why did God allow Lucifer to interact with man?

Thanks for your input. A couple issues I see with this are:
1. You said "it's not like god ever wanted to send any humans to the lake of fire. but if you are interacting with and attached to a spirit that belongs to luscifer or one of his angels then you are going to get dragged down too. like holding onto a sinking ship."

My problem with the above is that to my knowledge all you need to do to go down with that ship is not believe in Jesus as your salvation. Interaction with lucifer or his angels may not be helpful but is not a prerequisite for going to hell.

2.You said "although if you are challenging the justice of the christian god then you might consider that a few years of satan messing with us isn't too bad compared to eternity in paradise"

Okay that is one way to look at it and I get what you are saying. On the other side of that coin is, Satan seems to have had access to us for more than a few years. Many generations of man for centuries have been exposed to him if the bible is true. Additionally his impact on humanity has resulted in hell being inhabited by human beings that will spend eternity there because of it. In my mind, if you are going to damn a soul to eternal torment then you should at least have made your existance undeniable and provable and not just a story in a book. How can he hold us eternally responsible for not buying into something that he has left very little of any evidence of which to validate this belief?

Please keep in mind that I mean no disrespect to anyone's beliefs and I'm not mocking you or anyone else with my questions or rebuttals. I am asking out of genuine interest.

 

No I didn't find your post disrespectful. No need to apologize. I will share with you some things that I remember. Firstly I wish I had written down all of the conversations I had over the period of time this presence was with me. I was at a bad point emotionally and mentally before I encountered this entity. I was broken in spirit and about as humble as one could get at that point in my life. I believe I was experiencing what some people refer to as an ego death. I theorize that this condition had alot to do with me being able to hear this voice. I don't know that for a fact. I have honestly wrestled with the who's what's why's and how's for years.

At some point I started to feel a pull to purify myself somehow, be nice to people, separate myself from the crowd I was rolling with and avoid their darkness and negativity for awhile. After some time, (I can remember anymore how long exactly, a few weeks? I dunno)...I started to feel a joy inside of me. That is the best word to use I think. Suddenly I felt compassion, no...love for everyone I met. I wanted to not just help people but almost "serve" them so to speak and it brought me more joy.

I saw an emptiness in our world, commercials on TV were somehow poison to my spirit and not just the usual obnoxious brief moments they were before. The world was somehow different.

Eventually I started to feel a "holiness" around me. I don't know what else to call it. It was powerful and it was loving. It got to a point where I felt the presence so strong that I can remember thinking that at any moment I was literally going to "see" god. That never happened but I can remember looking around for him in the carpet warehouse I was working at and I actually asked "where are you?" This is when I got my first reply. I was told "I am inside of you" that moment was beyond words.

From that moment and for the next few weeks to maybe two months I think? I had continuous dialogue with him. I can recall him having pity on a guy that I was riding to work with because he was so lost and was more of a puppet to negative energies but he loved him anyway. Though he did warn me not to let him rub off on me.

Anyway I can remember this entity being much smarter than me and he knew how to speak to me in a way that made me feel safe and comfortable and loved etc. Hard to paint a good picture of it really.

Eventually though, this being was so holy and pure that I would feel like scum for looking at a hot chick and wanting to bang her. I was 18 or 19 at the time though so imagine my dilemma. I eventually asked this being to kind of back off because I wanted the freedom to be a young man and have fun like my friends were having and get into trouble and basically be a young idiot.

This choice has haunted me since. It told me it would leave and I thought if I reached out to it later in life that it would respond. Nope, nada, nuthin. I have replayed this thing in my head many times over and as much of a blessing as it was it will probably haunt me to my grave. There are things I would ask it now that I simply didn't back then. I was just a dumb kid and knew nothing about life when this happened.

Anyway that's the condensed version of what happened.

 

Ahh now this is interesting. Would you care to expound on this?

 

Thanks brother. I respect what you do here. I have watched you do it for years now and have seen how rough some people can be with you when your opinion is both requested and then given. I recognize a man of principals and integrity and though I may not agree with the things you say all the time I respect how you man the wall.

 

I can very much relate to your experiences with a higher spiritual power. Practically the same thing happened to me. Actually this same theme is seen in a lot of stories and experiences I've heard and seen. When we hit total bottom and are hopeless and helpless and give up control and no longer have the answers or the will to live or fight does this higher power God show itself to us or make itself known. This is a phenomona that i dont think very many people experience. THis thing is so powerful and life changing that 'miracles' can happen. In your case you communicated, had dialogue. Amazing! In my case the desire to never want alcohole again. The thought and desire was gone after around 20 years of heavy drinking.
This is a spiritual thing but not religious. I can see why some that experience God will go to religion to try to understand and 'frame' it. Or like you, wanting to help and serve others with this new found power. Sounds like it was to much too fast. I couldnt have handled this power in youth either. Thanks for your story. Very enlightning.

 

How certian are you of this probability?

Perhaps it will haunt you to your grave because you're framing it that way in your mind.

 

Well I'm only 36 so hopefully I have a long road to the grave from this point and maybe it won't haunt me that long and I dunno. maybe I am framing it that way. I'll be honest with you though, this event was great for me at first, gave me hope and inspiration but as time went on and I never heard or felt anything like it since, I began to have questions. One of them being why can't I connect with it again, what is different about me? Did I offend it? Am I not the kind of person it would communicate with any longer?

These kinds of questions began to become a sort of torment. I feel that this was a natural evolution for me honestly. I now have many questions that I don't have answers to about what I could consider the single most important moment of my life. I am guessing that anyone in my shoes would feel the same way so longs as it played out the same way for them.

 

Mothman,

It is true that God had no choice but to allow Lucifer to interact with man. When Lucifer gave God the finger and began working behind the scenes in the Garden of Eden to undermine God's creation by corrupting it, he was met with no resistance. Of course, God knew what was going on, and told him to stop it. And of course, Lucifer replied, "And just what are you going to do about it?"

Ever since then, the whole universe has been watching and waiting for God to make his move. Lately, there's been a lot of talk about who's really in charge here.

Evidence that Lucifer is in charge can be found in the fact that, though God is so powerful that he could make a rock so big that even he can't lift it, he doesn't dare do it. Not because there's not enough praise and worship in it for him, but because he has a deep-seated fear of coming back to the site of that "too-heavy-for-him-to-move" rock some day and finding that it has not only been moved, but is also nowhere to be found.

 

i don't think people will go to hell just for not believing in jesus. but i do believe in a point where once the holy spirit has created conviction in your life that if you turn your back on that salvation then you might be in danger of hell. but if you've never even encountered a tangible witness and it has lead up to a point of being convicted then all you are accountable for is being a good person. but i don't think most people have ever even encountered such an experience. for example, you can't be sent to hell for rejecting jesus' salvation if his salvation was never shown to you in the first place.

yea it is pretty messed up that anyone would be eternally damned. but do you really want to spend eterenity with murderers and the like? something that helped me was seeing that some people are really just so evil that nothing can turn them back.

 

It's an interesting concept that you present but where is this information coming from? The bible says Satan IS the god of this world. It also says someehwere in the book of revelations that when the devils armies assemble to do battle with God that God laughs at him from his throne. If you are going off the bible then I do not see anywhere in it where God is in anyway threatened by Satan's power.

If your source is somewhere other than the bible I would be interested in hearing where it came from. It's not that I have a problem with the idea of what you are saying but if you pulled it out of thin air without your concept being found anywhere else but in this thread then it's hard for me to swallow.

 

My problem with this is the bible does not back your ideal as much as it back the concept of "there is no way to
the father except through the son". This does not leave room for exceptions...there is "NO WAY" to the father except through the son.

Additionally I would want to spend eternity in hell even if there were no murderers there. I don't think I should have to go to hell for eternity period. There is no compassion or mercy in sending anyone to a place of eternal torment forever. Zero compassion, Zero mercy. If the flames of hell are real I think even Adolph Hitler would have learned his lesson after 50 years of burning. But eternity is endless and so even after a billion years he has not put a dent in his sentence. this to me is as sick as any crime Hitler actually commited. It's evil to me.

I would rather our species have never existed and never known what it means to be alive than to have countless people suffer forever even if a few get to enjoy paradise for just as long. When you throw in that outside forces (satan) were allowed to influence this outcome it makes it even more dispicable to me.

I am not coming down on you and I respect your view, so if I sound angry its not toward you its toward this concept of a hypocrit God creating and then torturing a lifeform like this. The mind job of follow me or burn forever and oh by the way my mercy knows no bounds is sick to me.

In my mind this almighty God need to make his presence more known to mankind in a more convincing way than through his people who hate gays, molest little boys, and vote in such a way as to limit the freedoms of others.

I have met some great christians and I give those individuals my respect but overall Christianity is a pain in the ass in this country and the blood trail and bigotry left behind in its history is disgusting. Holy wars and such, not to mention with burnings and how christians view american indians as ignorant pagan heathens and then proceeded to kill their men women and children and then lie to them repeatedly to steal land from them while those same heathens tried over and over to honor the pacts made with white men.

I realize that most christians fully buy into the idea that there are doing this world a great service but sadly there is a negative reality that follows them weather they want it to or not.

I can not follow a god based on the compiled beliefs and influences of such a people simply because their actions often don't line up with thier words. If these people were so connected to god his light would truly shine through them and it doesn't. Getting people riled up in a mega church on sunday morning doesn't count.

I have never seen a christian heal a blind man in walmart. No one can walk on water these days regardless of their level of faith.

Our society has gotten to savy to simply rely on a book that had so many hands in its creation. For all I know god IS responsible for the whole thing and that book IS perfect but how in the heck are we supposed to just buy into that without something more. God had to know we would reach this point and have questions. Even if we had what we beleived was a salvation experience or a holy ghost moment only to question if we were not just worked up and overly passionate due to the inspirational sermon coming from the pulpit?

Was it god that we were feeling in that moment or were synapse firing like crazy in our brain and endorphines being released in our bodies to such a point that we felt something that we never had before? Any all knowing god would have been able to predict this crisis of questioning these experiences.

Sorry for rambling but these questions just seemed to flow out of me so I went with it. You don't actually have to address all of them, I was simply putting out there things that I ahve considered.

Please accept my apologies if anything I've said is offensive to you. It was not my intent.

 

Of course, I don't know exactly why you can't connect with it again but of everything else it could be, why assume something is different about you?

If it's so easily offended why do you want to connect with it?

I guess that would depend on what kind of person or thing "it" is.

 

This is a very rich, meaty post that raises lots of issues I'd like to reply to. But I'll need to do it in installments. My basic gripe is that you buy into the notion that fundamentalists are the real Christians, and attack and reject Christianity on that basis. Needless to say, as a Progressive Christian who takes Jesus and the Bible seriously but not literally, I object.

First of all, many Christian scholars don't think Jesus said these words. The Jesus Seminar rejects them from the less than 20% of biblical sayings attributed to Jesus that he probably said, and scholars like John Hicks and Marcus Braybrook think they were made up by later Christians. They appear in John, the last of the gospels, written fifty to eighty years after they were supposedly spoken. Who was John? Nobody knows, but few scholars think he was Jesus' Apostle. He is probably one or more members of a Johannine community in Asia, the most anti-Jewish of the Gospel writers, and the most influenced by Greek ideas--e.g., the Logos. His views are those of a faction of early Christians who believed that Jesus was the Son of God from the beginning of time, as opposed to the Ebionites or Jewish Christians who thought Jesus was God's adopted son. The Joahnnine view won and the Ebionite view lost the political battle of memes. He represents the highest "Christology'--in other words, less concerned than the other gospel writers with the details of the life of the historical Jesus and more concerned with Jesus as "the Christ". I'm convinced by Oklahoma pastor Robin Meyer that we need to "stop worshiping Christ and start following Jesus."

Second, the words quoted, which don't "leave room for exceptions", are an English translation of a Greek translation of an Aramaic statement that the gospel writer probably never personally heard. Professor Macquerrie of Oxford thinks that the "I" being referred to is Jesus as the Christ or Logos (Truth or Enlightenment), not just the ego of the historical Galilean rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth, in whom the Logos was manifested. The Father is the Absolute transcendent Ground of Being, and Jesus the Christ is the incarnate Truth of that reality. I see the words as metaphor communicating a profound truth: Only through enlightenment concerning the meaning of our existence, conveyed to us by the Logos incarnate, can we be saved from the bondage of our human condition. Heaven is enlightened understanding. Hell is a bad attitude. Saint Justin Martyr taught that "those who live according to reason are Christians, even though they are accounted atheists." He included Socrates and other eminent pagans among the saved. By the same token, I think those who sincerely follow the Buddha or Krishna are following Jesus, since they are essentially the same entity.

 

you seem confused about the no way to the father except through the son thing. going to quote a few relative verses here..

so these verses talk about how men will be rendered according to their work. not according to whether they accepted jesus into their life or not.

so this is an example of where, upon the light coming into the world, if you reject the light then you are condemned already. but into order to reject it you must first encounter it. this is simple if you lived 2000 years ago. if you meet Jesus then you either rejected the idea that he was the son of god or you didn't. but how does that correlate over today?

this passage explains how it is impossible to have faith without a preacher who has been sent. sent by the "true" church. because faith comes from hearing. but where does such an authentic thing exist? you will know them by their fruits.

this draws a seperation between those who are under the law and gentiles who are not under the law. righteousness and living according to your conscience are the key points here.

it isn't sin if you don't know or you don't understand.

love one another

 

First of all thank you for the most recent replies. You both have interesting perspectives and I will respond. I am homeschooling my son and running a business out of my house and business has been good lately. I will respond shortly when I have a minute. I promise I won't leave you hanging. Thank you.

 

would lord of the rings or star wars make sense otherwise?..

 

This is all very interesting but I think it also kind of muddies our discussion a bit and takes us down an intellectual road into so many possibilities and variables that it is endless postulation an example being "Heaven is enlightened understanding and Hell is a bad attitude" or even "those who live according to reason are Christians, even though they are accounted atheists." This is great food for thought but it begs to be supported by something substantial and it seems like we are now in a discussion about what is christianity?

 

The line you wrote about being under the law and not under the law is the one thing that stands in the way of what you wrote being an example of the bible contradicting itself but I agree with you because you included that piece of information.

 

Good vs Evil? Yin and Yang? Just a story then? Even starwars and LOTR fans geek out on what is cannon and what is not. As pointless as some would say those discussions can be they can be entertaining as well.

 

You seem to insist on documentation but doubt the verity of the documents.

Do you believe that god allowed lucifer to interact with man? Do you believe that you interact with lucifer?

All books must be interpreted because they are repositories of symbols. Symbols must be compared to existing models to be understood. The bible does not, can not, interpret itself.

There are many who will say there is only one correct interpretation, but,
when you look at the facts of the world there are many differing interpretations and all those espousing those interpretations are convinced that their interpretation is the accurate one. Despite this fact there is a level of belief that refuses to accept fact because it does not coincide with belief. A belief that does not take fact into account is called a superstition.

What is the model for comparison for the symbol lucifer? The model is not a supernatural being with dominion over your environment. The model is the internal debates that arise in a mans mind as he examines the characters in himself ranging from nurturing to hostile and decides which is deserving of any particular stimulus.

The model does not arise from supernatural sources but the source, the mind, is naturally abstract and that is why it is possible to come up with these symbolic scenarios and have them represent anything at all.

What you see in this world is not a battle between good and evil but an identity crises, an authority problem. The problem arises form the sense that there is good in the world for me and I must have it. We are created to create the good. Now the authority question is, what is good?