Posted on 12/21/2002 11:21:49 AM PST by DouglasKC
That is an excellent analysis and was very instructive. Why do you consider yourself an athiest?
#1 Because if there is a Creator, I have not met him/her. If there is a Creator, then that person is actually someone we could touch as a physical manifestation on the Earth (albeit an all powerful, immortal being) in this present day material world. #2 Because I do not agree with anyone on the nature of what God could be if evidence of such a personage were revealed to exist (this includes various translations of the Bible and those of other religious texts). #3 Human and all other life is finite and there is no life in the Universe other than that which is on this Earth. #4 Most importantly, it does not matter. If there is a God, our lives are pre-destined/pre-determined - - according to your theological perspective, the case of Job, Moses, Jesus and others, asserts this is the case. The chemistry of genetics also lends to the idea that life is pre-determined and possibly not beyond human controls. There are many more...
My understanding of this scripture has always been that it refers to Ashera poles named after the Goddess Ashera. In modern times, we refer to them as totempoles.
Old Testament scripture has numerous references to these Ashera poles. These are not Christmas trees.
Sigh! Having come out and been delivered from the false doctrines of the apostate Christian church, I know how their heads work. Baal-worshippingJezebel says to the Church as she seduces them to commit spiritual fornication (Re 2:20), "Just say a blessing on everyone even those who don't agree with you 'cause they must be enemies and keep doing your own thing, it is okay to be right in your own eyes and you are excused from obedience because you are a Christian and G~d loves you too much to require you to obey and not worship Mammon and will bless your every idolatrous, sinful behavior." You are probably relying on: Mt 5:44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.
I say to you, like Paul: Gal 4:16 Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?
It appears that you put your piece on this thread without reading the thread which is to help those who are true and wish no longer to be deceived to come out of Deception. Yours piece missed the point and your blanket blessings amount to "not receiving instruction" (Pr 1:7) because you haven't read the thread. If you had read it you would know Christmas is NOT a holy day, but a satanic unholy day with ample use of "mother and child" images associated with the occult; the satanists know that and laugh themselves silly at the Christians who don't believe the Truth. Those "Christians" are deceived (something Jesus warned about) and have become atheistic Secular Humanists. BTW Derek Prince* writes that Humanism is a demon.
>Funny how people rarely go looking for the meaning behind things such as Christmas trees and prefer to simply denounce them as pagan. Same could be said for Christmas itself. Merry Christmas to you all!
All that the L~rd said is being fulfilled. He said many would be deceived, that men loved darkness more than light and few there be that find eternal life. The dry unfruitful branch of the apostate Church which loves tradition and lies more than the Truth is being whacked off and readied for the fire.
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* Derek Prince, They shall Expel Demons, (Baker Books, 1998), p. 84.
cc to ALS: It is likely that "the easy prey" who are taken captive at the will of the devil will not know what I am talking about. 2 Ti 2:26. There are far greater problems involved in this falling away than just Christmas.
The more scripture is used, the more you are offended. It looks like your real beef may with the Author of Life Himself. I can understand rejecting as false the lifestyle of hypocritical, apostate Christianity. There is, however, a real Jesus...Yeshua...who will meet personally those who recognize and serve Him as L~rd and savior, putting Him first above the things of the world and do things His way. Check out v. 17-19 below:
Joh 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.
18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.
21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.
Interesting. I was having this very same debate with Christians on another thread. They also insist that Christ is now a physical manifestation now (albeit an all powerful, immortal being.)
I disagree. God created everything through Christ. Our entire universe, everything we can or can not see is creation. Every quark, every proton. Every black hole. Every element. Space and time itself. I don't know if you accept all of the bible, but I base my beliefs on it:
Col 1:16 For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:
The nature of God is completely outside of the created. God isn't bound by anything in his creation. He's eternal indeed because he's outside of time. If he's outside of time then he's outside of the creation and invisible, or unseeable, to us. He does intereact, but we can only sense and describe his presence in the vaguest of terms...spirituality, love, intellect, rationality, creativeness, etc.
As a Christian I don't believe I will ever be able to "see" God as a physical manifestation until Christ returns and I become like him and then am able to see him as he is:
1Jo 3:2 Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.
In short the divine entity known as God cannot be composed of anything in the universe that he created. If he were than he would be bound by the same laws of physics as us. He wouldn't be eternal, or immortal, or all powerful.
#2 Because I do not agree with anyone on the nature of what God could be if evidence of such a personage were revealed to exist (this includes various translations of the Bible and those of other religious texts).
See above.
#3 Human and all other life is finite and there is no life in the Universe other than that which is on this Earth.
I agree. The possiblity that life exists elsewhere is slim to none. That only makes the case for a creator stronger to me.
#4 Most importantly, it does not matter. If there is a God, our lives are pre-destined/pre-determined - - according to your theological perspective, the case of Job, Moses, Jesus and others, asserts this is the case.
Not correct. The courses of our lives are known to God, but the choices are always ours. We are led but God, but not dragged. Every choice we make is entirely of our own free will. Knowing the outcome is not the same as making it happen.
The chemistry of genetics also lends to the idea that life is pre-determined and possibly not beyond human controls.
The creation is not the creator. Given enough time and intellect we can figure out how certain parts of the creation operate and behave. Nothing new there, we've been doing it for millenia. But what we can never do is go beyond our reality.
At any rate, I thank you for your contributions to this thread.
lol...you have been wonderful on this thread and have spoken some great truths. But I know that before God tapped me on the shoulder and showed me the truth that I could have been staring the truth right in the face and never seen it. I would have even argued that it wasn't even there in front of me. Nobody will listen until God wants them to.
Joh 6:44 No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.
The nature of God is completely outside of the created. God isn't bound by anything in his creation. He's eternal indeed because he's outside of time. If he's outside of time then he's outside of the creation and invisible, or unseeable, to us. He does intereact, but we can only sense and describe his presence in the vaguest of terms...spirituality, love, intellect, rationality, creativeness, etc.
Sounds like exactly what Hobbes said in Leviathan:
Part IV. Of the Kingdom of DarknessChap. xlv. Of Demonology and other Relics of the Religion of the Gentiles.
[15] It is also evident that there can be no image of a thing infinite: for all the images and phantasms that are made by the impression of things visible are figured. But figure is quantity every way determined, and therefore there can be no image of God, nor of the soul of man, nor of spirits; but only of bodies visible, that is, bodies that have light in themselves, or are by such enlightened.
BTW, what is the steeple on most churches all about?
Excellent point!
I expected as much, I am used to such a response when questioning someone's irrational claim that they are "pagan." This is something I do know a lot about.
Most of the neo-pagan groups who criticize Christians are 10 times worse than the Christians they constantly and unfairly defame. Satan, Shaitan, Set or Seth ("Set-hn" as spoken in the ancient Hebrew) is a pagan entity, the "adversary" of Judaic theology. (A "pagan" is anyone not Judaic, Christian or Muslim.)
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I am actually supposed to care what you think about my beliefs?
Obviously, you do...
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But I do not and will not allow you to define me.
Not my definitions, as I had stated. You are the one who gave the broad definition without specific terminology.
I am asking are you a Hellenistic pagan, Celtic pagan, Roman or Egyptian pagan, (etc... ad nauseum), or just a Chaos practitioner?
Or are you just a non-Judaic, non-Christian?
Words do mean things and when you so carelessly throw them out there, I see it and will question it. Language is the totality of a civilization, this is why Marxists and the other Leftists (my enemies) attack our language.
I question the idea that you even know what you believe, since you can't seem to tell me in a clear construction of language and have to resort to informal fallacies of logic in response.
Aristotle was a Hellenistic "pagan," whose categorical logic is what I am using here, along with his knowledge given to us in Poetics.
As an atheist, I maintain that the societal practice of abortion is ritual mass murder upon the altars dedicated to idolatrous vanities, a collective human sacrifice to pagan idols. I don't care much for that type of paganism.
CONSIDER YOUR WORDS CAREFULLY, THEY DO HAVE CONSEQUENCES AND GIVE PEOPLE IMPRESSIONS YOU MAY NOT INTEND...
Anyone care to dispute the following with logical arguments ???
Set, Satan, and Shaitan are the same. "Satan" is a Hebrew word for the pagan Egyptian Set. Satan, Shaitan, Set or Seth ("Set-hn" as spoken in the ancient Hebrew) is a pagan entity, the "adversary" of Judaic theology. (A "pagan" is anyone not Judaic, Christian or Muslim.)
The Greeks called Set "Typhon," who was the war god assigned to Upper Egypt. This also represents another contravention to the "accepted" etymologies of words like "typhoon" in English, which is erroneously listed as the Cantonese "tai fung" in many dictionaries. English has more commonalties with Greek and Latin.
The Egyptian priest Manetho associated the Jews with the Hyksos and Moses with the Egyptian priest Osarsiph. It was at this time that the belief the Jews worshipped an ass – an animal holy to the Egyptian god Set was established. Both the Jews and the pagan Egyptians used the labels (i.e., Satan, Set, Seth, or "Set-hn" as spoken in the ancient Hebrew) to defame each other. How fitting that amidst this epic struggle and bloody conflict, the entity known as Satan was born into the World. Such conflict continued through the Maccabean period (with Antiochus Epiphanes), and continues into modern times on several fronts.
There is a recurring theme that alludes to the hostility between the pagan Egyptians and the Judaic. Often it is claimed by the Neo-Pagans that Satan is only found in Christianity. How can this be if Satan is undeniably a Hebrew word adapted from the name of the pagan Egyptian god Set? This cannot be reconciled with the fact that it is a Hebrew word...
Thomas Hobbes, having been fluent in both Greek and Latin by age 9, has this to support my assertions in Leviathan:
Part III. Of a Christian Commonwealth.Chap. xxxviii. Of Eternal Life, Hell, Salvation, and Redemption.
[12] And first, for the tormentors, we have their nature and properties exactly and properly delivered by the names of the Enemy (or Satan), the Accuser (or Diabolus), the Destroyer (or Abaddon). Which significant names (Satan, Devil, Abaddon) set not forth to us any individual person, as proper names do, but only an office or quality, and are therefore appellatives, which ought not to have been left untranslated (as they are in the Latin and modern Bibles), because thereby they seem to be the proper names of demons, and men are the more easily seduced to believe the doctrine of devils, which at that time was the religion of the Gentiles, and contrary to that of Moses, and of Christ.
[13] And because by the Enemy, the Accuser, and Destroyer, is meant the enemy of them that shall be in the kingdom of God, therefore if the kingdom of God after the resurrection be upon the earth (as in the former Chapter I have shewn by Scripture it seems to be), the Enemy and his kingdom must be on earth also. For so also was it in the time before the Jews had deposed God. For God's kingdom was in Israel, and the nations round about were the kingdoms of the Enemy; and consequently, by Satan is meant any earthly enemy of the Church.
Consider this, from Hobbes' Leviathan, in 1668:
Part IV. Of the Kingdom of DarknessChap. xlvii. Of the Benefit that proceedeth from such Darkness
[21] ...For from the time that the Bishop of Rome had gotten to be acknowledged for bishop universal, by pretence of succsession to St. Peter, their whole hierarchy (or kingdom of darkness) may be compared not unfitly to the kingdom of fairies (that is, to the old wives' fables in England, concerning ghosts and spirits and the feats they play in the night). And if a man consider the original of this ecclesiastical dominion, he will easily perceive that the Papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased Roman empire sitting crowned upon the grave thereof. For so did the Papacy start out of the ruins of that heathen power.
[22] The language also which they use (both in the churches and in their public acts) being Latin, which is not commonly used by any nation now in the world, what is it but the ghost of the old Roman language?
[23] The fairies, in what nation soever they converse, have but one universal king, which some poets of ours call King Oberon; but the Scripture calls Beelzebub, prince of demons. The ecclesiastics likewise, in whose dominions soever they be found, acknowledge but one universal king, the Pope.
[24] The ecclesiastics are spiritual men and ghostly fathers. The fairies and ghosts inhabit darkness, solitudes, and graves. The ecclesiastics walk in obscurity of doctrine,...
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