Cold Case Christianity: Four Things We Won’t Need in Heaven

This is my reply to an article by J. Warner Wallace entitled

Cold Case Christianity: Four Things We Won’t Need in Heaven 

(But Ought to Pursue Here on Earth)

Posted: 16 Nov 2018 01:31 AM PST

As a Christian, I have a reasonable expectation of Heaven, based on the clear teaching of Scripture and the logical consequence of God’s nature.

Which is about as meaningful as the Calvinist saying "As a Calvinist, I have a reasonable expectation that God causes people to sin, based on the clear teaching of Scripture and the logical consequence of God’s Sovereignty".

I also anticipate a particular experience in Heaven based on the teaching of the Old and New Testament.

 Do you anticipate that time will operate in Heaven the exact same way it does on earth.  Every biblical description of heaven depicts the events there are taking place one after the other with no less temporal chronological progression than we find events taking place on earth.

I’m looking forward to what each of us will become when we are united with God.

You should.  God could have caused Adam and Eve to have "incorruptible" bodies you think Christians will get at the resurrection, and presto, Adam and Eve would have been no more likely to sin than any saint who is now in heaven.  If God can do something to ensure that freewilled sinners never actually sin (which is supposed to be the case after you get to heaven), he could have done the same with the original creation of Adam and Eve, and then, like the saints who are now in heaven, they'd be "free", but they'd be guaranteed to never sin. If you try to refute this analogy by saying the people who have already died and gone to heaven no longer have freewill, that can be allowed as long as you remain consistent with that theory, and admit that because God turns people into righteous robots when they enter heaven, he actually doesn't respect human freewill...which means, contrary to most apologists, God does not have a problem with using the "righteous robot" solution to dissaude people from sinning.   So all of that boring apologetics talk about how God is required to all freewill humans to choose good or evil merely so they can also authentically love him, is total bullshit.  If you think the dead saints who are now in heaven authentically love and worship god despite being unable to sin, then apparently you do not have to be capable of choosing evil, in order to be capable of authentically loving God.  That is, the old worn out "God gave Adam and Eve freewill, if he didn't allow you to sin, you couldn't authentically love him either, and forced love is rape" excuse is total bullshit.

God knew there was a way to get creatures to authentically love him without also giving them the ability to sin...but he rejected that option.  You don't need to be a Calvinist to have biblical justification for saying all human sin on earth is nobody's fault but God's.

At the same time, I recognize there are some earthly pursuits I will abandon in the next life. While many of our cravings and desires will be satisfied once we are reunited with the One who has created us in His Image, some needs will simply vanish once we leave this world. As we think about the future with God, let’s remember what won’t be needed in Heaven so we can live differently while we are here on Earth:

The Need to Have Faith

Faith is the mechanism through which we are saved, and although the nature of faith (as it is described in Scripture) is not blind, it does require us to trust in the most reasonable inference from the evidence Jesus provided, even though we don’t have first-hand access to Jesus or the eyewitnesses who wrote the Gospels:

Hebrews 11:1-2

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

In this life, we are asked to trust in something often unseen (God), on the basis of something that was seen (Jesus as He was described in the Gospels) and for which there is sufficient evidence (as observed in our universe and world). God’s “hiddenness” requires us to draw conclusions and inferences from evidence, but a day is coming when we will see him directly. In that day, faith (as we understand and experience it here on earth) will no longer exist. We will simply know.

Sorry, but Hebrews 11:1 says that faith constitutes evidence (i.e., faith IS the substance of things hoped for, faith IS the evidence of things not seen.   And Paul was very clear that the hope which saves is blind, otherwise (he argues) it wouldn't be "hope":

 24 For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees?
 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it. (Rom. 8:24-25 NAU)

 Wallace continues:

The Need to Study

We won’t find ourselves cracking the books in Heaven to have knowledge about God. We won’t be in seminary classes, trying to understand the complexity of the Trinity or the nature of God. In Heaven, our direct contact with the God of the universe will open our eyes to the mysteries we’ve been struggling to understand:

 Which must mean that because God doesn't kill you right now and take you to heaven right now, he must want you to continue struggling....despite his own rules which say if you get any of this theological bullshit wrong, you go to hell.

1 Corinthians 13:11-12

Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

Our desire to learn will be fully satisfied in Heaven. Much of what we spend hours trying to master here on earth will be available to us immediately once we are in God’s presence.

One has to wonder how much sin would be preempted if God put forth himself the same amount of effort that pastors, scholars and apologists do to "explain" biblical matters.  

The Need to Comfort

We also won’t find ourselves crying on each other’s shoulder in Heaven. In fact, we won’t find ourselves crying at all. We won’t need each other’s comfort in difficult times because there won’t be any difficult times:

Revelation 21:3

And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He shall dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be among them, and He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there shall no longer be any death; there shall no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.”

 But the souls under god's altar appear to notice an injustice in god's delay of justice, despite their formally admitting god is holy and true, no different than our sensing that an earthly judge has done wrong in delaying justice, while we nevertheless couch our complaint in the formal wording "Your honor...."

 9 When the Lamb broke the fifth seal, I saw underneath the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God, and because of the testimony which they had maintained;
 10 and they cried out with a loud voice, saying, "How long, O Lord, holy and true, will You refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth?" (Rev. 6:9-10 NAU)

 Not exactly the reaction you'd expect from anybody whose is honestly "content" with the way the boss is handling things.  They sound more like children who don't understand why Dad is taking so long to get ready to go to McDonalds.

Our current struggles with sin (and the consequences we often experience as a result of our poor choices) will vanish in the next life. Better yet, our search for mercy and justice will be fully realized in God’s presence.

But Christians still have a duty to praise God for the times when other people foist unjust evil upon them:

 40 They took his advice; and after calling the apostles in, they flogged them and ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and then released them.
 41 So they went on their way from the presence of the Council, rejoicing that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for His name. (Acts 5:40-41 NAU)

 In other words, if a Christian woman is raped by a non-Christian man who got mad at her for shrugging off his sexual advances with a biblical quotation or two, it would be spiritual immaturity for her to cry and become depressed, and it would be spiritual maturity for her to rejoice that she was counted worthy to suffer shame for Christ's name. 

And yet something tells me you aren't quite as stupid as biblical theology requires, and thus you do not remind the recently raped emotionally distraught Christian woman that her confusion, anger and depression are a sign of spiritual immaturity.

The Need to Reach Others

We won’t be planning missions trips in Heaven. We won’t be trying to figure out the best way to witness to the lost or reach those who don’t yet know Jesus. Truth is, there is only one chance to place your faith in Christ, and that time will have expired by the time we get to Heaven:

Hebrews 9:27-28

Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.

Under your fundamentalist interpretation, you leave yourself no rational or reasonable justification for telling non-Christians to purchase your books or do any amount of study whatsoever, because you seriously believe that they are always a mere heartbeat away from the gates of an irreversible eternal hell. 

Wallace continues:

We die just once, and then we are judged. There is no second chance in Heaven, even though there are so many chances for each of us here on earth. This is the place where we are asked to trust the most reasonable inference from the evidence; to place our faith in what cannot be seen. Once it has all been revealed to us, the opportunities to do this will be gone.

For you to tell the atheist to check out your books or view arguments on your website, is for you to say they can safely delay the day of their repentance if they use up that time in such bible study.  But you don't actually know whether an atheist will or won't be killed as he drives to the local library to check out a book you wrote.  If you seriously believe eternal conscious torment in hell for such people is THAT urgent of a danger (i.e., no second chances after death), then the only way you can preach consistent with this extremist view is for you to tell atheists, skeptics and non-Christians that because they could die and seal their horrible fate at any moment, they need to repent and believe the gospel, now, RIGHT now.

That would be more consistent with the fundies who deny the possibility of any second chances after death...but it comes at a high price...you'd be asking non-Christians to make a decision about a very controversial complex matter with a quickness that forbids the least bit of preparation or study.  After all, if you tell the atheist to take the next week to study one of your books, they might die before they actually repent, and if there's no second chances after death, then the fact that they weren't a Christian at death, means it doesn't matter how interested in the gospel they were at the point they were killed:   they weren't saved at that time, hence they go to hell.

If the stakes really are that high, you are only encouraging atheists to believe falsely they can safely delay the day of their repentance when you tell them to "check out" any of your apologetics crap.  Apologetics and theology are complex, it takes more than a few weeks for the biblically illiterate atheist to be able to know enough to say with any degree or reasonable confidence which specific Jesus-salesman is correct.  But in those few weeks of bible study, they could die, and under your current belief, it doesn't matter how interested they were becoming in repenting...if they weren't already born again at the point of physical death, they suffer in hell for the rest of eternity, there's no second chances for anybody, ever, period.

There is simply no way to reasonably reconcile the theory that it is good to study biblical theology comprehensively before salvation to make sure you don't align yourself with a false gospel...with the other theory that says the more you delay "getting saved", the more chance you take of dying and having your fate irreversibly sealed forever.

The more I understand about the nature of Heaven (what I can expect and what I cannot), the more committed I am to an intentional life here on earth.

 Then I'd live to hear you debate a Calvinist.  You know, those fools who say they should use God's absolute predestination as license to sin or be lazy...but if they do, they must have been predestined by God to be a lazy or sinful Christian.

Some activities and pursuits will be unnecessary or irrelevant in Heaven;

One wonders how much sin would have been avoided after Adam and Eve's original sin, if God had magically made us so that we don't require food to continue physical life.  How much sin would be preempted if the concern to grow and consume food completely disappeared from human history?

You think God created the sexual drive in people and sin perverted this?  How much sexual sin would have been preempted had God chosen to make erectile dysfunction and lack of sexual drive a result of the Fall?

For that matter, could God simply just create individual human beings from scratch the way he did Adam, and thereby achieve the goal of filling the earth, but without needing to involving sexual desire to do it?

I think this is where you start in with the old excuse that Mormons find so blessedly convenient when they get their ass kicked all over hell and back: "God's ways are mysterious".

they’re only important while we are living our daily, temporal lives. As I get older, I’ve learned to do the things today I won’t be able to do later. Now is the time to run a marathon; I won’t be as physically able in the years to come. All of us have a “bucket list”; a series of temporal goals we want to achieve before the opportunity is lost forever. It’s time to rethink our “bucket lists” and embrace heavenly goals before we pass from this life and the opportunity is lost forever.

 Yup, you are highly inconsistent to pretend to love unbelievers, and then tell them to go "check out" the bible and your apologetics arguments.  It takes days and weeks and months for the average person with a life, to be able to do this, and in that time of checking things out, they might die.  If you truly love them, and if you truly believe they cannot safely delay the day of their repentance, and if you truly believe there are no second chances after death, you won't be telling them to check out your arguments, you'll be telling them they need to repent and believe the gospel now, right now.

I don't give a shit if the apostles did preach that way.  If they believed everything you did, and yet still felt comfortable giving unbelievers reasons to delay repentance (i.e., by telling them to go study the scriptures or listen to sermons), then the apostles' actions were inconsistent with their theology.

Now is the time to reason from the evidence and trust, to learn and defend, to comfort those in need, and to share the Gospel.

I'm taking my chances with the philosophers on Mars' Hill, who responded to Paul with

"...What would this idle babbler wish to say?..." (Acts 17:18 NAU)

Frank Turek's Bible Error # 1: God cannot allow sin to go unpunished?

I received this in the mail today:

From: Frank Turek <Frank@crossexamined.org>
Date: Wed, Aug 1, 2018 at 7:07 AM
Subject: Q&A: How were people saved before Jesus?
To: ---------

Since God is infinitely Just, He cannot allow sin to go unpunished. That’s why God had to punish Jesus in our place. But what about those who lived before Jesus. How were they saved from punishment? Here is a very short answer to that question:

Turek's video for this is here.  Turek is wrong.  The bible makes many statements indicating that God can leave sin unpunished:

First, you know the story:  King David committed adultery with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, and got her pregnant:

 3 So David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, "Is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?"
 4 David sent messengers and took her, and when she came to him, he lay with her; and when she had purified herself from her uncleanness, she returned to her house.
 5 The woman conceived; and she sent and told David, and said, "I am pregnant." (2 Sam. 11:3-5 NAU)

David tried to cover it up by having Uriah come home from battle and sleep with Bathsheba (v. 6-12).
 
When this plan didn't work, David had Uriah placed at the front of a battle to ensure he would be killed, and he was:

 14 Now in the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah.
 15 He had written in the letter, saying, "Place Uriah in the front line of the fiercest battle and withdraw from him, so that he may be struck down and die."
 16 So it was as Joab kept watch on the city, that he put Uriah at the place where he knew there were valiant men.
 17 The men of the city went out and fought against Joab, and some of the people among David's servants fell; and Uriah the Hittite also died. (2 Sam. 11:14-17 NAU)

 God's penalty for adultery and murder was death:

  10 'If there is a man who commits adultery with another man's wife, one who commits adultery with his friend's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.
(Lev. 20:10 NAU)

 17 'If a man takes the life of any human being, he shall surely be put to death.
(Lev. 24:17 NAU)

Sometime after David committed these two sins, the prophet Nathan confronts David as guilty of murder and adultery, and David admits his guilt;  the problem being that Nathan then says God has taken away David's sin, meaning, God has exempted David himself from the otherwise deserved mandatory "punishment" of death for these crimes:

 7 Nathan then said to David, "You are the man! Thus says the LORD God of Israel, 'It is I who anointed you king over Israel and it is I who delivered you from the hand of Saul.
 8 'I also gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your care, and I gave you the house of Israel and Judah; and if that had been too little, I would have added to you many more things like these!
 9 'Why have you despised the word of the LORD by doing evil in His sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the sons of Ammon.
 10 'Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised Me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.'
 11 "Thus says the LORD, 'Behold, I will raise up evil against you from your own household; I will even take your wives before your eyes and give them to your companion, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight.
 12 'Indeed you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, and under the sun.'"
 13 Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD." And Nathan said to David, "The LORD also has taken away your sin; you shall not die.
 14 "However, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born to you shall surely die."
 15 So Nathan went to his house. Then the LORD struck the child that Uriah's widow bore to David, so that he was very sick. (2 Sam. 12:7-15 NAU)

Of course, Turek will pounce on the fact that God struck David's baby and made it sick and eventually killed it (i.e., God caused the child to be sick for 7 days before killing it, otherwise known as unnecessary torture of babies)

 15 So Nathan went to his house. Then the LORD struck the child that Uriah's widow bore to David, so that he was very sick.
 16 David therefore inquired of God for the child; and David fasted and went and lay all night on the ground.
 17 The elders of his household stood beside him in order to raise him up from the ground, but he was unwilling and would not eat food with them.
 18 Then it happened on the seventh day that the child died. (2 Sam. 12:15-18 NAU)

But even assuming torturing the baby should be seen as "punishing" David himself, God has exempted David from an otherwise twice-richly deserved and mandatory death penalty, apparently through no other mechanism than God's choice to decree it so.

Turek's error is in thinking systematic theology is the key to apologetics.  Sorry, Turek, but most of the people in your audience are not inerrantists.  You will get nothing but yawns of disapproval when you start in with that 

the-book-of-Hebrews-says-Jesus'-sacrifice-reached-

back-into-the-OT-sins-and-atoned-for-these-too

  shit.  If you could just admit that you do your apologetics stuff more to sell books to people who already believe everything you believe, and less to convince non-Christians, it would clear up a few questions about your motives.  If you wish to employ arguments that leave bible critics and atheists "without excuse", you need to either stop pretending the bible is the end of the argument when you debate them, or first establish the bible's theological reliability before you flood them with all of your classical theist assumptions that many Christians don't even accept.

Turek's belief that God cannot allow sin to go unpunished also contradicts the teaching in the book of Revelation that after judgment day, God will forever encourage the unredeemed sinners living outside the holy city to continue sinning:

 10 And he said to me, "Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near.
 11 "Let the one who does wrong, still do wrong; and the one who is filthy, still be filthy; and let the one who is righteous, still practice righteousness; and the one who is holy, still keep himself holy."
 12 "Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to every man according to what he has done.
 13 "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end."
 14 Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter by the gates into the city.
 15 Outside are the dogs and the sorcerers and the immoral persons and the murderers and the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices lying.   (Rev. 22:10-15 NAU)

And you never knew that God instructed pedophiles to forever continue molesting children until just now, amen?

How can it make sense to refer to God as infinitely righteous (as Turek routinely does), if God sometimes gets to the point of encouraging pedophiles to continue practicing their filthy sins?  Righteousness that is "infinite" would NEVER tell sinners to continue sinning, would it?

If it would, how can infinite righteousness be meaningfully distinguished from finite righteousness?  The mere use of the word "infinite" doesn't resolve the philosophical problem.  Yet Turek is a master at getting people to think clever twists of words constitute some type of eternal vindication of biblical theology.

Finally, that God can allow sin to go unpunished is clear from that drug-induced hallucination recorded for us in Isaiah 6:

 1 In the year of King Uzziah's death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple.
 2 Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.
 3 And one called out to another and said, "Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of hosts, The whole earth is full of His glory."
 4 And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke.
 5 Then I said, "Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts."
 6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal in his hand, which he had taken from the altar with tongs.
 7 He touched my mouth with it and said, "Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away and your sin is forgiven."
 8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?" Then I said, "Here am I. Send me!"    (Isa. 6:1-8 NAU)

 Even assuming this is supposed to mean Isaiah's sin was "atoned" for, that is irrelevant.  Turek said God cannot allow sin to go unpunished.

Isaiah admitted his sinfulness (v. 5)...and Isaiah's sins were subsequently taken away by a bizarre flying creature touching Isaiah's lips with a hot coal from heaven's stove.

Ok...so since God allegedly cannot allow sin to go unpunished, then who was punished for Isaiah's sin here?

The stove?


--------------------Update:

Here's a screenshot of my cross-posting my response here to Turek's YouTube video for this:

Demolishing Triablogue: Steve Hays helps unbelievers stop worrying about hell

This is my reply to an article by Steve Hays entitled

Scandinavian hell
I'd like to make a brief observation about hell. There are Christians, apostates, and atheists who get carried away with the poetic imagery.

And the more even spiritually alive people get hell wrong, the more justification spiritually dead people have to toss the entire business out the window, knowing they can only do worse if they try.

If, however, the Bible was originally revealed in, say, Iceland, the Yukon, or Scandinavia, rather than a hot dry climate like Palestine, the hellish imagery might instead draw on snow and ice, arctic temperatures, a polar vortex, and a continuous polar night.

So if the bible was originally revealed in, say, Sacramento California, 1986, the hellish imagery might instead draw on constant traffic, ceaseless urban growth and non-stop crime.  

The "geography" of hell is based on the Middle East. The "geography" of hell would vary if originally revealed in regions with different landscape and climate. The metaphors are to some degree culturebound. A tropical depiction of hell might be characterized by an abundance of nasty reptiles and stinging insects.

The problem being that your alleged God refuses to specify exactly what hell is.  Yet under Calvinism, despite God predestining me to fault him for such ambiguity, I'm still "without excuse" for doing what God forced me to do.

Calvinism makes me feel better about rejecting the gospel...there was no way I could have contradicted God's reprobative decree.  It's out of my hands, so any sense of personal responsibility on my part can only be a misleading illusion.

CrossExamined.org: Why did a "Good" God Create Hell? (and other loaded questions)

This is my reply to an article at CrossExamined.org by Al Serrato entitled

Why did a "Good" God Create Hell?

Tuesday, October 10, 2017

Many people today accuse God of unfairness.

Like me.  It is unfair for God to cause a man to rape a woman.  Deuteronomy 28:15, 30.  It's even more unfair for God to take "delight" in causing a man to rape a woman.  See v. 63.

 Since God can foresee the future, they ask, why didn’t He simply never create all those he knows to be destined to spend eternity in Hell?

If his foreknowledge of our future acts was infallible, then those acts were logically incapable of failing, so anything in God's infallible foreknowledge must come to pass.  But this is all esoteric crystal ball bullshit.

  One skeptic I know put the question like this:

God supposedly knows everything that will happen before you are ever born, so if all your choices are set beforehand, how can they possibly matter? Furthermore, if God knows you will “choose” Hell before he creates you, why does he simply not create you? Personally, I would much prefer nonexistence to eternal torment. Is God deliberately creating people knowing they will end up in Hell? Then I would call him evil. Is he compelled to create people regardless of what he sees in their future? Then he doesn’t have free will, which would certainly be an interesting interpretation, but one I doubt many people share. Is there some other explanation? If so, I can’t think of it. 

This challenge has a bit of intuitive appeal.  It seems to put God in a box, as it were, trapped between being “evil” for choosing to create rebellious creatures or lacking free will, by being unable to do otherwise.  Let’s take a closer look at the two horns of this apparent dilemma.
Good God Hell
To the Christian, “evil” is the label we give to words, thoughts or actions that deviate from God’s perfect will.

First, many bible passages forbid the distinction between the perfect/permissive will of God, which appears to be a distinction that was conjured up by Christian philosophers for no other reason than enable them to believe the bible statements on God's will are all in harmony.

Second, if there is nothing evil in God, there's no reason to create the perfect/permission distinction in god's will in the first place, all of God's acts would be good regardless of how they are categorized.  God allowing child-rape would be no less good than god positively decreeing that some atheist should be given a free bible.

 If we were created robots, there would be no evil in the world; we would operate exactly in accordance with God’s desires.

That's exactly what is taught by the metaphor of God putting a hook into your jaws and forcing you to sin, then punishing you for doing what he forced you to do, as seen in Ezekiel 38-39:

Ezekiel 38:1 And the word of the LORD came to me saying,
 2 "Son of man, set your face toward Gog of the land of Magog, the prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him
 3 and say, 'Thus says the Lord GOD, "Behold, I am against you, O Gog, prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal.
 4 "I will turn you about and put hooks into your jaws, and I will bring you out, and all your army, horses and horsemen, all of them splendidly attired, a great company with buckler and shield, all of them wielding swords;
 5 Persia, Ethiopia and Put with them, all of them with shield and helmet;
... 16 and you will come up against My people Israel like a cloud to cover the land. It shall come about in the last days that I will bring you against My land, so that the nations may know Me when I am sanctified through you before their eyes, O Gog."
 17 'Thus says the Lord GOD, "Are you the one of whom I spoke in former days through My servants the prophets of Israel, who prophesied in those days for many years that I would bring you against them?
 18 "It will come about on that day, when Gog comes against the land of Israel," declares the Lord GOD, "that My fury will mount up in My anger.
 ...21 "I will call for a sword against him on all My mountains," declares the Lord GOD. "Every man's sword will be against his brother. 

Ezekiel 39:1 "And you, son of man, prophesy against Gog and say, 'Thus says the Lord GOD, "Behold, I am against you, O Gog, prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal;
 2 and I will turn you around, drive you on, take you up from the remotest parts of the north and bring you against the mountains of Israel.
 3 "I will strike your bow from your left hand and dash down your arrows from your right hand.

Serrato continues:

 But in creating man, God did something quite different. He gave us “free will,” the capacity to rebel against him in our thoughts, words and actions.

In other words, you think the atheist reading this has a moral obligation to spend the next 25 years investigating Christian theology to see whether your statement on freewill is actually "biblical" and why plenty of other Christian advocates of bible inerrancy disagree with you.  No thanks.  But Ezekiel 38-39, supra, justify viewing God as evil for forcing people to sin, even if your view of freewill were the "biblical" one.

And rebel we did.  God “foresaw” this development, but only in a manner of speaking – a manner focused upon the way we think.  This is because God is not bound by time.

Not being bound by time constitutes an incoherent notion, as do other words preferred by apologists like god living "outside of nature" or "above nature".  Worse, every one of the bible's descriptions of activity in heaven, describe the acts as occurring in temporal progression no less than do events down here on earth:

19 Micaiah said, "Therefore, hear the word of the LORD. I saw the LORD sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven standing by Him on His right and on His left.
 20 "The LORD said, 'Who will entice Ahab to go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?' And one said this while another said that.
 21 "Then a spirit came forward and stood before the LORD and said, 'I will entice him.'
 22 "The LORD said to him, 'How?' And he said, 'I will go out and be a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.' Then He said, 'You are to entice him and also prevail. Go and do so.'
 23 "Now therefore, behold, the LORD has put a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; and the LORD has proclaimed disaster against you." (1 Ki. 22:19-23 NAU)

Job 1 contains the famous dialogue of God and Satan up in heaven.  Read any description of heaven in Revelation, the same applies.  Sorry, but your premise that God isn't bound by time, is biblically false.

For him, there is no future to “foresee.”  There is only an eternal present.

You haven't the slightest fucking clue whether god experiences reality like that or not.

 All times – whether past, present or future – are accessible to him in this eternal present. Thus, at the moment of creation, God was aware that man would rebel, that he was rebelling, and that he had rebelled. He was aware of the acts and the consequences, the motivations and the ultimate end, of everyone.  

Wrong, Jeremiah says the idolatry of the Jews was a sin that had never entered God's mind:

Jer. 7:31  "They have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, and it did not come into My mind.
 Jer. 19:5  and have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, a thing which I never commanded or spoke of, nor did it ever enter My mind;

Serrato continues:

Consistent with his nature for perfect fairness,

What fool thinks it fair for God to cause a woman to be raped (Deuteronomy 28:15, 30, 63)?  Christian apologists who think intellectual sophistry is more important that spiritual maturity, that's who.

he created a means by which man – though in rebellion and deserving punishment – could nonetheless find reunification with him.

Which was a waste of his time and makes him rather forgetful of his own abilities.  God doesn't need to create a means, he can get rid of your sin with a wave of his magic wand, not Yom Kippur or altar in sight:

 11 "Thus says the LORD, 'Behold, I will raise up evil against you from your own household; I will even take your wives before your eyes and give them to your companion, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight.
 12 'Indeed you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, and under the sun.'"
 13 Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD." And Nathan said to David, "The LORD also has taken away your sin; you shall not die.
 14 "However, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born to you shall surely die."   (2 Sam. 12:11-14 NAU) 

The highlighted part doesn't stop saying what it says merely because you point out that God caused David's baby to die.

 But in implementing this scheme, he did not force this choice upon us.

Then he was stupid and mean, because true love sometimes forces the loved one to prevent them from suffering the consequences of their own stupidity.  Mother doesn't just stand there presenting choices to her child in the street as the drunk driver speeds toward him.  And yet when compared with God, we are like "children".

He gives us the means to salvation, but remains content in allowing us to choose which path we will follow.

Like the father who remains content that his son has disobeyed the rule about playing with chainsaws.  When the parent is brought up on charges of criminal neglect after the boy cuts his hand off, perhaps the man will have a Christian apologist as a lawyer, who will thus argue that because the man made clear his prohibition on playing with chainsaws, nobody else is responsible for the calamity except the child.

Those who use their free will to turn toward him – more precisely, to accept his free gift of salvation – will find a welcoming father, ready to do the work needed to restore us.

No they will find a lying asshole who tells them the more they sin, the less reason they have to believe they are saved.  We call it legalistic grace.  

Those who use their free will to turn away from God – to reject his gift – will find that this choice too is honored.

Some would argue that true love will put forth serious effort to convince the rebellious loved one to obey.  Creating thousands of conflicting Christian denominations for the atheist to choose from in the gamble to pick the one that just happens to be the right religion, does not constitute "serious effort" by God.

 Expecting God not to create those in this latter category would have two significant effects: it would show that God’s provision of free will is really a fiction, since only those who choose to do his will are actually created,

You cannot reconcile freewill of man with God forcing people to sin in Ezekiel 38-39, so there's not much harm in saying freewill is a fiction.

and two, it would mean that Hell is a place of evil.  But Hell is a place – or perhaps more precisely a condition – which was created by God to serve a purpose.

An atheist would have to decide how much time to spend researching Christian fundies and liberals on the nature of hell, and since there are fatal problems with God's existence and the bible being the word of God, it is rational to turn away from this tempting opportunity to impress my girlfriend.

Since God does not create evil – i.e. he does not act against his own nature

Fuck you, God not only causes women to be raped (Deut. 28:15, 30), but will take "delight" to cause that curse no less than he takes delight in prospering those who obey (v. 63).  Gee, you never knew that rape was morally good until just now, eh?

– then Hell cannot be a place of evil. Like a human prison, it may be inhabited by those bent on doing evil, but the place itself – and the confinement it effectuates – is actually a good, just as separating hardened criminals from society is a net positive for both the evil-doer and the society that is victimized.

Sorry, but it does not seem the least bit feasible that the horrific realities of hell would fail to convince those there to repent in sincereity.  And if there comes a time when God no longer responds to sincere repentance, then you just found a limitation in one of God's "eternal" attributes.  And if God hardens those who are in hell so they don't wish to repent, he is not too different from the parent who withholds the Ritlan from the disobedient child, knowing the child will just rebel more and more as a result.

Some will be tempted to argue that God should have forced this choice upon us anyway. Isn’t it better to be forced to love God then to spend eternity in Hell? Only, I suppose, if one believes it is better to be a robot than a thinking, self-aware and self-directed being.

Ask the people now in hell, they'll kindly disagree and tell you being a robot forced to love god would have been better.  Your opinion is nowhere near controlling or persuasive.

 There is no middle ground. Either free will is something real – with consequences attendant to the choices we make – or it’s a fiction.  One cannot have it both ways.

It's a fiction, Ezekiel 38:4.

To recap: God is not trapped in an either/or dilemma. God is not “evil” for having created, because in the end he treats his creation fairly, giving each what he or she deserves.

Then you must agree with Deut. 28:15, 30 that circumstances can arise which would make a woman "deserving" of being raped.  You must also agree that when God causes pagans to beat Hebrew children to death (Hosea 13:15-16), those children "deserved" it.  Is this the part where we email Dr. Copan and ask him if its possible that God had morally sufficient reasons for causing pagan armies to beat children to death?

 Since he values free will enough to have given it to us, he apparently intends to make that gift real by allowing some to reject him.

Like the mother who allows her three year old to stay in the street according to his will, despite her knowledge that if not forced out of the street, he will be run over.  Apparently any who would call that woman unloving, never took Apologetics 101.

Likewise, God is not lacking in free will, because he is not “compelled” to create against his will.

That's also bullshit.  If God infallibly knows that he will cause a hurricane tomorrow, well, "infallible" means "incapable of failing", in which case God would not have the ability to deviate from this infallibly predicted event.  But again, infallible foreknowledge, living outside of time, maybe it can be loving to beat a child to death, etc, etc. is nothing but sophistry and illusion.

Since Hell is not a place for eternal torture,

Then apparently you don't know your bible well enough to justify your commentary on it:

 23 "In Hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torment (Greek: basanos, torture), and saw Abraham far away and Lazarus in his bosom. (Lk. 16:23 NAU).

 46 "These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." (Matt. 25:46 NAU)

 11 "And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever; they have no rest day and night, those who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name." (Rev. 14:11 NAU)

Some would argue that being on fire and yet unable to extinguish it, is "torture".

but an appropriate destination for all rebellious human beings, God does not violate his own nature – does not engage in “evil” – when he separates himself from some of his creation.

You have already settled in your mind that God is synonymous with good.  That's precisely why you'd never call God evil no matter what horrific atrocity you believed God caused.  Your assurances that God doesn't do evil are about as stupid and ill-informed as any Nazi who says Hitler wasn't able to do evil, who then proceeds to hem and haw and "explain" that massacring the Jews in WW2 was actually a "good" thing in the long term.  Fuck you.

What this challenge brings into focus is not some internal inconsistency in our conception of God. No, what it highlights is just how different our thinking is as compared to God’s.

Giving us justification to wonder whether you got jack shit right anywhere in this article.

For like the skeptic, many would view the decision to create nothing all – neither good nor bad people – to be a better – a more noble – alternative.  Yet God sees things quite a bit differently, it seems.

Not according to the Christian liberal theologians who deny all of your bullshit and assert everybody will be saved.  How long do you recommend atheists spend invenstigating why Christian fundies disagree with Christian liberals?  And why should we feel the least bit compelled to do so?  My atheism justifies me to not worry about the truth of Christian hell, just like your Christianity justifies you to not worry about Muslim hell.

In the end, that he views things differently should not really surprise us. Our judgment as to right and wrong, good and evil, has been corrupted by our rebellion.

Yeah, if only we'd become spiritually alive and born again by accepting Jesus into our hearts, we'd then recognize that sometimes women "deserve" to be raped (Deut. 28:15, 30) and that children "deserve" to be beaten to death (Hosea 13:15-16, Isaiah 13:15-16.

Since we all share this fallen nature,  we should realize that we are not in the best position to render judgment as to the way eternal things “ought to be.”

A criticism that applies with equal force to the theology written down by the sinful imperfect biblical authors.

We wouldn’t ask a group of incarcerated rapists for guidance on issues of sexual mores;

But you'd certainly ask your raping-god for guidance on issues of sexual mores!

nor would we consult death row inmates for advice on how best to treat one another.

But you certainly consult a god who allows non-fatal beatings (Exodus 21:20-21), on how best to treat one another.

Perhaps, in the same way, God has little need to consult with us to determine what ultimate “fairness” demands.

That's a possibility, but not likely, since even God has to sometimes accept correction from his creatures.  Exodus 32:9-14, a story that you always thought was literally true history until you discovered that taking it as literally true history would produce a conflict in biblical theology.  Anthropomorphisms, to the rescue!

No, the Creator of the universe may occupy a slightly better position to judge matters eternal. We might be wise to heed him, rather than try to ensnare him in a “logical” trap.

We also might be wise to do whatever we're asked by powerful space aliens, but that hardly argues that they are good.