|
Register | Sign In |
|
QuickSearch
Thread ▼ Details |
|
Thread Info
|
|
|
Author | Topic: Tribute Thread For the Recently Raptured Faith | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
But there is no problem with the order in the sense of the same fossils ending up in the same layers, that's just a mechanical thing.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Since evolution is false on other grounds so that the order is not evidence for evolution, you have no explanation for the order either. It must be mechanically explained, but since you don't have an explanation either, that's the best that can be said for now.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
The amount of variation/evolution in living things that we see today fits pretty nicely into a few thousand years given the disease and death that entered at the Fall, much of it brought about by the disease process known as mutation. Millions of years is not only unnecessary, but given the reality of gradual attrition to extinction nothing would be left alive by now on the Old Earth model.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined:
|
Just noticed you are on the board and since you've come to mind recently because of some devotional writings I've been reading I thought I might address a post or two to you about it.
You seem to limit your idea of the Christian life to good works, or loving your neighbor, would you say that's correct?
GDR writes: Yes, as a Christian I believe that Jesus perfectly modeled the nature of God but although His basic message of love of all creation, and even our enemies is simple, understanding it's application isn't always so simple, so there are disagreements and it is belief. What about love of God in your system? It's the first of the ten commandments after all. Love of neighbor with all the good works that entails is embodied in the other commandments but love of God comes first. Devotional writings aim to raise our affections to God Himself but I was wondering if you consider your relation to God to be much of a part of Christian life at all. It seems that you may not just because you seem so focused on love of, as you say above, the creation, enemy etc.
I base my life on the faith that my understanding of God is at least close enough to the truth to use that teaching as a foundation to base my life on, no matter how imperfectly I do it. Which is all about doing good for others, loving others? What about prayer? How much is that part of your Christian vision? How about prayer just as communion with God because He's lovable and wants our company? Our conversations are usually about your objection to making the Bible so important, but I started thinking that you may be missing something apart from that issue, just in how you live in terms of Jesus' message rather than in terms of loving Jesus Himself personally above all else. Just a thought. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Yeah but in this case it's about millions of years of supposed history that didn't exist and is based on wild conjectures that can't ever come up to the level of proof of the other sciences behind the phenomena you mention. The historical sciences are all supported only by imagination unlike the hard sciences.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
they don't rival the Bible.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
I know you don't care, but I don't care either. I came to the conclusion some time ago that the email sounded strange and that's the end of it for me. I did not want to revisit the topic and still don't. No interest whatever. If I came to that conclusion then I'd no doubt come to it again if I took the trouble to retrace the information. PaulK has no right to talk about me as he does in any case and that was how this came up. End of topic for me.
The Rapture is going to happen eventually, the scripture has the information. End of THAT topic too. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
I was referring to the one in Genesis, from Seth to Noah. It is unusual in that it details the years when the next generation was fathered, contributing to the counting of the years to the Flood, and the names also are codes that refer to the message of salvation.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Right. You just go on believing it's just a story while I know it's historical fact just as I know all the Bible is fact. Make all the slimy slurs you want against it. You're all just hurting yourselves.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
You really have no idea what you are talking about. I don't care about pizzagate, only about PaulK's attack on me personally, which is the only reason I wanted a reminder of what I'd said. I was very very very clear that I was NOT interested in reviewing the subject otherwise. Now as usual YOU are making a big deal about it anyway and making it MY problem when it is not my problem.
As for the Rapture you know even less and like others here apparently have no interest in learning the truth. The Rapture is a biblical promise about the second coming of Jesus, that it will occur when he comes back, and it gives NO timing at all except for general clues to the general "season." It will happen for sure, but the timing is up for grabs. The only thing that failed was my personal guess at the timing. The Rapture is still a promise that will eventually be fulfilled. It may be that when it comes it will be a complete and total surprise to everyone and nobody's guess will be right. All this is quite plain in multiple posts already. The personal slurs against me are really unnecessary, sp it must just be that you all enjoy them too much to give them up. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Thanks very much for your answer. I'm not sure I completely get what you mean.
You seem to limit your idea of the Christian life to good works, or loving your neighbor, would you say that's correct? Not at all. It is about knowing that love is simply a gift from God and then reflecting His love into the world which of course includes my neighbour. I know, no matter how imperfectly I do it, that I'm called to a life of prayer and worship. OK, I wouldn't have guessed you looked at it that way. Like this?John 4:24 writes: God is Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. What about love of God in your system? It's the first of the ten commandments after all. It actually isn't the first of the 10 commandments... Yes, you are right. I was thinking of Jesus' summary of the two tables of the Law which comprise the Ten Commandments:
Matthew 22:37-40 King James Version (KJV) writes: Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. In other words Jesus sums up the two sections of the Ten Commandments as first, loving God and second, loving neighbor.
... but to the point it is that we show our love of God by loving what He stands for and we know what He stands for by knowing Jesus. I've been thinking more along the lines of the great joy there is in the experience of loving God Himself, which sometimes happens in prayer, at least when we give a fair amount of time to it. Not so much about "showing" it as just experiencing it. Not saying you are wrong, but it is a different emphasis. I ran across this in looking up "love of God:"
1John5:1-3 writes: Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: and every one that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous. Loving God=keeping His commandments. This is closer to what you are saying than what I'm talking about, which is more about directly experiencing God. "Be still and know that I am God."
Devotional writings aim to raise our affections to God Himself but I was wondering if you consider your relation to God to be much of a part of Christian life at all. It seems that you may not just because you seem so focused on love of, as you say above, the creation, enemy etc. You are an ardent follower of some politicians... I certainly wouldn't say that. Most politicians I agree with are along the lines of "the best we can do at this time," certainly not people I "ardently follow." I might agree to the idea that I ardently follow certain principles that some politicians embody better than others, emphasizing principles, not people.
You don't know them personally but you know and believe in them by what they stand for, and even feel a relationship with them. Um, no.
Yes, I have had personal experiences of God in my life but that isn't really the issue. The issue is do I allow God to change my heart away from self centredness to one that is more centred on others. Hm. Yes I'd agree in a way but I'd probably emphasize "being conformed to the image of Christ" which includes being less self centered for sure. But still I'm thinking more of directly experiencing God here, and I think the closer we get to Him the more we change just by the experience. And it's a lot harder to change without such experiences.
Faith writes: Which is all about doing good for others, loving others? What about prayer? How much is that part of your Christian vision? How about prayer just as communion with God because He's lovable and wants our company? Of course prayer is important and yes I pray, primarily that I would be the person that God wants me to be. (I'm a long way from having that one answered.) I pray like that too, but lately I'm trying to pray at much greater length than I normally do and pray a lot for God to strengthen all His people, to give His people repentance and reformation and revival, to save many more people, and particularly lately to bring me to experience and understand what it means to "pray in the spirit" and "pray without ceasing" and "pray through" something that I care a lot about etc. I'm no great fan of the charismatics and Pentecostals but one thing I know they have that many of the rest of the Church misses, is a spirit of deep prayer, because they believe more in the importance of things of the spirit than much of the rest of the Church does, and they write a lot about "praying through" a "prayer burden" until they know that God has answered. It's laborious work and can be lengthy from the sound of it. They may give hours or even days to it, including fasting. I've never experienced it but I want to learn to if God permits.
Faith writes: Our conversations are usually about your objection to making the Bible so important, but I started thinking that you may be missing something apart from that issue, just in how you live in terms of Jesus' message rather than in terms of loving Jesus Himself personally above all else. The Bible is extremely important. However, it is Jesus that is the Word of God according to the Bible and when we value the words in the Bible above the words of Jesus we are missing the message that the Bible has for us. Well but we do not "value the words of the Bible above the words of Jesus," we believe the Bible is all His words and it is Him we follow and we read the Bible to hear from Him. The whole Bible is about Him and by Him.
For me the focus of my Christianity is not what happens to me in the next life but what God calls me to in this life. Which to my mind is a very confused and frustrating statement. Salvation is the first step to being ABLE to live the life God calls us to. People who try to live it without being saved are doing in their flesh what can only be done in the power of God, and we can only have the power of God if we are born again. "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth;" said Paul in Romans 1:16. What is the "gospel of Christ" but the good news that He has died to pay for our sins, which is what gives us the power to love and serve, without which we really do not have the ability to love and serve though we may think we do.
God has given us life; he has given us various gifts; he has given us the ability to know and share love and so on. What is important in our life is how we use these gifts. But he has only given these things to those He's saved, meaning those who DO have the new life, are born again. To slight salvation is to slight the whole life you want to live. Or, put it this way: if people do not know they have eternal life, what is to motivate them to serve God at all? It is God's loving us that motivates us to love, and His loving us means He gives us eternal life. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish but have everlasting life." And 1 John 4:10: "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." abe: So says we need to be loved before we can love: 1 John 4:19 "We love him because he first loved us." Which raises the question how you have the motivation to serve God with no assurance of being saved or even that He loves you. I'd apply the same logic to needing to be saved and safe from Hell to be able to live for God and obey him. This also reminds me of Martin Luther's experience. He was always confessing a huge collection of sins because he could never get free of the sense that he didn't deserve salvation or anything from God, and this led him to confess that he couldn't love God at all, but only hate him. Which changed when he found out that one is saved by faith in Christ alone. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
...
Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Interesting memory. Hard to see how that mistake could have happened.
abe: Dare I suggest it was fudged by someone with a "liberal" bias, somehow conflating the two parts into one, because loving neighbor is more like social justice than loving God. ? Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
It simply never occurs to me that such a message of love could be turned into a message of selfishness or hate or whatever it is you do with it. By now I should have learned but I never do. It remains a message of love to me anyway.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Interesting memory. Hard to see how that mistake could have happened. abe: Dare I suggest it was fudged by someone with a "liberal" bias, somehow conflating the two parts into one, because loving neighbor is more like social justice than loving God. ? I wouldn't have said liberal bias, but I did suspect at the time that the religious message was being tailored to be more palatable for a secular generation. Not how I would have worded it when I was 16. Yes, I think you are right, that must have been the motive. We have lots of churches today that think they can lure unbelievers by making the religion less religious. Big churches too so I guess it works. It's just not Christianity. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : finally got the quote box right I hope
|
|
|
Do Nothing Button
Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved
Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024