By Sodium
Reciting Question (6):
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" God said King Hezekiah would die of an illness, but a few minutes later said he would let Hezekiah live another fifteen years. How can someone who knows everything change his mind like that ? "
Outlining The Answers Provided By Stephen Miller:
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~ Miller says that " most Bible experts " say that " God does not change his mind. " and they quote the following quotation from the Bible:
" The Lord is the Eternal One of Israel...He is not a human being, so he does not change his mind
( ! Samuel 15:29 NCV ).
~ In order to validate the legitimacy of his question, Miller has provided the following responses or comments:
( A ) " Enter King Hezekiah, sick to death."
( B ) " God sent the prophet Isaiah to tell the king: " Set your affairs in order, for you are going to
die. You will no recover from this illness " ( Isaiah 38:1 NLT ).
( C ) " Hezekiah broke into sobs and started praying. "
D ) " Isaiah was walking out of the palace when God told him to turn around and give the king a new and improved message: " God heard your prayers and he is giving you fifteen more years "
( See v. 5 )
( E ) According to the biblical evidences ( A ), ( B ), ( C ) and ( D ), as stated above, Miller says : " That sounds like God changed his mind. "
Moreover, Miller goes on to say that " There are other stories in the Bible that also seem to report God doing a 180 ( degrees change ) " in changing his mind. He list the following biblical stories:
" * Creation do-over: " The Lord saw how bad the people on earth were...He was very sorry that he had made them ( Genesis 6:5-6 CEV ). Up next: the flood.
" * King do-over. " The Lord told Samuel , ' Saul has stopped obeying me, and I am sorry that I made him king ' " ( 1 Samuel 15:10-11 ) ". David would replace Saul as Israel's king. "
" * On second thought. After compelling the prophet Jonah to go to Nineveh, in what is now Iraq, and tell the people that their city would be destroyed in forty days, God did not destroy the city. The people repented and God Forgave them ( Jonah 3 ).
Although Bible experts has considered the biblical story as ( Jonah 3 ) specified above as "The clue" . by saying that " It is not who's changing. It's the people who are changing. All God is doing is changing his plans to accommodate the changed people. "
After debating the issues in considerable length, Miller says the following:
" Some Bible experts don't try to defend the Bible choices of words. Instead, they embrace the mystery of God. They say the Bible writers were simply trying to explain what was going on as best they knew how-- but their know-how was limited. It eas limited because they were only humans."
Final Words:
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Because of the fact that the Bible experts have some differences in their viewpoints about what was going on, the validity of the question raised, and the answers given to it, by miller had become more interesting to the writer of this blog. However, one may not be able to avoid the fact that God remains a mystery to all humanity, exactly as the last paragraph stated above by some Bible experts.
END.
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