Perhaps, but there are also so many situations where it's hard to see how the victim(s) of a situation can be said to have done anything to bring it upon themselves. He might ask us why we didn't do more to love people caught up in it all but if someone asks why God allowed something like the Fukushima disaster it would be pretty pointless if God asked why we did it. Having never been within 5000 miles of Japan I think I can safely say I did nothing to even remotely contribute to that one.
The passage states there will be no more death. There will be no mourning. There will be no crying. There will be no pain. If a future rebellion were to happen, can it happen that sin carries on and not include death, mourning, crying nor pain?
My point exactly... This is inconsistent with reformed theology, unless limited to those in new Jerusalem
I (as a dad) want to be understood by my children. I don't want them to start mistrusting me because of something they don't get.
Compare: 21:27 - But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life. with: 22:14 - Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates. 15 Outside [the gates] are the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.
Do you subscribe to the satan = fallen angel (lucifer) theory? Because outside of that, I can't see where according to Scripture sin began pre-Adam&Eve unless you're a gap-theorist. Which I'm totally down with. I do think it's possible that there were earthly civilizations & creations pre-Adam&Eve that went into oblivion after some cataclysmic event due to them having filled their own cup, eons ago, that we now consider "prehistoric" (but are they?). That the Bible never mentions because it's outside its scope. As a strict matter of personal curiosity, I do sometimes wonder whether demons are actually spirits of earth-dwelling humanoid beings that perished eons ago due to them having committed evil, and so they were cursed to roam the spirit realm around earth during this age we live in now. Maybe they're still in the state of wickedness that was the evil they committed back then, and they are bound to it now, until further notice. Because why do demons have the urge to inhabit people's bodies, unless they themselves had bodies at some point and now are always seeking to get back into one (which could part of their judgment)? I know that's probably out there, but I do wonder ... once in a while. I don't subscribe to a "fallen angel" theory any longer, but I do consider a "fallen whoever/whatever lived here before" theory -- if that makes any sense. So perhaps the thing we know now as "satan" was the leader of such a civilization, as it certainly seems to be bound to earth for some reason. Which makes me think that whatever happened, it happened on earth eons ago before the age of (what we now know as) man ...
But Luke 10 describes Jesus saying that he saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. This was directly after the 70 said “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name.” Did that ( Satan falling like lightning ) happen after Adam & Eve? It seems likely to me because of the whole Job thing. If God cast him down out of heaven before Adam and Eve I can't imagine him letting Satan back in for any reason.
Hence the 'many' situations There are plenty where such an answer wouldn't be appropriate, as you point out.
I don't think God want any of his children to doubt Him and or show hypocritical lip service. Don't you think that everything will be in the open and fully understood? Luke 8:17 is nice in this respect.
On what basis do you believe pre-Adamic individuals existed? Anything in particular push you in that direction, despite nothing in scripture indicating such a thing?
Edit: I was wondering that myself. Some ( Not me) believe that the Nephilim's souls became demons after the flood but I've never heard of any serious ( and I mean besides made up fiction ) claims of a manlike creation pre-Adam.
That sort of theory seems to me like the kind of topic upon which we could endlessly speculate but, since the Bible is silent, speculation is all we will ever have. Since the Bible is silent on the possibility we can really only conclude that the existence or otherwise of a pre-Adam man isn't anything we need to know about.
There's no Scriptural evidence for a view like the one DaniH is wondering about, not even implicitly. What we ought to ask in that case is whether it fits God's character to judge 'earth-dwelling humanoid beings from a previous age' by cursing them with an earth-bound, spiritually oriented, incorporeal existence (that is, speculation can be addressed, even when it's so explicitly outside the scope of Scripture). The short (theological) answer is that it's the stuff of Hollywood.
I don't see any evidence for it, stated or implied. But if it does turn out to be one of those cases where absence of evidence is not evidence of absence that doesn't explicitly rule out the possibility. Personally I'd have thought that "in the beginning" should mean "in the beginning" rather than "in the beginning after the previous ending" but, since the existence or otherwise of a pre-Adam man makes precisely zero difference to my life, I don't have a problem with filing under "maybe" even if it's in the section subtitled "probably not".
Which is why we examine according to other criteria. If possible, it's best to eliminate as many theological views as possible, or else the door is left open to all sorts of nonsense, bad reasoning, etc.
Shouldn't "Maybe and Probably not" have at least a passing inference with what Scripture tells us? Edit: Er...yeah what Athanasius said. I mean Kierkegaard.