What you choose to ignore is that you are accusing all of Christianity of worshipping a speculated Germanic deity, (it is also possible that there is another, lost, meaning to the word), when that word only entered the language of people who would eventually become speakers of English. Falsely claiming that “Christians” are worshipping Ishtar when it is clear that the French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italians, Germans, Scandinavians, Poles, Greeks, Russians, and the everyone else to the South and East of Europe are not even using the same word, means that you are basing your claims on an error.
You can join our atheist brethren is challenging Christian beliefs and practices to your heart’s content, but if your arguments are filled with errors–as they clearly are–then we have no reason to pay any attention to you.
(Are you a disciple of Jack Chick, by any chance?)
In the act of dying, or some ethereal suffering of my soul after death?
Then God has given you understanding that he denies me. I can’t point to anything in history that necessitates the intervention of God, or a divine relevaltion or teaching to the benefit of mankind. Of course, I presume you’d point to the Bible, but for historical reasons I’ve outlined above I’d dispute even this.
I don’t blame you, theologians have been coming up with ideas for millennia as to why a good, just, loving God would allow suffering and evil. For me, it is no problem, for there are no big ‘whys’. Only ‘hows’.
So we suffer through no fault of our own?
Evil is an aspect of God, and he does not have it within his power to remove it? Then he is not all-powerful.
Well, I agree. To me it appears as if there is a great many things that God will not do. If Jesus is God, he asks himself to save himself, and denied himself? You see the problem, and how it seems like God does betray who he is.
And the moral parent would reign in the spoiled child, not give him all creation to play with.
I think this is a fundamental difference of opinion. In the example of the husband and wife, if the husband commits murder we do not put the innocent wife on trial. She didn’t do anything, why should she be bound by actions that are not her own?
I also (still) don’t understand why it required even 1 death. Especially seeing as that death was the death of part of God, so in actuality was no death at all. He is risen, after all. If God needed some way of bestowing grace it seems a brutal way to do it. I also don’t think this idea of grace is moral, either. We’ve had discussions on the board before about this, and I know opinion varies wildly among Christians. But under this kind of reading an evil man, who committed many evil acts, may have no judgment or reckoning simply because he came into a state of grace before the end.
Likewise a moral man, who either did not know of Jesus or could not accept the argument for him would never get into heaven, for the only way to heaven is through Jesus. This is not moral teaching, saying that all it requires is for a state of grace to come upon you and all crimes, transgressions, are forgiven and washed away. It abolishes morality, for why even try to live a good life accountable to your fellow humans if you have a cosmic ‘get out of jail free’ card in the form of Jesus?
But surely this severing, original sin, was the fault of God in the first place. Let me explain. He created the Garden, and placed all things in it (for in the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth), including the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the snake (which the Bible makes clear is God’s creation; “Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made.”). He commands his new creations not to eat of this tree, or they will surely die. Then you get the snake duping Eve, they are cast out, etc etc.
Here’s the problem. What possible justification does God have for condemning not only Adam and Eve, but their descendants for thousands of years? Because Eve disobeyed him? She could not have known it was wrong to disobey God. She had no knowledge of good and evil, which came from the fruit.
“For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
So why on Earth is God upset at his creation? It’s like leaving a toddler with a powerdrill and then being furious with the child because he drilled some holes in the wall. Be angry at yourself, turn your fury at yourself for your own flawed plan! Which, by his nature, he knew was going to happen anyway. They couldn’t win.
But he is God…so he is eternal. So how can he die? I thought God couldn’t destroy a part of himself?
Zoe said an interesting thing above that relates to this. She said that perhaps the Holy Spirit guides her when she is looking over the Bible, so she knows which parts are applicable and which aren’t. I know exactly what she means, for I too can discern which parts of the Bible are moral and which aren’t. But I attribute this to my personal morality and my own personal responsibility for my actions. These are my guidelines, not heaven sent or divinely mandated, but built over centuries of suffering and our collective experience deciding what overall makes for a productive, happy society.
If he is a parent, he is a negligent and abusive parent. He looks on in disappointment on his own creation many times in the Bible. This is our fault, how? If I plan and construct a building only for the purposes of demolishing it or looking upon it in jealously or some other absurd notion I would be a madman. But this is what God does, over and over again.
Take the Flood. Apparently the whole world was so corrupted by sin (even the babies, and pregnant women, and old men) that his only option (why not send Jesus down early to forgive this sinful world?), the best plan this divine being could come up with, is wiping the whole lot out and starting again. Why did he bother creating us in the first place, just to drown us?
Or the Tower of Babel;
“5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. 6 The LORD said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” Genesis 11.
Again, seeing flaws in his own creation, being jealous of his own creation, creating them just so that he can make them suffer. A loving parent would be proud of the accomplishments of his children, not work against them.
Then you have Exodus. Oh, Exodus. The Plagues.
" 9 The LORD had said to Moses, “Pharaoh will refuse to listen to you—so that my wonders may be multiplied in Egypt.” 10 Moses and Aaron performed all these wonders before Pharaoh, but the LORD hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let the Israelites go out of his country.” - Exodus 9.
Why, why, why. What kind of parent is this? Not only does he thwart any opportunity the Israelites would have to get out of Egypt, he also engages in great evil by punishing Pharaoh - through something he had no control over! The only ‘wonders’ this loving parent can come up with are horrific. He kills all the first born of Egypt. For no reason. He could have just let Pharaoh have his free will back. This is akin to a schoolyard bully saying “Stop hitting yourself!”
This is something I have recently been shown, perhaps over the last year, and it is awesome. We are all meant to be interconnected, with the Spirit of God flowing through us. But this world teaches us to build walls, to put up barriers and be individuals.
Marriage is just one of many of these connections and sometimes I can feel exactly as if I was the other person in me, and can use that, for instance to pick out presents. Also formal marriage is not needed for this, but just a giving of oneself to the other, usually if not always sex will create some marital like bond.
What God wants is Love to flow from one person to the next. The Holy Spirit links the believers together into the body of Christ and I have had revelation of that body as a vision of God Himself flowing through all those people. Through this bond sometimes love flows so intensely that I had to fall to the ground and be surrounded with such love, which is extremely pleasurable.
This world downplays this and does it’s best to push individuality, even in marriage, which hinders this flow. But even when the couple like to keep their identity they are still acting as one, but unfortunately usually in a way that tends to tear them apart, or is used to dominate the other in my experience.
Death is departure from God’s way, which is life. If we depart from life we can expect to die, there really is no option here. This is also why there is only one way, that of Life & Love. This is also why it doesn’t matter how many times one sins, one single departure and you leave life, and there is no way back except for the way that Jesus offers, which is life.
All this is very nice of course, but it doesn’t explain why it’s moral for me to pretend that my wrongdoings no longer exist or trouble because I have lumped them onto somebody else.
Impossible! My culture is based on freedom and self-determination. Without getting to flippant about it, this sounds like some nightmarish Christian Borg. I have no choice in the matter, I am linked to this blood sacrifice whether I like it or not. As I’ve said earlier, I don’t need the Holy Spirit to know that treating my fellow primates badly is a bad idea, for experience has taught our species that jerkasses tend to get treated like jerkasses. No divine power necessary for that.
Isn’t death the gateway to another life, leaving this vale of tears for the chance of infinite life? After a few million years in Heaven, in the company and comfort of the maker of everything, I’d wager you won’t even remember, let along give a damn, about this rock orbiting a burning ball of hydrogen.
"Even though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death, [a]
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me. "
Psalm 23
The Valley of the shadow of death. This life we lead now, which is constantly overhung by that shadow. I choose to believe that this world, and my actions in it, do matter.
Flying DoDo: How can you trust the King James Version when it was in your eyes translated by unsaved men who believed the Sabbath was on Sunday? Shouldn’t you read the original versions of the Bible instead?
Resting on every seventh day by law could be a serious problem for certain agrarian societies. What if the best time to plant or harvest is on that arbitrary sabbath day? Do I lose my crops or trust God?
Also, extrapolating and in conjecture of this point, the Jewish Days of Count starting from year one, of the Jewish Calendar (Lunar solar) do not correspond to our Gregorian count, nor the days. Perhaps the Jewish calendar compensates like an Almanac so that the days of rest do not interfere with the natural agrarian cycle of their little nook of the Mediterranean. Sucks, if you are farming in Northern Climes on this Sabbat relativity…
You do not know what Is God’s truth and what you call truth as God’s is not a fact but a belief.
I am not afraid of your statements. I know you believe you have some great connection with a God and have every right to believe it. but belief doesn’t make for truth, and one thing I learned about your God from your description of it is: Your god is not a good father, he doesn’t know very much, and is a cruel being who creates a being, then punishes it for having the faults that he created them with.
Because Pilate didn’t know that truth is what is, doesn’t prove anything to me. If Pilate was quoted right it still is just the word of another human, just like your word or mine. It is a matter of what one wants to be true, not what is truth.
What youve done is what most denominations do with scripture. Ive found the writings of your 6 months but…if you keep reading youll find the weeping for Tammuz for 40 days.
Where do i find those original versions? Were they translated before the KJV? The fact that the KJV was traslated by unsaved men is actually a good thing. No agendas. No previous doctrinal beliefs. Just translate the words. I do have online the worlds oldest bible. I have found some interesting things in there. There have been added words to the KJV or so it seems
You might try learning Arameic, and/or Koine Greek.
FlyingDoDo I find it fascinating that you have found “truth” after reading only two books in your life. That’s a whole lot of knowledge that you’re discounting, simply because you’re unaware of it. Having read the KJV bible, along with a whole lot of other books, I have found that it does not actually stack up that well in the “truth” department.
If you’re actually simply unaware of other points of view, it’s pretty hard to give your opinions much credence. I would be much more strongly swayed by the witnessing of a person who had more knowledge of other facets of the world.
I’d think “hmmm, they’ve thought quite a bit about this, and have experience with a wide variety of ways of thinking… yet they still come to the conclusion that Christianity is the way. Hmmmm…”
In your case, I think “Well, he’s only read two books in his life, and has chosen the Bible over the Babe Ruth Story. I guess given the choice of two, that’s the best one to worship,but it does not convince me to do the same.”
[middle part of post snipped to juxtapose segments]
I’m thinking that if he’s only read 2 books, Aramaic or Greek may be on the back burner for a while. How old is he?
Also - 2 books? how can you read only two books? Before you can read the bible, don’t you need to read ‘One fish two fish, red fish blue fish’ and ‘Fun with Dick and Jane’? I realize that settlers in the Old West may have learned to read from the Bible, but nowadays? Either its a failure of the school system, or the kid was home schooled far from society - in which case, how did he get the internet connection?
This sort ofd statement is a demonstration of your errors and lack of knowledge. The notion that the translators of the KJV had no agenda is silly. The notion that they had no previous doctrinal beliefs is ludicrous.
I am sure that they were sincere in their efforts and their scholarship was pretty good for the time, but they very definitely worked in a specific doctrinal tradition and their choices of English words into which to translate were shaped by their beliefs.
If you have the “oldest” bible, then it is not in English, so how do you know what is in it? And the “oldest” bible, (dating to the first century or the fourth century or whatever date, in whichever tradition, you choose to decide that the bible was completed), cannot have “added” anything to a work that was not written before 1604 - 1611.
Getting back to Gods sabbath and His commandments. Theres a big denomination that believes we are no longer to follow Gods commandments. They claim they were nailed to the cross. Is that true?
PSALM 94 [11] The LORD knoweth the thoughts of man, that they are vanity.12] Blessed is the man whom thou chastenest, O LORD, and teachest him out of thy law;[13] That thou mayest give him rest from the days of adversity, until the pit be digged for the wicked.
Teach man out of thy law, until pit digged for the wicked. The bottomless pit?
PSALM 119 [84] How many are the days of thy servant? when wilt thou execute judgment on them that persecute me? [85] The proud have digged pits for me, which are not after thy law.[86] All thy commandments are faithful: they persecute me wrongfully; help thou me.
They who are not after the law have dug pits and ALL thy commandments are faithful
PROVERBS 28 [9] He that turneth away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer shall be abomination.[10] Whoso causeth the righteous to go astray in an evil way, he shall fall himself into his own pit: but the upright shall have good things in possession.
Those who turn from hearing the law will fall into pit they themselves dug.
PSALM 7 [15] He made a pit, and digged it, and is fallen into the ditch which he made.
ISAIAH 24 [3] The land shall be utterly emptied, and utterly spoiled: for the LORD hath spoken this word.[4] The earth mourneth and fadeth away, the world languisheth and fadeth away, the haughty people of the earth do languish.[5] The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because THEY HAVE TRANSGRESSED THE LAWS, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant.[6] Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth, and they that dwell therein are desolate: therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men left.[17] Fear, and the pit, and the snare, are upon thee, O inhabitant of the earth.[18] And it shall come to pass, that he who fleeth from the noise of the fear shall fall into the pit; and he that cometh up out of the midst of the pit shall be taken in the snare: for the windows from on high are open, and the foundations of the earth do shake.[22] And they shall be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in the prison, and after many days shall they be visited.
Well, heres the end of the story. The DAY OF THE LORD. Those that practice transgressing the law of God will end up in the pit and scripture says in Revelation that those that keep the commandments of God (Exodus 20) and have the testimony of Jesus will end up in the Kingdom. Those in the pit will be visited after many days. A thousand years maybe?
REV.20 [1] And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand.[2] And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years,[3] And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season.
YUP. A thousand years. Looks like those that do not observe to keep Gods 10 commandments will be having some company in the pit. Kinda makes Saddams wormhole look rather appealing.
The new testament says if you break one of the commandments, you break them all. Has the whole world been decieved as the bible says? When God says to keep His commandments does that include the 4th? There is one sure thing. No where in the new testament will you find God changing His sabbath day.
It’s extremely unlikely that Flying has any particular interest in Chick, who is probably too “mainstream” :eek: to stomach.
My nose tells me that it’s far more likely that the discipleship in question is for some form of “Armstrongism” as represented by one or more of the “refugee” sects that came about when diehard adherents to its tenets refused to continue in the Worldwide Church of God, now renamed Grace Communion International, when its leadership went evangelical.
No. You’re confusing a few things, there. Tammuz is a month in the Jewish calendar. See, after the Babylonian captivity, Jews adopted the Babylonian names for the months, which replaced the older Jewish names. One of those months was the month of Tammuz, which is named after the Babylonian goddess Tammuz, but that’s the only connection.
It’s like you and I can talk about the month of March without worshiping the Roman god Mars.
Anyway, in the month of Tammuz, on the 17th day, like your link says, there’s a fast day in Judaism. This is the beginning a three week period of fasting and mourning (that ends on the 9th of Av), commemmorating the fall of Jerusalem during the Jewish revolt against the Romans and the destruction of the Second Temple. It has nothing to do with the worship of the goddess Tammuz.
The only 40 day period in Judaism associated with the 17th of Tammuz, also like your link says, is that the date that Moses supposedly came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets, which he then smashed when he saw that the Israelites were worshiping a golden calf. Moses had been on Sinai talking to God for 40 days.
Yes exactly, Jack Chick certainly believes in that the Sabbath is on Sunday something Flying DoDo here finds heretical.
Also Flying DoDo do you any “saved” Christians other than yourself or your family members? If what you’re saying is true that means “the gates of Hades” have prevailed and true Christianity has been crushed which contradicts what Jesus has said about the gates of Hades (or Hell) never to prevail.