The Whole Jesus Thing

actually I find that most of the people here that discuss understand very little about apologetics and the history of the church. It doesn't take alot of research to discover that Jesus does not burn you in hell, but rather satan does because it his world now. In a overly simplistic interpretation you have a God that created the world perfect in the beginning without any death, suffering, diseases, ect; and then man sins, therefore choosing through free will to seperate himself from God. What we observe throughout the Bible is a loving God that tries numerous times to get people back on the right track, through different motivations, and then offers a part of himself as "Jesus" as a final attonement for our sin. So, basically the Hebrew text of the OT is a literal account of God's word spoken through his people and His personal walk and mercy given to them from the beginning of time to the very end. So God does not send people to hell, but you send yourself to satan's world, hell. God tries to save you by offering a peice Himself through the salvation of Jesus Christ and you have the free will to choose whether to accept the reality of your situation or not. God does not seperate himself from you but rather you are the product of man which has already seperated himself from God in the garden hince all the suffering, death, struggle and chaos that has insued since. We live in satan's world, you want out accept Jesus's gift of salavation through the belief in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ as our Lord and savior, aka God. It's actually that easy! Why would God set us up to let us just fail? Why do we let our children grow up and leave the house, drive a car? go to school, or war to possibly be killed? same reason why God did. He doesn't want us to walk around like zombies with no choice and constrained and neither do your children. So at some point and time because you love your children and they want to make their own free will choices in life you will allow them to jump in that car knowing fair well what the statisitics for mortlity are for their age group. So why doesn't God protect us more like some of our parents do by letting us drive around with them and going to training driving courses, oh I would indeed say that he does just that, and has been there for us since the beginning of time guiding us through our lives when we simply ask him for help. Just read throughout the Bible. David, Sam, Noah, Jacob, Isaiah, Jonah. All perfect examples of God's mercy and grace given to man even when we turned against him in every way possible. Heck we even murdered his own son and he still didn't disown us. Now I call that love!

your assuming that just because you have the capability to do something means that you will, or maybe in this case that just because God could know what would happen means that he would prevent it from happening or even participate in using His power to find out what would happen. After all, that would indeed break the scope of His gift of free will. Furthermore, if you indeed know your Bible then you probably know that this fits well within the doctrine of free will, two subcomponents, God's over all will and his permissive will. Basically we know from the Bible that God is in charge of all things, and yet we also know that he gives us choice to make decisions with that which He has given us. Sounds pretty supportive for this idea of free will to me.And yes the son was God! Need I also explain the trinity too you as well?This message has been edited by cctman, 11-03-2004 01:45 PM

AdminNosy thanks!

I have taken quite a few courses on bias and interpretation of media content within multimedia. This grabbing topics and moving them sounds kind of dangerous to me. Meaning the seperation of God's word by topic and disection makes the meaning of it skewed due to subjectivity under categorization. God's word is continual and by seperating it by topic, this seperates the meaning of the Bible which if done means that as a christian you can not give an adequate explanation or response.So what qualifies when and at one point a topic can be seperated to a different area? I was directly replying to a comment made here. My reply should not be compartmentalized or divided if it creates a misunderstanding of my orginal explanation.To clarify, Seperating a christian Biblical reply into different content areas skews the meaning of the christians response and should not be allowed.

Well, first off we know that Jesus burning someone in hell would be contrary to every single teaching and Biblical account told of him through the apostles. We know by the chronology according to the apostles that Jesus was sinless and perfect. This being said... we are shown throughout that Bible that satan influences and is tempting man and that since the fall in Genesis in the garden that the world is under the control of Satan and it shows through human suffering, wars, diseases, death, and struggle.

well, I have heard this as you have probably heard as well. "How can God allow people to burn in hell for eternity? Is this loving? ..."I would say that God is limited and can not do everything based on His identity. Meaning he is defined and limited by His characteritics. He can not lie, steal, cheat, or do anything that is described as contrary to His nature in the Bible. There fore if he indeed gave free will to man, permisive free will within his over all will. that he is bound by that obligation and can not do anything that would put himself in direct contrast to whom He is.We unfortunately are allowed to murder, torcher, pillage and God chooses not stop those things to preserve His true nature or He would no longer fit the description or be who He is which is perfect as described by the characterisitcs defined in the Bible.So, if man decided to sin and seperate himself from God, God can only do what He mandated or is allowed within His power to do for us within the Bible. I'm not saying that God is necessarily unable to do those things and save everyone, but that God must work within what he has created. And if he were to take back free will, that would describe Him as unjust, untrue less than perfect and His word would definately not be preserved as absolute.Do I think God can save everyone? Yes! and He has the power too, but he restricts Himself based on who He is. So in a since He is indeed limited. He must be honest, have integrity, love, as well as be defined by His primary chars. as ominpotent and omnipresent.God is limited by His nature! After all it makes since if He is absolute good.

spaces between sentances? lol! Sorry man! I didn't know this was a English college course. It has been a while since I have had one. And no I'm not going to spell check all of my words? Are you actually saying that this is a requirement for this board?Hey! maybe if you guys right some jsp,php,vbscript or javascript code you can produce an auto-editor online so none of us have to worry about that.And thanks for the compliments by the way!

oh OK... actually the Bible gives a perfectly clear description of hell in several different places. In Luke 16:22, Matthew 18:8, Matthew 25:46, Rev. 20:10Also, Matthew 25:46, Acts 4:21, 2 Peter 2:9, 1 John 4:18 all speak of punishment and in each case the Greek word is kolasis. Matthew 25:46 is therefore talking of eternal punishment.So yes, I do believe scripture is very clear about eternal hell.

sounds good even though I'm fat fingered and mispell constantly... thanks for the info!

cool! I'll take that as a compliment. You see to tell a christian that they sound like other christians or the Bible's teachings is nothing other than a pretty big compliment. So thanks! you deserve your 10$ Can I pay you in euros? hehe!Now if only you do a little more reading you might just be a Biblical scholar...kidding of course!This message has been edited by cctman, 11-03-2004 09:42 PM

Matthew 18:8- that a fire may be called "everlasting" does not necessarily mean that someone would burn forever in it.I'm not sure I understand what you are saying here... If you read the passage you can take it no other way than than eternal fire, or that you burn in hell for ever, ect; Its pretty clear.Luke 16:22's story of Lazarus is an allegory.Say what? no actually it's called a parable. And this is the parable of the Rich man and the Beggar which is very popular in christianity. Every time Jesus spoke of parables he used and refered to real world events to help people commonly relate to His message. A parable is a brief story that is true to life, comparing the point of commonality between two unlike things, given for the purpose of teaching spiritual truth. Jesus always referenced real world events when used parables.What does this mean? An everlasting punishment could be eternal separation from God simply by being destroyed.I'm not sure what your asking here...10 And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.This refers to the devil, the beast, and the false prophet.Yes, your right! And by this and other verses also speaking of eternal torment and hell, we can easily coorelate them together. They fit very clearly.

If god is 'absolute good' why did he create evil.The problem your identifying here is the different identities between human moral evil and what God does that appears evil but is not. If you remember He also flooded the earth eliminating all living creatures save Noah and His family. God stripped all evil from the earth and started fresh with Noah's family.By the way that verse actually is interpreted by the NIV as"I bring prosperity and create disaster; I the Lord, do all these things."And as shown above God can and has used His people to eliminate evil and pass judgement on evil nations throughout the OT.Matter of fact thats a good point you brought up. Because this is a clear indication that God is in control of all things and is indeed absolute and good. Now if He did nothing and never saved Noah and His family and they were slaughtered by evil people and He let the world cave in on itself then you might have a good point. But we see that God forgave and helped Noah's family because they repented of their sins and did what was good in the site of the Lord.This message has been edited by cctman, 11-03-2004 10:26 PM

actually, that is a very poor translation.
Why don't you read it in the Hebrew?? Or, why don't you go to your local
Rabbi (non-messanic), and he will explain it to you.I dont' appreicate that rude comment for one. Secondly, I don't have a local Rabbi. Why would I? I'm christian. Thirdly, what good would it do to read it in Hebrew even if I found some commentary or Hebrew translation? Do you really think there would be a difference? The translations really say the same thing.

"The fire may be "everlasting" but it doesn't take an eternity for something to burn up in it."Why would you even make a comment like that when there is no way for you to support nor prove how or if an eternal fire in hell takes an eternity to burn up in it?There are many events within the Bible that we can not know how God created or did these things. That would be why they are considered in many cases mericles. So to suggests that we should start explaining things that aren't even suppose to be explained --> see God's response to Job, the creation, mericles, resurrection, parting of the red sea, bringing Lazareth from the dead, ect; God even tells us that there many things that we can not comprehend. God even questions Job and asks him Where were you when I created these things.Basically, you don't go chasing down desriptions in the Bible that are identified as mericles because there is no logical empericle explanation for them. Other wise they wouldn't be mericles. Science far from explains everything!"What is your evidence for saying that Jesus always referenced real world events?"My evidence is that which lies witin the Bible. Show me a parable that Jesus used where he did not identify with His audience with real world events or desriptions. If He did then wouldn't be a parable."If a parable was describing something actual rather than allegorical, Jesus' statement would not make sense."Actually, you have to understand the context of what is going on in Matthew 13 as well as throughout the NT. Jesus spoke in parables because too those that sought the truth the message was very clear to them, but to Jesus's enemies when they heard the parables, they would here only stories without meaning.This prevented Jesus from having his enemies trap Him earlier than they might have done. You have to remember Jesus new that He would have to die for us and he also new that he had to find a way to teach without having His enemies prematurely capturing Him as they always looked to do. Jesus was actually a genius for taking this approach.I am a little frustrated though because yuo are asking and saying things that require very little reading to understand. What I have said can be found very easy in the commentary in the NIV.I would suggest to you that you stop making statements first without doing some basic reading first."Also, the notion that the saved would be able to see the unsaved suffering for eternity is illogical. How could anybody enjoy Heaven if they had to endure seeing others (including possibly friends and family) suffer."Again another question that falls in the realm of trying to explain a mericle, that which can not be explained. How am I to define heaven for you and how everything works in it, if God did not give us this information? We do know that there is no suffering in heaven so that they would not look down and grieve."What does not correlate together is the notion that God is loving, long-suffering, not willing that any should perish, and your interpretation that he would punish someone in that way.
"Clarify your point with references and examples and I will attempt to show you your error in misinterpertation, but like I said before it would help if you did some basic reading and use the commentaries please! This message has been edited by cctman, 11-04-2004 08:32 AM

"cctman, I suggest you show a bit more patience. I see no rudeness in what was posted to you."First off it doesn't matter if u see his comments as rude, its my interpretation not yours."I'm also suprised that you don't know more about the Bible that is important to you."Thats a quick observation, based on upon what?"One thing that I've learned here is that the translations do not all say the same thing. There have been a number of individuals who actually do understand the Hebrew who have posted here."Then bring the Hebrew scholars here and I will gladly debate them if they think they can point out errancies within the Bible."It seems you may have something to learn. Be patient. You don't have to agree with what is said and should ask for support (as I have already done) when you don't agree. But wait till the support is shown before dismissing things out of hand. "We all have something to learn including yourself otherwise we wouldn't be human, hence my continuing of education. I just wish that the public education system was so one sided. But anyways thats another topic.This message has been edited by cctman, 11-04-2004 08:33 AM