Bible Study: The God who Lies and Deceives

[Rhondazvous]

You ask why an atheist forum would have a bible study. First, this thread doesn’t represent this forum as a forum. It is just one thread among thousands. Second, it is to show that I don’t reject the bible without knowledge of what it is I am rejecting.

Forget Tim Leedom. The bible is the book your church doesn’t want you to read. They give you so many memory verses in Sunday school that you can go your whole life thinking you know what’s in the bible. Read on and you may find that you’ve been accepting the bible without full knowledge of what you’ve been accepting.

Part 1 of this bible study is about God the Father, and today’s installment is called The God who Lies and Deceives

“That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us:” (Hebrews 6: 18)
Either this is not true, or the biblical concept of lying is on the liberal end of the spectrum. After twenty-five years of studying the bible under sincere, authoritative and passionate teachers I never once had anyone tell me about Ezekiel 14:9 .
And if the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the Lord have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand upon him, and will destroy him from the midst of my people Israel. (Ezekiel 14:9)
Perhaps I am misinterpreting this. Perhaps “the Lord” is not actually God himself but some angel God’s using as a cat’s paw to do what he cannot do. That doesn’t have to be the case here, but it is the case elsewhere in the bible .
19 Micaiah continued, “Therefore hear the word of the Lord: I saw the Lord sitting on his throne with all the multitudes of heaven standing around him on his right and on his left.
20 And the Lord said, ‘Who will entice Ahab into attacking Ramoth Gilead and going to his death there?’

“One suggested this, and another that. 21 Finally, a spirit came forward, stood before the Lord and said, ‘I will entice him.’
“‘By what means?’ the Lord asked.
21 “‘I will go out and be a deceiving spirit in the mouths of all his prophets,’ he said.
22 “‘You will succeed in enticing him,’ said the Lord. ‘Go and do it.’
23 “So now the Lord has put a deceiving spirit in the mouths of all these prophets of yours. The Lord has decreed disaster for you.” (1 Kings 22:19-23)
I had to go back and read this again because it sounds like Satan talking to the demons in hell. But again, this is “the Lord” sending a spirit to entice Kind Ahab and giving it a blank check to do whatever’s necessary to accomplish the deed.
And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: (2 Thessalonians 2:11)
So, you see, God doesn’t actually lie. He deceives and deludes people into believing lies others tell. Right. Sure. Tell me anything.
Wait. Who is “They?” they are bad people—unbelievers. God only lies to them. This is a great explanation, as long as we forget that it’s supposed to be impossible for God to lie. Okay, it’s impossible for God to lie to believers. There’s your con man—your confidence man. God takes believers into his confidence. I, the Lord, will lie to all those suckers out there in the world. But you’re smart, I like you, and I’m going to tell you the truth.
I can’t think of a Christian who would have a problem with this passage in Thessalonians. It makes them feel kinda special to know something about the creator of the universe that no one else knows. Human beings lie. We excuse God’s lying because that’s what we do. Tu quoque. Show me a man’s god and I’ll show you the man.