Tribute Thread For the Recently Raptured Faith

Jefferson was one of the Deists, the deviants from Christianity in their day. I'm talking about the majority of the population and the Christian leaders both before and after the Revolutionary generation, but mostly the generally held view of reality that would have been reflected in the Christian publications the book is talking about. Yes. Interesting to see that in reality it doesn't really make a lot of difference to the beliefs of the population. However, maybe at least your having religious education makes Brits more Bible literate than Americans are. As I understand it, the wars were not really intrinsic to the Reformation itself, but a political reaction given justification by it, or just the Roman Church objecting to the challenge to its power. There are historians who could demonstrate that the rise of empirical science was the result of the Protestant Reformation. Maybe the Industrial Revolution too. Well it's a claim about actual history so by calling it a religious belief you are saying it's a lie about history. But since it is a claim about history it has to be true or the whole thing is meaningless.And the Protestant Reformation is another claim about history, that it did in fact restore the truths of Christianity that had been lost.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

As I suggested to PaulK, Brits may at least be more Bible literate than Americans are because of your required religious education.Thanks very much for the description. Bible stories taken out of context could certainly be boring and irrelevant. It's maybe good for very small children to learn them because they can later be used as a scaffolding for serious Bible study, but over the age of, say, six, I think there should be more meat in religious education than that. If the focus is Christian it should at least give the outline of Old Testament prophecies of the promised Messiah to come, which as a matter of fact do run through all those Bible stories though I suppose none of that is taught; and then the accounts of how Jesus fulfilled the prophecies, that He was God who submitted to being born as a man so He could save us from our sins etc. Sounds like you didn't get much or any of that. I wonder if any other schools do.So although your education was "Bible heavy" maybe it wasn't in a way that taught what the Bible is really all about. Thanks for acknowledging that. I may have to come back to this.ABE, next day: Since there was no difference in what people thought about Jesus in the early centuries from what they thought later I don't see the point of this idea. I do think the gospel of salvation through His death had to be clearly recognized for it to have had the influence it did in building western civilization. Also, despite the long period of the "Babylonian Captivity of the Church" by Romanism, as Luther referred to it, the true gospel had been firmly established in I think the third or fourth century in Britain, and it was that gospel truth that the Briton Patrick carried to Ireland, which established a powerful missionary Celtic Church in Ireland. Utterly destroyed by Romanism which co-opted that history to itself since then, alas, and they even depict the rough-hewn Patrick in the ridiculous pointy fishhead hat and robes of a Roman Bishop. I'm not really sure what my point is here, sorry, maybe it will come back to me. /ABE Since Britain was prominent in Christian history I'd of course vote for emphasizing British history. I'm really sorry that US universities dropped their required courses in American History and Institutions and Western Civilization as a consequence of the Sixties' bashing of everything western and Christian. As for textbooks on history I'd like to see one written that explains all of western history as a working out of the influences of Christianity and its opponents. I guess such a textbook could be written for different age groups.ABE: The faction that wants more emphasis on world history no doubt falsely treats it as equal to British history. The only really interesting and meaningful history on the planet has to do with the influence of Christ. A Biblical view of the rest of the world would analyze it in terms of the nature of Fallen Humanity and Satan's rule due to the Fall. Which is how it should be presented in any textbook of course. /ABE Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

What the government says is irrelevant to my point about the general acceptance of the truth claims of Christianity in western civilization, which persisted in spite of Jefferson for a very long period of time. Freed from the superstitions of Romanism by the Protestant Reformation, trust in empirical observation flourished based on the recognition of a God of reality, order and law.ABE: Oh, and it was the Roman Church's adherence to Aristotle, NOT TO THE BIBLE, that was the cause of their rejection of Galileo's science. With the Bible restored and Aristotle abandoned by the Reformation, empirical science was liberated. /abe.And as usual you are wrong that empirical science required abandoning religion. I just explained how the realistic views of the Protestant Reformation made it possible, and the only "sciences" that ever required abandoning the Biblical viewpoint are the ridiculous bogus historical sciences of evolution and Old Earthism, which are about as empirical as reading tea leaves and incapable of actual proof, OR falsification. No, belief in it is based on witness evidence of such phenomena as His resurrection and ascension and walking through walls in between, also to His virgin birth, walking on the water, telling the storm to be still and so on.But my point was that it used to be believed to be true and promoted as the truth by western society in general. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

It was Moses, but I didn't remember anything about the forehead so I looked it up. God was threatening to kill Moses because he hadn't had his son circumcised, which is the sign of the covenant between God and Israel. It wasn't "inexplicable" and the demand was for Moses' death, not his son's. And it was his wife Zipporah who cut off the foreskin, and cast it at Moses' feet. Nothing about the forehead although one translation says she "touched" his feet with it which is weird enough. But "cast it" is the more common translation. I'm getting awfully tired of being called a liar. No, I do not know about any "plenty of accounts," I know of a consistent understanding of Jesus' life throughout the history of traditional Christianity, so whatever you have in mind has to be some oddball or heretical line that I'm not even aware of, or possibly gave no attention to because I knew they were false and therefore utterly irrelevant since the valid tradition does not acknowledge them. That's ridiculous. There are four different accounts of His life and they are traditionally put together to give the full picture. Which is where things have sadly ended up when before the whole society in general accepted the Biblical portrait of Jesus and all the rest of the gospel. This comes from the book that started this discussion, which shows that there seem to be strange absences of major historical events from twentieth century textbooks and news publication accounts. Otherwise I accepted the usual notion that it was all just the natural erosion of belief over time. Again, the context of this discussion is the book (Prodigal Press) that shows odd absences of major historical events formerly recognized as major, in publications by WESTERN writers whose cultural background would have recognized those major historical Christian events. I became a believer in my mid to late forties. I'm NOW stating what I NOW consider to be the objective truth which I've learned by studying the history of Christianity, about what are truly the most important events in all of human history, which have been removed from our cultural heritage over the last century. I am responding to this particular book which shows something more than a mere erosion of belief over time in western civilization. What I believed before is utterly irrelevant.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

None of that is the email I think I remember.

Sorry for getting impatient but it was like being called a liar. Heresies simply don't count in my frame of reference, they don't even really exist, and wouldn't be taken into account in any cultural presentation of Christianity either. I rarely ever answer any of LamarkNewAge's long posts because they practically require the recapitulation of every doctrinal conflict already fought in Christian history.And it's only unbelievers who think there are any contradictions in the gospels. You all think they are important but to me they are just irritating nonsense.And what you remembered about the circumcision incident would just be evidence that you weren't really taught any Bible despite its being nothing much other than Bible stories. That's interesting to find out at least.The west did used to be genuinely Christian and it's very sad to me how utterly totally completely lost all that is. But fighting it out here is pretty counterproductive. I'm not good at it and it's hard on me and everybody else. I should leave it to people who have more patience than I do. I can pray, but that's about it.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You certainly didn't read very carefully. I said clearly that the timing was my own guess and isn't determined by the Biblical prophecy itself which offers nothing on the timing question except the admonition to watch and be aware of events that suggest it is close. I The Bible tells us only that we will be caught up to meet Jesus when He returns, that's it. If we guess wrong about when that is that's our fault, not the Bible's fault. The prophecy itself still stands.

The situation is this: I'm VERY VERY sure of my overall understanding of Christian history and doctrine. I'm VERY VERY sure of the defeat of the heresies and cults by the best theologians in Christian history, so I feel no need whatever to even acknowledge their existence. I know they are wrong, the great men of Christianity have proved them wrong. I read a lot on all those subjects during my early years of becoming a Christian. My beliefs are orthodox to the core. And I also know a fair amount about Christian history and its effect especially on Europe, though if I were more of a scholar than I am I'd seek to know a lot more than I do.So it is very disappointing when I encounter unbelievers insisting that the heresies that were defeated long long ago are equal in value to the accepted doctrines of Christianity, and must be taken seriously. And disappointing to find out just HOW utterly ignorant of the illustrious history of Christianity so many people are who grew up in the west, especially in Britain which has maybe THE most illustrious Christian history of all.I get impatient with these things. I'm obviously not cut out for debate because I can't take the opposition's point of view seriously for half a second, I just know it's utterly wrong and it's annoying that I'm asked to take it seriously. And then of course I'm told that I'm wrong because of ridiculous misreadings of the Bible that are offered as truth over the traditional readings, and because of some heretical writer's opinion that is more persuasive to the unbeliever. And then I'm called arrogant because I know I'm right, and the unbeliever wants me to consider that his own view is at least equal to my own in truth value since I can't prove anything to his satisfaction.So obviously I am not cut out for debate. I want to tell what I know to be the truth and have it accepted just because I'm honest and it IS the truth. That's it.Now everybody here can go ahead and call me all the usual names and worse.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

As I said I'm not at all interested in pursuing the Pizzagate topic. PaulK had been throwing it in my face as an example of how evil I am so I finally asked him to show me what I'd supposedly said about it. As a result I now remember at least that the way pizza was discussed in some email or other is simply very strange, and could support the suspicion of some kind of conspiracy. I see no reason to change my mind about that. The email you posted is also strange in relation to anything having to do with pizza. It's just odd. If you don't see that oh well. I came to a reasonable conclusion long ago and don't want to discuss it any more.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Yup, it's all true, and it all came as a big surprise to me too.

No, the hints and clues I based the when on were purely personal impressions. The Bible's testimony is something else.Who says I'm "more" convinced than ever? I had recently come to believe in the Pre Trib Rapture. I still believe in the Pre-Trib Rapture.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I'm not so much "frustrated trying to convince others" as I am frustrated at the antichristian heresies that I keep being asked to treat seriously. As I believe I said.Oh and frustrated at the kind of nonsense you just posted too, since it's very clear that the Bible is the source of the items you called loony but the rapture timing was based on my own personal experiences. Do try to be fair occasionally.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

It's really very wrong of you to impute motives to a person, oh author of the EvC Rules. I came to the conclusion that the email I saw was strange enough to suggest it wasn't really about pizza. I don't remember anything about "cheese pizza" at all. And the more you accuse me the less interested I am in pursuing the subject which I concluded years ago was "strange enough to suggest it wasn't really about pizza." Period.

You are really off the wall. There is such a thing as antichristian heresies and they have been argued against my Christian claims. Again, do try to be fair once in a while.All you've done is ridicule things that don't suit your modern prejudices, you have not shown that anything I've said is "demonstrably in error." Funny how irrational secularists can be and get away with it just cuz they subscribe to the popular view.

There isn't really any evidence to the contrary, only interpretations of the evidence to the contrary. There is no trickery, the problem is that the obvious evidence for the Flood got wrongly interpreted because of the accumulation of false ideas about the age of the earth.