In Reply to: Re: Do all things always work together? posted by George on August 05, 2003 at 08:48:27:
I agree completely. I think there are all kinds of verses in the Bible that people take out of context. When you are 13 years old and your father dies of cancer and you have to go out and work because your mother can't support you and your education suffers as a direct result, there's no way it works for your good. It works for your bad. Plus you are deprived of the love of someone very precious in your life. Believing that God is totally in control and nothing happens without his permission is just not true, IMO. I think that when bad things happen, God goes into overdrive to try to help us in spite of it. But I don't think he causes bad things or allows them.
Another verse that people use is, Is God going to give you a stone when you are asking for bread? Obviously the answer to that is no. So people say they were sincerely praying for direction in their life and they found the family, so it must have been God leading them, because they were sincerely asking God to lead them. I've seen through that one too. I actually know people who are saved, filled with the spirit and very spirit-led in many instances but not all. I've come to the very definite conclusion that God pretty much allows us to believe anything we want to. It seems to be our prerogative. There is a web site called Rapture Ready dot com. This is a Christian web site for people who believe the rapture is going to happen any day. (I finally realized that is not the case, but I toyed with the idea for a while). I've read the posts of people on that site and am absolutely amazed at how deceived people are on that site and yet they are saved and filled with the spirit in many cases. I emailed several people who posted and asked them if they saw the same thing and they said they had. We all eventually stopped going there. But those are sincere people but sincerely nuts, IMO. It doesn't seem to me that God goes out of his way to correct people's thinking. It's up to us to find the truth.
There are a lot of verses in the Bible that say that man has dominion over the things on the earth, which seems to suggest that God is not totally in control. I believe he can intervene but for the most part, between the laws (like gravity) that he has set in motion that he doesn't usually circumvent, and the fact that he has given us authority over things, he has deliberately given us the power and authority to change things.
Knowing how evil the family was, how full of total ungodliness it was, with its mind control, treating children like slaves, its perverted sexual teachings, its fallacies, etc. etc., it's impossible for me to believe that God led any of us into the family. Something else was at work and it wasn't God. I think so-called Christian cults are the most dangerous kind because they preach Christ but they are so contrary to everything that Jesus Christ espoused.
That's just my two cents for what it is worth.