Regarding the April 26 letter A voice in the wilderness from Jake Hjorth: Jake, your understanding of history and humanity is very different than mine!
The Egyptians enslaved the Israelites, drowned the first born males and with whips inflicted cruel labor upon them. As a nation Egypt and her citizens treated all other people cruelly and cannot be considered innocent. This was the way they chose to live.
God creates every man and woman, and since the beginning, gives each person a choice, love me or do not love me. If you love me then prove it by always doing good to your neighbors, your friends and all strangers, even enemies; and, never do harm to anyone.
As a dad I can relate to how God felt when he saw that his sons, the Egyptians, had enslaved and even killed his sons the Israelites. He brought plagues upon them, so they would know that there is a living God, and that they should change their ways.
When this did not work, God did what any dad would do, he made the punishment of the Egyptians fit the crime. He killed the first born Egyptians to redeem his sons from slavery and save them from certain death.
Jesus was the only innocent man to walk this earth. He came to redeem all mankind from the slavery of disbelief in a Creator; whose consequences are the cause of the cruelty and misery which man subjects his fellow man to.
For three years Jesus gathered over 500 followers, and lived the way God intended man to live. He performed countless miracles, and died and rose from the dead to show us that God indeed exists. These 500 finished our Bible, and went throughout the entire world telling others what Jesus did and what he said. Jesus came to give us assurance that God loves us, and if we chose to love him, we will be his sons and daughters forevermore. And this is why, after 2,000 years, the world is a very much better place!
Chuck Flickinger
Hovland
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