Just to make myself clear about all my post from yesterday.I did not come here to belittle anyone about their beliefs. How far would a thread get if it was on an anti-jewish platform. It would probably get deleted and the poster reprimanded within 50 post. I just don’t see a need to insult anybody about their faith, and as shown by the last few post,become childish about it. To me all religions are like alcohol. Some light and fruity, some strong and bitter, some leave you with a hangover and for those that have a daily diet of any of it, need more and more of it to make it through the day. Sort of like some beer comercial. More taste less filling, The king of beers,the land of sky blue waters etc.So no matter what flavor you like or wich one agrees with you the most, in the end any of them will get you drunk if you drink enough of it.So, thats my outlook about religion, ya’ll have a nice day and thanks for playing.
Well, eastforker, in my opinion you should consider going on the "FR Religion Forum Wagon" and stick with the forums that don't offend your agnostic sensibilities.
Ya see, what we do on the Religion Forum is discuss religion...all day every day. Perhaps you could post a thread yourself in which to discuss "Lack of Religious Belief, Pro or Con" but I'd suggest it go up in the chat forum.
Have a good day.
All I can say is that you (and others) are missing the whole point. The Jews are not presenting themselves as christians. The Mormons are. The Christians know they are not. The Christians post official LDS writings and scripture so people can see where they diverge.
Nobody would get bent out of shape if they went about being Mormon and quit trying to take a ride on the “Christian” brand name.
We’d still love them and try to evangelize them.
Posting conflicting or contradictory information about a belief system is not the same as “insulting anybody”.
But truth be told, your angst really should be directed at the mormons then if you’re going to stay on that line of thinking. They’re the ones who “insulted everyone else” because their founder came out firing with the “all are an abomination” statement.
We don’t view exposing that information as a game.
Now when I use the word 'heresies' I refer to the things which insult the very nature of God as He has defined Himself in Judeo-Christian rvelation.
God says of Himself that He is the Alpha and Omega, the first and last. As Alamo_Girl put it last evening, Only He was before the universe came into existence, and when the created stops being, only He will remain. In that sense God is the limits definition of all that there is, whether spiritual or physical. All exist between the limits of Whom IS and Whom will remain when all you or I can even imagine is no more.
Let's go even further, for the benefit of discussion on a plane you may enjoin. There is not one thing that is not a created thing EXCEPT God. God IS ... before there was anything created, God IS. When the universe expands into a cold lifeless expanse in approximately 10120 billion years, if some as yet undiscovered principle of Physics does not intervene sooner, God IS even at that limit. If God rolls up the universe when it reaches the cold dead state at that far time, and He blows it into nothingness so time and space and matter and souls and spirits are no more, God will still be I AM.
Christians--not cultist pretending to be Christians, but CHRIST ians-- believe God has told us in the pages of the Tanakh and New Testament that Jesus IS The Word and that The Word was with God in the beginning and Was God. That means--if words mean anything--that Jesus is either the very first of God's Creation and from Whom all else issues, or it means Jesus is God as He creates dimension time, dimension space, and all the rest of what we have and will discover.
In the sense of the Trinity, I would assert that the second way of contemplating Jesus, The Word made flesh WHo dwelt among us, is the more accurate. In my calculus, when God declares what will be, it is as sure as already in existence, for the God I believe in cannot lie ... men and women can and do lie, but it is not in God's nature to lie therefore He is not a liar.
The Bible makes it very clear that Jesus could not sin as He walked among men during His ministry because His seed, His nature remained within Him.
You may believe yourself to be samrter than to believe in the Judeo-Christian God, but have you ever really discussed Whom God IS with a learned Christian? Oh, I don't mean just someone who has warmed a pew among fellow Christians for deacdes, I'm referring to the Christian into Whom God placed a burning desire to know Whom God IS and has been studying for decades to comprehend God in all the many ways He IS revealing Himself. If she will allow it, you could find just such a Christian in Alamo_Girl, and you will be rewarded beyond your imaginings in asking for her opinions and revelations. In the meantime, following is a little essay on the nature of The Alpha and Omega God as expressed in three ways, three venues, three functions, and two of the three are functioning within the limits of Alpha and Omega, while remaining aspects of He Who IS and ever shall be, Who told us His name is I AM:
The following will be 'a way' to understand the notion of the trinitarian nature of God, not a strictly Biblical explanation, but one which is applicable to the teaching of the Bible. Here goes:
God The Father Almighty, The Alpha and Omega, is greater than His creation, thus greater than dimension time and dimension space, thus we may think of The Father Almighty as beyond time and space but not prevented from touching and indeed penetrating His creation. Everything that exists does so between the limits, the beginning and end beyond which I AM still IS.
I liken the universe of space and time to a bubble: what is inside the bubble is in time and space. But the nature of what is inside the bubble is only partially understood in modern Physics.
The Bible relates scenes which defy the simplistic notions we use for assumptive science. God The Father Almighty is as comfortable outside the bubble as He is inside the bubble.
Modern Physics has discovered that the balance of forces and tensions sustaining the universe necessary for human life to arise within the universe is extremely delicate, on the order of a mathematical improbability, represented as a 'one in less than' fraction so tiny that a one over a one followed by more than one-hundred zeros (1/10100) defines the probability that the whole thing remains in balance! Such a delicate balancing act is but one of the continuing 'works' of the Holy Spirit of God. It is by the Spirit of God, The Word, that the universe came into existence and it is said in the Bible that by His Spirit the whole is maintained.
But the Bible also states that The Word was with God in the beginning and was God. In John's gospel we find that Jesus is The Word made flesh Who dwelt among us. So, inside the bubble Created by The Father Almighty, sustained by God The Holy Spirit, is the Word, God made flesh Who dwelt among us. The Creator does not stop being greater than His creation bubble, nor does His Spirit cease to sustain it all in balance, when Jesus comes in the flesh to dwell among us.
God The Father Almighty created and creates all the where/when realms we may discover; His Holy Spirit maintains the balance and separateness of our where/when and all other where/whens, and Jesus has moved in and out of other where/whens: as shown when He resurrected from the tomb without rolling away the stone, just passing out of the tomb where/when, into 'another' where/when, then back into our where/when as He spoke to the women come to the sepulchre; and when He appeared in a locked and shuttered room with the disciples present; or when He appeared suddenly with the disciples walking on a road and broke bread with them then left our where/when to go to the 'other' where/when.
The trinitarian nature of God is shown in the Bible, even in the Tanakh. Trinity IS the nature of God as we have been given to know. God's nature may be much more than trinitarian, but I for one haven't a clue what other works God does since I'm limited to the capabilities He has built into us. Even in the Old Testament/Tanakh, we do have instruction on the Three nature of God as Creator, Sustainer, and Deliverer. God Is manifested as three yet one, seen identified by 'the work He is doing'.
With each manifestation, we are given to realize His presence simultaneously as Creator--because we exist in the realm He created, as Sustainer--because the balance is too delicate to stand alone without His sustaining the separation and interdependence, and as God with us in the person of Jesus our Lord and Savior.
Yup; RELIGION will do that to ya.
Go find JESUS on your own.