tptp

It is futile to make demands of God. God is bigger than you. You can’t say, “show me a miracle” and if one doesn’t appear, use that as evidence that God does not exist.

Celebrity religious leaders speak for me as much as real celebrities – they don’t. Everyone quit using Billy Graham, Benny Hinn, Jerry Falwell, or even Martin Luther King or the Pope as evidence that Christians are bunk. There are weirdos and non-weirdos.

The argument is whether there is a God. Evidence to prove or disprove. There are just as many weirdo Christians out there as there are weirdo non-Christians. And they don’t speak for me. Mariyln Manson will take your money just as much as Benny Hinn, but neither changes my personal opinion for or against God. There are, however, very good at giving the respective groups a bad name.

Freightdog, Why do you still go to Baptist church if the sermons don’t make sense to you? If you are so wise, how foolish of you to continue going to a church that obviously doesn’t spur you on to worship the Lord. You waste your own time. If you spent 15 years coming to the conclusion there is no God, why waste your time with church?

Are your parents a different religion that you? There aren’t “bishops” in Baptist organizations that I’m familiar with.

As far as your tsunami relief and the girl who prayed to her Hindu god, you are absolutely correct to not slam the 6-year-old in the middle of the loss of her family. What Christian would pick that time to do that? People who want to emulate Christ’s love would never engage in your situation’s conclusion! Loosely related, It’s also borderline that the 6-year-old would have enough understanding at all to make a decision for Christ (or Hindu). It’s not impossible, but unlikely that 6-year-old’s are old enough yet to have an in-depth understanding of Jesus or Hindu to draw a decision with accuracy.

Christ is all loving and all kind. Let me re-explain everything because you with your highly-religious background are getting it wrong and I think there may be some confusion among other board readers as to God, Sin, and Judgment.

God created the world as depicted in the book of Genesis. It does not explicitly (word-for-word) say that was 8000 years ago or a million years ago or whatever. According to ages and deaths and events in the Bible (and some events cross-dated with other ancient manuscripts) that is the age of the earth/world as far as can be ascertained. Could 8000 be a wrong figure? I’m open-minded enough to say that it might be wrong. It might be right too! The age of earth argument isn’t a pillar to what I have next:

God created Adam. God created Eve as a helper to Adam. From Adam and Eve the rest of the peoples of the world were created. One day the serpent (the devil) deceived Eve in to breaking the only rule that God had made for Adam and Eve in their Garden of Eden (suggested as the present day area somewhere around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the Middle East). God’s explicit rule was not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The serpent fooled Eve in to eating the tree’s fruit and then she gave some to Adam and he ate it too. God found out and punished them as depicted in Gen 3. From that moment on, sin entered the world.

Sin is what separates people from God. God hates sin and sin cannot enter heaven. The human was a perfect creation, even made in the likeness or image of God, but is able to make its own decisions. Because Adam (and Eve) sinned, all of his offspring (or seed of Adam) is dirtied by Adam’s sin. Just like if you dropped a mL of cyanide in a 1000 gal drum of drinking water, all the water would be impure too. Sucks for us, right?

The world grew and people multiplied and wickedness increased. God was upset with the evil in the world and wiped it out with a flood. The only people spared were Noah and his family. The bible says Noah was “righteous” and “found favor in the eyes of the Lord”, but gives no other account on why he was spared. Noah was still sinful because he came from the lineage of Adam.

After the flood God made a covenant with Noah. A covenant is like a contract or promise. In it God will never destroy the world by flood, all of earth’s creatures are given in to the hand’s of man and these animals are food, people are to be fruitful and multiply, man must not eat meat that “still has lifeblood in it… and whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed…” This is the first of many covenants God makes with man. Abraham gets rules from God, Moses gets rules from God (the first ten are called the Ten Commandments), and so forth. All of the covenants are collectively called the Law. The book of Leviticus chronicles a lot of the Law. As long as Jews followed the Law, their sin was pardoned. The Law is something like 248 complicated Cans, 365 complicated Can’ts. All sorts of crazy rules had to be followed. People went to great lengths to follow the Law, memorize the Law, meditate on the Law... The problem is that the Law is too hard. No human can live up to the Law’s requirement. Not Billy Graham, not pink-hair lady on TBN, not me, not gasp! Mother Theresa, not even the pope.

Jesus was born of a virgin birth. This is critical. Joseph’s seed/semen is from the line of Adam. Jesus’ virgin birth lets him enter the earth sin-free. He did a lot of great stuff on earth. Miracles, teachings, preaching… all chronicled by different authors including a Tax Collector and Doctor. (First 4 books of the new testament). Other critical part is that when Jesus was crucified for crimes he didn’t commit (Pontus Pilate didn’t really want him killed, the masses of people did), 2 things happened.

#1 Upon Jesus’ last breath the ground shook, the earth quaked, and the curtain in the Jewish Tabernacle that separates “the holy place” from “the most holy place” was torn in two. This signifies that we don’t need a special priest to talk to God for us. God is available to all on a personal level.

#2 All of the world’s sin – past/present/future was placed on Jesus’s life. His death paid for all sin. This is the new covenant. This was not Jesus’ decision. This was God’s. God gave his only son, so that whoever believes in him will not perish [to hell], but have everlasting life”. Once you’re saved, sin cannot touch you as God will not be able to see you as a sinner anymore. You are as pure and white as snow. Bible says so. Judgment will come and all of us, believers and non-believers are going to have all their sins judged by God. Even if your perfectly sweet grandmother who was Super-Missionary and converted all of China; if at one point in her life let unwholesome talk come out of her mouth, she has sinned. Sin can’t enter heaven. Bible says so. No human has ever been sin-free. The only one that has was Jesus who was really half-man/half-God according to his parents (God & Mary).

Freightdog,
Christians engage in communion to remember the new covenant God made with us. The bible says, “do this in remembrance of me.” Note it doesn’t say, “do this in remembrance of me or you will go to hell.” Communion is an act of worship where people emulate the last meal Christ had with his apostles before he was put to death. The bread symbolizes his body, broken for us. The wine (or more accurately the fruit of the vine) symbolizes the blood sacrifice made by Jesus for us. You are not literally drinking Christ’s blood at communion. You are worshipping the Lord through remembrance of your soul’s purchase price. Hindus on the other hand, really believe Cows are sacred and all their civilization come from them or were helped by their milk. I am not however, a Hindu expert.

Whether you regard communion or cow sanctity stupid, that is only in your eyes. It doesn’t disprove God and Christians are always going to look different from the world until the very end. Following Jesus and following secularism is incompatible.

I disagree with the notion that religion is created to explain the unexplainable. No one “invented” the Bible. The Bible is a record. There wasn’t a desert group with a monolith discovery despite yours or Hollywood’s imagination. The Bible starts with creation, where WE started. To expound on your C-182&native situation, if a spaceship came from the stars and landed on Earth I wouldn’t worship the aliens.

What Christians are shooting bullets over religion? If you want to talk about the pillages of the crusades, that was a dark time, in the dark ages. Most people didn’t know what they were fighting about or what the Bible said because back then, most were illiterate and the Bible was only allowed to be read by the Roman Catholic priests which exploited their position. The Protestant Reformation put the Bible (and along with the printing press) fully into the common man’s hands dislodging the Vatican’s power and discrediting false doctrine including the sale of indulgences. Such wickedness! Don’t allow on man to shape your mind. The Bible is really the only thing you can count on.

The only Christian army I know about is the Salvation Army which helps people. The message of the Bible speaks for itself. Blowing up your body like Muslims does not “further the cause” or convert people. I wish Muslims would get that. There is a BIG difference between the Koran and the Bible too. The Koran teaches Muslims that no one but Muslims will go to their heaven. The Koran says Muslims should “slay infidels”. Infidels are you and me. They want to slay our necks!!!! The Christian God, the real God, the God of the Jews, is about love. God wants no one to perish.

If you are mad at Christianity because you think it is arrogant and not open to others you are misled. Be mad at Satan. Focus your anger against the devil. The devil tricked Eve and led to our downfall. Sin is the devil’s fault, not God’s. God has made it SO EASY to not go to hell. Accept Jesus. Jesus is truth and the way. God wants you so bad that he would send his Son as payment for your sin. How is that condemning? That’s love!

We keep going on and on about being open-minded but sometimes you have to have standards and beliefs. If we were completely open-minded, would we be open-minded to murderers and child molesters as school teachers? Christianity is open to all of the lost out there. No one should perish except those that reject the free gift of salvation. How is that so close minded?