Tribute Thread For the Recently Raptured Faith

There's no problem.
And I didn't say anything about wanting to believe. Believers simply believe.
Believers believe what is written, and that is what opens the door to realms of glory unbelievers will never know.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

There was no abomination of desolation involved in 70 AD.

The unbelievers may not want to believe, but that says nothing about the believers, who simply believe. Sorry.

Since there wasn't, we know it is yet future.

Exactly.

Speak for yourself, Phat. This is sheer nonsense. I became a Christian after reading up on a lot of other religions, because I was persuaded it is the truth by many different arguments and experiences reported by believers. I also had lots of feelings BASED ON what I was learning from these sources but the feelings followed the persuasion. This has nothing to do with "suspending evidence" whatever on earth that could mean anyway.And as for evidence, there is such a thing as witness evidence and that is what the Bible is all about. Witnesses to miracles, witnesses to Christ's miracles, witnesses to His resurrection and ascension, visions of Heaven, witnesses to angelic beings, etc etc etc. I don't "suspend" such evidence, and it IS evidence, I believe it is true, I believe the people who wrote about it are telling the truth, and by believing that I grow in faith because it all works together each part supporting each other part.If you deny that then you have nothing left and I guess you would have to make it all up for yourself in that case, but it's all there, it IS evidence and God gave us this evidence specifically so we COULD believe the truth.If you want to go on insisting on your subjectivist point of view, please at least stop applying it to all believers. C. S. Lewis says he came "kicking and screaming" against belief. But he eventually gave in of course. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Something confused here. Christian faith is said to be "the evidence of things not seen," meaning of course the things reported in the Bible that either can't be seen under normal conditions because they are invisible, or are not seen by the reader just because we weren't there, so must be believed, held by faith. There's nothing beyond that implied by biblical faith, no claim that it is a "way of determining what's real and what isn't." Faith is evidence of the particular things reported in the Bible. Perhaps it also applies to some invisible things outside the Bible too, but since the idea of faith itself as a way of knowing originated with the Bible (yes it did) I'm only going to claim its application to Biblical revelation.. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Phat, believe what you want, for whatever reason you think applies, I'm merely objecting to your including other believers in your idea of how we come to belief.The way you go on to characterize what I think is false and insulting, and I'm not going to try to answer it except to say I always try to represent what I know to be traditional Christian belief, NONE OF IT is my own EVER unless I specifically say it is. You are letting yourself be influenced by unbelievers.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I agree it's hard to make sense of the idea of faith as evidence but that is what the Bible says and I understand it to mean that we actually learn things about the invisible worlds through faith in what the Bible says about them. They are realities that we cannot see but can know and think about by having faith in their reality as given in the Bible.Another part of the statement is "faith is the substance of things hoped for" which means we can have knowledge of God's promises to us in some really substantial way through believing in them without any more evidence than the word of God.And all I meant otherwise was that you seem to be saying it's claimed that faith is some kind of way of understanding all kinds of things other than "things unseen" as described in the Bible, but that is taking the idea too far, way out of its intended context. By faith I believe in God, by faith I believe in an afterlife, by faith I believe in angels, by faith I believe that I'm saved to eternal life by the shed blood of Jesus Christ, things I've never seen and about which I have no way of knowing anything except by believe the Biblical reports. by faith I can learn a lot about all these things I've never seen and can only take as reality because God says so. Hebrews 11 gives a list of people in the Bible whose faith worked wonders in their lives.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I suspect the idea of faith as evidence was as unusual for them as it is for us, and they certainly knew what evidence in the ordinary sense meant anyway. Faith is evidence for things that CAN'T be evidenced in any other way because they are invisible or otherwise something beyond our personal ability to experience. People here keep asking for ordinary physical evidence for nonphysical things but the Bible makes it clear that isn't going to happen. The visible evidence was given and witnessed by people whose witness and experience were reported and now all we have is believing or not believing what they said. There is a huge effort here to discredit them so grounds for belief are eliminated. But if you simply believe, as Jesus says we are to do, all sorts of hitherto unknown realities open up to us. Realities. Facts. Known only by faith and in no other way.Your version is OK : So, ""faith is the realization of things hoped for, the confidence of things not seen." But I do like "substance" and "evidence."

duplicateEdited by Faith, : No reason given.

But that's a false comparison. My own guess as to when the Rapture might occur has nothing to do with faith, it was just my own guess based on current events as many had been discussing them on Christian sites. The Rapture is yet to come and although we don't know when we have faith that it will certainly come because scripture says so. Nobody claims faith for our own guesswork, or at least nobody should. Again you are talking about things that have nothing to do with faith as the "evidence of things unseen" etc. Well, you might start by recognizing that you are misapplying the concept as I say above. Faith as described in the Bible will lead you to the reality of God, Heaven, angels and demons, miracles, and the promise of eternal life. Also a coming Rapture of believers, but not when it is to occur. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I once added up the converts described in the Gospels and the Book of Acts and arrived at a minimum of 30,000 JEWISH believers before the gospel went out the Gentiles. Three thousand Jews alone were converted by the disciples assembed in the Upper Room when the Holy Spirit fell on them so that figure of 1000 you found is bogus. Then Paul and the other apostles always preached first in the synagogues all over the Hellenized world of the time, and made their first converts there. It was some time before the Jews stopped listening to them and they began to concentrate on the Gentiles more exclusively. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

There is very rarely a MAJORITY of any group that receives Jesus as the messiah. But there were tends of thousands in the early church and googling how many there are today I got: Not a majority, but probably more than you thought.

No, I don't find it palatable. As ringo said, I don't like what happened in the Old Testament [meaning of course God's commands to wipe out whole tribes in judgment against them] but I believe it happened, and that it is just because it is God's justice. I don't have to like it or even understand it, only believe it and learn from it.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.