Posted on 12/08/2013 12:35:03 PM PST by CHRISTIAN DIARIST
Imagine if an activist group blanketed a major city with 55 billboards urging that illegal aliens go back to their own country. Or that homosexuality is a crime against nature. Or that Muslims are responsible for most of the world’s terrorist attacks.
The mainstream media would be all over the story. Organizations – like La Raza, like GLAAD, like CAIR – would organize protests. President Obama would publicly condemn the billboards (while defending illegals, homosexuals and Islam). And the sponsors of the billboards would be branded a “hate group.”
Yet, there has been little outrage over the 55 billboards that started going up last week in Sacramento, California that mock Christians, that blaspheme God. They are sponsored by the so-called Freedom From Religion Foundation, an atheist organization based in Madison, Wisconsin that truly is a hate group.
“I don’t believe in Odin, either,” sneers one billboard. “Studying the bible made me an atheist,” disparages another. “Without god I am full of love,” declares still another.
Yet, Judy Saint, director of FFRF’s newly formed Sacramento chapter, insists that the 55 billboards are not anti-Christian, not anti-God. They just thought it would be a good way to encourage atheists on the down low to “come out of the closet”
“There are thousands of us here,” she said, “and we are reaching out to them because it’s such a maligned minority. If the message at all is to believers, it would be that we are good moral people, too.”
But, by her own words, Saint reveals the nefariousness of the atheist movement in this country.
She suggests that atheists are an unfairly maligned minority. But if the noisome atheist community – which constitutes less than 1 percent of the U.S. population – is maligned, it’s because of their attacks on Christians by in-your-face atheist groups like FFRF.
Indeed, not only are the atheists putting up 55 billboards that bash the religious faith of more than three-quarters of Americans, they have deliberately chosen to do so during the Christmas season, defecating on a holy day on which Christians celebrate the birth of Christ the Lord.
Saint also claims that she and her fellow atheists are both “good” and “moral.”
But there is no good in the atheists’ (un)holy war against Christianity, using billboards as their weapon of attack. And there is no morality in the atheist community’s endorsement of such practices as same-sex marriage.
Indeed, one of FFRF’s 55 billboards features Saint, the atheist hate group’s Sacramento front woman, and her wife with the message: “Reason. Equality. Doing Good – All without gods.”
That’s the arrogance of atheists that they inherited from their father, the devil. They think that “doing good” means they are good. But the Bible advises that their good works, whatever they might be, “are as filthy rags” before the Almighty.
The Word of God also tell us, everyone, “There is none righteous, no not one.”
The difference between unrighteous Christians and unrighteous atheists is that Christians are born again; their sins covered by the blood of Christ. Atheists, on the other hand reject Christ, and shake their fist at God.
And for their unrepentant, unforgiven sin, the unGodly will spend their existence beyond this fallen world in everlasting torment.
It ain’t the speed; but the volume.
I need to work on short and pithy.
I'm sure you could be.
Your tagline says much already.
When I read of a person who has been terribly hurt by others, who say they'd NEVER forgive, my heart just breaks and I pray for healing to come to them eventually.
Matthew 6:15
But if you don't forgive people, your Father will not forgive your wrongdoing.
you seem to have wavered from that path....Christ, while on Earth formed a religion on the apostles, He didn't hesitate to point out that He had paved the way to Heaven, He set out rules, Sacraments, powers, and promised to be with her until the end of time. The church exists today, as it has for over 2,000 years and it is the Catholic Church....none other even comes close, it is apparent and undeniable.
you are in a flood, a rowboat happens by and you say no thanks, I've prayed and God will take care of me, a fireboat comes toward you, you wave it away saying I'm depending on God, a helicopter passes overhead and you wave it off knowing that God will save you....you drown.....at the pearly gates you complain to God that He didn't come to save you....He says, I sent a rowboat, a fireboat and a helicopter to get you but you refused My gift.......we are all free to refuse His gifts!!!
“Perhaps you like math...”
“...the second best thing for you to do is to solve intergral equations...”
“...So you are now reduced to performing differentiation, your third favorite thing. The after life is still good, but after only 20,000, you after life quality is significantly diminished.”
“And as time goes on, you see that you will be reduced to doing things that you are increasingly less enthusiastic about doing...”
A lot of assumptions there. Like assuming that whatever things you liked during your wisp of time on Earth are all you will “like” in the afterlife. That would be like a four year old thinking that he doesn’t want to become an adult because he would be bored doing adult things since everyone knows the only thing worth doing is playing on his scooter, or perhaps riding that red bike with training wheels.
Also, the “as time goes on” assumes the afterlife is bound within the constraints of time as it was when on Earth.
Finally, your thought process seems to be bound by the dimensions you have learned while on Earth, when in the afterlife you very well may find your new “reality” to be much less constrained.
Sure, we all will make certain assumptions when speculating about the afterlife, but why limit yourself to those assumptions that make it an undesirable “place” to be?
In the end, it really doesn’t matter what we speculate the afterlife to be, it will be what it will be, regardless of our speculations.
It is not the truth that bites but malice. You don’t have to tell an ugly person they are ugly.
What you describe sounds more like hell than heaven. Like what someone locked in a cell would do. Heaven is supposed to be more like a newborn child whose mouth closes around the nipple of his mother’s breast, and with delight takes in her nourishing milk. To be born again with all possibilities before us.
Thank you for sharing your insights, dear Talisker! The decision was quite shocking.
An email or phone call...maybe a text message? ;o)
I guess you don’t like the problem solving aspects of being a human.
Different heavens for different folks.
I am sometimes not nice. Sometimes I am too nice. We all have our problems.
When I am nice, it is despite not being defrauded.
This unworthy one asks if having children molested by priests is part of the Catholic faith that you find admirable.
When it comes to the Catholic Church, noone else comes close.
ah yes, the ‘others know better than you what you like’ is the idea that gave us obamacare.
So you don’t expect me to get that email either?
Dear FFRF et al.: With every passing year, I grow less and less interested in indulging your theological daddy issues. You’re about as free-thinking as a group of North Koreans at an audience with Number Un, which makes you utterly predictable and utterly boring. How sad for you.
Please!
Do NOT equate your chosen religious organization's rites with the simplicity that is found in CHRIST!
Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
1 John 3:21-24
Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.
Many toads on FR have told me I’m ugly.
One just recently...
Ah...
You ARE a MORMON!!
"Now, it may be contended that a judgment, with some degree of salvation for all, encourages the sinner to pursue his dark ways. Not so. However generous the judgment, it is measured by our works. Our punishment will be the heavy regret that we might have received a greater reward, a higher kingdom, had our lives conformed more nearly to truth. Such remorse may yield keener pain than physical torture." (Understandable Religion, p. 89)
While Widtsoe is careful not to call a heavenly kingdom "hell", he is nonetheless certain that there will be a keen regret for lost opportunities:
"Humanity will be grouped according to their works in three main divisions: Celestial (like the sun), Telestial (like the moon), Terrestrial (like the earth). Within each group there will be many gradations and divisions, until from the lowest to the highest in all groups there will be a series of gradually ascending glories. There can be no talk of a hell, except for the few 'sons of Perdition,' but undoubtedly the regret for lost opportunities will be keen among those in the lower degrees of glory." (Program of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, p. 226)
Joseph Fielding Smith, on the other hand, considers the tormenting regret experienced in the bottom two heavenly kingdoms and concludes "in that sense it will be hell":
"This earth will become a celestial kingdom when it is sanctified. Those who enter the terrestrial kingdom will have to go to some other sphere which will be prepared for them. Those who enter the telestial kingdom, likewise will have to go to some earth which is prepared for them, and there will be another place which is hell where the devil and those who are punished to go with him will dwell. Of course, those who enter the telestial kingdom, and those who enter the terrestrial kingdom will have the eternal punishment which will come to them in knowing that they might, if they had kept the commandments of the Lord, have returned to his presence as his sons and his daughters. This will be a torment to them, and in that sense it will be hell." (Answers to Gospel Questions, v. 2, p. 210)
This line of thinking is interesting in light of Joseph Smith's following teaching:
"A man is his own tormenter and his own condemner. Hence the saying, They shall go into the lake that burns with fire and brimstone. The torment of disappointment in the mind of man is as exquisite as a lake burning with fire and brimstone" (TPJS, p. 357)
The entry in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism on "Damnation" essentially explains that the bottom two kingdoms of heaven are kingdoms of damnation:
"Just as there are varying degrees and types of salvation, coupled with eternal progression in some areas (D&C 76:96-98; 131:1-4), so are there varying degrees and types of damnation. In LDS doctrine, to be damned means to be stopped, blocked, or limited in one's progress. Individuals are damned whenever they are prevented from reaching their full potential as children of God. Damnation is falling short of what one might have enjoyed if one had received and been faithful to the whole law of the gospel. In this sense, all who do not achieve the highest degree of the Celestial Kingdom are damned, even though they are saved in some degree of glory."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.