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[Silo Door]

> False prophets are consistently identified as defrauders, and God is consistently identified as the source of truth.

I know this, of course. It does seem bizarre to invert the two but God has done some bizarre things within the Bible with this being an example, imo of course. God himself claims to have done this same act in the Ezekiel chapter.

Did you really think I thought the false prophets were supposed to be the heroes of the Bible instead of God?

> No, my case has God deserting people to their own distorted ways of thinking. The deception in Ezekiel is clearly in the people's own hearts.

I disagree but I feel no amount of discussion will get us on the same page here.

> Pretty soon I'll have to desert you to your own distorted thinking.

You mean actively send a lying spirit into my mouth?

> The point is that when people have something in their hearts, what the other person says or does changes nothing.

In all other cases but the Christian God, I would agree. The Christian God is said to be sovereign over everything and his will alone will be done. With this in mind, the Christian God could easily change their hearts if he wanted to.

> God is not the liar—the Lying Spirit—in these texts. But people whose hearts are dark, whose thinking is distorted, they see God as the Great Misleader, the Great Deceiver, the Great False Prophet Himself. When these people's hearts are so hard, they can't see God any other way.

Let's say this is true. Fine. The part I object to is the sending lying spirits and enticing/deceiving the false prophets, both actions carried out by God. Thus, it isn't a "let them do what they will" sort of issue.

Taking that into consideration, that they saw God as "the Great Misleader, the Great Deceiver, the Great False Prophet Himself", it seems like God tried to prove them right!

Bringing Trump into it, it would be similar to if he sent a spy into Iran in order to sabotage them by lying to them and sets him up with a plane ticket in order that he may infiltrate their ranks and lie. Would you say that's an honest thing to do? No. Has the United States done similar things? Yes, if I had to guess. Would that point to dishonest tactics and be a blow to the trustworthiness of Trump (not like he needs another blow to that) for at least the Iranian people? Definitely.

Could you even make an argument that it's morally justified? Perhaps but the topic is trustworthiness. I never tried to argue God is moral monster here because I don't think I'd make any headway with Christians. Come to think of it, I don't know why I thought I'd make any headway on this discussion and I guess I knew deep down I wouldn't. I guess morality is a trickier subject to debate with Christians, or with anyone else for that matter I guess, than trustworthiness/honesty (imo).

In the analogy, we are like the Iranian people as it's humans being deceived.

But actually I think there's even another layer to this as the verses say things like: Now therefore behold, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; the Lord has declared disaster for you.” and I, the Lord, have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand against him and will destroy him from the midst of my people Israel. so it would be like Trump using spies to lie in order to start a war so that Iran can be punished.

[jimwalton]

> Did you really think I thought the false prophets were supposed to be the heroes of the Bible instead of God?

I don't really know who you are or anything about you, so it's improper for me to assume one way or the other. The position you are advocating, though, is that God has placed Himself in the role of the false prophet, which is biblically untenable.

> The Christian God is said to be sovereign over everything and his will alone will be done. With this in mind, the Christian God could easily change their hearts if he wanted to.

God's "sovereignty" is often mistakenly thought to be that He can do absolutely anything, but it's impossible that is true.

* God can't act in a way contradictory to His nature (He can't lie, be finite, sin, etc.)
* He can't do anything self-contradictory (make a square circle, a married bachelor, etc.)

Therefore He can't interfere with human free will (or else it's not free, which would be a contradiction). God can only change hearts when He is given permission by the free agent. He cannot change a heart against the will of the possessor of that heart.

> The part I object to is the sending lying spirits and enticing/deceiving the false prophets, both actions carried out by God. Thus, it isn't a "let them do what they will" sort of issue.

Yeah, we've been over this multiple times. But, as you said, obviously no amount of discussion will get us on the same page here. You see God as a hostile, malevolent agent of deceit here, but that would be both self-contradictory (God is truth) and contrary to the entire position the Bible takes about him (God is good).

> Could you even make an argument that it's morally justified?

I have. God is not a malevolent deceiver because that is contradictory to His nature (truth and omnibenevolent). Instead, God leaves them to the lifestyle they have chosen for themselves (as I have shown from the overview of the texts, looking beyond the superficial words; I have also shown that the translation of the word as "deceit" is even suspect). After a while, as is conspicuous from our discussion, no amount of conversation will change a person's perspective.

> so it would be like Trump

I think that my trying to use Trump as an analogy was misguided on my part. The analogy fails on so many levels, to try to use it is just fraught was disaster in trying to make my point. I think we have to nix my analogy either for straight conversation or a different analogy.