Prophecy

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JEFF
If you read my post again, my claim was simply that the book of Jonah
teaches that God is compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in love.
Whether or not this is consistent with the rest of Scripture is a completely
different issue.

POOBAH
You may be right that it is a different issue, but it is the issue of this
newsgroup. The point of this newsgroup is to discuss whether the Bible is
contradictory or not. If Jonah says that God is compassionate & slow to
anger, and another book shows God lashes out irrationally at someone who
tried to save his precious ark, that would show a contradiction, would it
not?

JEFF
On a side note, your reply both puzzles and saddens me. It puzzles me as to
why you are quick to sight the previously mentioned passages as "proof" that
God is an angry and vengeful God, yet you are apparently quick to ignore
passages like Jonah 4:2 (see above), Hosea 7:13-16, Jeremiah 31:20, John
3:16, or Romans 2:4 "...do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness,
tolerance, and patience, not realizing that God's kindness leads you toward
repentance?" (to name a few) which clearly indicate God's kindness.

POOBAH
Because if Jehovah actually existed, and did the things that were attributed
to him, he is a sick bastard no matter how nice he is to other people at
other times.

JEFF
Likewise, it saddens me that you are allowing one side of the story to be
heard without attending to the other. Please consider searching for and
studying the passages in both the Old and New Testaments where God is
described (or describes himself) as being compassionate and loving.

POOBAH
Your argument seems to be that we can't judge John Wayne Gacy's serial
murders unless we first take into account all of the joy & happiness he
brought to people's life as a birthday clown.

Or that we can't judge the abusive alcoholic father without first mentioning
how nice he is when he's sober.

I hope you can do better than that.

JEFF
You may also wish to study the history and culture(s) of the people
mentioned in the verses you have cited above. It will help you get a better
grasp of the context and circumstances under which God brought judgment upon
them. If you would like help with this, I will gladly do what I can to
assist you. Thank you for your time.

POOBAH
Let's say the inhabitants of Ninevah were devil worshippers, homosexuals,
and blasphemers (to pick a few of Jehovah's favorite meaningless sins). So
what? For this they deserve destruction? What about the innocent children
that haven't yet had a chance to do any of the above? What about the poor
unborn children that were no doubt in the city at the time (your ilk seems
particularly obsessed with them); what had they done to deserve destruction?

Couldn't an omnipotent God have gotten rid of all the bad people without
killing everyone as he did with the Amalkites, or killing everyone but the
little girls (as with the Midianites) and sending them off to be sex slaves?

If you were King Saul and God ordered you to slay all of the Amalkites,
including women & children, what would you do? If you were Abraham and God
ordered you to kill your own child, what would you do?

And given that he is evil enough to order those events, why should we care
what "good" he does? I'm sure in your worldview the Devil does good things
sometimes too; do we need to weigh those in evaluating him?

Finally, none of the above should be taken as meaning that I share your
fantasy about the existence of Jehovah. If he did exist, however, he would
be the most loathsome being imaginable.

Oh, one last thing. Perhaps you would like to deal with this Biblical
inaccuracy. According to Jonah 3:3, "Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great
city, a three days' walk." (NASV). That would make the diameter of Ninevah
about 60 miles, or the size of a modern metropolitan area like Los Angeles.
Archeology has shown that ancient Ninevah was nowhere near that size (nor
was any other ancient city for that matter).

So how can you account for the Bible's inaccuracy in this matter? If it was
exaggerating here, perhaps there are other exaggerations in describing
Jehovah's "goodness"?

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