"Mark T" <mark@home.in.oz> wrote in message

A LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO LIGHT - Farrell Till
Once the seeds of doubt had been planted in my mind, I began to see that

Bible wasn't a book with just a few problems; it was riddled with
inconsistencies, discrepancies, contradictions, and absurdities.
As long as
I believed that the Bible was inerrant, for example, I was able to
rationalize the barbaric nature of God as presented in the Old

accepted the premise that God was not immoral in ordering the massacre

children and babies (Num. 31:17; 1 Sam. 15:3), for if he could create

he had the right to take life; if he killed children and babies in the
heathen nations around Israel, he was actually doing them a favor,

they would go to heaven rather than grow up to be like their wicked

To my embarrassment and discredit, I have to admit that I actually

this kind of stuff when I was a fundamentalist minister. Once my faith

inerrancy was shaken, however, I was able to see the folly of stupid
attempts like these to justify the despicable conduct of the Hebrew god.
When I crossed that line, I had gone too far ever to turn back again.
from http://vanallens.com/exchristian/fartil.htm

just the example of what happened with farrell in his understanding of
numbers 31:17 alone should be a warning. for in the end, he cannot
see the wrath of God, the severity of the cross, the warning of jude
11 against "the error of balaam for profit," and the judgement of
sinners.

The old testament God is the new testament God:

jude11: Woe to them! They have taken the way of Cain; they have rushed
for profit into Balaam's error; they have been destroyed in Korah's
rebellion.
12These men are blemishes at your love feasts, eating with you without
the slightest qualm--shepherds who feed only themselves. They are
clouds without rain, blown along by the wind; autumn trees, without
fruit and uprooted--twice dead.
13They are wild waves of the sea, foaming up their shame; wandering
stars, for whom blackest darkness has been reserved forever.
14Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about these men: "See, the
Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones
15to judge everyone, and to convict all the ungodly of all the ungodly
acts they have done in the ungodly way, and of all the harsh words
ungodly sinners have spoken against him."
16These men are grumblers and faultfinders; they follow their own evil
desires; they boast about themselves and flatter others for their own
advantage.

the error of balaam was his strategy for the midianites of moab to
seduce the israelites. balaam could not curse israel - and so his
plan was to seduce them into immorality and idolatry - so that God
himself would judge them.

numbers 31
15 "Have you allowed all the women to live?" he asked them.
16 "They were the ones who followed Balaam's advice and were the means
of turning the Israelites away from the LORD in what happened at Peor,
so that a plague struck the LORD's people.
17 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a
man,

18 but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.
sin has never been funny, nor has God ever been slight about sin -
only merciful in his forbearance towards sinners. esau was not
killed, cain was not killed, yet they both threatened the people of
God's existence and our salvation. but, balaam and these midianites
had proposed to curse God's people and to lead them to sin (as a
method of destroying them).
farrell till no longer teaches the God of the bible - but rather the
god of his imagination and design. a god who would not act upon the
sin of the israelites and a god who would not judge the source of that
sin (the conspirators: balaam and the midianites of moab) with the
penalty of death.
if one cannot understand the wrath of God towards sin then one will
have much trouble understanding the bloody cross.
for him, the cross surely must become redifined or else it is just
another example of, "the despicable conduct of the Hebrew god."