Summations Only

There are lots of "Christians" who don't obey God, but there are also genuine Bible believers who do and will. I think it's five business owners now who have been legally punished for refusing to serve a gay wedding. I expect to see a sharp rise in that kind of incident if the Supreme Court rules to make gay marriage the law of the nation.

Let me rephrase that: BELIEVERS know what the Bible means, unbelievers can't know because they don't have the Holy Spirit. And saying that we know doesn't mean we understand all of it. But there is no point in arguing with you about what it means because you're going to think whatever you think anyway.

Yes, I forget how confusing it can be from the outside, and it's not all that easy to define to an outsider either.Generally a Christian takes the Bible as ultimate authority but I have to allow that there are some who believe the main tenets of the faith yet won't accept the early part of Genesis yet may be Christians because of those main tenets. There are hundreds or even thousands of churches that teach those tenets so those supposed thousands of different sects disagree only on inessentials.I was going to go on to try to be more specific but I'm not very optimistic that it would be taken seriously by you anyway and I'm worn out from earlier posts so I'll try to get back to it later.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Yes I've seen that and I have no problem whatever saying the Bible unequivocally represents homosexual acts as sin and marriage as between a man and a woman without exception. There is no support for gay rights in the Bible, and those I consider genuine Christians read the Bible the same way. If a person can't recognize the fraudulent twisting that has to go on to claim the Bible supports homosexuality and gay marriage there is no hope of persuading you of anything. I expect to lose this argument because that's the way the world is going, but all that means is that the world is happily embracing a huge destructive lie.

Wasn't I clear? TRUE Christians DO agree on the CORRECT interpretation. Take it or leave it.

Mike didn't say anything that suggests that he himself believes the Bible is the word of God. I cheered him for simply arguing that position.

dupEdited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Please please please stop attributing the Inquisition to "Christianity" or the Bible. The Inquisition murdered people for READING the Bible. When the RC Church reigned over European Christendom the Bible was allowed only to the priests, who read more of the pagan philosophers than the Bible anyway, and it could only be in Latin: those who translated it into the vernacular languages were top of the Inquisitor's execution list. Fifty million BIBLE BELIEVERS were murdered by the Inquisition. The Roman Church's commandeering of the title Christian is one of the biggest most evil lies ever perpetrated.

)Plus seventeen million Jews, Muslims, witches and sundry others who ran afoul of the Inquisition.

The persecutions by the RCC are counted over 600 years, rather longer than Hitler's holocaust. It does depend on what you include in the figures. The Spanish Inquisition was only a small part of it. Whole communities of Bible believers such as the Waldensians were periodically massacred. And the numbers usually include the religious wars. The Inquisition has continued out of sight in smallscale massacres and dungeons through the 19th century (See Garibaldi's discoveries in the dungeons of Rome) and up to the present.Here are two sources:http://www.cs.unc.edu/~plaisted/estimates.html#_Toc135810590How Many People Died in the Inquisition? | The CripplegateAnd by the way, I have books that attribute Hitler's inspiration for the Holocaust to the Roman Church. He had the Pope behind him who then provided the "ratlines" by which thousands of Nazis escaped to South America after the war.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You appear to be attributing a quote to me that I did not write. If you're going to respond to more than one post at a time, it helps to identify the different writers in the quote boxes.

You are ridiculing something you don't understand. I don't know if Phat would answer as I would, but nobody earns their way to God by passing some test, and nobody is ever "good enough" to be His friend. Christians understand ourselves to be sinners who could never be in God's presence for that reason, but are allowed into His presence purely by His grace, His choice to save us, for which Jesus was sent to die for our sins. Jesus earned our right to be with God, we personally have no ability to do it. Faith that He has done it for us is our only part and even that is a gift from God.

God condemns human sacrifice. God Himself died for us.

The incredible ignorance and rudeness about these things from you and others here really should not be given any kind of answer, but it leaves too much error on the table not to say something at least.Jesus is the Son of God. We believe in the Trinity of ONE GOD IN THREE PERSONS. Jesus is God the Son, Second Person of the Trinity. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are all God. ONE GOD, not one Being, three Persons, not three Gods. The attributes are all laid out in scripture, nobody understands it so there's no point in complaining about that, but it is consistently and repeatedly affirmed in scripture so it is a mystery we have to accept.There is a rule here against treating others' beliefs with disrespect.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

There is no single chapter and verse that says this, you put it together from the whole portrait of Christ in the Scriptures. That He is God is clear from many verses, such as the titles given to the Messiah in the Old Testament: "God Our Righteousness," and "Mighty God, Prince of Peace, Everlasting Father."Death doesn't mean ceasing to exist. The human soul is also immortal, only the body dies.Jesus is God the Son who became a human being and died for us, that means His body died just as ours will too, though His was resurrected because He is sinless. He suffered God's withdrawing His presence from Him on the cross, which was death to Him. And really is also death to us, as Hell is said to be primarily the absence of God. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.