Shalom Abra

yes hedid not write anything personally.. it's all on faith. either u have it or not.

The bible tells us of 2 witnesses. what is written in the Nt has to agree with the OT.

that is how we can know if it is true or not.

how many people do you know that fight constantly about what the OT says?

not many. yet they throw out the old when it is our measuring stick of what the new says.. again 2 witnesses Blessings..Miles

Well Morning Song,

You know I love you, but try to see it from a different point of view.

Maybe YOU think they wont get saved, and Christians are taught that Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven, I know.

But I personally, honestly, feel, that if a person at least has a higher power that they believe in, and it makes them feel blessed, than live and let live.

Everyone has the right to believe in whatever they like.

And you cant down them, if they want to believe differently, or
save them by trying to change them.

Its not that easy, although I know, your heart is in the right place sister. And that you just want those you believe are not going to be saved, to be saved in Jesus.

I just hope they are happy, healthy, and wish them the best.

Bless all!

double post!

Luv, maybe this scripture will help:



Jesus said:

John 10:17,18

"Therefore doth my Father love me,

because I LAY DOWN MY LIFE ,

that I might TAKE IT AGAIN.



NO MAN Taketh it FROM me,

but I LAY IT DOWN OF MYSELF.

I have POWER TO LAY IT DOWN ,

and I have POWER TO TAKE IT AGAIN.

This commandment have I received of my Father."




And Thank You for sharing from your heart on here Luv.


Out of the mouth of babes.....



Psssst !!!! Hey Luv !!!


I Dearly Love ALL The Precious People on

here .... and Truly Believe with ALL My Heart, that

Everyone of Them WILL Be in Heaven One Day.


God Isn't Done with ANY of Us Yet.

Love You Too, Luv.

Be Blessed Now, Sweet Sister.

Keep Growing in the Faith Now. Luv.....

I am reading my bible everyday now, im about 1/4 of the way through it.

Ok so Jesus said that he wanted to surrender his life, because he knew they were gonna kill him anyways, and so he surrendered his life so that they coulnt take it from him?

Is that right?

And he did it, because, he and his father knew, that he would not be dead, because he would rise from the dead?

I probably shouldnt even make comments on here, till ive read the whole bible....I still have much to learn....

but your right, I am just speaking from my heart.

1. The NT and the OT ARE NOT "WITNESSES" they are books. Books are not witnesses. Books are simply written material.

That's reality.

That one book might have the same thing in it that another book has is simply plagiarism. It was simply written later and it was taken from another source.

I doubt if plagiarism was an issue with people 2000 years ago.

Hi Luv,

Yes, this is a major concern for many theologians.

I realize that you don't know me very well so perhaps I should explain a little bit about my history. I'll try to keep it short.

As a very young child I always felt close to God. Not in a religious sense, but in a very natural sense. I simply sensed the love of a supreme being that is watching over me and have always felt close to God in that way. I've also very that God is my ultimate "friend" and would never become my enemy.

Could I become God's enemy? Sure. I could. But that's not the point. The point is that the God that I naturally sensed would never become my enemy without deliberate provocation from me.

~~~~

Ok that's my extreme childhood background innate feelings about "God". This precedes any religious teachings. It's just an innate intuitive connection with a supreme presence.

~~~~~

In the meantime I was raised into Christianity by a very nice Free Methodist family. They did not preach fire and brimstone, nor where they strong evangelists or proselytizers of the religion. Similar to you, they believed that God can have a relationship with anyone whether they are Christians or not. They weren't firm believers that God would condemn someone for simply not believing in Jesus. They basically believed that "goodness" counts. And that God is indeed fair and righteous. So they weren't obnoxious about their Christianity toward non-Christians.

None the less, my family was highly religious for the most part. And some of my uncles were actually preachers. So this exposed me to the religion from the "inside" of at least this one denomination.

In other words, I would see the preacher sitting around discussing their concerns about various biblical concepts. They weren't always in agreement either. In fact, they often held considerably different views on things. They never became irate or argumentative with each other, but they did politely discuss how they view things differently.

In the meantime, I'm thinking that there should be precise answers in this Bible. After all, I had been taught that the Bible contains answers to all our questions. Possibly that's a false idea right there, but none the less I was told that this was supposedly the case.

So I turned to the Bible to seek the answers to these questions myself. Why was it necessary for Jesus to be crucified to "pay" for our sins? In what way do bloody sacrifices appease God?

If this is the basis of the religion I would think that these things should be explained within these stories in clear and understandable terms. However, when I went looking for answers I came away with far more questions than answers.

As far as I can tell, the idea that "gods" are appeased by blood sacrifices is simply taken for granted that this is the way gods are. Back in the days when the Old Testament tales were written it was a common believe that gods need to be appeased by blood sacrifices, etc. This is interwoven into Greek Mythology and just about every other mythology ever written by human cultures. So this is a common thread in myths and superstitions. People "paid homage" to the gods because at that time they believed that the gods were responsible for natural disasters, disease, mental illness (which they saw as being possessed by a demon), etc.

So that's the origin of this whole idea of blood sacrifices to appease the gods. It was just a common human superstition common to just about every culture imaginable.

The more I read the Old Testament, the more I'm convinced that it is just another mythology. It doesn't represent anything significantly different. It even has God turning Lot's wife into a pillar of salt, etc. It contains a lot of silly things no different from any other man-made myths.

~~~~~


But getting back to Jesus being the ultimate blood sacrifice made by God himself to "pay" for the sins of man,... well,... this becomes extremely problematic for me on many different levels.

First off, what sense does it make for a God to make a blood sacrifice unto himself? How can a God appease himself in this way?

It also makes no sense that his had to be "paid" to Satan to appease Satan. We can't very well have God offering up his son as an appeasement to Satan to pay for the sins of man.

So the only way the appeasement can even work at all is if it is indeed made TO God. So that's highly problematic for me. An appeasement made TO God BY God makes no sense to me.

~~~~

It also makes no sense in terms of two wrongs somehow making a right.

In other words, let's say that some guy raped and murdered someone's young daughter. Then after that he has a change of heart and asks Jesus to forgive his sins.

So what does Jesus say to him, "No problem, I got you covered. I was brutally beaten and nailed to a pole to PAY for you having raped and murdered that nice little girl".

What?

How would that pay for having raped and murdered the little girl?

So it makes things alright as long as some totally innocent perfect person is beaten and nailed to a pole?

What sense does that even begin to make?

This whole idea seems to be based on an idea that as long as someone "pay" via some sort of brutal painful beating, that's going to make everything just fine and dandy.

This whole idea is extremely problematic for me.

And to be perfectly honest with you, it's just totally unacceptable, as far as I'm concerned. There's got to be something wrong here.

And to make matters worse, the Christians keep badgering people with things like, "If you refuse to believe that God is like this then you are the scum of the earth because you are refusing to acknowledge God's GLORY"



So now I'm the scum of the earth because I don't believe in a God who requires gory bloody sacrifices to "pay" for sins.

~~~~~

Is there a better answer?

Well, for me there is. And I don't need to turn to atheism to find it. Although, in a sense even atheism would be a 'better' answer to reality than a God who is appeased by bloody sacrifices, IMHO.

~~~~~

But what about another spiritual answer?

After decades of thinking about this, and learning other religions and philosophies "outside the box of Christianity", I came to realize that there may very well be a better explanation for how the Hebrew fables came to be.

Here's my personal conclusions:

1. The Old Testament was indeed just another mythology not much different from Greek Mythology.

So I dismiss the whole Old Testament, as least as a "verbatim" account of God and man. It may very well contain some spiritual truths. I'm not saying that it doesn't contain any spiritual truths at all. I imagine that even Greek Mythologies contains some spiritual truths as well. So I'm not saying that just because something is in the Old Testament it's necessarily false or wrong. But what I am saying is that it shouldn't be viewed as the perfect infallible "Word of God", and instead it should be taken with a huge grain of salt and anything that seems ungodly probably is ungodly.

In short, it can't be trusted to be the perfectly infallible "Word of God".

~~~~

So that brings us to the Christian New Testament and the question of who Jesus might have been (if not the only begotten son of the God of the Old Testament).

Well, without conveying everything that I've learned about other religions, let me just say that it makes perfect sense to me that Jesus was well-educated in the philosophy of Mahayana Buddhism. This form of Buddhism was at it's peak right around the time that Jesus would have lived. This particular form of Buddhism was quite "spiritual". Unlike some of the more modern forums of Buddhism that are almost glorified forms of atheism.

What I noticed is that many of the teachings that have been attributed to Jesus fit in with this Mahayana Buddhism, and especially with the concept of a Bodhisattva, which was very popular right around the time Jesus lived. A Bodhisattva is a person who takes on disciples and teachings them the spiritual teachings charging them to then go out and become Bodhisattvas themselves (i.e. to teach others the same things that he taught them)

So this fits in perfectly with the idea of Jesus having disciples and teaching them spiritual things.

~~~~

From this I suspect that the Christian New Testament is a gross misunderstanding of the things that Jesus taught. Or worse yet, a purposeful attempt to use Jesus as a means to prop back up the Torah, which Jesus clearly did not agree with.

Even according to the gospels Jesus renounced the judging of others and the stoning to death of sinners. Jesus renounced an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and instead of seeking revenge, Jesus taught people to turn the other cheek and forgive those who trespass against you.

In short, Jesus renounced that moral fabric of the teachings of the Torah and replaced them with far more sane and more intelligent ideals. I deals that were being taught by Mahayana Buddhism long before Jesus had ever been born.

~~~~~

So I reject the notion that Jesus was "born of a virgin", or that he was the only begotten son of Yahweh to sent to pay for the sins of man and offer salvation though his crucifixion.

Instead, I see Jesus as a highly spiritual man who simply tried to teach far better morals to a society whose religion had them judging each other and stoning sinners to death (not to mention crucifying heathens).

Unfortunately that tendency was quite profound and Jesus himself ended up being crucified by the very people he was trying to teach better moral values.

~~~~~

Do I need to become an atheist now?

Of course not!

I've been close to God in spirit since I've been a child. That's never going to change. I don't need a specific religious fable to be true in order to believe in God.

The Buddhists, had a very deep insight into highly spiritual moral values and ethics too. In fact, as far as I'm concerned they had far better moral values long before the Hebrews did,.

If the teachings of Jesus appear to be "divine", when then clearly the teachings of the Torah were not. Because Jesus taught totally different moral values than had been taught in the Torah.

So you might even say that Jesus "led me to Buddhism".

Although, having said that, I don't require any "religion" to be close to God. I was close to God when I was a very young child. I had no religion then. Why would I need religion now?

I've realize that religion and God are two entirely different things.

Religion is the babblings of men.

God is God.

Religion becomes nothing more than an excuse to become "defensive" or even possibly "offensive" about God.

Either believe in my RELIGION, or you're rejecting GOD!

That's nonsense and is about as ungodly as anything can be.

The whole story of the Christ dying for our sins is symbolic. It has to do with quantum mechanics, and positive and negative charges.

Well, if God didn't tell people to write things down, then why would anyone assume that this stories constitute "God's Word"?

Moreover, the New Testament really only contains TWO gospels.

The book of John is one gospel.

The three books of Mark, Matthew, and Luke, or the other. Most scholars are in agreement that writings of Matthew and Luke are just rehashing the writings of Mark. So Matthew and Luke were simply re-teaching, the rumors of Mark.

Finally, the BULK of the New Testament was written by Paul, and Paul never met Jesus in person. Paul was supposedly converted to Christianity when he had a vision of Jesus in his mind.

So really this whole religions is basically based on the writings of John and Mark. Two flimsy rumors that were repeated by others and elaborated on by Paul.

The whole religion is basically based on a very few rumors, just retold in and elaborated on by other people who heard them.

In fact, some people believe that the entire New Testament was actually constructed by a single group of people who had an agenda to give "life" to these particular rumors. These weren't the only rumors that existed about Jesus. These were simply the rumors that eventually GREW to become the religion we today call "Christianity".

It's perfectly reasonable to dismiss these writings as being undependable.

Yet the authors of these writings claim that there is "no excuse" for not believing them. But then LOOK at who is making that claim!

In fact, I'm sure that Paul wrote that somewhere in Romans.

But how arrogant is it for an author to write that there is "no excuse" for not believing his position. That's baloney and totally unconvincing. Why should we believe him?

Especially when we can clearly see that there many sound rational reasons for dismissing these rumors as having no merit.

It also states in the Bible that no "good" can come from non-believers because all "good" comes from God. We know that's a lie too. There are a lot of "good" people who are atheists, or who simply believe in other spiritual views of creation, etc.

So the book clearly contains falsehoods.

Yes, as a symbolic parable it's acceptable.

I accept Jesus as my symbolic parable savior.

How's that?

He can save me from my symbolic parable sins.

In the New Testament, the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, James, I Peter, II Peter, I John, II John, III John and Jude were all written by the men after whom they are named. Luke also wrote the book of Acts. The apostle Paul wrote the book of Romans, I Corinthians, II Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, I Thessalonians, II Thessalonians, I Timothy, II Timothy, Titus, Philemon and Hebrews. The apostle John recorded the book of Revelation.

Amen Abra

Pen names.

It does not say this exactly. Yes all good comes from God, but that doesn't mean God doesn't bless us ALL with this good. You act as if someone doesn't believe in God, God just ignores them, doesn't love them, ect. And that is absolutely and totally incorrect.

Truly.

Besides, who is Cowboy to say who wrote these stories?

How would he have a clue who wrote something that was written almost 2000 years ago.

I think it's crystal clear that Cowboy assumes to actually "know" far more than he could ever possibly know. He's being totally unreasonable to claim to know things that he can't possibly know.

Anyone could write anything and evidently Cowboy will believe them.

That's a matter of pure FAITH, and has absolutely nothing at all to do with "knowledge".

Cowboy needs to learn to say things like "I have FAITH that they were all written by legitimate people"

But instead he states his faith-based beliefs as if they are absolute truths, which is nonsense. He can't possibly know that. He simply has faith that it might be true.

Exactly.

And I personally see no reason to have "Faith" that some angry God has to appease himself by having his only begotten son nailed to a pole.

Why would I even want to have "Faith" in such an absurd idea?

If I'm going to have "Faith" in something, I'd rather have faith that God is REASONABLE and SANE.



Why waste faith believing that God is one sick puppy?

If Christianity is a "Faith-based religion" (which is most certainly is) then I see absolutely no reason at all to want to place faith in it.

I would be far happier if Eastern Mysticism is true. So why not place my faith in that? It's a far more reasonable picture of God, IMHO.

Why place my faith in a derogatory picture of God when I can place my faith in a really great picture of God?

What would be the point to that?

Yep. He clearly believe what he chooses to believe and can't back any of it up, then he states it as fact.

When anyone tries to show him he is incorrect he defends his belief and refuses to consider anything else. Even the meaning of "hearsay" he argues.

He would be a very difficult student.

Faith is knowledge when it comes to history. There is absolutely not one thing you can know happened yesterday for sure less it directly involved you. If it does not directly involve you every bit of history is taken on faith.