Give Me an Answer -
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 ก.ย. 2024
- Cliffe Knechtle has a great conversation with college students at a campus in the southwest US.
The "Give Me An Answer" ministry began as an outgrowth of the dialogues Cliffe Knechtle has had with students on various university campuses throughout the United States. These universities include the University of Maine, Harvard, MIT, University of Florida, University of Texas, University of Wisconsin, University of Minnesota, University of California Los Angeles, University of California San Diego, Berkeley, Stanford, University of Hawaii and the University of Washington. Cliffe spoke on these campuses in front of the Student Union or Library at noon for five to ten minutes. At the close of his initial remarks, he'd open up the time for questions and answers, which usually turned into a two to four hour dialogue with students. His crowd size ranged from 25 - 500 students at a time, and between classes, new students would join the discussion. This is an extremely effective way to reach a large number of university students with the Gospel of Christ.
I like this guy questioning. He’s really seeking. Not just arguing for the sake of it.
I struggle with this one also, it never really got answered in depth, the way I see it is God judged the people on sins there and sins that would happen when Gods people enter the land. Like an early end time judgment of sorts. These people would have influenced Gods people in a bad way so fo the greater good the judgement came early.
Just try as a Christian to get my head around the fact they were told to kill when the commandments say not to and God is the representation of the law
@@Adam-ku8vl We are so intertwined that if God didn’t wipe everyone out that culture very well may have came right back. Those children, at least some will continue the legacy of their parents most likely. It must be put to a complete end.
@@Adam-ku8vl I’d add an analogy about morality like “isn’t it not fair how children are killed by abortion or terriost attacks? They did nothing wrong, but most of the time, the parents didn’t handle their business or countries are fighting each other”
Cliff touched on it, but needed to dig deeper….
Take an atheist family ……The Mom stays home with 3 kids & Dad’s the sole bread earner…..he decides to rob a bank, he gets caught, goes to jail, now the family will endure the wrath from his sins…..no money coming in, loses housing, food is hard to come by, living in a shelter, Mom has to work, kids get into trouble because of no supervision, etc……..were they innocent, YEP, did they have to endure hardship because of their Dad’s criminal behavior, YES
Way to dish out knowledge in a kind and loving way to help people think through tough issues.
Amazing patients with the man in red shoes. Well done Cliffe!
This gentleman asked real questions. I can see Cliffe had a difficult time justifying biblical genocide. Thank you for posting this video despite the challenge you had, shows humanity.
Aawww! Love hearing about souls coming to Christ.
Cliffe was so patient with this guy explaining the same subject in different ways to help that guy understand. That guy still refuses to submit to the Lord or believe in God. I pray the Lord continues to draw that guy to Himself.
If God did not put an end to their evil practices it would have been passed down to the next generation and so on. I believe God had mercy on the children.
the questions need to be asked, "On what basis do we say anything is moral? Anything is right or wrong? How did you come to that conclusion?"
+Wesley Dickens
Not from the bible anyway!!!
How do you come to that conclusion? What makes "the bible" any less valid than any other source?
Wesley Dickens
Is slavery morally alright?
I say no but if you think morality comes from the bible then you have to say yes.
+170221dn where does the greek or hebrew scripture mention slavery?
Wesley Dickens
Depends on how you define slavery, but to me it is owning people and being allowed to buy or sell them. I guess you haven't really read the bible?
Even though he slay me, i still have faith in him -Job 13:15
Job is a fool.
The way I see things I believe that God cleansing a people, also means separation of the wicked and those who had faith in God. In all reality, if God did punish a people which was likely all if not most adults, there would have been a nation of parentless infants, which makes sense that God would take the innocent children to him
The ending of Cliffe's remarks was rather weak. I have used the following analogy to explain why God does not intervene to protect the children from the divine judgment the adults incurred: Imagine a father driving home from a party with his family when he is drunk. As a result of his drunkenness he drives the car into an oncoming semi-truck and everybody in the car is killed. Why didn't God miraculously transport the innocent parties out the vehicle and let the father alone suffer the consequences of his foolish choice to drive drunk? Because we are genuinely free to choose what we'll do. And this entails that we are responsible for, and experience, the consequences - good AND BAD - of our choices. Were God to constantly intervene to prevent the destructive consequences of our choices, we would not truly have the freedom to choose. But God is determined that we be free moral agents; because such freedom, among other things, is necessary to genuinely loving Him. Our free moral agency, then, is a tremendous and a terrible gift. Our choices, whether good or bad, rarely affect only ourselves. Our choices ripple outward in their effects touching many people, which is why, morally, God commands us so strictly and hates our sin so powerfully.
God would not carefully parcel out his judgment upon pagan nations, protecting the children from the consequences of the choices of the wicked adults, for the same reason he would not miraculously suspend the terrible consequences of the drunken father's choice to drive his family home: He respects our freedom to choose - however horrible the result ends up being.
When you're on drugs, things get muddled.
+Phil Curr on drugs?
Cliffe with the alley hoop
I want to find that video lol
It’s crazy to me how people can’t see the flaw in their logic when it comes to questioning Gods actions. They complain and question why doesn’t God “play God” and stop evil when it happens but then when he does “play God” and killed off an incredibly evil culture that was slaughtering infants for an idol they say God is a tyrant and a murderer. You can’t have it both ways, you can’t complain when he doesn’t stop evil and then turn around a reject him when he does.
The children did not really die, they changed locations.
2nd time i see the guy come back to cliffe.. hes really searching for truth and really wanting to understand, God please guide him to find Jesus 🙏
I remember this guy from a different video. But his dreads are a lot longer.
Yeess!! I thought so too... episode 1914 worship
Life in flesh is temporary. If i’m one of the casualty that will be taken away as an innocent kid, i would choose that and be with the creator than dwelling in a surrounding full of sins in the earth.
I really like this guy, praying hat God will draw him to Jesus. He has a good radio voice lol😂
I think if you don't believe in Jesus, and your first issue is to question the old testament, you are not arguing in good faith, and should be called out. I don't believe in Jesus because of the old testament I believe in the Old Testament because of Jesus. It's like trying to jump to calculus first and then saying math is wrong because calculus is too hard to understand.
Dis guys dilemma with God is evidence of how real & historical Scripture is, b/c it's d same dilemma Abraham had with God b4 d destruction of Sodom & Gomora. Gen 18:23 & 25, Abraham asked God "...Will u sweep away d righteous with d wicked?...Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?”
D difference b/n dis guy & Abraham is dat Abraham already recognized God as d God of d universe, as d final authority (judge), thus was acting as an intercessor for Lot & his family, Abraham had seen evidence of God in his personal life. Dis guy, though his question is very valid but is asking it from a perspective of struggling with who God is, is God moral? But dats life, b/c lots of times ur view on certain issues is dependent upon ur experiences & level of knowledge in life
This guy thinks God has no right to do what he wants to do. The world was formed through Jesus Christ. Sin has deformed us but Jesus came to transform the body, soul, and the spirit and our twisted minds too. Salvation became universal in new testament. The old testament was a shadow of the latest things to come. see www.gotquestions.org
Tough question on issue of babies being killed...
Jewish community doesn't accept Yeshua's sacrifice for all of us not just them. I found out that Jesus is God Almighty the literal hard way. Please follow Him too? ❤❤❤
It's not the evidence thats recquired for salvation but faith in Jesus Christ through the working of the Holy Spirit. So it comes to a prayer as salvation is free gift through faith in Jesus Christ. There is nothing to lose. see www.gotquestions.org
No way he cut his hair lol he came on before with dreadlocks...
this guy has brought this same topic up before
Yeah i really respect the way he talks and brings up issues in the Bible, seems like he can come to terms with some of God's commands.
I have to disagree with Cliffe Knetchtle here. He seems to want to reinterpret God's commands in Joshua and Judges to mean that God only intended for the Israelite soldiers to kill the adults, and the children happened to be swept up in this. God does, however, explicitly command the deaths of the children. I don't say this to imply that God's command was immoral. I just don't think that Cliffe should misrepresent the passages in this way to make them seem palatable to unbelievers.
+Kevin Watson This discussion got me thinking too, and I'm a firm believer. So I thought and came to this conclusion about the original question, "How can a just God punish/destroy/kill children, something that would be unacceptable in today's society?"Firstly, when I read the book of Revelation I know that one day God will judge all people. Because he is a just God, I can assume that children and adults who are dead, however they died, will have to give an account against God Holy standard, because we are being accused of causing an offense against him. If a person/child was unable to control their actions, did not understand it was wrong in the first place etc, I believe God will give those people/children another chance, this is what will happen in the millennium kingdom. At the end, they will be judged once more.Secondly, yes God did order the Jews to go into here and there and destroy everything, man, women, child and beast, but you do not know what those other nations had done. Maybe they had killed children of their own, or of other people. Maybe it wasn't them, but it was their forefathers that done such wrong, sometimes in our modern society it is the next generations that pay for the mistakes of our forefathers.Thirdly, the world is in a messed up state. God did not intend for life to be this way, he did not intend people to die! Our end is going to be death in this life ,unless Jesus comes and takes those with him. But for everyone that has lived so far, death has come. Did it matter how many years that person lived? Did they take anything to the grave with them? Did they impact humanity in a great way? (No because we still have poverty, death, illness etc) You see a just God will make all things right! For that baby that was aborted 23 weeks, God will give it life again. For that old man who lived in pain and suffering until the age of 120, God will make it right.The book of Revelation talks about how God will heal the nations. What a wonderful thought. I know its hard to find a solution in this world, to end suffering. But only God can do it. And I've looked high and low, talked to many people, my heart, my brain, my soul can only see this solution, this Jesus as the answer to all our problems.Amen
Jagdev Chandard Well, I've heard two responses two this that I think are good. If you read Paul Copan's book "Is God a Moral Monster?" you'll see that he thinks that these accounts of the Israelites "utterly destroying" these peoples are even meant to be taken literally. He thinks of them as hyperbole akin to a football team exclaiming, "We slaughtered them!" when they only won by a point. Paul Copan provides evidence for this view, and I think that this explanation is plausible.
But if we're to take these accounts literally, then William Lane Craig goes from here to provide a moral theory that shows that God's command and His character do not conflict with each other. Here's a link to that article: www.reasonablefaith.org/slaughter-of-the-canaanites.
Thankyou for those other views.
Ultimately, God works in a way that is beyond our understanding at times, but he is the definition of good and all he can do is good.
Jagdev Chandard Amen.
Not forget that God gave them over 400 years to repent and communicated through his prophets to turn these people away from the atrocities they were committing. God also judged the Jews hundreds of years later for the very same thing he held the caanitites accountable for. God is consistent and just from the scriptures.
He says the law wasn't God's best. Yeah about that. Read below
Deuteronomy 4:6-8 KJVS
Keep therefore and do them ; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. [7] For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them, as the Lord our God is in all things that we call upon him for ? [8] And what nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day?
God is the life giver, He has the right to give and take back when ever He choose to, He has His reasons. He moves both adults and children from one place to another, and does not have to answer to us! He neither must nor needs to ask us for permission before He is going to judge or not, for it is not we who know best and have His role! God is / has the ultimate power and authority, and that means He is not accountable to anyone! We are not in a position to teach God morality and love, to teach him how to make important decisions, as if we are the ones who see everything in a single present, both past and future! It is not humble to question Almighty Holy and Righteous God regarding His actions.
God possesses infinite knowledge. God knows the only way to bring the Israelites to Him is a slow process of leading them out of their old ways.
The question could be rephrased as... Is it morale for God to move a child from his/her physical life to their eternal life. Would you be upset if you passed away but was immediately in paradise. Person seems caught up on the death but failed to grasp what came next. Sorry Cliffe didn't dive into that aspect of the question.
The guy makes a very good point at about 17:35 How does the sacrifice of Jesus forgive other people? If I wrong somebody, surely it's up to me to ask forgiveness from the person I've wronged. Lets say I am badly beaten up and left for dead, then some time later, the person who nearly killed me genuinely feels remorse and begs forgiveness from Christ, and Christ forgives him. Shouldn't that guy be asking *me* for forgiveness, not Christ? And, I'm under no obligation to accept his forgiveness. Yes, forgiveness is a very magnanimous gesture, but it's entirely up to the wronged person to accept or deny the apology. Lets take an extreme example and say a murderer rapes and kills Cliffe's wife and daughters, I'm sure Cliffe would be very reluctant to forgive the man who committed such a crime, and quite rightly, he may refuse to forgive him for such a despicable act. Yet it's ok for Christ to accept his forgiveness if it's genuine. And when the murderer dies, because he's accepted Christ as his savior, he spends eternity in heaven.
+bonnie43uk If someone beats you up, in a way that's two crimes. It's a crime against you, deserving maybe a few years in prison, and a crime against the eternal God (since you were created with value by Him), which deserves, fittingly, eternal punishment. Jesus's death and resurrection forgives the crime against God, not the crime against you.
John Hsu well, I disagree with you John when you say a particular crime fittingly deserves eternal punishment. I can think of no crime whatsoever that deserves a punishment that is never ending. Think seriously about it John, lets say hypothetically you are sentenced to 10 billion years of eternal punishment. ( i cannot even envisage such a time scale), well, even 10 billion years is but a tiny drop in the ocean compared to eternity.
***** If Jesus ends up in heaven, then how can it be a sacrifice?, that sounds like a reward to me. Also, i didn't ask anyone to die for whatever sins i commit, if I do wrong, then it's up to me to pay for my wrongdoings, not someone else. I would not want another person to suffer for sins I am responsible for.
***** Thats not a free will choice of me to go to hell, that is a threat. I've not seen any credible evidence of God, so i have no reason to believe he exists. I choose not to believe in something unless I have credible evidence. I'm not mocking God, how can I mock something that I can't see hear smell touch or taste. Ada2step, if you were born in a Muslim country, or Hindu country you would now be a Hindu or a Muslim, why don't those people believe in the Christian God.?
+bonnie43uk Yeah I had that question too, but think of it like this. It's not the crime that matters, it's who you commit the crime against. If I slap you in the face, there isn't much punishment. If I slap president obama in the face, I'll get mauled by the secret service and arrested. In both cases I committed the same crime, a slap, but it was the one on the other end, who received the crime, that determines the punishment. Now imagine slapping God in the face. That's basically what sin is. It's stepping on God's glory despite all He's given us. A crime against an eternal God with infinite glory deserves an infinite punishment. A mathematical way to see it:
me (finite) + sin (infinite) = me (finite) + hell (infinite) -both sides equal
And this logic applies to Jesus and what He did on the cross. You take the right side of the above equation and set it equal to what jesus did:
me (finite) + hell (infinite) = jesus (infinite) + death on the cross (finite) -both sides equal
It's important to see that "forgiveness" in this sense doesn't mean that God just waves off sin on whim. He can't do that. He must carry out justice, and He poured out that justice on Himself.
On what grounds is God wrong?
Science has much to say about morality........ since religions are conflicted.....
+veganath science says nothing about morality only the social sciences say a little but that's where you get things like moral relativity which can offer no absolutes,
Isn't that the gentlemen in a couple of past videos with long hair and braided? Very similar way of talking but diff appearance
Episode 1914 - worship
This young man argues about God having the authority to judge this man's decisions. Is this because you are the ruler of your universe? If this guy thinks he can fly will he be angry or argue with gravity when he makes that sudden stop on the ground?
You can see the cognitive dissonance in Cliffe. His programming is breaking down.
This guy must be pro life.
Atheists talking about morality in the Old Testament reminds me of my 3 year old son telling me about pirates and Cookie Monster.
Explain?
@@BrockJamesStory Because it doesn't make sense.
@@zeraphking1407 the Old Testament shows how God is loving and caring and it also shows what God likes and does not like, the New Test simply adds to the Old
@@BrockJamesStory Atheists don't make sense. Not the Bible.
If God changes his mind on morality then morality is subjective. Nothing is certain. If God's standards in the law never change then polygamy, sex slaves, selling your daughter, slavery, rape, killing disobedient children are all good, right and holy today. He says the law wasn't God's best! Read deut 4 and get back to me on that one.. . This man is pure evil.
He gave the Jewish people more than 400 years to stop their sinful practices, if you ask me that is a lot of patience.
If he gives us life then he can take it back in order to judge us and stop evil.
@JohnjOcampo Your comment is useless. It doesn't address my statement in any way. Try again
@@realchurch2693 you are implying the sinful actions of humans were done because that was God's law are you not?
Evil has always been the same since the beginning of time, it hasn't changed.
@JohnjOcampo I'm not implying, I'm stating explicitly God commanded slavery, genocide and the like. To argue contrary to this tells me you either haven't read the bible in any serious way or are so warped you refuse to accept what's plainly written. Which is it?
@@realchurch2693 God never commanded jews to own slaves, they started that practice on their own.
As i said before if God created life than he can take it away to judge us for our wrong doings, i am ok with that once you understand that evil cannot win but clearly you are not.
I don't understand why it's so hard to believe that the sons of God came down and made it with the daughters of men spoken in Genesis 6 and is elaborated in The book of Enoch the Bible is a supernatural book it's not a far stretch.
This guy is hard to listen to.
This guy is still living? ;)
yes he is, in one of his other videos he talks about ISIS
The first three minutes he talks about 'some unnamed student'. ... Who? Can we talk to this person? Can we get their perspective? Can we do _something_ to confirm this tale _actually happened?_ ... Nope. So we have _only Cliffe's word for it_ that _any_ of this happened. Given that we _know_ that people are very much prone to 'making up stories' of this exact sort, this doesn't impress me much.
Of course, now that I look at it, the _whole format_ of this is kinda questionable. I mean... he's going onto campuses and talking to random students. That's not really a good way to go about assessing 'what is' and 'what is not', but it _is_ a good way to 'convince people'. Unfortunately 'convincing people' is how _so many_ of the disasters of history have happened. The majority of the American public was 'convinced' that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Turns out... no, there weren't. And yet so many people who _were_ alive are now _dead_ because 'people became convinced'. I think if we're going to go about trying to decide 'what is and what is not', given the disasters that have happened, we _really_ should be using a better method than this.
Then there's the bit about things not being 'moral absolutes' but instead 'moral legislation'. Um? God had no problem _at all_ putting down 'moral absolutes' about things like sex and what clothing you cannot wear and what you cannot eat, but we have to hand-wave and call this 'legislation' instead? What makes any of the rest of it 'absolutes' instead of just 'legislation'? If you can go about saying 'no, these are the rules because I say so'... kinda kills the idea that you can't do that _again_ with something else like slavery, divorce, or similar.
Then there's the bit about punishing the innocent, where he talks about alcoholics and addicts. Well... no, not at all the same situation. To _make it_ the same situation, let's take the crack-head. What _God_ did was say 'okay, crack is illegal, so we are going to throw the addict _and his child_ in prison', which I think everyone can see is immoral. Yes, the crack dealer is immoral in that situation but _so is the judge_ for imprisoning the child along with the addict. To try to say the child 'is not being punished' in that instance (as Cliffe tries right after) is sophistry. No, they are, and God _could have_ removed _just the bad people_ from the situation and left the rest alone, but didn't, making the morality of the suffering caused _on God_ and not on 'well people are bad'.
Then there's this whole notion that being 'the creator of something' gives you the right to 'do whatever you want with it', effectively. Um... no. If _we humans_ were to 'create life' (such as building it molecule by molecule) that doesn't automatically mean 'we can just do whatever we want with it'. Morality _still_ has constraints in those situations, and 'group punishment' is not okay. It's something we humans, being limited and flawed, sometimes use (and even there it's pretty widely criticized), but if you're going to propose an infinitely powerful and infinitely wise being, I think we should _expect better_ from a being like that than from something as limited and flawed as we are.
Then he brings up the cross, which I _also_ find wildly immoral. The notion that forgiveness 'costs' is, I think, a bit silly. It doesn't _necessarily_ do so. The point of 'payment' _can_ be restorative (to put back what was taken) but it can _also_ be corrective (to entice the prevention of this sort of behavior in the future) or retributive (to cause suffering where there has been suffering). For instance, if I destroy someone's eye, destroying _my_ eye in return is... stupid. It does _nothing at all_ to 'restore' the person whose eye was taken, and outside of a sort of 'vengeance' idea it doesn't seem to _help_ anything at all. Instead we tend to do things like lock people up for it _to prevent them doing it again._ We've worked out that 'an eye for an eye' is a _really_ bad method of dealing with things like this, though it might be the only method an ancient people had (since prisons are _really_ expensive). And, of course, more than this we note that the 'ability to transfer' a payment from one to another seems tied to 'how bad is the thing that was done'. If I _litter,_ pretty much any judge would allow my friend Jim to come along and pay the fine for me. But _no_ judge, _anywhere,_ would let Jim take my prison sentence for murder.
Then there's the bit about the school forgiving the shooters, and saying that they can't because they weren't the ones killed. I agree the students can't forgive for those who were killed, but they _can_ forgive for _their own_ losses, the loss of friends, the terror, the pain endured while fleeing, etc. There's _lots_ of things that the still living people can forgive for, and _some_ of that is _even_ the killing itself because doing that killing _took those people away_ from those who are still living.
Then, ultimately, he gets down to 'God is good by definition', at which point... um... no. When you do good things, you're good. When you do bad things, you're bad. He says maybe he doesn't 'understand', but he 'trusts'. That's how we end up with 'battered person syndrome', which all the various forms of 'God is always good' _really_ seems to look like, at least to me.