The issue I see here is that the combos you're suggesting are either slow, clunky, vulnerable to all forms of removal, or a combination of these. I also don't see how Forbidden Orchard would net you infinite mana, but regardless that would also require a third card for a successful combo.
Intruder's Alarm is a very unique card and I'd love to see a successful deck that revolves around it, but right now I can't see it working out.
You are right about Forbidden Orchard. You would have to play something like Voyaging Satyr or Kiora's Follower with it, which do have great synergy with Intruder Alarm on their own. I think Cryptolith Rite is an intriguing new card that could potentially help solve the spot removal problem and it plays well with it. And then maybe ramp into a Craterhoof Behemoth for the win or something like that.
I know Splinter Twin suppressed this card back when it was a thing in modern. With Splinter Twin out of the format is it time for people to dust off their Intruder Alarm's?
Just an idea, but if you are going to play Possibility Storm, then Plea For Guidance becomes a possibility and you could try to put it into a Tron shell, which isn't entirely bad because Knowledge Pool is exactly the type of spell that you would want to be playing in a Tron shell. Curse of the Pierced Heart is also a decent option if red becomes an option. I've never seen a R/W Tron deck list before, but I imagine it would be pretty fun to be the first one to try it.
And Romans 1:27 says, "In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error." Do you believe that I have had sex with another man? Are you prepared to tell me that I have had sex with another man?
No, I don't. I believe further up in the passage Paul is talking about all non-believers, and then later on he begins listing specific sins demonstrating that we are all sinners in one way or another.
You really should too. Otherwise, when someone said, "There is no God", you would not be able to contradict it.
If it is just some notion that we invented out of thin air and it has no real bearing on reality, then I am not sure why I should. Do you believe that the laws of logic existed during the Big Bang or did they only come into existence when we supposedly invented them?
Logic is the notion that when we talk about stuff, we should have clear definitions for our terms and use the same definition for the same term every time. It is an idea. As with any idea, simply expressing it is both proof of its existence and instantiation of it.
So then logic does not pre-exist human beings? So if another country on another continent binned the fundamental laws of logic and just decided to invent a different set of logical laws...that would be just as valid as our current laws of logic? So if I got enough people together we could develop an equally valid logical system where we replace the law of non-contradiction with the law of contradiction?
Because it's really just the definition of the term "not". When we use "not" to describe any possible situation, in this universe or any other, it will mean the same thing.
I think you have to presuppose the law of non-contradiction to come to that the conclusion.
Therefore the pathway to heaven is not the works you do in life, and you've contradicted yourself.
Not quite. Saying that what we do affects eternity is not the same thing as saying that our works will get us to heaven. "The wages of sin is death" means that you reap what you sow. So what you do in this life you will reap the consequences of it. A baby doesn't do anything so it has nothing to reap. A baby cannot lie because it is not capable of doing so. A baby cannot lust because it is incapable of doing so. "The free gift of God is eternal life" means that people get to heaven on the basis of grace alone. That is just how we obtain eternal life. Once we have obtained eternal life there are many things we can do to affect eternity not just for ourselves but also for others. I don't particularly enjoy coming on here and arguing with some of you. The magic community in particular seems to have more than its fair share of rude arrogant atheists/agnostics/new-agers, especially in this forum. Make no mistake this forum is a hostile place for a Christian to post on. Another hobby of mine is Gator football, and the variety of atheist/agnostic/new-ager over on the Gator message boards is far less arrogant and more reasonable than what you will find here. I come on here and I try to reason with some of you because it appears to me that many of the Christians who are arguing for Christianity on this forum are not really Christians in any Biblical sense at all. So while my salvation does not hang in the balance because I am completely covered as a believer in Christ there are many of you here who need to hear the gospel message, and being a preacher of that message in a hostile environment is a way to affect eternity.
I'm not asking Jesus to love me differently. I'm saying that getting yourself tortured to death isn't love.
I find a creature arguing with the Almighty about the definition of the word "love" to be one of the vainest things I've ever heard of. If God says, "There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends" (John 15:13), then that is what love is. Your protesting of such is arbitrary because it is just your opinion.
If sin is a crime against god, then it's not an issue of "refusing" to believe it. I am incapable of believing that I have a "sin debt" as long as I do not believe in the existence of any god.
Sure...when Jesus describes the blindness and the deafness of the non-believer it is a very real thing. What a curse it is to be in such a condition, but you are blind and deaf because you have deceived yourself. It is of your own volition that you are imprisoned in such a state. I hope God gives you the ears to hear and the eyes to see.
I believe you do know God on a certain level. Romans 1:19-20 says, "For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse."
You and many people here make a big deal about logical contradictions. How do you know logic exists? Can you account for immaterial laws (moral and logical) within your worldview? How do you know that the law of non-contradiction exists as a universal law? How do you know that logic itself isn't a culturally constructed idea?
On that note, what's your position on people that have never even gotten the message of Christ in the first place? For example, let's take the Pirahã people prior to 1978. They have no concept of deities (although they do have some supernatural beliefs). At this point in time, their only contact with believers has been shut down by a language barrier. It's not until 1978 that Daniel Everett manages to start communications with them. When he tells them about Jesus, they ask if he can bring Jesus to come meet them. When he admits that he can't, they move on with the conversation and ignore Jesus entirely.
In fact, the Pirahã were the starting point for Everett's deconversion, and he become a closeted atheist in 1985. When he finally came out of the closet over a decade later, his wife divorced him and most of his children refused to speak with him for another ten years.
To answer your question, I'd respond back with Romans 1 again. All non-believers are without excuse because God's attributes are clearly perceived by the things that have been made. So they will be held accountable before God. That is my position, and I believe it is Paul's position too.
Except neither a baby nor a mentally ill person can be said to be justified by faith. Ergo, if indeed one is justified by faith, it cannot be said that a baby is justified, nor can it be said a mentally ill person is justified.
Therefore, if you believe that babies go to Heaven, it must follow, then, that justification requires neither faith nor works, in which case Paul is incorrect. Yes?
You have an agenda, and that agenda is you want the Bible to be proven to contradict itself. Just because there is one exception does not mean that Paul is wrong. It is the exception that proves the rule. The rule for the normal person is that they must be justified by faith. So Paul is not wrong...even though you really really want it to be so.
Which doesn't matter. There's nothing in the Torah about an insanity defense. You are applying provisions found in the laws of countries to the law of the Torah.
No...that is not where I got it from. Go read the article on my sister's blog. It explains the position quite well.
If babies and the mentally ill can go to heaven, then why can't Jesus also save the non-believers? What about the person who could have accepted Jesus in old age, but their mind was destroyed by dementia? What about the person who could have accepted Jesus in old age, but was hit by a bus? If we're going to send babies to heaven because it makes us feel good, we should just as well pretend that everyone else is going to heaven.
It is not because it makes us feel good. It is because the Bible seems to point to it. Romans 4:15 says, "For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression." Babies and the mentally ill do not have the capacity to understand God's law in the New and Old Testaments. That is why I believe babies and the mentally ill go to heaven.
For the person whose mind is destroyed by dementia, there was a point in their life where they could understand God's law. They knew right from wrong, and there is a very good chance that such a person heard the gospel of Jesus Christ, and hopefully they accepted it. If not then they drank judgment upon themselves when they rejected the gospel of Jesus Christ. When I say the gospel, that is the good news of Jesus Christ, which if summed up in a single verse, is probably best summed up as follows:
"For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 6:23).
That is a good question. My sister addresses the question on her blog. King David had a son who died as an infant, and King David remarked "I shall go to him, but he will not return to me” (2 Samuel 12:23). So that is where my hope is for my nephew. I will go to him and see him again one day in the courts of heaven.
Except, David isn't talking about heaven. That would be anachronistic. The text predates the idea of the dead going to heaven. Instead, there would have been a belief in Sheol, a land of the dead. The eschatological views of Heaven and Hell would not have been present in this tradition.
We don't have forums solely devoted to bashing Islam, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or Fairies. That is because we all know that Allah, Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, and Fairies are not real, and therefore we don't hate them and obsess over them like we do Christianity.
Except Islam worships the same God that all Judeo-Christian religions do. To deny the existence of Allah is to deny the existence of God. Allah means God.
Highroller, we are going to have to disagree. I don't believe that religion evolves because God does not evolve. God does not change, and therefore whatever we know to be true about God in the New Testament it is true of God in the Old Testament. Not going to argue with you about, but I don't accept the premises involved with your perspective.
And we are going to have to disagree about Allah and Islam. Allah is not the same as the Biblical God. Allah is unitarian, and the Biblical God is trinitarian. And if we cannot agree on the Biblical God being trinitarian, then we cannot call one another brothers in Christ. I cannot call you a fellow believer if you do not know that the Biblical God is trinitarian.
How is this consistent with the belief that humans are born in sin and do not go to heaven unless they accept Christ as their savior?
That is a good question. My sister addresses the question on her blog. King David had a son who died as an infant, and King David remarked "I shall go to him, but he will not return to me” (2 Samuel 12:23). So that is where my hope is for my nephew. I will go to him and see him again one day in the courts of heaven.
I have no doubt that answer will be unsatisfactory to you...that babies and the mentally ill are the exception since they are not mentally able to grasp the concepts of the faith. At the end of the day all people are born in sin, and they need a savior. I have no doubt that Jesus could have died for the mentally ill and babies who die prematurely. Nowhere in scripture does it directly say this, but there is evidence that points to it. So that is what I hold onto in hope.
If the Bible makes this claim, it is incorrect. People don't hate things they don't even believe exist. Do you hate fairies? I don't think so.
I think your observation that people don't hate things they don't believe in is correct. And that is why I believe every agnostic/atheist believes in the Biblical God on some level. If people truly didn't believe in God there wouldn't be a whole sub-forum on MTGS that is mostly about bashing Christianity and the Bible. We don't have forums solely devoted to bashing Islam, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or Fairies. That is because we all know that Allah, Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, and Fairies are not real, and therefore we don't hate them and obsess over them like we do Christianity.
Now I think that a lot of you think you don't hate God, but your attitude towards the subjects of Christianity, the Bible, and the Biblical God contradicts that profession. The nature of the non-believer's unbelief is that he has deceived himself about his own self-deception. The non-believer hates God, but has deceived himself into thinking that he simply does not believe in God. Romans 1 says that the non-believer suppresses the truth he knows about God in his own unrighteousness:
"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them" (Romans 1:18-32).
My sister believes that her son Arthur is in heaven. I do too. I believe Arthur is in heaven, and I cannot wait to see him again! I believe that all murdered babies are in heaven.
So, heaven will be crowded with disfigured fetuses? Remind me why I'd want to go there again?
If the Bible is correct about the non-believer hating God, then the fact that God is in heaven is all the reason you would need for not wanting to go there.
Actually "kill" is a bad translation. "Murder" is a much better translation.
The lesson from the Old Testament is that "the wages of sin is death." Israel was a theocracy, and so they had certain laws governing them as a theocracy. Many of those laws show us how holy God is, and how a holy God does not tolerate sin. If you sin, then you've earned the penalty of death. That is why all people die because all people are sinners. And when you die, afterwards you will go stand before the God of the Old Testsment who does not tolerate sin. He'll give you what you've earned because of your sin...that is unless if you've trusted upon Christ as your sin bearer, and repented of your sins.
What's your position on the final resting place of people who die before reaching the age of reason?
How does the cross bring any of those qualities together? The cross is simply a few pieces of wood and some nails utilized as a shame, torture, and execution device for thousands of criminals in the ancient world. The depiction of Jesus' crucifixion isn't even as bad as it was for some victims. For example, many people crucified had their legs broken with an iron club.
I'd much rather someone (anyone) demonstrate love by living, not by being used for human blood sacrifice.
1) Just a few months ago I held my nephew in my own arms. He almost lived 2 days. My sister, who is also a Christian, heard that her son would not be compatible with life outside of the womb, and the doctors asked her if she'd like to have an abortion. She said "heck no!" because the way we live affects eternity. What a tragedy it would be for a parent to kill a child in the womb, and for the child to be eternally separated from the parent because the parent went to hell. What a sobering day the day of judgement will be!
My sister believes that her son Arthur is in heaven. I do too. I believe Arthur is in heaven, and I cannot wait to see him again! I believe that all murdered babies are in heaven.
2) The cross brings those qualities together because all of those qualities reflect who God is, and the cross is the event where God is most revealed in the Bible.
I want you to think about the worst thing you ever experienced. Was it physical in nature or was it emotional or spiritual? I'd be willing to bet it was the latter. Jesus was sweating blood before anyone ever laid a hand on him. While Jesus suffered great physical pain I'd be willing to bet that the worst pain he suffered was spiritual and relational. I think the greatest moment of Jesus' pain was seen when he cried out "Why have you forsaken me?" Jesus had an eternal love for the Father that is far greater than the love of even a husband or a wife. To be willingly forsaken by the Father was a greater pain than anything you or I or anyone else in the history of mankind even know of, but Jesus walked to the cross willingly because it was His Father's will.
3) Jesus did love while living. His entire life that he lived without sinning is credited to those who trust in him for their salvation. We see Jesus' love in his life and in his death. As for the fact that you would like Jesus to love you differently, I'm sure most kids wish their parents loved them differently and gave them whatever they wanted. At the end of the day...you have a sin debt. You may not like it, and you might refuse to believe it, but you do. And that is why Jesus made a date with the cross. Our sin debt had to be taken away. Just like a good parent, Jesus loves us based on what we need not what we want. You desperately need to trust in Christ so that you don't die with your sin debt upon you! Because you won't be able to pay it!
"For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 6:23).
You are right about Forbidden Orchard. You would have to play something like Voyaging Satyr or Kiora's Follower with it, which do have great synergy with Intruder Alarm on their own. I think Cryptolith Rite is an intriguing new card that could potentially help solve the spot removal problem and it plays well with it. And then maybe ramp into a Craterhoof Behemoth for the win or something like that.
You can combo out with Bloodline Keeper, Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, Thraben Doomsayer, Krenko, Mob Boss and you can get infinite mana with Forbidden Orchard.
I am just curious what people think of the card's chances in the current meta.
No, I don't. I believe further up in the passage Paul is talking about all non-believers, and then later on he begins listing specific sins demonstrating that we are all sinners in one way or another.
If it is just some notion that we invented out of thin air and it has no real bearing on reality, then I am not sure why I should. Do you believe that the laws of logic existed during the Big Bang or did they only come into existence when we supposedly invented them?
So then logic does not pre-exist human beings? So if another country on another continent binned the fundamental laws of logic and just decided to invent a different set of logical laws...that would be just as valid as our current laws of logic? So if I got enough people together we could develop an equally valid logical system where we replace the law of non-contradiction with the law of contradiction?
I think you have to presuppose the law of non-contradiction to come to that the conclusion.
Not quite. Saying that what we do affects eternity is not the same thing as saying that our works will get us to heaven. "The wages of sin is death" means that you reap what you sow. So what you do in this life you will reap the consequences of it. A baby doesn't do anything so it has nothing to reap. A baby cannot lie because it is not capable of doing so. A baby cannot lust because it is incapable of doing so. "The free gift of God is eternal life" means that people get to heaven on the basis of grace alone. That is just how we obtain eternal life. Once we have obtained eternal life there are many things we can do to affect eternity not just for ourselves but also for others. I don't particularly enjoy coming on here and arguing with some of you. The magic community in particular seems to have more than its fair share of rude arrogant atheists/agnostics/new-agers, especially in this forum. Make no mistake this forum is a hostile place for a Christian to post on. Another hobby of mine is Gator football, and the variety of atheist/agnostic/new-ager over on the Gator message boards is far less arrogant and more reasonable than what you will find here. I come on here and I try to reason with some of you because it appears to me that many of the Christians who are arguing for Christianity on this forum are not really Christians in any Biblical sense at all. So while my salvation does not hang in the balance because I am completely covered as a believer in Christ there are many of you here who need to hear the gospel message, and being a preacher of that message in a hostile environment is a way to affect eternity.
I find a creature arguing with the Almighty about the definition of the word "love" to be one of the vainest things I've ever heard of. If God says, "There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends" (John 15:13), then that is what love is. Your protesting of such is arbitrary because it is just your opinion.
Sure...when Jesus describes the blindness and the deafness of the non-believer it is a very real thing. What a curse it is to be in such a condition, but you are blind and deaf because you have deceived yourself. It is of your own volition that you are imprisoned in such a state. I hope God gives you the ears to hear and the eyes to see.
I believe you do know God on a certain level. Romans 1:19-20 says, "For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse."
You and many people here make a big deal about logical contradictions. How do you know logic exists? Can you account for immaterial laws (moral and logical) within your worldview? How do you know that the law of non-contradiction exists as a universal law? How do you know that logic itself isn't a culturally constructed idea?
That would be correct.
To answer your question, I'd respond back with Romans 1 again. All non-believers are without excuse because God's attributes are clearly perceived by the things that have been made. So they will be held accountable before God. That is my position, and I believe it is Paul's position too.
You have an agenda, and that agenda is you want the Bible to be proven to contradict itself. Just because there is one exception does not mean that Paul is wrong. It is the exception that proves the rule. The rule for the normal person is that they must be justified by faith. So Paul is not wrong...even though you really really want it to be so.
No...that is not where I got it from. Go read the article on my sister's blog. It explains the position quite well.
It is not because it makes us feel good. It is because the Bible seems to point to it. Romans 4:15 says, "For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression." Babies and the mentally ill do not have the capacity to understand God's law in the New and Old Testaments. That is why I believe babies and the mentally ill go to heaven.
For the person whose mind is destroyed by dementia, there was a point in their life where they could understand God's law. They knew right from wrong, and there is a very good chance that such a person heard the gospel of Jesus Christ, and hopefully they accepted it. If not then they drank judgment upon themselves when they rejected the gospel of Jesus Christ. When I say the gospel, that is the good news of Jesus Christ, which if summed up in a single verse, is probably best summed up as follows:
"For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 6:23).
Highroller, we are going to have to disagree. I don't believe that religion evolves because God does not evolve. God does not change, and therefore whatever we know to be true about God in the New Testament it is true of God in the Old Testament. Not going to argue with you about, but I don't accept the premises involved with your perspective.
And we are going to have to disagree about Allah and Islam. Allah is not the same as the Biblical God. Allah is unitarian, and the Biblical God is trinitarian. And if we cannot agree on the Biblical God being trinitarian, then we cannot call one another brothers in Christ. I cannot call you a fellow believer if you do not know that the Biblical God is trinitarian.
That is a good question. My sister addresses the question on her blog. King David had a son who died as an infant, and King David remarked "I shall go to him, but he will not return to me” (2 Samuel 12:23). So that is where my hope is for my nephew. I will go to him and see him again one day in the courts of heaven.
I have no doubt that answer will be unsatisfactory to you...that babies and the mentally ill are the exception since they are not mentally able to grasp the concepts of the faith. At the end of the day all people are born in sin, and they need a savior. I have no doubt that Jesus could have died for the mentally ill and babies who die prematurely. Nowhere in scripture does it directly say this, but there is evidence that points to it. So that is what I hold onto in hope.
I think your observation that people don't hate things they don't believe in is correct. And that is why I believe every agnostic/atheist believes in the Biblical God on some level. If people truly didn't believe in God there wouldn't be a whole sub-forum on MTGS that is mostly about bashing Christianity and the Bible. We don't have forums solely devoted to bashing Islam, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or Fairies. That is because we all know that Allah, Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, and Fairies are not real, and therefore we don't hate them and obsess over them like we do Christianity.
Now I think that a lot of you think you don't hate God, but your attitude towards the subjects of Christianity, the Bible, and the Biblical God contradicts that profession. The nature of the non-believer's unbelief is that he has deceived himself about his own self-deception. The non-believer hates God, but has deceived himself into thinking that he simply does not believe in God. Romans 1 says that the non-believer suppresses the truth he knows about God in his own unrighteousness:
"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them" (Romans 1:18-32).
If the Bible is correct about the non-believer hating God, then the fact that God is in heaven is all the reason you would need for not wanting to go there.
The lesson from the Old Testament is that "the wages of sin is death." Israel was a theocracy, and so they had certain laws governing them as a theocracy. Many of those laws show us how holy God is, and how a holy God does not tolerate sin. If you sin, then you've earned the penalty of death. That is why all people die because all people are sinners. And when you die, afterwards you will go stand before the God of the Old Testsment who does not tolerate sin. He'll give you what you've earned because of your sin...that is unless if you've trusted upon Christ as your sin bearer, and repented of your sins.
1) Just a few months ago I held my nephew in my own arms. He almost lived 2 days. My sister, who is also a Christian, heard that her son would not be compatible with life outside of the womb, and the doctors asked her if she'd like to have an abortion. She said "heck no!" because the way we live affects eternity. What a tragedy it would be for a parent to kill a child in the womb, and for the child to be eternally separated from the parent because the parent went to hell. What a sobering day the day of judgement will be!
My sister believes that her son Arthur is in heaven. I do too. I believe Arthur is in heaven, and I cannot wait to see him again! I believe that all murdered babies are in heaven.
2) The cross brings those qualities together because all of those qualities reflect who God is, and the cross is the event where God is most revealed in the Bible.
I want you to think about the worst thing you ever experienced. Was it physical in nature or was it emotional or spiritual? I'd be willing to bet it was the latter. Jesus was sweating blood before anyone ever laid a hand on him. While Jesus suffered great physical pain I'd be willing to bet that the worst pain he suffered was spiritual and relational. I think the greatest moment of Jesus' pain was seen when he cried out "Why have you forsaken me?" Jesus had an eternal love for the Father that is far greater than the love of even a husband or a wife. To be willingly forsaken by the Father was a greater pain than anything you or I or anyone else in the history of mankind even know of, but Jesus walked to the cross willingly because it was His Father's will.
3) Jesus did love while living. His entire life that he lived without sinning is credited to those who trust in him for their salvation. We see Jesus' love in his life and in his death. As for the fact that you would like Jesus to love you differently, I'm sure most kids wish their parents loved them differently and gave them whatever they wanted. At the end of the day...you have a sin debt. You may not like it, and you might refuse to believe it, but you do. And that is why Jesus made a date with the cross. Our sin debt had to be taken away. Just like a good parent, Jesus loves us based on what we need not what we want. You desperately need to trust in Christ so that you don't die with your sin debt upon you! Because you won't be able to pay it!
"For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 6:23).