But God does many things that are hard to fathom at times.
For one thing it is hard to fathom that there were four attempts to assassinate Hitler from which he escaped. tHREE TIMES EVENTS PREVENTED THE EXPLODING OF THE BOMB, AND THE FOURTH TIME IT EXPLODED BUT MIRACULOUSLY HE WASN'T HURT BY IT.
fOR WHATEVER REASON IT WAS GOD'S WILL THAT bONHOEFFER DIE WHEN HE DID AND THAT hITLER ESCAPE THE ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS. gERMAN;Y WAS LIBERATED SOON AFTER ANYWAY AND HE DIED THEN BUT WHY THAT WAY RATHER THAN THE TOEHR? iT DOES SHOW, IF YOU HAVE THE MIND TO SEE IT, THAT gOD IS SHOWING THAT hE IS IN CHARGE OF THE AFFAIRS OF MEN RATHER THAN HUMAN BEINGS ALTHOUGH OF COURSE WE ARE HIS INTSTRUMENTS IN ANY WAYCASE. hITLER WAS hIS INSTRUMENT FOR hIS PURPOSES TOO, AND WE CAN ONLY SPECULATE WHAT THOSE PURPOSES WERE, ALTHOUGH AT LEAST WE SHOULD BE ABLE TO SAY THAT HE WAS AN INSTRUMENT OF JUDGMENT AGAINST A WORLD THAT WAS IN VIOLATION OF hIS lAW.
that is why we will yet have a final Antichrist come to rule this earth and probably not too far in the future. Could be right around the corner the way things have been going these days. God brings His judgments against nations and eventually the whole world for those violations when they ave accumulated to some trigger point known only to Him. the Israelites were His instrument for the punishment of the cananaite tribes under the leadership of Johshua, but they had had to wait in bondage in Egypt for four hundred years bfore the time was right and the sins of the canaanites had rip[ened to the point of deserving the full blown judgment. Later at the tifht time god brought assyria against the israelites for their transgressions and then the Babylonian Captivity of the Souther Kindgdom. the fall of jerusalem and the e;temple in seventy AD was ahnother devastating judmgnet by God against Israel, after which the land fell into desolateion until the regathering of the Jews in the twentieth century abnd the establishment of the Jewish state in nineteen forty either. We are now accumulationg sins apace sincde at lest the sixties and are already seeing the crazy consequences of a lot of it, both sin and consequence at once really. transgender idiocy is both sin and punishment and son on.
I now have an audio book system at my disposal and have heard to books by Eric Metaxas. I wanted to hear his latest, the Letter to the American Church but it isn't available in audio form, at least not yet. I hope it will be eventually. But I did hear "If You can Keep It" wghich is about the founding of America, and "Bonhoeffer" which is his biography of the Christian activist against the Nazies I mention above.
I havw to mentionj a couple of peeves here. Metaxas describes American Founder John Adams as "theologically orthodox" which he was not. He was a unitarian from everything I've heard about him, far from orthodox. He, like the other founders, had a strong appreciation of Biblical morality and considered it an essential foundation for the kind of government they crafted for us, but they were not Christians. None of them was a Christian, at least of the main five, Washington, Adams, Jerfferson, rfranklin and Paine. Christian in the cultural sense and very strongly so, yes, but not Christian in the biblical dogmatic sense.
The other peeve was in the Bonhoeffer book where he is trying to tgrapple with Luther's Anti Semitic rant against the jews and puts it down to phyiscal maladies that made him cranky about all kinds of things. two of those things he mentions are his railing against the jews and his identification of the Pope as the Antichrist. Woopsie. Metas=as is way off on this one. The Reforemers, not just Luther, and hundreds of other dissents in the previous centuries, had clearly made the ase against the Pope. there is no doubt that they had proved his identity as the Antichrist from scripture. It was certainly not Luther alone who arrived tat this conclusions. It took him a while to recognize it, it took seeing how the Pope cealt with him and what scripture said about the Antichrist that fiolnally showed him beyond a doubt that this is who the Pope really is. Whatever crankiness due to physical discomforts he may have had, they were not the reason for this conclusion which was pefectly scriptural and rtional.
ad for his rant against the Jews, it was certainly ill considered and impulsive but it wasn't without cause. As I've understood it he'd befriended the Jews and hoped to convert them to their Messiah, but then he became aware of their blasphemous pronouncewments against the son of Mary in their talmudic writings, which made jesus the illegitimate son of a Roman soldier and Mary of course a whore. this pushed Luther over the top. this doesn't judtstify his recomendations forallkinds of punishments to be levied aainst them which of course the Naxzxis used to justify their own atrocities. As I recall it was Art Katz, a jewish XChristian teacher who died a while back, who defended Luther on these gournds. Explainsed him anyway, though not exactly juidtifying him.
Ane another similar issue came up in the biographty of bonhoeffer as Bonhoeffer's students explained the evils coming against the Jews as the consequence of the curse abgainst them which they took on themsevles when they called for Pilate to crucify Jesus and spare the criminal Barabbas. ": His blood be unopnj us and upon our c hildren, they said to Pilate when he announced that he washed his hands of guilt against Jeuss, knowing him to be innocent. It is hard to avoid the horror of what the Jes did to themseles with that declaraction. Yet VBonhoeffer told the students they were wrong. He somehow argued that but I can't fathom how he could. the curse is right there in scripture, there is no getting around it. It certainly does not justify anyone's taking the role of punisher of the Jews, and certainly god isn't going to tolerate that for long but wikll finally judge the punsihers. But meanwhile theyu act as God's instruments. This is a theme in the Old TESTGAMENT. gOD BRINGS ENEMIES AGAINST hIS PEOPLE AS PUHNISHEMTN BUT IS VERY CLEAR THAT hE DOEASN'T LET THEM GET AWAY WITH IT WITHOUT BEING PUNISHED IN RETURN.
aNYWAY i WAS DISAPPOINTED IN mETAXAS, AND bONHOEFFER, FOR THEIR DENIAL OF THIS OBVIOUS SPIRITUAL CONNCECTION. i UNDERSTAND THAT THEY WORRY ABOUT JUSTIFYING THE PERPECTRATORS OF THE ATROCITIES, BUT WE NEED A MORE REFINED THEOLOGY THAN THAT. wE ARE CALLED TO MERCY, NOT TO ENACT gOD'S JUDGMENTS, EXCEPT IN THE CASE ORF ACTUAL CRIMINAL PROCEEDINGS, WHICH OF COURZE NONE OF THIS IS. sHAM pROCEEDINGS MADEW UP BY THE nAZI REGIME, BUT ALL SHAM. mUCH AS WE ARE SEEING SIMILAR SHAM PROCEEDINGS TODAY IN aMERICA AS THE lEFT IS UNRAVELING OUR JUSTICE SYSTEM IN ORDER TO PROMOTE THEIR OWN POLITICAL BENEFITS. THOUGH IN THIS CASE IT'S HARD TO SEE HOW THEIR ESPECIFIC SHAM JUSTICE IS DESERVICED. iN GENERAL, FOR SURE, THE COUNTRY IS AWASH IN VIOLATIONS OF gOD'S lAW, BUT NOT IN PARTICULAR.
gETHE gERMAN CHURCH IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY WAS CORRUPTED BY LIBERAL THEOLOGY, AND bONHOEFFER HAD BEEN TRAINED UNDER LIBRAL TGHEOLOGIANS AT UNIVERSITY. THE SAME THING WAS GOING ON IN aMERICA WHERE HE TAUGHT FOR A W3HILE. hNRY eMERSON fOSDICK, DID i GET THAT RIGHT? WAS PASTOR OF A H7UGE CHURCH BASED ON THE LIBERAL THEOLOGY THAT DENIED THE SUPERNATURAL TACHINGS OF THE bIBLE AND FOCYUSED ON SOCIAL ISSUES. iT DISGUSED bONHOEFFER THOUGH HE NEVER QUITE FULLY WHET OVER TO EHT FUNDAMENTALIST SICDE AS FAR AS i COULD TELL FROM THE BIOLGRAPHY. hE FOUND MORE TRUTH THERE AT ONE POINT, BUT HIS OWN THEOLOGICAL THINBKING ALWAYS SOUNDS TO ME LIKE IT'S TRYING TO WORK ROUND AND THROUGH THE LITERAL THEOLOGY HE HAD ORITINALLY LEARNED. iT NEVR QUITE BREAKS FREE OF IT.
gERMANY'S CHURCHES WERE WEAK IN THE nAZI ERA, AND aMERIAN HURCHES ARE WEAK NOW. i HOPE mETAXAS'[ BOOK lETTER TO TEH aMERICAN cHHRUCH MIGHT BE SUCCESSFUL IN CHANGING THAT DIRECTION. hE TOOK IBHHIS INSPIRTAION FROM WHAT HAPPENED IN GERMANY, SEEING THE SAME THINGS HAPPENING HERE.
