Why does God Hide from us?

[Danmark]

Orthodoxy claims God revealed himself to Adam and Eve, and a host of prophets since, including Jesus and Paul. Except for the LDS church, and some scattered believers, most do not believe there is ongoing divine revelation, or at least no recent scripture directly from God.

Many of the great 'saints' have remarked on the silence of God. We know there are many forces and fields in the universe we cannot detect with our basic senses, but we can detect them with instruments.

But we have discovered no force or field or radiation that suggests God exists.
The affirmative of this debate topic is that if God exists, we should be able to detect that existence; since we cannot, there is no God.

Frequently we hear the claim that 'God chooses not to reveal himself' or 'He already has, you just need to read scripture and listen to Jesus in your heart.'

This raises the related question, 'why would God not reveal himself for 2000 years?'

[Danmark]

[Replying to post 10 by earl]

There will always be people who claim to have seen a 'sign.'
What has NOT happened is any new revelation from God in 2000 years that has been accepted by even a majority of Christians.

Name a single scripture in the last 1800 years that has the status of Mark.

[1213]

But we have discovered no force or field or radiation that suggests God exists.

Bible tells God is spirit and love that dwells in disciples of Jesus. Do you think Love is not in the disciples of Jesus? How do you think it should show, if Love is in some people?

God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.
John 4:24

He who doesn't love doesn't know God, for God is love.
1 John 4:8

Don't you know that you are a temple of God, and that God's Spirit lives in you?
1 Corinthians 3:16

This raises the related question, 'why would God not reveal himself for 2000 years?'

I believe there is no good reason to reveal Himself more. Why think that God is like some kind of show dog that makes tricks to amuse people?

[SallyF]

The simplest and most obvious reason is still that all gods are just inventions of human imaginations.

No god is EVER shown to exist anywhere else.

Quoting human-written "scripture" is no proof at all.

[Tcg]

3. Since God wanted his message revealed and has good reason to know it is no longer deemed authentic or authoritative by billions of people today, why not give us a refresher revelation?

This is a perfectly reasonable expectation. Of course going a bit further, one has to wonder why God isn't with us always. Why does he hide for any length of time?

As has already been mentioned, our "experience" of God is exactly the experience we'd have if God doesn't exist.


Tcg

[William]

Pre-earth in the Spirit world:
GOD hid HIMself from us pre-earth when we were trying to make up our minds to believe HIM or to reject HIM as a liar. To show us HIS divinity, HIS power and glory would have coerced all of us to accept HE was our GOD, overriding our free will. Once we chose by our free will and separated all of creation into those who accepted HIM as GOD who were chosen to be HIS heavenly bride (the elect) even though some later sinned (the sinful elect) and the eternally sinful who rejected HIM as a liar and a false god.

GOD reveals HIMself:
Job 38:7...while the morning stars sang together and all the sons of GOD shouted for joy? tells us that at the creation of the physical universe there were people who witnessed that creation and sang HIS praise and shouted their joy!!!

Then in the context of this verse about the creation of the physical universe, we read Rom 1:18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men WHO SUPPRESS THE TRUTH BY THEIR WICKEDNESS. 19 FOR WHAT MAY BE KNOWN ABOUT GOD IS PLAIN TO THEM, BECAUSE GOD HAS MADE IT PLAIN TO THEM. 20 For since the creation of the world Gods invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, BEING UNDERSTOOD FROM THE THINGS THAT WERE MADE (ie created, at the creation) 21 For although THEY KNEW GOD, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking and darkened in their foolish hearts.

Verse 21 and 25 They EXCHANGED THE TRUTH OF GOD FOR A LIE, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is forever worthy of praise! Amen. tells us that sinners who know the truth suppress it because they love sinfulness more.

The purpose of housing all sinners together in the earth was for the sinul elect to see the truth about the suffering sin causes and to seek repentance, redemption and repudiating their loving idolatry of the reprobate.

So not only would further self revelation NOT do the world any good, it just might cause them to reevaluate their strategy and stop their evil to make it harder for the sinful elect to reject them and turn to GOD themselves.

William: Are you Ted?

[Danmark]

I believe there is no good reason to reveal Himself more. Why think that God is like some kind of show dog that makes tricks to amuse people?

This is a very old argument, that for some unknown reason God wanted to reveal himself to the ancients, before we had science to explain much of the unknown. But now God either does not care, or he wants to play 'hard to get' despite His previous stance of claiming his existence is obvious.

This strikes me as a ridiculous position to take.

What makes much more sense is that before science, people had a need to make up fantastic explanations for what they didn't understand. As we entered the age of science, the fantasies became less compelling. This image of a 'god' of the bible makes no sense. Science does.

[1213]

This is a very old argument, that for some unknown reason God wanted to reveal himself to the ancients, before we had science to explain much of the unknown. But now God either does not care What makes much more sense is that before science, people had a need to make up fantastic explanations for what they didn't understand...

When people make explanations, they seem to be like Mother Earth cults (=evolution theory), sun God people worship nature, naturally, because that is what they can observe. Bible God is very different to those naturalistic beliefs.

By what the Bible tells, it is not really much about God revealing Himself, but about teaching what is good and right. In Bible we have announcement that eternal life is for righteous and we should love others and remain in truth. If we would not have that message, maybe God would announce it again, but because we have the message, I dont see why to announce it again.

[Zzyzx]

.
[Replying to post 17 by 1213]

Of course, let's just read the Bible and not bother with <ugh> science or with learning about the real world we inhabit. Repeating Goddidit is far simpler and easier than actual study.

We can learn that plagues (and presumably pandemics) are punishment for sins, or homosexuality, or adultery, or divorce, or abortion, or whatever preachers oppose (in public, while often participating themselves in private).

[Danmark]

When people make explanations, they seem to be like Mother Earth cults (=evolution theory), sun God people worship nature, naturally, because that is what they can observe. Bible God is very different to those naturalistic beliefs.

Really, 1213? You are equating evolution with cults like that of Genesis? The "Sun God" and "Mother Earth cults" are EXACTLY like the beliefs shown in Genesis and the entire Bible. They are all based on religious belief and can be treated the same.

Evolution is different from all of them since it is based on scientific observation. Perhaps you don't understand the difference between 'just looking' and scientific observation. I honestly don't know, based on what you wrote. So, there are many here who would be happy to explain if you ask.

[1213]

Really, 1213? You are equating evolution with cults like that of Genesis? The "Sun God" and "Mother Earth cults" are EXACTLY like the beliefs shown in Genesis and the entire Bible. They are all based on religious belief and can be treated the same.

Evolution is different from all of them since it is based on scientific observation. Perhaps you don't understand the difference between 'just looking' and scientific observation...

Yes, Mother Earth means earth has created all species so, basically it is exactly the same as Evolution that has created all species. Evolution theory is only like modernization of Mother Earth belief.