, Oh God, and know our hearts today; cleanse us from every sin and Set us free.
:
: Amen!'
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Monday, June 08, 2009

The Knowledge of Good and Evil : Knowledge of God


How many people have said to you, "How can you believe in an all knowing, all powerful, all loving God, when there is so much evil in the world"?
In seeing all of the evil they fail to see the good around them. The typical apologetic answer for such a person is to point their eyes to the good saying, "how do you know there is "evil" except that there is "good" by which to draw a contrast? How do you know that there is "good" except that there is a "moral law" by which to differentiate between "good" and "evil"? How can there be a "moral law" except that there be a "moral Law" giver, which is God? No God - no moral law, no moral law - no good, no good - no evil! If you believe in evil you must believe in God!

It is interesting that in the Garden of Eden, when there was no "evil", and there was full knowledge of God, there was also implanted, in the very first act of evil, the seed for the acknowledgement of God. The very act of rebellion, that was the first sin, included the sequence for not being able to deny that God existed!

GE 2:9 And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground--trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil... GE 2:15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."...
GE 3:4 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. 5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

Knowing good and evil makes it impossible to deny the existence of God, the giver of the laws of morality.

When Adam and Eve did sin they instantly know the difference between right and wrong.
GE:9 But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?" 10 He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid." 11 And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?"

When God said, "who told you that you were naked", it was like saying how did you know that it was wrong/evil be naked?
Then God went on to prove that he was all loving. Speaking to Satan in the serpent he said."GE 3:15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel."
This was the first promise of Christ the Redeemer of mankind from the bondage of Satan and sin.

"Plainly speaking, there are only four possible worlds. The first is that there be no creation at all. Would it not have been better for God to have not created a world than to have created ours—where good and evil are both possibilities? The second is a world where only good is permitted, a kind of robotically beneficent universe. The third option is a world where there is no such thing as good or evil, an amoral world. There, right and wrong would not even be legitimate categories for consideration. The fourth is the world that we live in, where good and evil exist with the possibility of choosing either.In the final analysis, our world is the only one where love is genuinely possible because freedom is a precondition for authentic love. We intuitively recognize that love is the supreme ethic and where love is possible, freedom is necessary. Where freedom is real, so is the possibility of suffering.{Four Possible Worlds, Ravi Zacharias}

So why would God create such a world? He would create such a world because he was all knowing, all powerful, and all loving! What other kind of world could he have created where real love between creation and Creator could freely exist, but this one completed through the suffering on the Cross of Calvary.

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