Happy Easter friends!
- Thread starter steel dino
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This is a Politics and Religion forum, and it's literally been years since any topics related to religion have been discussed.
I remember religion last being discussed maybe10 yrs. ago, when I joined.
Back at ya!
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Happy Glorious Easter.
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We should have a thread for mental illness and absurd fads. I actually feel sorry for them.
Today is a good day to start again then...
I'm about to head out now, but when I return i certainly will have some questions for you!Today is a good day to start again then...
The Lord has risen, we know this in our hearts. Opinions may vary, but they would be wrong.
Tuna and durian. Rocky Mountain oysters for an app.
Oh, and happy Easter.
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Easter Feaster for the beasts
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Happy Easter All!
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Bring them on. This is truly my passion.
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Whatever happened to kruton?s/p
I think there’s two U’s. Kind of like how Con taught us how to cuss.
Ok, you asked for it!.
Christian doctrine states that God is the Creator of the Heavens and the Earth.
The Earth is situated in the Milky Way galaxy. The Milky Way is 100,000 light years across...(light travels at 186,000 miles per second, so you can imagine how far it would travel in 1year!)
The Milky Way is composed of an estimated 400 BILLION stars (suns), and an estimated 3,900 solar systems like our own.
The real kicker is that there an estimated 2 TRILLION galaxies in the seeable universe.
100,000 light years is a hop, skip and a jump...The newly detected star is so far away that its light has taken 12.9 BILLION years to reach the earth
The numbers are mind blowing to say the least.
Question: What in heavens name was God's plan for all of this??????? Pun intended!
Why God?? Why?
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His glory. Not a super exciting answer, but we know nothing more. Where He is silent, I must be silent.
However, let me caution you against thinking that the utilitarian answer is that the universe must necessarily have other life because it has other resources. That is poor logic, and even worse science..
I don't want to make this a back-and-forth argument, so I will respect your answers and leave it at that.
Question #2
I was not asked to be born, so why am I forced to be put through this trial....that if I'm good I will go to heaven and if I'm bad I will suffer in hell for all eternity?
From what I gather the Jewish faith does not believe in hell the way we do.
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I don't think of it as an argument, in case you wondered. I learn a lot this way, personally.
Why were you born? I don't know. Are there storehouses of those who weren't born? Don't know the background of the question.
I guess my question is "What if these unanswerable questions remain unanswered?" I guess I could ask some too, but we attend to what we know in this life, and leave the unanswerable ones alone. Not a cop out, but functioning without knowledge is how we live most of our lives. Even when we feel we know stuff, we may be wrong, or have just scratched the surface of things.
I guess the existing side of things is that we exist, so now what? Your life has intrinsic value, and God has a plan even though we don't know it. Is that not enough?
Question #3
The first known human civilization began 4000 years before Christ. Where did all those people go who never learned of the one true God upon their death? The only way to salvation is through Christ. It wouldn't be fair to send them to either heaven or hell, and it certainly wouldn't be fair to us if the ancients that came before Christ didn't have to face the threat of hell.
Well, that's about it. Those were the 3 most pressing questions I had.
Probably not what you were expecting? lol
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This one, I got you!
The point of the cross was to make a way for people to be reconciled to God in a relationship. Reconciliation speaks of what we have - a broken relationship that can be restored. His goal was not a religion, but a relationship. So, when people cry out to Him, He meets them there. Time is no issue to God - He is outside it, as He created it. So WHEN a person believes God for Him making a way to Him is irrelevant, but that we come to Him. Since it's a relationship and not a religion, we can come to Him with all our doubts, misunderstandings, errors, etc. In fact, those will never be fully resolved on this side of the grave.
So, those people, and the pigmies in Africa today, can call on the creator, never knowing that Jesus died in their place, not knowing the name of Jesus, having never read a Bible verse, etc. That's the beauty of it being a relationship, and not a religion that requires things and disallows things. The only thing we have is His graciousness toward us, who don't deserve it in the extreme.
A funny reality about "believing" is that the demons are called believers in the book of James 2:19. So, just believing puts a person the level of demon, and nothing else is promised there. But, being reconciled puts us on the level of adopted child. Much more significant.
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I wanted to add a couple of things from your previous questions.
Question #2 - You were born to bring glory to God. The implication of that are hard to be certain about, as you and all others are different. But, the scriptures are clear that this is the point of all people.
Question #1 - We have to remember when looking at things like planets, space, etc., that the original plan was disrupted by sin, so the intent of these things we see in creation might be a moot point.
Well Thank you DJ. You are very well versed in this area. Appreciate you very much.
I'm a little surprised no one else chimed in. Maybe secularism has reached conservatism too.
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I'm a former Christian and still on a journey to find answers in some sort of intelligent design, or "God" if you will.
My wife fell into what some believe to be a cult, which is the Hebrew roots movement, and her "leader" was once a member of the World Wide Church of God, which was also a cult. My wife believes that she is an Israelite by proxy and still must observe all of God's laws under Moses. The leader uses the same policies and doctrines as the WWCoG. The cult uses these restrictions to drive wedges into her relationships, including our marriage. She doesn't see it that way as she see it as a blessing. They have her so brain washed that there is no talking to her.
This led me on a journey to look at Christianity, Judaism, and I approached it from a historical perspective and what I've learned really opened my eyes to how Judaism and then Christianity formed. I'm in on the conversation if you'd allow me. Understand that the true name of the Israelite "God" is Yahweh and he was a lesser "Storm God" in the Canaanite religion. Then you get into how the Egyptians portrayed followers of Yahweh as donkey headed people...It's fascinating really.
My wife fell into what some believe to be a cult, which is the Hebrew roots movement, and her "leader" was once a member of the World Wide Church of God, which was also a cult. My wife believes that she is an Israelite by proxy and still must observe all of God's laws under Moses. The leader uses the same policies and doctrines as the WWCoG. The cult uses these restrictions to drive wedges into her relationships, including our marriage. She doesn't see it that way as she see it as a blessing. They have her so brain washed that there is no talking to her.
This led me on a journey to look at Christianity, Judaism, and I approached it from a historical perspective and what I've learned really opened my eyes to how Judaism and then Christianity formed. I'm in on the conversation if you'd allow me. Understand that the true name of the Israelite "God" is Yahweh and he was a lesser "Storm God" in the Canaanite religion. Then you get into how the Egyptians portrayed followers of Yahweh as donkey headed people...It's fascinating really.
