JESUS CHRIST IS THE LORD AND SAVIOR

Post Reply New Topic

Now that's not fair to assume like that. Only a fool could come up with what you said.

Yeah well it was givin by God himself.
Try reading the book 23 minutes in Hell and you'll see.

I know you did not say...for me, but Whoo! That was really pretty good. I always did say, if you are going to do something you should go all the way. Rock on, Dee.

Did you witness God doing this with your own eyes or are you relying on the witness of a Notary Public?

No I will not try reading this because it is nonsense and I have little time for nonsense.

ruveyn

I feel sorry for you. I'll remember you in my prayers.

ThatRedHairedGrrl:

0: It's no so much that I'm brave, I just don't much care for life. Since I've dealt with mental illness my entire life and I have a list of 19 names of people that I've met who later died, I stopped caring about whether I live or die a long time ago. I'm rarely suicidal, and would never do it, but I just don't care.

I figure God still has a use for me, or He'd bring me home, so for now I'm looking for ways to help bring other people to Him. In my terms, I'm looking for demons to mess with, since I tend to view things in a martial light. I'm tired of being tormented, I want to kick some ass. And hey, Jesus is kinda the nuclear weapon of spiritual warfare: once we call for Jesus, bad things hide or face obliteration.

0.5: I haven't read 1984 in a very long time. I need to, I didn't go as deep into books then as I do now.

1: I do sometimes wonder if it's at all fair, and I wonder about the nature of God, and I wonder about my own religion. In the end, I keep coming back to how my faith enabled me to turn my life around, helped me accept and start to deal with my BP and AS, and brought me out of my depression. I hope to bring that to at least one other person. Just one single person would be the best thing I can ever hope to do.

I understand your reference to torture and thought crime, you're referring to Hell. I think there is quite a difference in that it's not so much what we think that damns us but what we do, and even then the punishment is *never* guaranteed. Even at the door to Room 101 we can repent and be completely forgiven.

Also, the comparison of God to the Party isn't quite accurate. God wants us to love him, but does little to prevent distractions or force people to convert. It's all up to us. Also, God doesn't clamp down on people doing things that don't directly benefit Him. He's pretty pro-family, doesn't mind sceince, promotes art and literature, and generally lets us serve Him in any way we choose.

And conversion to Christianity isn't much like brainwashing, I'm pretty much the same person I was, just a little more compassionate, and a little calmer. I'm still hardcore about whatever I'm doing, I'm still utterly devoted to the people I love, pretty much everything is the same, I'm just nicer and less troubled.

2: I've noticed in my life that when I'm about to do something God is whispering that I shouldn't do, there comes a point when I tell Him I want to do it, and would He please just go away. So yeah, I don't think people always want to be rescued. I think sometimes they're in trouble and Jesus shows up and says "hey, want some help?" and they turn him away. I think he comes back the next time, and the time after that, and so on until they accept it, or they die.

2A: Jesus paid for the salvation of *all* mankind at once, true. But look around, mankind as a whole will never accept it, so it's up to me, you, each individual person. And it's not really up to the majority to decide the issue for all of us at once anyways.

3: I think it's pretty easy to understand, but hard to accept. I'd make a joke about this neat little book that explains all the rules, but I did that yesterday in a different thread on these boards, so it's not yet ready to be recycled. If you want a Bible, I'll send you one, my dollar. Anyways, it does explain things rather well, and the way I see it, God keeps making things easier. I don't really thinks it's all that hard anyways, I don't feel anything is lacking in my life other than a wife. And even that I can do without if He requires it.

4: As for God knowing the future, I think He sees *all* possible futures, and tries to get us to obey Him so that the best one happens, but sometimes we obey the Void*, so it's never certain what will happen. Sometimes He steps in and drops a miracle, but those are pretty rare. Most of the time He doesn't need those, the person in question can do it with His normal help if they're ready to.

*With the number of fantasy books I've read, I get bored using "Devil" and "Satan" all the time, so I started dropping in the word used in whatever fantasy book comes to mind. The Wheel of Time books provide several, that one was from one of the Shannara books by Terry Brooks.

The Bible? It was written by humans - mostly men - to support a patrilineal and male-dominated culture.

Yet, the Bible says that God is real, while also saying that God says the Bible is His word.

Seems to me that people are putting a lot of faith into a collection of historically apocryphal accounts that vainly attempt to self-validate.

Still, I admire your faith. Have you fully examined it? I've found that the unexamined faith is not worth believing.

Is this book "23 Minutes in Hell" also the 'Word of God' as the other 'holy' books are? *shakes head* When you arbitrarily choose your proof and sources, you inherently weaken your argument. Every religion has its own variation on God, on such a being's wishes, goals and desires. That people continue to insistently believe that they alone have the "right" interpretation is baffling to me, and pointless.


M.

So if I have Jesus in my heart does that mean I can do as I damn well please here on Earth knowing that the Lord will forgive me for my sins?



Dont believe everything you read!

It is the nature of a religious meme to protect itself by limiting its exposure to facts that would undermine it, so uses only document sources (bible, koran etc) that support its continued existence using self referential circular arguments. Outside of such a limited mentality religious memes collapse or become absurd as they try to support the lie they are, by denying facts in ever more bizarre ways (e.g. fossil record is the work of the devil etc). A religious meme behaves very much like a virus controlling the mind, and behaviour of those it infects.

Last edited by TallyMan on 31 Mar 2009, 12:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

My Cr0.02...

The way I understand it, once Jesus is "in your heart," you no longer feel the urge to do as you "damn well please." And if you are doing as you "damn well please," then you don't have Jesus "in your heart."

Unfortunately, a lot of peodophile priests and adulterous evangelists don't seem to understand that. It's the old "Don't do as I do; do what the Bible says" routine.

Just a few quick words before I depart this particular discussion.

zero - several things. One, I have read the Bible (or large parts of it, in several different versions), but thanks for your offer...

Two, my Orwell comparison wasn't meant to go quite that far! I was referring primarily to the part where O'Brien tells the (previously beaten to a pulp) Winston that he 'did this to himself' and can choose to stop it whenever he wants by no longer being defiant to the Party. I just picked a modern, fictional example of the fact that, when someone is being tortured, saying they chose torture by whatever they did to 'merit' the torture is, in human terms, monstrous. (I find it interesting that people now use this terminology - seeing humans as choosing Hell, rather than God choosing to send them there. I haven't been able to find examples of it in the Bible or in any other Christian writings, in fact, before C. S. 'the doors of Hell are locked on the inside' Lewis, and I suspect it's a modern response to the fact that the older idea was pretty monstrous in itself. Although, there have been a lot of changes in the way Hell has been viewed in Christianity over the centuries, and some people debate whether the idea of eternal punishment was ever part of the original faith. But that's another discussion.)

Three...I've been in some of those dark places too, and five years ago I underwent a similar kind of turnaround to the one you describe. During that recovery I experienced what I, for want of a better form of shorthand, will refer to as God (although there are myriads of other names for it, all of them partly descriptive but none of them ultimately doing It justice) in a much closer and deeper way than I had previously. It was really that experience that convinced me, once and for all, that what we call God isn't something that we can, ultimately, reject or ever be separated from. That no matter how far down we go, no matter how much we try and shut ourselves off from love, it will somehow, in whatever way is right for us, come find us and get us back again. (How that tallies with free will, I don't know; I found Julian of Norwich the most helpful person on that one, and she couldn't work it out either.) For me, then, in the end, although I may wrangle intellectually, it comes down to gut feelings about what is and isn't real in this universe. That's all. Peace to you on your path (and PS...good luck with the wife thing.)

ruveyn...strictly speaking, I think many of the Gnostics believed that 'Hell' was right here on this earth. Their 'resurrection from the dead' meant becoming re-awakened to their real life as divine Spirit. Even if they believed in after-death punishment (they were a very varied lot) it was generally temporary. The heaven-hell duality is really a Persian thing, but again, that's a whole other thread...

What about "ex-gays" who accept Jesus Christ as their personal saviour and still have homosexual urges?
Unfotunately becoming a born-again Christian DOESNT eliminate temptation to commit sin and many of these people continue to do what they've always done, believing that forgiveness absolves them from any responsibility for their actions.

Yeah...the get out of Hell free attitude bothers me too for some reason...

Last edited by claire-333 on 31 Mar 2009, 5:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The sin is not in the temptation, it is in the act.

No, I won't. I'm Jewish and Jesus was too. If Jesus really is the saviour and all that jazz, I doubt he'd frown on those of his own faith himself.