Ritual washing for removal of sin
cite:
If you only want to consider a cite from the Bible I can’t
help you, the Bible is not in my oppinion good source
material for citing anything but the Bible’s contents.
I cited the passages because you asked for them.
I’m not going to go into any great detail here, because I’m sure you can do your own research. To start with, I did just a casual little count and easily found 50 books of the bible that were removed between 364A.D. and now. The original bible was in Hebrew/Aramaic and Greek. The Old Testament was printed for the first time in 1488. Until this date it existed only in manuscript, and was constantly exposed to erasures and additions. The original Hebrew text was written with consonants only. It is now admitted by the most learned in the Hebrew language that in our present English version of the Old Testament there are at least one hundred thousand errors. The list could go on and on, but I think what got my attention the most was a session I had with a person who painstaking translated some verses of the Bible at my request from Hebrew to english. The result were obviously somewhat choppy sentences that could definitely mean more than one thing. This makes a translating nightmare. You should try that, it’s enlightening. Remember that in any language the same word can be used for several different meanings. I’ll give you a couple of cites, one is obviously from people who are skeptical about God, but they’re can be very good with their facts, so don’t ignore it because you don’t like who wrote it. It doesn’t mean you don’t have faith if you are skeptical about things. Here’s the
good one. And here’s the infidel one.
Again, I’m am not knocking the Bible, in spite of what it sounds like. It’s a good tool, but it’s naive to think it’s intact or perfect or even that close to what the original text was.
So, the verses you quoted back to me. Was that to say that baptism wasn’t as important as we it appears or were you just witnessing to me?
You shot yourself in the foot, mister. I hold a very similar view to yours concerning certain aspects of this discussion and was going to jump in with certain reasonings from the Scriptures to help flesh this thread out. We probably don’t agree on every single issue that could be made, but you’ll never know now. Instead, you’re so in touch with the Holy Spirit that you can actually discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart, right?
Get off your self righteous posting and either actually read what was written by other posters, or ask questions to clarify. DO NOT MAKE ASSUMPTIONS OF WHAT I MEANT. PERIOD.
In the spirit of my last point, I should change one sentence in the previous post.
…ot, mister. Based on your previous posts in this thread, I think I may hold a ve…
Sorry. My tinfoil hat was glowing threateningly at that time. Carry on.
;j
I’m sorry for taking so long to respond, but I was trying to understand what you’re saying here. What does this even mean?
I’m willing to take the negative possibilities of the afterlife into account. Are you willing to take the concept into account? Keep in mind that I might not have the same concept of the afterlife than you think most Christians (or the most vocal ones) do. That of course has to do with being Mormon and all.
If He killed ‘bad people’ He then presumably sent them to hell. Which is worse than death.
Does God condone the torture of evil people, after they die?
According to the Bible, he does. Hold those stories up beside Noah’s Ark and creation and I would give a resounding, firm “We just don’t know.” How much of the Hell story was religion’s attempt to get people to obey, out of fear? We don’t know that either. We all have opinions. Mine are kinder, more gentle than what it sounds like in the Bible, but I will admit that it is wishful thinking.
Your destination after death isn’t “worse than death”–it’s just what happens next. How you arrive there is irrelevent. There’s no difference between being hit by lightning and hit by a bus.
No. Indeed, he keeps trying to tell us how to be happy both now and after we die.
Okay, I believe in God and that answer doesn’t make sense to me. The point of death itself doesn’t really matter. But to me destination would matter if I were sent to an eternity in a fiery pit. That would be worse than getting hit by a bus or whatever. Although I don’t lean toward believing in hellfire, that is what is in the Bible. As far as God’s continued attempts to tell us how to be happy now and after we die; some people can’t hear him. How fair is it that some people really search and actually want to believe, but can’t and for you or I, it’s fairly easy?
emarkp you make it sound like Hell exists, but God isn’t responsible for the existance of Hell.
btw. my view is God exists, hell (in the sence of God’s Dungeon, Torture Chamber) does not.
I like to think that anything that condones torture is wrong, and if it does so in full knowledge of what it does, then it is evil.
I will not worship anything that is evil. So my worship of God is conditional on that He is not a torturer. My beleif is that God is not a torturer and is not Evil, and I think that belief requires me to reject parts of the bible as errors or lies.
We all die, it’s just a matter of when. Jesus is on record that it would be better to be maimed yet have a clean soul than to have a whole body but a tainted soul. Additionally, he comments about preferring a shorter life that ends in heaven over a longer life that ends elsewhere. It’s silly to talk about something “worse than death.”
There is no clear definition of hellfire in the Bible. The only clear thing is that those who accept Christ’s teachings will be glorified with him–be saved. Those who do not, will not. LDS theology makes it very clear that (with very few exceptions) our eternal reward will be better than this life for everyone. The rebellious who chose not to accept Christ willingly will suffer the unavoidable consequences (more on that below).
That’s not quite how I would put it. Hell certainly exists, and it is where the wicked suffer the pains of sin until they accept Christ as Savior. God isn’t responsible for its existence, because if there were no wicked, it would not exist.
An analogy: a person who visits the Emergency Room of a hospital sees suffering all around him. Are the doctors to blame for the suffering? Of course not. The suffering is an unavoidable result of the injuries that brought people into the ER. Similarly, the sins we commit damage our souls. We cannot sin and somehow not be injured. Christ is the physician who will take away our injury, but cannot unless we choose to let him.
Until we choose to let him heal us, we cannot escape hell. If we hear the Gospel and accept it (by accepting Christ as Savior and living his teachings) then he can heal us before we even enter hell, which is how we can have joy in this life.
Agreed–the Dante fantasy of hell is precisely that.
I do not claim the Bible as we have it to be an inerrant work. Indeed as a Mormon, I believe in the necessity of modern prophets to clarify past teachings or receive new revelation as God directs. That is why I’m not cherrypicking the Bible for what I believe. Rather I’m relying on prophets (as was done anciently) to guide the theology, and the Holy Spirit to guide me in my personal relationship with Christ.