SO YOU WANT ME TO BECOME A CHRISTIAN?
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200th REPLY
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NO. But LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE! You get to ENJOY FREE BBQOriginally posted by crazy monkey:so for ppl who end up in hell is there any redemption ? 
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...of yourself.Originally posted by Devil1976:NO. But LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE! You get to ENJOY FREE BBQ -
... even if they truly repent ?Originally posted by fandango:...of yourself.
... and ppl who are in heaven if they do something wrong will they end up in hell ? -
wiccans rox! u on d other hand sux!Originally posted by fandango:72. Explain why Christians have harassed Wiccans ("white witches") for almost two thousand years now, when the central rule of the Wiccan ethical system is "an it harm no one, do what thou wilt."
Same thing as the Inquisition: It's wrong to persecute people and groups, but they do need to know the truth. During the Middle Ages, the church persecuted all kinds of people: Jews, Muslims, Huguenots (French Protestants), Anabaptists (the ancestor of modern-day Baptists), Wiccans, etc.
By the way, White Witches, Black Witches, Purple Witches, Rainbow Witches. They are alll still witches. And all witches worship the same person.
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81. Would it be good for men to castrate themselves? Justify your answer, taking Matthew 19:12 into account.
Not necessarily. This appears to be speaking of staying single. It gives several reasons: because they were born that way (birth defect), they were made so by men (castrating), or that they decided to dedicate themselves fully to the Lord, and not have to worry about a wife. I Corinthians 7 is good to study alongside this. However, it does not appear to say one way or the other, that castrating is good. -
82. What exactly is faith?
Trusting in something (usually, as in this context, God), no matter what. -
83. All of the various Christian sects ignore parts of the Bible, usually because those parts of the Bible are inconvenient. Explain which parts of the Bible your sect ignores, and explain why it is OK to ignore those parts of the Bible.
I don't ignore any of the Bible, and I don't believe that it is okay to ignore parts of the Bible. -
84. Why did your god allow Satan to do evil things to Job (Job 2:7 etc.)? Wouldn't your god better spend his time punishing unbelievers?
Yet again, I do not and cannot claim to know the mind of God. Maybe someone else can answer this question. -
85. If Jesus and his father are one (John 10:30), then why does Jesus have to pray (i.e. Matthew 26:39)?
You're getting into the Incarnation. At the moment, while Jesus was a man, He wasn't ontologically equal to God, as He normally was and is. It was at this point that He was "cut off," as put in the prophecy of Daniel 9:24-27. -
86. Explain your belief in heaven in light of Job 7:9 and Ecclesiastes 9:5.
Job: The Hebrew word for "grave" is Sheol, used most often for the place where unbelievers go after their death.
Ecclesiastes: I think that the first part ("For the living know that they will die") means that believers know that they could be gone in an instant, so they need to live as if that was going to happen. The other three lines in the verse more than likely refer to the spiritually dead, as does the Job passage.
I see no problem with my belief in heaven in light of these two verses. -
There is a story about young jesus.....let me check my bible...Originally posted by fandango:85. If Jesus and his father are one (John 10:30), then why does Jesus have to pray (i.e. Matthew 26:39)?
You're getting into the Incarnation. At the moment, while Jesus was a man, He wasn't ontologically equal to God, as He normally was and is. It was at this point that He was "cut off," as put in the prophecy of Daniel 9:24-27. -
87. Christ giving himself up on the cross was a great gesture, true, but wouldn't it have been more sensible for him to continue spreading his message until he died a natural death? Answer this question in light of your answer to question #1.
Because He believed that He was the divine Messiah, the Son of God, and that His main mission to earth (aside from His teaching) was to die for our sins. -
88. What is your interpretation of the temptation of Christ by Satan in the desert (Matthew 4:5-8, Luke 4:5-9)?
My "interpretation" is that Satan wanted to try to stop Jesus as much as possible. Why the Father allowed it, I don't know. Satan is the supreme egotist, and believes that he can usurp God's throne, that he could and can stop the Son of God in His mission to save souls, etc. Perhaps (but this is pure speculation) God wanted to show Satan that it wasn't going to happen, that Jesus couldn't be tempted. -
89. In view of Matthew 6:5-6, shouldn't prayer in public schools be discouraged? Support your answer with scripture quotes.
If we follow your logic, we shouldn't have prayer in church, but instead pray by ourselves all the time! He's talking specifically to the people that pretend to pray so that everyone will see them and see how "religious" they are. But that's not what God wants. He wants you and me to pray out of true desire, not just to look good. -
90. Do you feel that the last words of Christ were significant? If so, why do the four gospels attribute three different sentences to Christ as his last? (Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34: "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?"; Luke 23:46: "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit"; John 19:30: "It is finished").
There is no prophecy in the Old Testament that says what His last words are. Those are simply the last recorded words. It's very possible that he said all three of these things. In fact, Matthew and Mark seem to indicate that He said something after those verses you gave (after He was given a drink). -
91. Matthew and Mark say that the last words of Christ were, in Hebrew, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" This has traditionally been translated as, "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" However, a more accurate translation would be, "My El, My El, why has thou forsaken me?" El is the name of a specific pagan god. Why would Jesus call out to a pagan god at the moment of his death?
El is one of the names Hebrews used for God. Because YHWH (the "I AM", often transliterated into Yahweh or Jehovah; it was what God called Himself at the burning bush to Moses; most English Bibles translate it "the LORD") was such a formal name for God, they would use El in conjunction with other terms, leading to words such as Elohim and El-Shaddai. They would also use the term Adonai (literally, "Lord").
Here is how important the name YHWH was to the Jews: when they would write that name down in copies of the Scripture, they would
1) use a quill pen that would only be used for that word,
2) take a bath before writing it,
3) and after writing it, destroy the pen.
If this name was so important to them, does it make sense that they would use in common speech? -
92. A commonly recited litany in many forms of Christianity is "The LORD is my shepherd." (Psalm 23:1). Given the fact that the only reasons that people raise sheep are to rob them of their clothes and to kill them for meat, and the fact that sheep will often follow the shepherd to their destruction, do you think that this is any appropriate image for your god? Justify your answer.
In this time, sheep were almost children to the shepherd. The shepherd cared for them tremendously. I don't know if they ate sheep meat. Even if they did, it is for substenance. -
93. Why is the theory of the big bang any more (or less) likely that the idea that your god created the universe? Justify your answer. NOTE: I admit that science has not explained where the original supercondensed particle came from, but no one has ever explained where your god came from, either.
You answered your question in your question. It is up to you if you want to believe Big Bang for Creation. -
94. If your god is everywhere at the same time, and hell is the absence of (or separation from) your god, how can he be omnipresent?
I do not know. It is possible that this "absence" refers to the absence of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of the unredeemed, though again, I cannot confirm this. -
95. In the Genesis story, your god tells Adam and Eve that the day they eat from the tree of knowledge they will surely die (Gen 2:17). The devil tells them that they will not die, but that their eyes would be opened and they would know the difference between good and evil (Gen 3:5). Wasn't Satan telling the truth here? Is your god a liar? Justify your answer in light of Jeremiah 20:7 and Ezekiel 14:9.
Dying probably, in this sense, means being dead in sins and trespasses. -
96. If Lucifer is not as powerful as your god, then he cannot possibly be omnipresent. How could he possibly get as many followers as you seem to think he has?
At his fall, a third of the angels followed Him. The number of them probably is at least in the millions if not the billions. -
97. The Bible constantly describes your god as male. In view of the fact that your god supposedly created everything, and creation is very much a female function, isn't this at least a little bit absurd? Justify your answer.
How is creation a female function? Remember, God created a male human first. -
98. In light of the Trinity, angels, the Virgin Mary, etc., isn't Christianity polytheistic? If the Trinity is three who are one, why the three names? Justify your answer.
The Trinity has been described as "one what and three whos." Unlike Catholics, I don't believe that the Virgin Mary (or the saints and apostles) should be elevated to the status that the RCC makes them. I will admit that the Trinity (along with lot of philosophical questions like this) is difficult to understand, but I will explain it to you as best I can:
The Father: The God of the Old Testament, and the One Jesus prayed to.
The Son: Jesus Christ, the Messiah of the world. He appeared in the Old Testament as "The Angel of the LORD."
The Holy Spirit: He indwells all believers that have asked for His presence. He did not serve in this function during the Old Testament, and will not during the Tribulation period, but was there. -
99. Have you read the entire Bible? If not, how can you be devoted enough to try and convert me to a religion that you don't know that much about? Isn't knowing as much as possible about something necessary to understanding it? Isn't understanding something necessary to being completely devoted to it?
Yes I have read the whole Bible. About the "knowing = understanding" thing, look at young children of Christian parents. Obviously, they don't understand most (if any) of the nuances I'm talking about, but they believe in Jesus.
Also, if you can't know 100% about anything, you can't know 100% that there is no God. In order to do that (know 100% that there is not God), you would have to know all things, which is a requirement of being God. Do you know all things? If you think you do, then you are saying that you are God, which means you do believe in a god; that is, yourself.