Why do we want to wear a symbol that did not come about untill a pagan emperor claimed he saw in the sky a cross that said "with this sign conquer" since then millions of people have been slaughtered by men wearing uniforms with a large cross on it and a shield with one justifing thier actions. You would not where a swasaka would you? to me its worse..Shalom...Miles

The last king of Greece, found out that the prophecy of him was that his kingdom would be taken over by another group. But, the other group had to keep the king alive in order to keep the citizenship of the town in order. The king dressed as a commoner and went to the other group and started a fight, they killed him which broke prophesy. He saves Greece for the time, but they lost a incredible king, and no one ever wanted to be considered King of Greece to honor this King. They then became statemen.

Now God knew upon Adam all sin laid. Adam was reborn in human flesh and spirit filled by prophesy through Christ Jesus to live the perfect life that no man could live, Jesus learned the Torah, lived a sinless life, and filled the prophesy in which all men that believed in the Son of God would be reunited with God for ethernal life- instead of hell. He lived the life that no man could do. Mind, spirit and soul.

Now comparing the two stories which are similar, the lacking of the first is that one the King was dead there was no consolation for the hope of the people to be reunited with the way in which the perfection of the kingdom was run.

God, found a way to eventually bring us back to an eternal life that provides hope, joy and positively a reason to live a better life now for what has been given for our eternal soul (Heaven). Only God could possibly reason a way to make up for the evil in which he knew man was capable of creating. He was pure, man was made like God and could learn of good and evil. Mans flesh in humanly in need to fulfill the senses. It takes something extremely spiritual to move beyond the sensual. That is where the Holy Spirit is released to help us with controlling, but we still flesh lacking for God and God knew this. Thus he was omnipotent of our flesh and Spirit. Past. present and future. That is why the cross.

PS the King was Plato's uncle I believe or grandfather.

Take Care. TAB

The last king of Greece, found out that the prophecy of him was that his kingdom would be taken over by another group. But, the other group had to keep the king alive in order to keep the citizenship of the town in order. The king dressed as a commoner and went to the other group and started a fight, they killed him which broke prophesy. He saves Greece for the time, but they lost a incredible king, and no one ever wanted to be considered King of Greece to honor this King. They then became statemen.

Now God knew upon Adam all sin laid. Adam was reborn in human flesh and spirit filled by prophesy through Christ Jesus to live the perfect life that no man could live, Jesus learned the Torah, lived a sinless life, and filled the prophesy in which all men that believed in the Son of God would be reunited with God for ethernal life- instead of hell. He lived the life that no man could do. Mind, spirit and soul.

Now comparing the two stories which are similar, the lacking of the first is that one the King was dead there was no consolation for the hope of the people to be reunited with the way in which the perfection of the kingdom was run.

God, found a way to eventually bring us back to an eternal life that provides hope, joy and positively a reason to live a better life now for what has been given for our eternal soul (Heaven). Only God could possibly reason a way to make up for the evil in which he knew man was capable of creating. He was pure, man was made like God and could learn of good and evil. Mans flesh in humanly in need to fulfill the senses. It takes something extremely spiritual to move beyond the sensual. That is where the Holy Spirit is released to help us with controlling, but we still flesh lacking for God and God knew this. Thus he was omnipotent of our flesh and Spirit. Past. present and future. That is why the cross.

PS the King was Plato's uncle I believe or grandfather.

Take Care. TAB

being born human



because being born human is apparently a sin

For your information, I was not in the Garden at that time. I happen to have an unbreakable alibi. I was not born yet.

Now, unless you want to bear the price for the sins of all your ancestors, I would reconsider that story. It does not make sense whatsoever.

I am a sinner because an ancient ancestor ate some forbidden fruit? Ridiculous.

JB

BINGO BANGO!!! You won the prize! That is exactly what God did for us. That's why we can say...Jesus Rules!

Well actually... there was alot of barbarisms going on then. they hung people on the cross for their "Crimes."

Jesus, who was without sin, became the last blood sacrifice for all humanity. It was Jesus who was also ressurrected to give us power to overcome. It is also Jesus who is the only true way to the Father.

I had a really hard time years back about Jesus & His death. I thought it was so horrible. Like how could something good come out of something so horrible...so unjustifyable.. so wrong. I use to pray to God & ignored Jesus because I could not face what He endured for me...and humanity. I was also angry with God for allowing such evil to exist. I blamed God for everything wrong in this life but think about this...

Who would you like to see God take vengence on for the sins of the world? Your boss who you might hate? Your nasty neighbors? Your ex spouse? When I realized that I was just a sinner saved by grace then I understood why God would choose this way. I knew then that God loved all those people who hurt me as much as He did me. He loves the terrorist, the murderer, & rapist... et al...as much as He loves me ...& YOU!

Try to see God not with the carnal mind but with sincerity of heart & He will be faithful to reveal it all to you.

"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever would believe in His Name, would not perish but have everlasting life."

God bless....

The long vertical part of the cross is meant to represent material reality and the short horizontal part is meant to represent spiritual reality. I hope I don't have that backwards

While I appreciate your sincerity, in repeating this story, it still does not make any real sense.

Blood sacrifices in general do not make sense to me.

A vengeful God does not make sense to me.

Being "born in sin" does not make sense to me.

God's inability to forgive without a blood sacrifice does not make sense to me.

I need more information to answer these questions. Instead I get the same old story from everyone that has been repeated over and over and that same old story still does not make any sense.

JB

A symbol, any symbol, means only what people decide it means.

For me, every reality is a spiritual reality.

I was just explaining what the symbol of the cross meant in the ancient world, not giving my opinion.

I have a book of symbols that tells what a lot of them mean and it barely touches on the subject. There are also may different kinds of cross symbols and each have a different meaning. Its very interesting.

Meanings of symbols change over time. Have you studied anything about sacred geometry?

JB

The Christian cross has the horizontal piece higher up on the vertical piece to symbolize the triumph of the spirit world over the material world. I am slightly familiar with sacred geometry.

The problem is that the story has already been written. It’s a closed book. All that can be done is to repeat the same old story over and over again. Nothing new can be added now. It’s carved in stone now.

So if it doesn’t make sense now it never will. You can’t go back and rewrite it differently.

My point was simple and I know full well that you are smart enough to more than grasp my point. You answered a question in your response and I'm sure it was a question that someone asked--but it wasn't my question. My question was painfully simple and illustration of how unbelievably cruel one has to be as a father to allow a child to burn in hell. It is really that simple. And yes, these posts can be hijacked but I've more than defended people of faith when I think they are being "hit" for no reason. I will continue to do so.

Thanks though--as always, interesting to read your thoughts.

-Drew

Jellybean, I really appreciate your questions and comments here. They are EXCELLENT! You have some good and legitimate questions and concerns. They are questions and concerns people have been raising for hundreds of years and I hope they go on asking them for hundreds more. I'll try to answer some of your concerns and if you're still concerned, please say.

I think you've asked
Why do people deserve death
How did blood sacrifice pay for men's sin and so forth.

After I do this post, I'll go back and look at some of your questions and answer in more details and more specifically. I'm starting from the general and working toward the specific here.

Our understanding of the spiritual principles of Christianity depend, in part, on going back to the Old Testament. Most of the things in the New Testament (Christ's sacrifice for man's mistakes and death) have their roots in the Old Testament.

Blood sacrifice to cover sins has its roots in the Old Testament. After Adam and Eve transgressed by eating from the tree of Knowledge, God made skins to cover their nakedness, to cover their fallen spiritual condition and their separation from him. God sacrificed an animal, shed blood and covered the sin/nakedness with the skin.

Following God's act at the Garden of Eden, covering mankind's separation from him and bringing mankind (and womankind) back into fellowship with him, Abraham followed up by continuing the tradition of animal sacrifice. God covenanted with Abraham, that is he made agreements with him, and part of the whole covenant was the continuance of animal sacrifice and shedding of blood to cover men's sin: that is what Man did when he or she disobeyed God and was separated from God.

See, when we sin against God or someone else, we hurt them. The blood is the hurt that we create, enough blood shed, enough time gone by can bring us back into fellowship (a poor explanation, though).

When the Hebrews were slaves in Egypt, we have another example of Blood providing coverage of sin and prevention of death. At the eve of passover in Egypt, the Hebrews slaughtered lambs and put the BLOOD upon their doors, making the death angel pass over Hebrew households. The BLOOD of the lamb provided salvation for the Hebrews and their children.

Although blood sacrifice in the Old Testament was effective, it depended on the condition of the sacrificer's heart to be ultimately successful. A blood sacrifice offered in the wrong spirit, the wrong place, using the wrong animals would not be effective. Eventually, due to the rotten condition of man's heart (desperately wicked and deceitful above all things), God figured out the old way of animal sacrifice wouldn't work any more. As Jacob sacrificed Isaac, God would sacrifice Jesus, his own son, to make the ultimate sacrifice.

Yes, the sacrifice of Jesus is gory and scary. It scared me as a kid, too, but when I got older I had to put away childish things. I had to comprehend what was going on and once I did, the gory became glorious. I was able to comprehend that God so loved the world that while we were yet sinners, seperated from his love, he sent his only begotton son to give his life for us that whosoever believes in him (like, Jellybean and YZ and all of us, maybe) should not perish (apart from God), but should have eternal life.

Sin seperates us from God and this separation from God produces spiritual death here on earth and eternal death hereafter as we're seperated from God forever if we die without him. But thanks be to God, we have a chance to remedy that here through Jesus.

This separation is why the bible says the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ his son.

The shedding of Jesus' blood covers our sin. We are justified by our faith in God, our turning toward him and our desire to give our life to God as God gave Jesus' life for us. Like Abraham, we are made right with God through faith. Abraham believed his sacrifice, offered in the correct spirit, would put him in contact with the Lord, and we believe Jesus' sacrifice, properly accepted, will put US in touch with the Lord (and it will).

At any rate, that's the short version. Hope it helps.

If that is the short version I think the longer version would really confuse me.

Let me summarize:

They ate the "forbidden fruit" then they suddenly felt they had to hide their naked parts.

So an animal had to be killed to use the skins to make clothes.

This does not explain what the forbidden fruit was, and why it would make them ashamed of their nakedness.

Sounds like to me the forbidden fruit was not fruit at all but was probably sex, and since the devil "seduced" Eve then she probably had sex with Satan.

Otherwise you want me to believe that some exotic fruit has the power to cause people to realize they are naked and that being naked is some how a sin.

Why is being naked a sin again?

People are born naked. It is perfectly natural to be naked unless you are trying to keep warm in cold weather.

The only reason people today wear clothing is because of sex and to hide their sexual organs.

I think I understand what the forbidden fruit was now.

Tell me more.

JB

I don't think it was so much that shame made them hide their nakedness, it was the naked truth that they had disobeyed God, they had let him down, and were now hiding themselves from the Lord rather than revealing themselves and fellowshipping with God and with one another.

You see, JB, humans were made for the glory of God. They were made to worship him, to fellowship with him and each other, to learn from him in discipleship, to minister to each other and serve each other and to serve others in mission. When humans get away from that, there is trouble, like there was in the Garden of Eden.

I've never considered the view that the forbidden fruit was sex. It's a fascinating idea. I'm not sure it's entirely right, though, since God told Adam and Eve to procreate, to multiply and fill the earth. He had made Adam and Eve for each other and with a proper relationship with him and with each other, they had nothing to be ashamed of with each other.

An animal had to be killed not to make clothes, but to cover the offender's offenses against the Lord, to cover the excuses they used to point away from their own offenses and to make the humans palatable to God once again. That's why we need the blood of Jesus to cover our offenses against the Lord.

The Forbidden Fruit was fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. You will be like God, Satan said. That's the mistake. When we try to make ourself God, we try to make ourselves God's equal or God's better, it does not work! I can testify to this personally, unfortunately. The result is disaster. Absolute disaster. Pain, suffering, sickness, injury or death. Spiritual, physical, doesn't matter, either's just as bad.

Being naked is not a sin, being hidden from God and his purposes and his will is. The forbidden fruit wasn't sex (though it could have been, if God said no). The forbidden fruit was rebellion, disblief and being fooled and lured away from the truth and the Kingdom of God by the ultimate deceiver, Satan.

i would offer that it is spiritual hope rather than reality as it is by faith that we as Christians believe. Faith is greater than reality.

Thats the ancient meaning of the cross symbol