Is it up to us to believe in God?
- Thread starter elgazzaradel
- Start date
Ironically enough hell could get 50 million or so just from that area in that the armies around Jerusalem also include all people that 'morally' support them being there. Once away from Israel the deaths caused by Jesus will be 'selective' in that it could be 6 people standing beside you and you could remain alive if that is the way Jesus wanted it to be, it could also be the other way around as far as the numbers are concerned. The survivors get to walk to Jerusalem and witness the destruction before the land is cleansed, that is for at least the first 7 years.
Eze.39:6
And I will send a fire on Magog,
and among them that dwell carelessly in the isles:
and they shall know that I am the LORD.
Eze.39:14
And they shall sever out men of continual employment,
passing through the land to bury with the passengers those that remain upon the face of the earth,
to cleanse it:
after the end of seven months shall they search.
Eze.39:15
And the passengers that pass through the land,
when any seeth a man's bone,
then shall he set up a sign by it,
till the buriers have buried it in the valley of Hamon-gog.
Eze.39:16
And also the name of the city shall be Hamonah.
Thus shall they cleanse the land.
Jer.49:17
Also Edom shall be a desolation:
every one that goeth by it shall be astonished,
and shall hiss at all the plagues thereof.
Jer.50:13
Because of the wrath of the LORD it shall not be inhabited,
but it shall be wholly desolate:
every one that goeth by Babylon shall be astonished,
and hiss at all her plagues.
Jer.51:37
And Babylon shall become heaps,
a dwellingplace for dragons,
an astonishment,
and an hissing,
without an inhabitant.
Jer.51:41
How is Sheshach taken!
and how is the praise of the whole earth surprised!
how is Babylon become an astonishment among the nations!
Babylon in the above is Satan's Babylon, Neb was a believer when he dies and Goid did not destroy Neb's Babylon, that is taken away when all 3 others are involved. No use going through the events that assured Neb would be a believer but is was enough apparently.
Da.4:37
Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honour the King of heaven,
all whose works are truth,
and his ways judgment:
and those that walk in pride he is able to abase.
exactly right, the words can only affect someone who believes them, the fact that they tell us how
it is, 'in their opinion', is only that, their opinion, not fact, but they believe
it is fact, but that has nothing to do with anyone else but them, yet they keep
telling us about 'us', they know nothing about what will happen to us or anyone else, there
is no proof or direct reports from anyone,of what has happened after death,
except that they remain in the ground, on this earth, and that we know, we can go
and dig up anyone, and they will still be there, 'oh yeah' just the soul goes right? no one
has ever seen a soul, and of course it is invisible, and on and on it goes, fiction,
and sheer imagination.
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I know perfectly well what words mean. I write books for a living. I research books for information. I researched the bible for many years and I concluded it is metaphorical mythology. It has meaning when is it looked at as metaphor and allegory but it is not fact or historically true. It may have some history or fact in it but that is easy to do when something is written after the fact. I think as a guidebook it is useful but not any more useful that Lord of the Rings or Catcher in the Rye. The meanings that you attach to the words in the bible are your interpretations and therefore only your opinion. And in terms of opinion, the only opinion that matters in my life are my own.
Drag queens in cheep wigs?
It happens.
I know it's the first thing you naturally would think of.
It's the real deal mate. The higher the hair the closer to God era of Country music.
Francis Francine and Franny.
They teamed up with this guy and a couple of other guys to record this. I hear they tried a come back tour in the 70s but that didn't go to far for some reason.
YouTube - Amazing Grace by JC Parker and The Faith Tones
Nah, the Bible is an eclectic cobbling of desert ramblings each part meant to be literal individually but because it was never written as a coherent work makes almost no sense when taken literally as a whole. It makes better sense metaphorically because you can twist a metaphor to mean whatever you want.
Take history as an illustrative example. It is without a doubt a series of partially related events in which conscious human decisions form its principle driving force. You can't apply a teleological theory to it because everything that happens is contingent on the free actions of human beings. Nothing is inevitable and predictions are merely speculation. We see it entirely through hindsight and with the bias of our time. But if you do apply a teleological theory to it and imagine that there is some purpose in human history (that we are slowly moving towards), it will make sense and probably be more satisfying than just an account of the things that happens and how we got here, which is what it really is.
The Bible is similar. If you think of it as a metaphor the parts of it that are confusing or seemingly disjointed make more sense. You can adapt your metaphor to make sense of whatever is in there or to satisfy your world view. But this is dishonest. This is basically what a cafeteria Christian does. It's really just a bunch of myths and philosophical opinions, partially related, in the same tradition, generated over the centuries that happened to get bound together in a single book. Themes and metaphors are shared by the authors because they are part of the same tradition, but overarching themes, as if there was a single author or a group of author deliberately working together, is pure fantasy. It's what you want to believe is true and a metaphor is a perfectly pliable tool to use to make it fit your bias.
Take history as an illustrative example. It is without a doubt a series of partially related events in which conscious human decisions form its principle driving force. You can't apply a teleological theory to it because everything that happens is contingent on the free actions of human beings. Nothing is inevitable and predictions are merely speculation. We see it entirely through hindsight and with the bias of our time. But if you do apply a teleological theory to it and imagine that there is some purpose in human history (that we are slowly moving towards), it will make sense and probably be more satisfying than just an account of the things that happens and how we got here, which is what it really is.
The Bible is similar. If you think of it as a metaphor the parts of it that are confusing or seemingly disjointed make more sense. You can adapt your metaphor to make sense of whatever is in there or to satisfy your world view. But this is dishonest. This is basically what a cafeteria Christian does. It's really just a bunch of myths and philosophical opinions, partially related, in the same tradition, generated over the centuries that happened to get bound together in a single book. Themes and metaphors are shared by the authors because they are part of the same tradition, but overarching themes, as if there was a single author or a group of author deliberately working together, is pure fantasy. It's what you want to believe is true and a metaphor is a perfectly pliable tool to use to make it fit your bias.
Chapter VIII
IN DURANCE VILE
128
But pagan thought faced the implications and the data of the incarnation problem squarely. A fragment of deity was brought and lodged within the breast of every animal form evolved to the verge of the human kingdom. The animal race awaited the implantation of the divine spark, as their hope of a link with the order of responsible free agency and self-conscious intelligence. They stood at the point at which physical evolution could take them no farther toward mentality without the endowment of a nucleus or seed of potential mind from the plane above. They awaited the incubation of divine intelligence in their physical forms. The agents of such a blessing were at hand in the legions of Asuras, who had evolved the desired element of mind in former cycles elsewhere, but yet required some rounds of incarnate experience to complete the perfection of their divinity. After rebellion and delay they came to fulfill their cosmic destiny. We are those "unwilling Nirvanees," those "junior gods," those angelic hosts! By our coming and sharing our nature with the lesser creatures, they, too, become the heirs of immortality; for the essence of which our higher nature was nucleated is imperishable. If the animal could append it to his being, he would be immortalized also. The Demiurgus in charging us with the commission, assured us that we "should never be dissolved" (Timaeus). The gist of Plato’s, as of Paul’s, writings is that man is a being compounded of a lower perishable and a higher indestructible vesture, the two linked by an intermediate principle which may be inclined to a union with either, and which therefore stands at the place of the balance in human destiny. The fleshly form was contributed by physical evolution on earth, but it was molded upon the matrix of an emotional body of finer etheric substance supplied by the men of the previous Moon race,
Alvin Boyd Kuhn
129
Cheap queens in drab wigs.
Totally agree with the first part, the reason for saying anything is just to show why I don't have the same opinion as the non-believers hers. It's no different of forums where there are more believers, the topic is just slightly different. We see the part that happens to the other half of a living soul, we get to see the body turn to dust.
Not really as I use several verses to support any meaning I give to a word or verse. If you were truly observant you would know the only sign that was given to the Jews that Jesus was the Messiah. Gentiles are given nothing conctete, that means all traces all the way back to Adam are hidden and will not be found so 'proof' is missing by design, .how convent' you say. How ruinous for faith if one or more proofs were readily available to be handled.
All life serves a higher purpose. Humans are just a part of it. We are not special except in our tiny little egotistical minds. We are just tiny specks of dust in an infinite sea of dust, so we invented a god that thinks we are special so we can emotionally deal with our insignificance. Without the biosphere that supports our lives, we do not exit., but like a virus, we consume our host and at our rate of consumption, we are in danger of being consumed with it. Just thinking that we are special, we are dooming ourselves to oblivion.
To think that we are the only life form of any significance to our man made god is shear arrogance. We are not the only sentient beings on this planet or in the Universe. We think far too highly of ourselves and our importance, but it is all in our warped little heads. Our belief in gods has taken away our personal responsibility to life and disconnected us from the web of life. We think we can tamper with the order of natural law, to take whatever from the Earth that suits our fancy and to disregard the right of other humans, animals and plants to live all to fill the empty hole in the center of our being with useless stuff. God is not going to save us or fix the mess we made. It is not going to make it all better for those who believe with the wave of its magic wand. Time to stop living in fairy tales and take a long hard look at how we fit into the web of life and the significance of the damage our egos have reaped up the planet.
Um... bit of editing going on here, it changed from "serves a higher purpose" to simply "has purpose" after I posted. But the question still stands: what is the purpose? I think the purpose is ours to make, so it's whatever we want it to be, and it's to be found in what we can do to, with, for, and sometimes in spite of, those we love. And "those we love" ideally ought to include everybody, in the Biblical "love thy neighbour" sense, that we should respect and care for our fellows. The Bible does get some crucial things right. .
Here's my take on it, Cliff (for what it's worth) For starters there is a supreme being, be it God, Mother Nature or whatever. The earth and it's environment and the denizens there of are the result of a plan. Each speciman has a purpose as do all the systems in the realm and every one functions perfectly (until something, generally man's meddling or greed screws it up) At birth we were given all the tools to function perfectly but man's greed, laziness, stupidity generally derail it sooner than later. We are not supposed to drink booze, smoke cigarettes consume salt, sugar, fat in excess but as we were given the proper tools (brains) no one is going to over ride our stupidity and save us, just to breed more idiots. Like you say, the Bible is just a collection of fables, but it still has a purpose.............it's good entertainment or for the deep thinkers there's metaphors, and allegory to teach us lessons, but none of it is to be taken literally. That's what I believe but I'm not going to be knocking on doors trying to ram it down people's throats.
