Quote:
Originally Posted by Anh_Minh
He parted the Red Sea, sent plagues, the deluge, and talked directly to a number of people, when he didn't send angels. All of that is a lot more hands-on than now.
Now, basically, whether God exists or not makes no practical difference. The Sun will rise and fall at predictable times, catastrophes will be natural phenomenons, and so on. Back then? If the OT is to be believed, God could reach out and stop the Sun, and disasters were God's way of showing his temper.
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Again, saying God did that does not rule out an intermediary. Traditional expression attributes every action to God simply by the virtue of him not intervening, so not specifying a proxy every time an act is attributed to God is not at all unusual. God may intervene (and intervention it is, because the world would keep spinning regardless), but it is not direct.
The amount of divine intervention seen in the Bible covers a very small amount considering the number of years it covers. When all you get are the highlights, it sounds like a lot happened on a regular basis, but these were actually rare events, and rarely effected any one outside of the parties involved. Even what is described as the sun stopping would not require the earth to cease rotating for the observers to note a similar effect.
Keep in mind that I'm not suggesting that divine intervention (by proxy, of course) does not occur today. Deeper Christian understanding, though, would suggest that after the death of Christ it might actually be less necessary due to the availability of restoration to man.