2 thessalonians chapter 2 verses 9 thru 12."the coming of the lawless one is by the activity of satan with all power and false signs and wonders,and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing , because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. therefore God sends them a strong delusion , so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness .Originally Posted by dtknowles
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[QUOTE=6bg6ga;4832973 It would seem that when we don't wish to believe what is being taught someone starts yet another church. Ever notice how every single denomination says "They are the One True Church?"[/quote]
The RCC corrupts the word "church". The "church" is the people, the body of Christ, meaning all believers of all ages and without regard to to any self-righteous denomination's leadership. The meeting house is just a place where the true church comes to study and give thanks. No denomination is "the True Church".
People don't walk away from a group they love just to hear things that tickle their ears, good people leave to escape when the present leadership is corrupting scripture (as the United Methodists are doing now). It takes a longish period of time for walk-a-way congregations to organise scattered congregations into a new denomination.
Would you expect anyone to have loyalty to what they thought was the "second or third best true church?" I only know of ONE denomination, and a few cults, that routinely and loudly crowns themselves with that label ... and you started out in it! ??
When self-willed and unaccountable denominational leaders choose to initiate man-made worship and add power-grabbing "traditions" do you not think it is a good thing to seperate? I mean, when orthodox Christians walk away and begin a new association that actually follows scripture as best they understand it, isn't that good?
I can appreciate that; in your shoes, I would too. However, my faith is in God, not some sign above the door. Some church folk have disappointed me from time to time but Good has not.Like I have mentioned before on this forum I was raised Catholic and I guess you would say lost my faith.
In detail, the pastor is correct. Ditto Baptist; Methodist; Presbyterian. etc. We all do our best, but none of us are every going to be flawless in this life so it follows that our denominations can't possibly be flawless. So, imperfect us must choose the teachings that seem most important to us and find a denomination that comes closest to what we believe and, in love, accept their flaws as they must, in love, accept ours ... or live alone on a spiritually deserted island.Recently before we moved I was going to a Christian church. When I got into a conversation with a paster at a Baptist church I was told the Christian church wasn't correct and I was making a mistake by going there.
Why do you think our faith is "unquestioning"; most of us have a long list of questions! But, we're smart enough to know (1) He's God, we're not, and God doesn't owe us any explanations passed scripture. Then, (2) we usually have sufficient truth of personal life experiences of His faithfulness and believe He will remain true to the end. Few of us have any meaningful questions after that. (I wonder, do you believe you're more "scientific" than the committed Christian scientist Issac Newton?)I marvel at some of you with unquestioning faith. I guess I am more scientific and need more proof call it lack of faith.
You need a "new religion"; suggest you try real Christianity.My whole life religion has been centered around the almighty dollar. You gotta give that 10% off the top now.
It's hard to get folks who don't believe in God to be much concerned about any hell. And, even if they tried, they still wouldn't behave correctly!Put the fear of a place called hell in someones mind and most will behave correctly.
We all live what we believe. No one can live any other way for more than a few minutes. But truly believing/trusting in God will make us "new creatures in Christ"; not yet perfect but we simply can't be born again in Him and still live a life of sin without care.
You background seems focused on "good works" to gain God's favor (i.e, God's "grace") but, IMHO, that hopelessly puts the cart before the horse. A life of good works only counts for Christians. No amount of good works will gain anything spiritual for a religious pretender.
Faith and trust in Christ Jesus - alone - is the core of Christian teaching; not a denomination; not money; not good works; not faithfully jumping thru special religious hoops; not water baptisms by any form; not mumbling repetitious chants; not sending in 10%; not ... etc.!
If you find a new congregation with nice people but their doctrines teach anything like that you're not there yet, move on.
Many parts of the Old Testament are based on stories from even more ancient cultures. The Jews just rewrote a lot of it (including the part about Adam and Eve). I just can’t believe people would believe in any part of that nonsense. There are many other ancient texts about gods and deities. Why not believe those too? Some dead guy put a particular grouping of stories in a book and you believe it without any proof?
This is just my opinion. I don’t personally care what you do with your life as long as you don’t push your crazy beliefs on me. Freedom of OR from Religion.
I should add I typically stay out of Religious discussions but OP wanted opinions and I was bored.
Bored? Me too. It is true that Christians live by faith, but that does not mean there is not evidence for our faith.
Take a look at "Every Prophecy of the Bible" by John Walvoord. Six thousand years of fulfilled prophecy is hard to argue with, at least in my opinion.
exile
"There is not a single instance in history in which civil liberty was lost, and religious liberty preserved entire. If therefore we yield up our temporal property, we at the same time deliver the conscience into bondage." --John Witherspoon, The Dominion of Providence Over the Passions of Men. 1776
"The words of the Lord are pure words, like silver refined in a furnace on the ground, purified seven times." Psalm 12:6 (E.S.V.)
Nah.. people just look for patterns. It’s instinct. You can call it prophecy all you want but I will never believe it. I once told my best friend in high school that he should go see a doctor cause he probably has a tumor when he told me his back was hurting. He died of cancer in the spine within 8 months. True story. Did I have some mystical premonition or was it coincidence?
spent over an hour trying to think of anything productive, but the only thing i can think of is people believing things that are unfalsifiable is a logical dead end.
Very true. Just because something is written is no basis for its truth.
East Tennessee
Correct me if I am wrong here but weren't there some books left out of the bible? If so then why? The bible is supposed to be written using divine intervention and if that is the case why wasn't everything included in the bible? As much as I would like to believe things were written down word for word ask yourself this.. If you were to tell a story on one side of a room filled with people what are the chances of it coming back to you 100% as you told it? Not a very good chance and this has been proven. So, maybe God did guide the writers in their various books in the bible that doesn't entirely rule out the probability of a little free hand in what was being written down.
Contradictions.. God made Adam and Eve and they had sons Cain and Able. Cain killed Abel and was cast out. Cain wondered and met other people. Where did these people come from? I am told Adam and Eve had thousands of children and this is impossible and illogical unless Adam and Eve were super human God like creatures with a fife span of thousands of years.
doesn't matter what you bring up because saying god made it happen like that is always just as valid as a claim as saying he exists in the first place. its a logical checkmate where you can never move.
I think the main problem is if all something needs to be true is belief and faith then how do you differentiate between different claims, beliefs and religions. they are all equal claims if evidence and proof isn't needed to be true. then you have a mess and everyone is right and questions have many answers.
second option would be belief don't matter and only proof can confirm something true, in which case science wins hands down.
third option would be one of the beliefs is correct, but you cant tell which one is correct because none of them require proof, only belief, which basically everyone on earth believes in what there doing or else you'd kind of have to redefine terms. so if you were born in the right time in history and the right spot and right family, you might get the right one out of the infinite number of beliefs and 99% of the reason you got the right one is randomness.
I believe the entirety of religion began with some clan of loons in the middle of some nowhere, god forsaken place, and spread throughout the world. All religion is fear based and reward based, doesn't matter which one you pick, all the same.You follow the teachings, or you burn in some nasty environment for eternity.....that's a long time. Follow the teachings, and you get to live in some "heavenly" place, where you get to fish all day. Islam gives you a bunch of virgins to deflower.......don't ask what you do after going through them all, but there's probably an easy button for that too. No idea what the others give you, nor do I care.
Every Christian religion has it's own take on what the bible really means, and any books that didn't match what the writers of the bible thought were tossed aside, can't have that kind of heresy anywhere near the real truth of the bible. Consider too, that some authors were being pursued by people looking to run spears up their you know whats, while living in a sandbox and quite possibly under the influence of cannabis, or other flavor of the day dope. That has to have some effect on a persons mind, might even cause some wild, fanciful, stories to come forth. I'm pretty sure there are people on this thread who would very much welcome the opportunity to rewrite the bible.....just to explain what it "really" means, help out their fellow man and all.
The bible and religion has been the catalyst, the justification, of slaughtering millions upon millions of people, their crime was in not believing the same religion that their butchers did. It goes on today, the Vatican being not quite the pillar of society it would like people to think it is. Then you got Islam, knocking off anyone who doesn't conform. I have no idea what any of the other religions do, I'm sure they're probably rather drastic about it too.
All religions tend to foster an environment of fanatics, you're either in, or you're out. Religion is about control of the masses through fear, the bible is just the main weapon used to gain that control in society. Also, someone's gotta pay the electric bill for all the fancy glass churches and keep the above reproach leaders fat and happy. It was the same when the bible was put together, it'll be the same till this Earth is wiped out by some rock hitting it.....if we don't do ourselves in before that.
it's really sad to find so many people that are willing to die on their own merits and suffer the penalty of their unbelief. they will not out argue God in the end.
Same could happen to you since your gambling on one particular religion being right out of countless many. I dont think the odds of picking the right one is any higher than all of them being a test of exclusion rather than inclusion since thats also a possibility
Abraham's parents were refugees (displaced persons) who left Sumeria for Mesopotamia when the ice walls melted and a great flood resulted. Obviously he grew up learning lore and tales from his parents and other displaced persons. Many of the Old Testament Genesis stories (as well as the portion dealing with the early part of Moses' life are slightly distorted (manes changed, etc.) versions of much older pre-Hebrew tales found on clay tablets unearthed in Sumeria. Later of course they were transplanted by Constantine's lackeys into what became the Christian Bible. I suspect there was some basis for the old Sumerian tales, but what it was, how much was embellishment or distortion before our race developed a written language, we will never truly know.
Sir I'm sure your a believer. The rest of us the "Black Sheep" so to speak are having some problems. Some can blindly go along and picture the cartoon of sheep or another animal going over a cliff and the ones behind the lead sheep simply following along. Myself 'm having a hard time without being labeled as someone that twists and or distorts things in order to believe Christ wasn't my savior. I have a hard time with scriptures that frankly don't make a lot of sense to me. Some of this reminds me of my systematic brainwashing when I was young going to a Catholic grade school. We had to memorize a lot of stuff and in a manor its exactly parallel to brain washing. You do this by repetition you repeat the phrase over and over until you have it memorized.
‘A Catechism of Christian Doctrine’ – often called ‘The Penny Catechism’ tells us ‘a sacrament is an outward sign of
inward grace, ordained by Jesus Christ, by which grace is given to our souls.’
"90+% of His words are very simple and straightforward. It's our wills that are crooked and twisted - NOT His words! Wouldn't a good and benevolent God put forth His words in a manner that even those who are not mental giants could understand. How else could He do that other than to speak plainly, simply and directly to the issues of concern to him?"
To me it doesn't sound straightforward and simple to understand.
Every time someone like myself questions the Bible and religion then the EVIL card is played just like the Catholics play the guilt card. I've even heard a minister say that EVIL was the cause of him falling on an icy sidewalk and dislocating his shoulder. I'm not of the Devils side (If he even exists) nor on Evils side. I blame the minister for not being careful. You take a person that robs a bank for example....did the Devil make him do it? I think not. Is the person evil? Probably. Is the person just plain stupid? Most certainly.
Going back to "how some folks twist and contort their thinking " ever think about how your church go started? Is there a possibility that your particular church got started because someone didn't like another preaching? I've mentioned the Lutheran religion along with the Church of England as being offshoots of the Catholic church. You can probably add a lot more churches to that list.
You talk about the scripture as being "correct" yet so much is illogical. How are you going to turn water into wine? Feed thousands with a 1/2 dozen fish? As much as I would really love to believe all of that its illogical.
So what it really boils down to my opinion here.... If you follow the wrong religion your going to hell. Sin and your going to hell. Don't go to church and your going to hell. Be a native in the middle of Africa totally untouched by religion and your going to hell.
my God died for my sins and has risen from the grave and . all other "god's" are still in their graves. or some kind of idol that has eyes and cannot see or ears that cannot hear or mouths that cannot speak.
Last edited by a danl; 02-20-2020 at 07:06 PM.
well, one could look at it this way "some things are true whether you believe it or not"
I believe in God and Bigfoot. 🦧
Maybe aliens.
(Can I get an A-men?)
There are religions that believe that you get for example 74 virgins if you martyr yourself. Is that true simply because its written? Is it true because you wish to blindly follow? Lets look at this closely... due to the fact there is promiscuity the likely hood of finding 74 virgins for lets say 1000 people is going to be slim to none. They martyr themselves because they are told to they will evidentially go to a promised land even tho they kill others in the process of killing themselves. Yet it is written ah the power of the written word don't question it but believe entirely in it.
You believe in bigfoot? Seems to be some evidence to support it. I haven't personally seen one nor have a seen any physical evidence to support one yet people believe. Aliens..... yet another wonderful topic. Ever watch the history channel ? The documentary's they have on ancient Egypt the pyramids? Seems to be some cutting evidence there on aliens life forms having constructed the pyramids via other technology. Appears to have been done prior to the great flood. Someone else here on Earth prior to Christ? A lot to think about some of it brings about doubt about what we have been taught or maybe better yet brainwashed.
My contaminated brain has been washed as white as snow in the blood of Christ, leaving me a new creature in Him. For that I'm eternally grateful.
Do signs matter to you? They do to me!
I once had a 10 acre piece of partial bottom land with a small stream running through it. I lived there for 25 years. There was a game trail in the thick brush along side the stream. The stream had what looked like a couple of beaver dams. I often saw deer tracks in the trail and an occasional rub. In the 25 years I lived there I never saw a single deer or beaver but, by the signs I did see, I'm certain there was a few of each.
I'm almost 80 and have been a Christian since age 16. I've seen a lot but I've never seen God. However, I've seen the certain signs of His guidance and care in my life and the lives of many others so I'm certain He was there for all of us and He still is. I've already seen a lot of life and I'm still looking!
My eyes are not as good as they used to be but I'm not blind to all that's happening to me and around me; "I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able ...."(II Tim 1:12-14). So, perhaps as you can see, it really doesn't matter to me what anyone else "thinks" or "believes" about God, or why.
Signs do matter. Thus, from the signs I could easily see, I know I once had deer and beaver on my land and God is still in my life.
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