[Pebbles_Nibbles]

In the formation of our world, God was not beholden to preexistent substance or matter. For the "things which are seen were not made of things which do appear." On the contrary, all things, material or spiritual, stood up before the Lord Jehovah at His voice, and were created for His own purpose. The heavens and all the host of them, the earth and all things that are therein, are not only the work of His hand, they came into existence by the breath of His mouth.
The Lord had given evidence that by His power He could in one short hour dissolve the whole frame of nature. He can turn things upside down, and destroy the things that man has built up in his most firm and substantial manner. He "removeth the mountains," He "overturneth them in his anger," He "shaketh the earth out of her place, and the pillars thereof tremble." "The pillars of heaven tremble and are astonished at his reproof." "The mountains quake at him, and the hills melt, and the earth is burned at his presence.
All things stood up before Him at His voice.....yaaaaaar they ALL did.

[reggie_woic]

"....were created for His own purpose"
To do what with, again?

He gave us Free will....but for salvation, we have to do what HE says.
Failure to which, according to Him, will result in eternal damnation.

[ATLian]

Someone asked an interesting question - what was god doing for all that time before he made the earth?

Biblical man is only 8,000 or so years old, while god has always been around. It's common sense to assume that a perfect god would have been existing in a perfect state for all that time. So anything that was created later would have shattered the perfect state (since you can't add or subtract anything to a perfect state and still call it perfect). Why would god wake up one day and not just change what was already perfect, but completely shatter it by creating man (who is full of sin) and other deadly things like the polio and AIDS viruses, etc.

It just doesn't make sense to me.

[reggie_woic]

You need to find yourself a catholic priest, ATLian--those guys can really explain stuff to you.