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christianity atheism an update first i would like to thank all who sent me their opinions on the matter at hand all advice was taken to heart if not directly used my friend found out about the matter quite accidently after reading some of my mail i quit from the mail reader went about my business i must have trashed my mail improperly because he got on the same terminal the next day saw my old messages he thought they were responses to a post he placed in alt atheism earlier that week so he read some of them before realizing that they were for me i got a message from him the next day he apologized for reading my mail said that he did not want to appear to be a snoop he said that he would be willing to talk to me about his views didn t mind doing so especially with a friend so we did i neither changed his mind nor did he change mine as that was not the point now he knows where i m coming from now i know where he s coming from and all that i can do is pray for him as i ve always done i believe the reason that he i click instead of bash heads is because i see christianity as a tool for revolution not a tool for maintaining the status quo to be quite blunt i have more of a reason to reject god than he does just by the fact that i am an african american female christianity religion have been used as tools to separate my people from the true knowledge of our history the wealth of our contributions to the world society the kitchen of heaven was all we had to look forward to during the slave days this mentality second class status still exists today i too have rejected an aspect of christianity that of the estabished church too much hypocricy exists behind the walls of god s house beginning with the images of a white jesus to that of the members praise god on sunday raise hell beginning monday god willing i will find a church home where i can feel comfortable at home but i don t see it happening anytime soon sherlette
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re sex education regarding the moral question jen jenk microsoft com asked is it okay to create a child if you aren t able to be a good parent i am reminded of a speech by one of the characters i can t remember which in the movie parenthood i am way to liberal with my quotation marks tonight in this so called by me speech the character is expressing what a lousy father he had and he made an interesting point he said something to the effect of you have to have a license to drive a car you have to have a license to own a dog you even have to have a license to fish but they ll anyone have a kid keep in mind that i am in no way trying to pass this off as a quote it is probably grossly distorted but i think you get the point mike mattone
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re nature of god re environmentalism and paganism in article apr athos rutgers edu heath athena cs uga edu terrance heath writes fortunately my own personal theology which will probably not fall into line with a lot others recognized god as a being both without gender and posessing qualities of both genders as being both a masculine and feminine force that is not necessarily unorthodox when christians call god father we are using a metaphor the bible in one place refers to god as being like a mother god is neither a father nor a mother in the literal sense god has some of the attributes of both the father metaphor is usually used because for most people at most times it is the less misleading of the two possibilities michael a covington associate research scientist artificial intelligence programs mcovingt ai uga edu the university of georgia phone athens georgia u s a amateur radio n tmi
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daily verse he who overcomes will inherit all this and i will be his god and he will be my son revelation
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re certainty and arrogance in article apr athos rutgers edu kilroy gboro rowan edu dr nancy s sweetie writes dean velasco quoted a letter from james m stowell president of moody bible institute we affirm the absolutes of scripture not because we are arrogant moralists but because we believe in god who is truth who has revealed his truth in his word and therefore we hold as precious the strategic importance of those absolutes there has been a lot of discussion but so far nobody seems to have hit on exactly what the criticism of arrogance is aimed at lots of stuff deleted this is where the arrogance of christians arises many people believe that their own personal research can give them absolute certainty about the doctrines of christianity they are implicitly claiming that they are infallible and that there is no possibility of mistake claiming that you cannot have made a mistake and that your thinking has led you to a flawless conclusion is pretty arrogant i agree with what darren has to say here but would like to add a personal observation what i see as arrogance and the problem i have with it is not a sense of personal certainty but a lack of respect for others who come to differing conclusions clearly this is not just christian vs non christian there is a whole spectrum of belief systems within christianity i do not tend to argue with others about matters of personal faith because like aesthetics it is not demonstable by objective means choosing what to believe and rely on are important areas of personal sovereignty what bothers me is when others suggest that in these matters of faith their specific beliefs are not only true to them but are absolute and should be binding on others it follows from this that god must give everyone the same revelation of truth and thus anyone who comes to a different conclusion is intentionally choosing the wrong path this is the arrogance i see a lack of respect for the honest conclusions of others on matters which are between them and god even a personal certainty leaves room for the beliefs of others it is universalizing those matters of personal faith coupled by a proud notion that one s relationship with god is superior to other s that leads to arrogance in my honest and nonuniversal opinion darren f provine kilroy gboro rowan edu at the core of all well founded belief lies belief that is unfounded ludwig wittgenstein comments criticism welcome ken alvin ucsu colorado edu it is certainly reasonable to ask for some humility about our own ability to know the truth there are also different paths in some areas of practice but i d like to see more clarification about what you mean when you reject the idea of saying their specific beliefs are not only true to them but are absolute and should be binding on others if something is true it is true for everyone assuming that the belief is something about god history etc of course something of the form i believe that it s best for me not to xxx could be true for some people and not others i have suggested in the past that god may be less concerned about doctrinal agreement than many people are but that doesn t mean i doubt that there is a difference between true and false nor that i think there is no benefit in finding out what is true clh
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re easter what s in a name was re new testament double stan mcovingt aisun ai uga edu michael covington writes and the same goes for other cultural practices the festival of easter may possibly have some historical association with some pagan festival but today there are as far as i know no christians who intend to honor any kind of pagan goddess by celebrating easter that argument would be more compelling if it were not for the ishtar eggs and ishtar bunnies why mix pagan fertility symbols from the worship of the pagan goddess of fertility with biblical belief what would really be lost if all of you were to just drop the word easter and replace all such occurances with resurrection sunday would you not show up for services if they were called resurrection sunday services rather than easter services
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re can sin block our prayers in article apr athos rutgers edu jayne mmalt guild org jayne kulikauskas writes this verse also makes me think of the kind of husband who decides what is god s will for his family without consulting his wife god reveals his will to both the husband and the wife there needs to be some degree of mutuality in decision making even those whose understanding of the bible leads to a belief in an authoritarian headship of the husband need to incorporate this in order to have a functional family one way to look at it is that god speaks to the wife through the husband and to the husband through the wife jayne kulikauskas jayne mmalt guild org i agree god makes the husband the head of the house but he surely can t do it alone he needs the help of his beloved wife whom the lord gave him at least that s how it is in my house i thank god for the beautiful woman he has brought into my life i couldn t lead without the help of my wonderful wife john emery i will praise you o lord my god with all my heart emery tc fluke com i will glorify your name forever for great is your love toward me you have delivered me from the depths of the grave psalm
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re did he really rise in article apr athos rutgers edu eggertj moses atc ll mit edu jim eggert x g writes i disagree with your claim that jews were not evangelistic except in the narrow sense of the word jewish proselytism was widespread there are numerous accounts of jewish proselytism both in the new testament and in roman and greek documents of the day jim please feel free to correct me and give me some texts as far as i can see the only text which vaugely relates to jewish evangelism is found in mt however since this is found only in mt it cannot be dated before ce which makes it unusefull for understanding second temple judaism randy
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re accepting jesus in your heart stuff deleted religion especially christianity is nothing more than a drug some people use drugs as an escape from reality christians inject themselves with jeezus and live with that high your logic is falty if christianity is a drug and once we die we die then why would you be reluctant to embrase this drug so that while you are alive you enjoy yourself i also question your overall motives for posting this article why would you waste your presious fews seconds on this earth posting your opinon to a group that will generally reject it if you die never having acepting christ as your savior i hope you have a fantastic life that it is all you evver dreamed because it is al of heaven you will ever know in christ s love bryan
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re the arrogance of christians mhsu lonestar utsa edu melinda hsu writes i d like to share my thoughts on this topic of arrogance of christians and look forward to any responses in my encounters with christians i find myself dismayed by their belief that their faith is total truth according to them their beliefs come from the bible and the bible is the word of god and god is truth thus they know the truth this stance makes it difficult to discuss other faiths with them and my own hesitations about christianity because they see no other way their way is the truth but i see their faith arising from a willful choice to believe a particular way that choice is part faith and part reason but it seems to me a choice i m sort of mystified about how a christian might respond to this i ll start with a parable a christian woman hires a carpenter to build her a birdhouse when he comes over they begin talking about religion so you believe that you understand god he asks yes i do she replies then have him build you the birdhouse i don t think that melinda is complaining about the basis of christian belief however there is a tendency among christians to say i have all the answers because god gave them to me this is simply not the case i believe that the bible is inerrant however our human interpretations of the bible are necessarily in error because we are human and imperfect we have to remember that we all make mistakes in faith and that because we are human we have an imperfect understanding of the mind and will of god to claim as so many people do that the existence of the bible allows us to determine the answers to all questions is to claim that we humans can fully understand god s will this is hubris
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re the arrogance of christians in article apr athos rutgers edu dleonar andy bgsu edu pixie writes do the words question authority mean anything to you i defy any theist to reply for all those people who insist i question authority why chris mussack this is another example of my biting raw edged humor that is neither appreciated nor understood by everyone messy hair glasses winking smiling big chin
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re ancient books in article apr athos rutgers edu whheydt pbhya pacbell com wilson heydt writes as for the dating of the oldest extant texts of the nt how would you feel about the us civil war in a couple of thousand years if the only extant text was written about now now adjust for a largely illiterate population and one in which every copy of a manuscript is done by hand considerably better than i feel about say the punic wars or the peloponnesian war spelling optional or almost any other event in classical history how close to the events do you think the oldest extent manuscripts are in those cases steve schaffner sschaff unixhub slac stanford edu the opinions expressed may be mine and may not be those of slac stanford university or the doe
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online bible as bible study hello i am about to embark on a bible study on acts i have online bible software with me i would like to know the the background of the authors of its various topics articles and about the author of the people s new testament i need to know how realible is the articles in the online bible software specifically for your convenience i want to know about the darby translation i have never heard of this one young s literal translation i have also never heard of the realiability of the hebrew greek lexicon the authors from which denomination etc of the articles in the topics modules the realiability of the treasury of scripture knowlege as i have never heard of too who are the commentators scofield and b w johnson who wrote the scofield reference bible and the people s new testament respectively the realiability of the strong numbers i will be most happy to receive a reply of any of you who knows about the above also please qualify yourself so that i may know that i am not receiving a rubbish letter i just want to make sure wilfred ling name wilfred ling siew wee national university of s pore internet eng nusunix nus sg electrical engineering bitnet eng nusvm bitnet
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re the arrogance of christians dleonar andy bgsu edu pixie writes unfaithfully yours pixie p s if you do sincerely believe that a god exists why do you follow it blindly do the words question authority mean anything to you i defy any theist to reply o k i don t follow god blindly once long ago i questioned authority to such a rabid point that i found question authority reject authority unquestioningly i question authority all the time but to forever question is fruitless eventually we have to consider whether there are answers to the questions whether the authority say the bible in this case has validity basically to question authority does not necessarily mean reject authority
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re the arrogance of christians carol alvin caralv caralv auto trol com wrote in the new testament sorry i don t have a bible at work and can t provide a reference women are instructed to be silent and cover their heads in church now this is scripture by your definition this is truth and therefore absolute do women in your church speak do they cover their heads if all scripture is absolute truth it seems to me that women speaking in and coming to church with bare heads should be intolerable to evangelicals yet clearly women do speak in evangelical churches and come with bare heads at least this was the case in the evangelical churches i grew up in evangelicals are clearly not taking this particular part of scripture to be absolute truth and there are plenty of other examples can you reconcile this the problem you see here is that some christians claim things about the bible which they don t actually believe or practice i ve known all sorts of christians ranging from the trendiest of liberals to the fire breathing fundamentalists and although many on the conservative side of the christian faith do claim that the bible is a perhaps the source of absolute truth i don t know of anyone who treats it as anything other than a valuable part of a living tradition while i am not a roman catholic i believe this is close to the official position of the rc church perhaps an rc would like to comment the particular practice you refer to will usually be explained in terms of the social context of the time you would think the fact that the conservatives seem to have to break out the tophat and cane and give you some big song and dance routine about why this other passages as well aren t directly applicable today would show them that what they claim about the bible and what they actually practice are two different things but mostly it doens t while this thread is supposed to be about the arrogance of christians i would suggest that some of the problem is really hypocrasy in this case making claims about the bible which the claimants don t actually put into practice but if we step back from the name calling and look at what people are attempting to say we see that they are trying to express very concisely the unique place the bible holds within the christian faith so when people use such words or phrases as word of god inerrant infallibale the manufacturer s handbook the only rule of faith and practice in the church today to describe the bible we should try to hear what they are saying and not just look at the mere words they use some of the above descriptions are demostratably false and others are self contradictory but in my experience people are generally pretty good at picking out the intention of the speaker even when the speaker s words are at variance with their intentions a biblical example is from the garden of eden where god asks where are you and adam explains that he was naked and afraid and hid himself if adam had answered god s words he would have said something like i m here in this tree the problem seems to arise when christians insist that these words are indeed accurate reflections of their beleif most people have not made a determined effort to work out their own understanding of the place of the bible within their own faith and so rely on the phrases and explanations that others use i hope this helps bill rea o o w u w bill rea computer services centre e mail b rea csc canterbury ac nz university of canterbury or cctr csc canterbury ac nz christchurch new zealand phone fax
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re did he really rise in article apr athos rutgers edu mcovingt aisun ai uga edu michael covington writes the two historic facts that i think the most important are these if jesus didn t rise from the dead then he must have done something else equally impressive in order to create the observed amount of impact nobody ever displayed the dead body of jesus even though both the jewish and the roman authorities would have gained a lot by doing so it would have discredited the christians michael a covington internet mcovingt ai uga edu artificial intelligence programs phone the university of georgia fax athens georgia u s a amateur radio n tmi and the two simplest refutations are these what impact the only record of impact comes from the new testament i have no guarantee that its books are in the least accurate and that the recorded impact actually happened i find it interesting that no other contemporary source records an eclipse an earthquake a temple curtain being torn etc the earliest written claim we have of jesus resurrection is from the pauline epistles none of which were written sooner than years after the supposed event it seems probable that no one displayed the body of jesus because no one knew where it was i personally believe that the most likely explanation was that the body was stolen by disciples or by graverobbers don t bother with the point about the guards it only appears in one gospel and seems like exactly the sort of thing early christians might make up in order to counter the grave robbing charge the new testament does record that jews believed the body had been stolen if there were really guards they could not have effectively made this claim as they did scott o
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re eternity of hell was re hell in article apr athos rutgers edu dlecoint garnet acns fsu edu darius lecointe writes insert deletion of unnecessary quote why is it that we have this notion that god takes some sort of pleasure from punishing people the purpose of hell is to destroy the devil and his angels first of all god does not take any sort of pleasure from punishing people he will have mercy on whom he will have mercy and compassion on whom he will have compassion ex however if he enjoyed punishing people and sending them to hell then why would he send jesus to seek and save that which was lost luke to the earlier poster who tried to support the eternal hell theory with the fact that the fallen angels were not destroyed remember the bible teaches that god has reserved them until the day of judgement their judgement is soon to come let me suggest this maybe those who believe in the eternal hell theory should provide all the biblical evidence they can find for it stay away from human theories and only take into account references in the bible you asked for it peter ff talks about how those who are ungodly are punished matthew is also very clear that those who do not righteous in god s eyes will be sent to hell for eternity thessalonians states that those who cause trouble for the disciples will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the lord thessalonians talks about those who refuse to love the truth being condemned revelation talks about the difference between those who overcomes and those who do not those who do not listed in verse will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur revelation gives the indication that those who follow the beast will be tormented with burning sulfur and there being no rest day or night for them because of it psalm the wicked return to the grave all the nations that forget god i think those should be sufficient to prove the point darius joe fisher in the following i m mostly playing devil s advocate i m not advocating either position my concern is that people understand that it s possible to see these passages in different ways it s possible to see eternal destruction as just that destruction rev often uses the term second death the most obvious understanding of that would seem to be final extinction the problem is that the nt speaks both of eternal punishment and of second death i e it uses terms that can be understood either way my concern here is not to convince you of one view or the other but to help people understand that there s a wide enough variety of images that it s possible to understand them either way as tom albrecht commented the primary point is to do our best to keep people out of the eternal fire whatever the details to make things more interesting luke implies that the damned don t get resurrected at all presumably they just stay dead yes i m aware that it s possible to understand this passage in a non literal way peter ff is talking about angels and talks about holding them in hell until the final judgement this isn t eternal punishement matthew talks about sending the cursed into eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels the fact that the fire is eternal doesn t mean that people will last in its flames forever particularly interesting is the comment about the fire having been prepared for the devil and his angels rev and talk about the eternal fire as well they say that the beast and the false prophet will be tormented forever in it when talking about people being thrown into it it is referred to as the second death this sounds more like extinction than eternal torment is is possible that the fire has different effects on supernatural entities such as the devil and humans thessalonians similarly what is everlasting destruction this is not necessarily eternal torment this one can clearly be understood either way but i think it s at least possible to think that everlasting is being used to contrast the kind of destruction that can occur in this life with the final destruction that occurs in eternity thessalonians again talks about destruction revelation see comment above revelation is probably the best of the quotes even there it doesn t explicitly say that the people suffer forever it says that the smoke and presumably the fire is eternal and that there is no respite from it but it doesn t say that the people are tormented forever psalm i don t see that it says anything relevant to this issue clh
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re prophetic warning to new york city in article apr athos rutgers edu evensont spot colorado edu evenson thomas randall writes in article apr athos rutgers edu reid cs uiuc edu jon reid writes deon strydom f n z fidonet org deon strydom writes which brings me around to asking an open question is the bible a closed book of scripture is it okay for us to go around saying god told me this and jesus told me that wouldn t that imply that god is still pouring out new revelation to us i know that some people will feel that is okay and some will not the concept of a closed canon would certainly cast a shadow on contemporary prophets on the other hand an open canon seems to be indicated sometimes let s get back to basics canon from the latin means a rule if we say that a rule is open then its a rule made to be broken there is an issue also of measurement against a rule thus the words that are spoken need to be compared against the rule canon but not added to the canon is new revelation necessary topical current personal revelation i d say is necessary new revelation for all people for all times is not necessary as we have that in scripture you also seem to confuse canon with scripture scripture may speak of itself being open ie god speaking today it would speak that it is closed in the sense that the canon is unchangeable though the concept of canon is later historically also interesting to note is that some so called prophecies are nothing new but rather an inspired translation of scripture is it right to call that prophecy misleading wouldn t that be more having to do with knowledge i know the gift of knowledge may not be as exciting to talk about but shouldn t we call a horse a horse i agree with the problem of confusion if prophecy is meant to encourage exhort or correct then is an overlap with scripture if prophecy is meant to bring a word of the form the man you live with is not your husband then that is knowledge yet the exact words their are scripture i would expect the difference to be the motive and means for delivery the reading of scripture itself can be a powerful force regards david david morgan university of technology sydney morgan socs uts edu au po box broadway nsw ph broadway sydney fax i paid good money to get my opinions you get them for free v
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losing your temper is not a christian trait coming from a long line of hot tempered people i know temper when i see it one of the tell tale signs fruits that give non christians away is when their net replies are acrid angry and sarcastic we in the net village do have a laugh or two when professed born again christians verbally attack people who might otherwise have been won to christianity and had originally joined the discussions because they were spiritually hungry instead of answering questions with sweetness and sincerity these chrisitan net warriors flame the queries you don t need any enemies you already do yourselves the greatest harm again i say foolish foolish foolish
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re certainty and arrogance in article apr athos rutgers edu kilroy gboro rowan edu dr nancy s sweetie writes there is no way out of the loop oh contrer mon captitan there is a way certainly it is not by human reason certainly it is not by human experience and yet it is both to paraphrase sartre the particular is absurd unless it has an infinite reference point it is only because of god s own revelation that we can be absolute about a thing your logic comes to fruition in relativism at the core of all well founded belief lies belief that is unfounded ludwig wittgenstein ah now it is clear ludwig was a desciple of russell ludwig s fame is often explained by the fact that he spawned not one but two significant movements in contemporary philosophy both revolve around tractatus logico philosphicus and philosophical investigation many of witt s comments and implicit conclusions suggest ways of going beyond the explicit critique of language he offers according to some of the implicit suggestions of witt s thought ordinary language is an invaluable resource offering a necessary framework for the conduct of daily life however though its formal features remain the same its content does not and it is always capable of being transcended as our experience changes and our understanding is deepened giving us a clearer picture of what we are and what we wish to say on witt s own account there is a dynamic fluidity of language it is for this reason that any critique of language must move from talking about the limits of language to talking about its boundaries where a boundary is understood not as a wall but a threshold vonwrights s comment that witt s sentences have a content that often lies deep beneath the surface of language on the surface witt talks of the insuperable position of ordinary language and the necessity of bringing ourselves to accept it without question at the same time we are faced with witt s own creative uses of language and his concern for bringing about changes in our traditional modes of understanding philosophy then through more perspicacious speech seeks to effect this unity rather than assuming that it is already functioning yes the most brilliant of scientists are unable to offer a foundation for human speech so long as they reject christianity in his tractatus we have the well nigh perfect exhibition of the nature of the impasse of the scientific ideal of exhaustive logical analysis of reality by man perfect language does not exist for fallen man therefore we must get on about our buisness of relating truth via ordinary language this is why john s gospel is so dear to most christians it is so simple in it conveyance of the revealation of god yet so full of unlieing depth of understanding he viewed christ from the ot concept of as a man thinketh so he is john looked at the outward as only an indicator of what was inside that is the consciousness of christ and so must we words are only vehicals of truth he is truth the scriptures are plain in their expounding that there is a truth and that it is knowable there are absolutes and they too are knowable however they are only knowable when he reveals them to the individual there is and we shouldn t shy from this a mysticism to christianity paul in rom says there are men in the world there is the one who does not have the spirit and therefore can not know the things of the spirit the spirit of truth and there is the one who has the spirit and has the capacity to know of the truth but there is the third the one who not only has the spirit but that the spirit has him who can know the deep things of god and reveal them to us other than the spirit and it is only the deep things of god that are absolute and true there is such a thing as true truth and it is real it can be experienced and it is verifiable i disagree with dr nancy s sweetie s conclusion because if it is taken to fruition it leads to relativism which leads to dispair i would know the words which he would answer me and understand what he would say unto me job ff rex suggested easy reading about epistimology he is there and he is not silent by francis schaeffer
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phone number of wycliffe translators uk sorry for bothering with a request almost irrelevant to anyone except for me could some kind soul provide me with the phone number of wycliffe center horsley green high wycomb bucks hp xl i want to surprise a friend of mine staying there but i don t have the number thanks a lot in advance gerhard obviously email response is best what do people think of requests like this unless things are very different in the uk and us it should be possible to find this out by calling what we call information the netwide cost of a posting is fairly significant clh
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some questions from a new christian hi i am new to this newsgroup and also fairly new to christianity i was raised as a unitarian and have spent the better part of my life as an agnostic but recently i have developed the firm conviction that the christian message is correct and i have accepted jesus into my life i am happy but i realize i am very ignorant about much of the bible and quite possibly about what christians should hold as true this i am trying to rectify by reading the bible of course but it would be helpful to also read a good interpretation commentary on the bible or other relevant aspects of the christian faith one of my questions i would like to ask is can anyone recommend a good reading list of theological works intended for a lay person i have another question i would like to ask i am not yet affiliated with any one congregation aside from matters of taste what criteria should one use in choosing a church i don t really know the difference between the various protestant denominations thanks for reading my post sincerely steve hoskins aside from a commentary you might also want to consider an introduction these are books intended for use in undergraduate bible courses they give historical background discussion of literary styles etc and generally they have good bibligraphies for further reading i typically recommend kee froehlich and young s nt introduction there are also some good one volume commentaries they often have background articles that are helpful probably the best recommendation these days would be harper s bible commentary i think there may be a couple of books with this title this is a fairly recent one like about done in cooperation with the society for biblical criticism if you are committed to inerrancy you will probably prefer something more conservative i don t read a lot of conservative books but a commentary i looked at by donald guthrie looked rather good he has a nt introduction and he s also editor of eerdman s bible commentary clh
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re sabbath admissions of someone sent me this faq by e mail and i post my response here i m not enforcing the inclusion limits on this faq because most of our readers probably haven t seen it clh christ warns that anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches otheres to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven matt this faq is so full of error that i must respond to it i hope that whoever maintains will remove from it the partisan theology brothers and sisters being new to the faith and examining the decalogue closely i ve noticed the fourth commandment is pretty specific about keeping the sabbath day it states the th day saturday is the sabbath while most christian religions keep or atleast go to church on sunday what s up this is a frequently asked question every time it arises it causes months of debate so let me see if i can answer you directly basically it s because the law was given to moses as part of a specific covenanent with the jews most of us aren t jews so we aren t part of that covenant there was an argument early in christian history about whether the mosaic laws should apply to gentiles who became christians you can see the account of this debate in acts the main question there was circumcision but keeping the sabbath would be part of it as well the apostles concluded that we need not become jews in order to become christians and therefore that rules such as circumcision did not apply to us the law was known to man before it was revealed on mount sinai rom notes that where no law is there is no transgression not only did sin exist before sinai eden but the sabbath was kept before it was revealed on sinai ex the problem with the first covenant was not the law but the promise which undergirded it god wanted to perform his will in the lives of the people but in their ignorance after years of slavery they promised what ever he says to do we will do that is why the new covenant is based on better promises heb rather than do away with the law god promised to put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts heb including the sabbath in the acts is selective inclusion the sabbath was more important to the jews than circumcision if any attempt had been made to do away with the sabbath the reaction would have been even more strident than is recorded in acts do not confuse the weekly sabbath of the decalogue with the ceremonial sabbaths which could occur at any time of the week and were part of the law ceremonial which was added because of transgression of the moral law gal israel stands for god s people of all time that is why god grafted the gentiles in roma says that the adoption the glory the covenants the giving of the law the service of god and the promises belong to israelites in explanation paul makes it clear that being born into israel is not enough for they are not all israel which are of israel v then in gal he says if ye be christ s then are ye abraham s seed and heirs according to the promise all christians are abraham s seed jews israelites not physically for that is not the criterion but spiritually we are joint heirs with jesus based on the promise god made to all his people the israelites while christians agree that the ot laws do not all apply to us because some of them are part of a specific covenanent with the jews we also expect to see some similarity between the things god expected from the jews and the things he expects from us after all it s the same god however there are several ways of dealing with this these days the most common approach is to separate the ot commandments into moral and ceremonial ceremonial commandments apply only to the jews they are part of the specific mosaic covenant these are thinsg like the kosher laws and circumcision moral laws apply to everyone most of the commands are part of the moral law except for the commandment about the sabbath i believe most people who take this approach would say that the specific requirement to worship on the sabbath is part of the ceremonial law but a general obligation to worship regularly is part of the general moral law thus christians are free to choose the specific time we worship people would probably agree but they are wrong how can the sabbath commandment be ceremonial when it is part of a law which predates the ceremonial laws you are not free to choose your time of worship even if you were why do you follow a day of worship which has its origins in pagan sun worship would you rather give up a day which god blessed sanctified and hallowed in exchange for one which all church leaders agree has not biblical foundation see sabbath admissions in soc religion christian bible study a more radical approach which is generally connected with john calvin and the reformed tradition says that the law as a whole is no longer binding instead we are entirely under grace and our behavior should be guided solely by love portions of the ot law are still useful as guidance but they are not properly speaking legally binding on us in practice most people who take this position do not believe it is safe to leave christians without moral guidannce while we may no longer be under law as sinners it s not safe for us to go into situations with no principles to guide us we re too good at self justification for that to be safe thus christians do have moral guidance from things like jesus teachings paul s advice etc these may not be precisely a law but they serve much the same function as and have largely the same content as the moral law in the previous analysis while calvin would deny that we have a fixed legal responsibility to worship on any specific day he would say that given human weakness the discipline of regular worship is important i do not care what calvin or any theologian says my guide is what god says if being not under the law means we do not have to keep the law why is it that the only section of the law we have trouble with is the sabbath commandment which is the only one god thought was important enough to say remember if you study the word deeply you will note that the message is that we are no longer under the condemnation of the law but freed by the grace of god if a cop pulls me over for speeding then in court i ask for mercy and the judge does not throw the book at me but gives me grace do i walk out of the court saying i can now go on speeding for i am now under grace being under grace i now drive within the speed limit paul adds to it in rom di we then make void the law through faith god forbid yea we establish the law wherefore the law is holy and the commandment holy and just and good rom in both analyses the specific day is not an issue as a matter of tradition we worship on sunday as a memorial of christ s resurrection there s some debate about what acts shows about early christian worship the most common analysis is that is shows jewish christians continuing to go to jewish services on the sabbath but that specifically christian service were not necessarily held then act shows worship on the first day sunday and i cor also implies gatherings on that day there are a few groups that continue to believe christians have to worship on the sabbath saturday the best known are the seventh day adventists and jehovah s witnesses they argue that act is not a regular worship service but a special meeting to see paul off and that i cor doesn t explicitly say it s a regular worship service do you prefer implication to fact a careful study of the acts shows that the meeting was on saturday night and that on sunday morning paul did not go to a worship service but set off on a long journey by foot to assos in icor there is no way you can equate lay by him in store with go to a worship service it s clear that this issue was a contested one in paul s time see rom paul s advice is that we should be very careful about judging each other on issues like this one person sees a specific day as mandated by god while another does not he who observes that specific day does it in honor of the lord he who believes his worship is free of such restrictions also does it in honor of the lord those who believe that the sabbath is still mandated argue that paul is not referring to sabbath worship here note however col which says something similar but briefer it explicitly mentions sabbath wrong these are the sabbath days of the ceremonial law not the sabbath day of the moral law there are some differences among christians about use of the word sabbath originally the term referred to the th day the jewish day of worship many christians now use it to refer to sunday the day of christian worship they do this largely so that they can apply the th or whatever there are a couple of different numbering schemes commandment to it reformed tradition does not do this it distinguishes between the sabbath which is the observance mandated for jews and the lord s day which is the free christian worship the only reference i can find to this in the nt is rev there are also differences about laws regarding this day many christians support blue laws both in secular law and church law setting aside that day and causing people to spend it in worship the more radical anti legal approach sees such regulations as a return to the jewish sabbath which is not appropriate to the free christian worship of the lord s day why would you prefer to twist and turn relying on different arguments which conflict with each other rather than obey a simple request from a god who loved you enough to die for you jesus died because the law could not be changed why bother to die in order to meet the demands of a broken law if all you need to do is change the law penalties for law breaking means the law is immutable that is why it is no sin not to follow the demands of the ceremonial laws it will always be a sin to make false gods to violate god s name to break the sabbath to steal to kill etc except it you disagree but then your opinion has no weight when placed next to the word of god darius it s not clear how much more needs to be said other than the faq i think paul s comments on esteeming one day over another rom is probably all that needs to be said i accept that darius is doing what he does in honor of the lord i just wish he might equally accept that those who esteem all days alike are similarly doing their best to honor the lord however i d like to be clear that i do not think there s unambiguous proof that regular christian worship was on the first day as i indicated there are responses on both of the passages cited the difficulty with both of these passages is that they are actually about something else they both look like they are talking about nnregular christian meetings but neither explicitly says and they gathered every sunday for worship we get various pieces of information but nothing aimed at answering this question act describes christians as participating both in jewish temple worship and in christian communion services in homes obviously the temple worship is on the sabbath acts is an example of christians participating in them unfortunately it doesn t tell us what day christians met in their houses acts despite darius confusion is described by acts as occuring on sunday i see no reason to impose modern definitions of when days start when the biblical text is clear about what was meant the wording implies to me that this was a normal meeting it doesn t say they gathered to see paul off but that when they were gathered for breaking bread paul talked about his upcoming travel but that s just not explicit enough to be really convincing similarly with cor it says that on the first day they should set aside money for paul s collection now if you want to believe that they gathered specially to do this or that they did it in their homes i can t disprove it but the obvious time for a congregation to take an offering would be when they normally gather for worship and if they were expected to do it in their homes there would be no reason to mention a specific day so i think the most obvious reading of this is that on the first day of every week simply means every time they gather for worship i think the reason we have only implications and not clear statements is that the nt authors assumed that their readers knew when christian worship was clh
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daily verse how much better to get wisdom than gold to choose understanding rather than silver proverbs
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re did he really rise in article apr athos rutgers edu reedr cgsvax claremont edu writes i disagree with your claim that jews were not evangelistic except in the narrow sense of the word jewish proselytism was widespread there are numerous accounts of jewish proselytism both in the new testament and in roman and greek documents of the day i am not so sure of jewish proselytism then but i would like to relate an account of a recent dinner i had with jews a few months ago the dinner was instigated by the aunt of the hostess whom i had met while visiting my wife in galveston last october the dear old aunt now deceased was very proud of her jewish heritage although not especially devout her parents were both murdered in nazi concentration camps in austria during wwii because they were jewish while conversing with her about politics world affairs and religion she remarked that it would be a good idea for me to visit her niece on my return to atlanta within two days of returning to atlanta her niece called to invite me over for dinner with her husband i went not knowing really what to expect other than stimulating conversation and fellowship what i got however was rather unexpected the thrust of the evening s discussion was to condemn the reagan bush policies prohibiting abortion counseling in federally funded family planning clinics prohibiting the sterilization of minorities on welfare here and in puerto rico on the ban on fetal tissue research and against the mexico city policy which denies u s foreign aid to programs overseas that promote abortion the crux of their position was to place the blame for the problems of overpopulation rampant domestic crime african starvation unwed mothers etc on christianity rather on the fall of adam now this is not what i had to come to talk about but every time i tried to bring up the subject of judaism they would condemn jews for jesus and admonish me against converting to judaism because it involves too much study and effort and i did not even raise the prospect nor try to convert them to the truth of christ there was certainly no jewish proselytism going on there and again last november i toured a traditional jewish synagogue and was subjected to a minute harangue against jesus and christianity in general i realize that these are two isolated incidents and that the best supervisor i ever had at work is jewish but from my experience the modern jew is not known for his proselytism boundary no teneis que pensar que yo haya venido a traer la paz a la tierra no he venido a traer la paz sino la guerra mateo vulgata latina
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hearing sinners on the question does god hear the prayers of sinners we need to distinguish if we say that he never hears the prayers of any who have sinned we make pointless all prayers by anyone born less than centuries ago but if we consider the prayers of the impenitent sinner of someone who says lord i want you to do this for me but don t expect me to change my way of life that is a different matter even here i would not venture to say that god never grants such petitions just as he sends sun and rain on the evil and on the good however if someone we know well is praying to god in that spirit we might have the responsibility to say remember if god s help is real then so are his commands yours james kiefer
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john paraphrased at the end of a recent mon apr post alastair thomson offers the following paraphrase of john god loved the world so much that he gave us his son to die in our place so that we may have eternal life the to die in our place bothers me since it inserts into the verse a doctrine not found in the original moreover i suspect that the poster intends to affirm not merely substitution but forensic or penal substitution i maintain that the scriptures in speaking of the atonement teach a doctrine of substitution but not one of forensic substitution those interested in pursuing the matter are invited to send for my essays on genesis either thru on this question or through with lead in the n th essay can be obtained by sending to listserv asuacad bitnet or to listserv asuvm inre asu edu the message get gen n ruff yours james kiefer any theologian worth his salt can put anything he wants to say in the form of a commentary on the book of genesis walter kaufman
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re certainty and arrogance a reply to a post by kilroy gboro rowan edu aka nancy s sweetheart human brains are infested with sin and they can only be trusted in very limited circumstances i would beg to differ with you here the properly formed conscience can be trusted virtually all the time i am not so sure though about something so materialistic as the human brain does that mass of tissue possess anything trustworthy your observation would probably be valid if we were discussing the mind of an animal but the human being is only half animal as it were and half spiritual at the moment he stops speaking and people start interpreting the possibility of error appears did he mean that literally or not we do not have any record that he elaborated on the words was he thinking of tran or con substatiation he didn t say we interpret this passage using our brains we think and reason and draw conclusions but we know that our brains are not perfect our thinking often leads us wrong this is something that most of us have direct experience of now you have hit on the purpose of the church it is by necessity the infallible interpreter of divine revelation without the church christianity would be nothing more than a bunch of little divisive sects unless you are infallible there are very few things you can be certain of to the extent that doctrines rely on fallible human thinking they cannot be certain this argument of yours regarding the certainty of an observation or a conclusion is not necessarily substantiated by experience it reminds me of the theoretical physicist who said that you can never be certain of a measurment because the sensor interferes with the field you are trying to measure now the experimental physicist will reply that although the measurement can never be made with absolute certainty he is able to determine the certainty with which the measurement can be made and this knowledge is often sufficient to render the measurement useful enough to allow evidence of the true condition of the field under observation therefore although our minds are finite and susceptible to error our competence in arriving at inductive insights gives confidence in our ability to distinguish what is true from what is not true even in areas not subject to the experimental method darren f provine kilroy gboro rowan edu if any substantial number of talk religion misc readers read some wittgenstein of the postings would disappear if they understood some wittgenstein would disappear michael l siemon this quote seems a little arrogant don t you think boundary no teneis que pensar que yo haya venido a traer la paz a la tierra no he venido a traer la paz sino la guerra mateo vulgata latina
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wbt was re phone number of wycliffe translators uk in article apr geneva rutgers edu mprc troi cc rochester edu m price writes i m concerned about a recent posting about wbt sil i thought they d pretty much been denounced as a right wing organization involved in ideological manipulation and cultural interference including vietnam and south america a commission from mexican academia denounced them in as a covert political and ideological institution used by the u s govt as an instrument of control regulation penetration espionage and repression having met peter kingston of wbt some years back he struck me as an exemplery and dedicated christian whose main concern was with translation of the word of god and the welfare of the people group he was serving wbt literature is concerned mainly with providing scripture in minority languages the sort of criticism leveled at an organisation such as this along the lines of ideological manipulation and cultural interference is probably no more than christianising and education in this wbt will stand alongside the early christian missionaries to parts of africa or those groups who worked among native americans a couple hundred years ago my concern is that this group may be seen as acceptable and even praiseworthy by readers of soc religion christian it s important that christians don t immediately accept every christian organization as automatically above reproach mp i think you need to substantiate these attacks as being a legitimate criticism of priorities other than spreading the gospel among underdeveloped people barney resson many shall run to and fro knowledge shall increase daniel
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re an agnostic s question in article apr geneva rutgers edu jdt voodoo ca boeing com jim tomlinson jimt ii writes goodness that is within the power of each of us now the complication is that one of my best friends has become very fundamentalist that would normally be a non issue with me but he hello firstly what do you exactly mean by fundamentalist i will for the time being assume that what you mean is that your friend believes that the bible is god s word to mankind i suspect that what happened to him is what he ll call being born again anyway was that recent if the answer is yes to all the questions above it is quite understandable however imo i ld rather give advice to your friend i think i ve been through something similar to him and one thing i can say is that the basic problem is that each of you are now trying to communicate from different worldviews why he talks about those things is because they are now obvious to him what is obvious to him is not obvious to you secondly why he may be very persuasive is because from his point of view he has been on both sides of the fence this i mean that before he turned fundamentalist you two are agreeable because both of you see things from the same side if suddenly as if a new world of reality has suddenly opened up to him it is like the discovery of let s say a new continent or a new planet to him he s got to tell you because he has seen something much more wonderful than where he was and what he thinks is much better than where you are now you have got to realise that from his point of view he means well to you eventhough he may end up offending you to him it is worth that risk nevertheless it is really up to him to respect where you stand and listen to you as well at this moment it may be difficult because he is either very excited or feel it is too urgent to keep quiet about however he may not realise that he s really putting you off the bible that it is so so my question is how can i convince him that this is a subject better left undiscussed so we can preserve what is in all areas other than religious beliefs a great friendship how do i convince him that i am beyond saving so he won t try thanks for any advice so far i ve only been trying to explain things from his side however i do understand how you feel too because i wasn t a christian for a good part of my life as well i was quite turned off by christians or fundamentalists who were really all out and enthusiastic about their faith they really scared me to tell you the truth unfortunately religious belief is a very personal thing just as your agnosticism is also a very personal thing to you since the christian belief is inevitably at odds with anything non christian religious or otherwise it will be a touchy matter like all friendships it will take both sides to do their part to make it work in this matter maybe you can do your part by telling him nicely that you are not able to dig what he s trying to convince you about that it s beyond you or not your concern for now don t tell him it s nonsense because to him it is reality and that would be a real insult he ll also have to be careful not to insult where you stand too like i said before i wish i could give your friend some advice too i ll admit that i did similarly to some of my friends when i became a christian in some ways i wish i could have done things a little differently however it was difficult then because i was so excited and just blabbered away about what i ve found to me it was too good not to know to some i was crazy and i didn t really care most of the time what they thought you will probably think he s crazy too but god is very real to him as real as you are to him keep that in mind and he thinks he can convince you because since god is so real to him he doesn t see why god can t be real to you too i don t know how helpful this is to you but all the best anyhow this is quite a challenge for you to face by the way personal conviction nobody is beyond saving except the one we call the devil and his hosts regards selbyn liew dept of ee engineering university of melbourne victoria australia email sliew mullian ee mu oz au ph fax
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religious wars i don t know if this is the sort of thing you guys like to discuss i guess it falls into the area of apologetics this is a question that seems to pop up now and again in conversations with non christians it usually appears in the following sort of unqualified statement well you know that religion has caused more wars than anything else it bothers me that i cannot seem to find a satisfactory response to this after all if our religion is all about peace and love why have there been so many religious wars personally i am of the view that religion has often been used as an excuse to instigate wars often to disguise national ambitions but i would love to hear what anyone else has to say about this subject thanks in advance andrew j fraser if we re thinking in terms of history the crusades northern ireland yugoslavia come immediately to mind northern ireland yugoslavia name andrew james fraser e mail fraseraj dcs gla ac uk ese h student university of glasgow standard disclaimers i m beginning to suspect that the natural condition of humans is conflict perhaps we should not ask whether a religion or philosophy has been involved in any wars since they all have but whether it has stopped any clh
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re hell black sabbath in article apr geneva rutgers edu rexlex fnal fnal gov writes in looking through my files this weekend i ran across some lyrics from various rock groups that have content here are two from black sabbath s master of reality i ll say this much for the music of the s and early s at least they asked questions of significance jethro tull is another to asked and wrote about things that caused one to wonder rex it is interesting that you posted those lyrics because just the other day i was thinking of doing the same i like those lyrics since whenever i am approached by judgemental pharisitical evangelical fundamentalists who throw the bible at me because i have long hair wear a black leather jacket and listen to black sabbath i have something to throw back usually their chins drop and they come up speechless over those not very satanic lyrics it just goes to show that there are more important evils in the world to battle than rock lyrics steven c salaris we re a lot more dangerous than live crew salaris carcs wustl edu and their stupid use of foul language because we have ideas we have a philosophy geoff tate queensryche
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re phone number of wycliffe translators uk in apr geneva rutgers edu mserv mozart cc iup edu mail server writes mark mp i m concerned about a recent posting about wbt sil i thought they d pretty much been denounced as a right wing organization involved in ideological manipulation and cultural interference good heavens you mean my good friend wes collins who took his wife and two small children into the jungles of guatemala despite dangers from primitive conditions and armed guerillas so that the indigenous people groups their could have the bible in their native languages the young man who led bible studies in our church who daily demonstrated and declared his deep abiding faith in the lord of love you mean he really was a sneaky imperialistic spy i am sorry you find these charges amusing mark i understand your frustration though it can be kind of scary to find your assumptions challenged some of the specific cultural interference to which i refer includes linguistic manipulation for instance their tzotzil spanish dictionary removed both spanish and tzotzil words for concepts which are threatening to the ruling ideology e g class conquer exploitation repression revolution and described words which can express ideological concepts in examples like boss the boss is good he treats us well and pays us a good wage as some of my students would say not your tone implies that you are unlikely to believe me indeed why should you if you are interested enough to do some further research though and you sound as if you are here are some references for you stoll david fishers of men or founders of empire the wycliffe bible translators in latin america sectas y religiosidad en america latina los angeles times dec latin america press may washington times june happy hunting mp
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re losing your temper is not a christian trait hooray i always suspected that i was human too it is the desire to be like christ that often causes christians to be very critical of themselves and other christians we are supposed to grow mature endeavour to be christ like but we are far far far from perfect build up the body of christ don t tear it down and that includes yourself jesus loves me just the way i am today tomorrow and always thank god sheila patterson
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re god shaped hole was re accepting jeesus in your heart in article apr athos rutgers edu johnsd rpi edu dan johnson writes those who have an empty spot in the god shaped hole in their hearts must do something to ease the pain i have heard this claim quite a few times does anybody here know who first came up with the god shaped hole business i ve seen this verse used to back up this idea he has also set eternity in the hearts of men ecclesiastes sharon belville
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daily verse for whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother matthew
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re accepting jesus in your heart whitsebd nextwork rose hulman edu bryan whitsell writes religion especially christianity is nothing more than a drug some people use drugs as an escape from reality christians inject themselves with jeezus and live with that high your logic is falty if christianity is a drug and once we die we die then why would you be reluctant to embrase this drug so that while you are alive you enjoy yourself pardon the harshness that follows once i told a cradle christian please do not take advantage of jesus or anybody for the sake of your own selfish realization or search for true faith religion belonging being in fear of hell vanity etc instead of serving yourself we must be serving him until you have comprehended this truth you are only doing things for your own egoism let us not use jesus our religion the bible anything or anybody as a means of escape or getting ecstatic or high we are god s children and we must have a true and authentic relationship with our father with obedience faith hope and love and works the last as the most important beware of our materialistic worldly and selfish motives atheists have this ground against us and i believe they are right about some who call themselves christians marida spreading gods words through actions mother teresa
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moody monthly and moody the same are moody monthly and moody the same magazine name change in recent years if not could someone post the address to moody monthly avid david a sjoen my sheep hear my voice and i know them and they gulaksveien follow me and i give them life eternal and they n stavanger shall never perish and no one shall seize them norway out of my hand john e mail david s hsr no rogaland university centre norway
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anyone with l abri experiences i am curious if anyone in net land has spent any time at any of the l abri houses throughout the world and what the experience was like how it affected you etc especially interesting would be experiences at the original l abri in switzerland and personal interactions with francis and or edith schaeffer tom milligan
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re the arrogance of christians vbv r d eeap cwru edu virgilio dean b velasco jr writes in article apr athos rutgers edu caralv caralv auto trol com carol alvin writes virgilio dean b velasco jr writes carol alvin writes are all truths also absolutes is all of scripture truths and therefore absolutes the answer to both questions is yes an absolute is something that is constant across time culture situations etc true in every instance possible do you agree with this definition yes i do agree with your definition example of women covering their heads and not speaking hold it i said that all of scripture is true however discerning exactly what jesus paul and company were trying to say is not always so easy i don t believe that paul was trying to say that all women should behave that way rather he was trying to say that under the circumstances at the time the women he was speaking to would best avoid volubility and cover their heads this has to do with maintaining a proper witness toward others remember that any number of relativistic statements can be derived from absolutes for instance it is absolutely right for christians to strive for peace however this does not rule out trying to maintain world peace by resorting to violence on occasion yes my opinion i agree that there is truth in scripture there are principles to be learned from it claiming that that truth is absolute though seems to imply a literal reading of the bible if it were absolute truth constant across time culture etc then no interpretation would be necessary it may be that the lessons gleaned from various passages are different from person to person to me that doesn t mean that one person is right and the other is wrong i believe that god transcends our simple minds and that scripture may very well have been crafted with exactly this intent god knows me and knows that my needs are different from yours or anyone else s by claiming that scripture is absolute then at least one person in every disputed interpretation must be wrong i just don t believe that god is that rigid evangelicals are clearly not taking this particular part of scripture to be absolute truth and there are plenty of other examples can you reconcile this sure the bible preaches absolute truths however exactly what those truths are is sometimes a matter of confusion as i said the bible does preach absolute truths sometimes those fundamental principles are crystal clear at least to evangelicals this is where the arrogance comes in to play since these principles are crystal clear to evangelicals maybe the rest of us should just take their word for it maybe it isn t at all crystal clear to me that their fundamental principles are either fundamental or principles i think we ve established that figuring out biblical truth is a matter of human interpretation and therefore error prone yet you can still claim that some of them may be crystal clear maybe to a certain segment of christianity but to all it s very difficult to see how you can claim something which is based on your own interpretation is absolute god revealed his truths to the world through his word it is utterly unavoidable however that some people whill come up with alternate interpretations practically anything can be misinterpreted especially when it comes to matters of right and wrong care to deny that not at all i think it supports my position much more effectively than yours so i think that your position is the bible is absolute truth but as we are prone to error in our interpretation we cannot reliably determine if we have figured out what that truth is did i get that right what s the point of spending all this time claiming and defending absolute truth when we can never know what those truths are and we can never or at least shouldn t act upon them what practical difference can this make carol alvin caralv auto trol com
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re atheist s views on christianity was re accepting jeesus in your heart in article apr geneva rutgers edu jasons atlastele com jason smith writes in article apr athos rutgers edu kempmp phoenix oulu fi petri pihko writes this is not true science is a collection of models telling us how not why something happens i cannot see any good reason why the why questions would be bound only to natural things assuming that the supernatural domain exists if supernatural beings exist it is as appropriate to ask why they do so as it is to ask why we exist i beg to disagree with the assertion that science is a collection of models scientific models are a game to play and are only as good as the assumptions and measurements if any that go into them as an example i remember when nuclear winter was the big hype in atmospheric science it wasn t long after sagan s admonitions that one of our boys was adding another level of reality into his model of the nuclear winter scenario at erl in boulder he decided to assume that the atmosphere is more like a two dimensional thing than a one dimensional thing he also assumed that it rained and that the winds blow in the real atmosphere on returning to georgia tech he showed a transparency of atmospheric cooling rates according to the year they were generated by the models there was an unmistakable correlation between the age meaning simplicity of assumptions i e remoteness from reality of each model and the degree of cooling whereas sagan s model showed an approximate degree cooling episode the next model in sophistication showed about half that and so on until we got to our boy s model which showed a degree drop if the war happened in the winter and less than a degree drop if it happened in the summer he predicted that when we would include the presence of oceans chemistry the biosphere and other indicators of reality in the models we would probably see even less cooling thus nuclear winter was reduced to even less than a nuclear autumn one might say to a nuclear fizzle to quote from h s yoder the postulated models have become accepted as the reality instead of the lattice of assumptions they are authoritarianism dominates the field and a very critical analysis of each argument is to be encouraged skepticism of the model approach to earth problems is warranted because many key parameters have not been included this statement surely applies equally well to cosmogony only when convincing observational evidence substantiates the modeled results may one suggest that the model may describe the reality just thought i d clear that up before things really got out of hand boundary no teneis que pensar que yo haya venido a traer la paz a la tierra no he venido a traer la paz sino la guerra mateo vulgata latina
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revelations babylon hello all we are doing a bible study at my college on revelations we have been doing pretty good as far as getting some sort of reasonable interpretation we are now on chapters and which talk about the woman on the beast and the fall of babylon i believe the beast is the antichrist some may differ but it seems obvious and the woman represents babylon which stands for rome or the roman catholic church what are some views on this interpretation is the falling babylon in chapter the same babylon in as in chapter the catholic church hate to step on toes thanks jimmy buddenberg internet jbuddenberg vax cns muskingum edu muskingum college reading this imagery as the roman catholic church was certainly common in earlier protestant writers a lot of us find that frankly embarassing now though some of our readers will certainly advocate such a position the problem is that the description makes it look a lot like a political entity it s associated with kings controls world commerce is seated on seven mountains recall that rome is traditionally regarded as built on seven hills if it s a church then it s not the current roman catholic church but a church that has been taken over by the anti christ and merged with the state turning into something rather different than it is now presumably in such a scenario the true catholics are among those who are persecuted given the overall impression that satan is pretending to be an angel of light and the true church is a persecuted remnant i think the most consistent playing out of the image would be that the anti christ would be presiding over a church that claims to be the heir of both the protestant and catholic traditions but that the true spiritual descendants of both peter and the reformers are equally being persecuted clh
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doing the work of god as our local religion christian bbs group seems moribund i m posting here on one of the sundays just before easter i went to church the sermon was based on a story in the book of joshua the one about joshua sending out spies to the land he was planning to take what i particularly remember because of having heard part of a cbc radio documentary on bosnia was that the rahab the woman who sheltered the spies said that the people were melting in fear what with having heard that cbc radio documentary and knowing that the muslims in bosnia were losing the war i felt uncomfortable after all the serbs are driving non christians out on the other hand ministers do say that the bible is opposed to the values held by our secular society anyhow members of that church are involved in out of country missionary work also the pastor has talked of spiritual warfare and of bringing christ to the nonreligious people of our area the next sunday the sermon was about joshua where the israelites take jericho and then proceed to massacre everybody there except for rahab who had sheltered the spies with those reports about bosnia in my mind i felt uncomfortable about the minister saying that the massacre the one in joshua was right but what really bothered me was that if i was going to try taking christianity seriously i shouldn t be so troubled about the reports of ethnic cleansing in bosnia certainly my sympathies shouldn t be with the moslims considering that the bosnian muslims are descendants of christians who under turkish rule converted to islam could the serbs be doing god s work the example of god s people setting out on bloody wars of conquest has always been troubling in discussions here i personally question whether they were right even at the time but those who believe they were consider that the wars were justified only because they were specifically commanded by god somehow i don t see the serbs behaving like a group that is led by god in this matter clh
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re the arrogance of christians dleonar andy bgsu edu pixie writes unfaithfully yours pixie p s if you do sincerely believe that a god exists why do you follow it blindly do the words question authority mean anything to you i defy any theist to reply dear defiant or unfaithful or pixie i will take up the challenge to reply as i am a theist the foundation for faith in god is reason without which the existence of god could not be proven that his existence can be proven by reason is indisputable cf my short treatise traditional proofs for the existence of god and summa theologica now given that god exists and that his existence can be proven by reason i assert that his commands must be followed blindly although in our fallen condition we must always have some measure of doubt about our faith why because god is the first cause of all things the first mover of matter the independent thing that requires nothing else for its existence the measure of all that is perfect and the essential being who gives order to the universe logos i next assert that god is all good if this is so then that which is contrary to the will of god is evil i e the absence of the good and since god can never contradict himself then by his promise of a savior as early as the protoevangelium of genesis god instructs that because a human adam was first responsible for man s alienation from the source of all good a man would be required to act to restore the friendship thus god became incarnate in the person of the messiah now this messiah claimed that he is the truth john if this claim is true then we are bound by reason to follow him who is truth incarnate you next seem to have a problem with authority have you tried the united states marine corps yet i can tell you first hand that it is an excellent instructor in authority if you have not yet had the privilege i will reply that the authority which is truth incarnate may never be questioned and thus must be followed blindly one may not deny the truth for example when the proverbial apple fell on isaac newton s head he could have denied that it happened but he did not the laws of physics must be obeyed whether a human likes them or not they are true therefore the authority which is truth may not be denied qed boundary no teneis que pensar que yo haya venido a traer la paz a la tierra no he venido a traer la paz sino la guerra mateo vulgata latina
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re when are two people married jek cu nih gov writes the essential ingredient of a marriage is mutual commitment two persons are considered to be married if and only if they have bound themselves by mutual promises to live together as husband and wife forsaking all others till death do them part does that imply that people who take marriage vows but aren t sincere are not married jeff johnson jcj tellabs com
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re atheist s views on christianity was re accepting jeesus in your heart in article apr athos rutgers edu kempmp phoenix oulu fi petri pihko wrote jason smith jasons atlastele com wrote another answer is that god is the source of all existence this sounds much better but i am tempted to ask does god himself exist then if god is the source of his own existence it can only mean that he has in terms of human time always existed but this is not the same as the source of all existence this argument sounds like god does not exist but meta exists and from his meta existent perspective he created existence i think this is actually a nonsolution a mere twist of words always existing and being the source of the existence of all other beings is not problematic but as you put being the source of all existence including one s own would mean that god came from nothing a concept alien to christianity and theism it is better to understand the classical concepts of necessary and contingent existence god exists necessarily always god created contingent beings this is a coherent solution to existence so long as the concept of god is coherent the best answer i have heard is that human reasoning is incapable of understanding such questions being an atheist myself i do not accept such answers since i do not have any other methods not a very good answer if reason cannot by any means understand something then it is likely that it is a null concept something not in reality ted kalivoda
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cell church discussion group i am beginning an e mail discussion group about cell churches if you are a follower of jesus christ and are in a cell church or in a church that is transitioning to a cell church or just interested in learning more about cell churches send me e mail i reserve the right to remove anybody from the group who does not demonstrate a spirit of humility and christlikeness jon reid he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep reid cs uiuc edu to gain what he cannot lose jim elliot
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re atheists and hell mark schnitzius writes literal interpreters of the bible will have a problem with this view since the bible talks about the fires of hell and such this is something i ve always found confusing if all your nerve endings die with your physical body why would flame hurt you how can one wail and gnash teeth with no lungs and no teeth one can feel physical pain by having a body which if you know the doctrine of the resurrection of the body is what people will have after the great judgement we look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come nicene constantinopolitan creed you will have both body and soul in hell eventually andy byler
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prayers and advice requested on family problem my brother has been alienated from my parents and me since shortly after his marriage to a domineering and insecure woman about twelve years ago we ve kept things on a painfully polite christmas card sort of level for most of this time attempts to see each other end disastrously with his wife throwing a screaming fit and storming out over either our imagined slights to her or his inattention or insensitivity to her i mean this ll happen by the end of a single restaurant meal he seems from what i ve seen to live in a state of quivering anxiety hoping futilely to keep the next storm from breaking he has sacrificed not only meaningful contact with us but also other friends and outside interests now this is his choice and i need to accept it even if i deplore it but it s hard from time to time i ve wanted to drop the pretense that we have a relationship by cutting off contact or trying to have a real if painful relationship by talking honestly with him but i ve always thought why be dramatic and you know he ll only get evasive and then find some excuse to get off the phone just leave the door open in case he ever decides to come back it s been an unsatisfying choice to allow us to go on with the superficial trappings of a relationship but it was the best i could think of now this weekend my mother finally decided that she wasn t going to pretend any more and has cut off relations with them this was the outcome of a phone conversation in which my sister in law screamed and raved at my mother blaming her for everything wrong in their lives and in which my brother evaded temporized claimed the situation was beyond his control and as always expected my mother to make all the allowances and concessions mom said she would not that she would not quietly take abuse any more and that if these were the terms of their relationship she didn t want to talk to or see them any more and she hung up i have never seem my mother lose her temper and i think that this is the first time she s ever hung up on someone mom says she feels as if she s divorced my brother and that it s a relief in some ways to have the break out in the open and done with i have mixed feelings i m proud of mom for sticking up for herself angry at my brother and sister in law for hurting her for being jerks for persisting in such a wretched life which hurts us all and is warping their children angry at my sister in law for being so hateful and angry at my brother for being a coward and having so little respect for himself or us that he s willing to throw us aside and use up all his energy trying to appease an unappeasable emotionally disturbed woman pained for their children who are a mess scared for the future since this marks the time when either things will change and improve or the break will become irrevocable nastily self righteous over this bit of proof that they can t get away with treating us or each other this way and then disgusted with myself for even beginning to gloat over others misery and finally mostly sad sad sad to see my parents hurt and my brother and sister in law trapped in a horrible destructive situation that they can t see a way out of or they can t bear to take whatever paths they do see and i m frustrated because i don t know what if anything to do and doing nothing drives me up the wall i try to pray about my own feelings of rage impotence and vindictiveness and about their situation but i am not free of the desire to do something concrete the desire to do something to define a problem and fix it is one of my besetting vices i m having a terrible time quieting down my internal mental chatter enough to listen for god do you thoughtful and kind people on the net have advice for me is this a time to reach out to my brother to let things be how can i conquer my rage at him enough to be there for him here s the big question i ve been evading throughout this long long post is it ok as a christian and a proponent of faith hope and charity to accept the destruction of a relationship to give up on my own brother or at least to accept that i am powerless to help him and can only wait and see what happens do please answer by e mail or post thank you julie jjmarvin pucc princeton edu
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re christian s need for christianity in article apr athos rutgers edu lmh juliet caltech edu henling lawrence m writes in article apr geneva rutgers edu mussack austin ibm com writes for example why does the universe exist at all whether there is a why or not we have to find it this is pascal s wager if there is no why and we spend our lives searching then we have merely wasted our lives which were meaningless anyway if there is a why and we i find this view of christianity to be quite disheartening and sad the idea that life only has meaning or importance if there is a creator does not seem like much of a basis for belief please forgive all the inclusions i suppose they are neccessary to follow the argument my point is that if life has meaning or importance then we should try to find that meaning or importance which is almost a tautology i hope i m not being too patronizing one term for that meaning is creator though that is not obvious from my above argument and the logic is also appalling god must exist because i want him to it s more like i think therefore i am therefore god is i have heard this line of reasoning before and wonder how prevalent it is certainly in modern society many people are convinced life is hopeless or so the pollsters and newscasts state but i don t see where this is a good reason to become religious if you want meaning why not just join a cult such as in waco the leaders will give you the security blanket you desire unfortunately the term religious is ambiguous to me in this context i could say that searching for meaning in life is by definition being religious i could say cult followers by definition have given up on the search if you want meaning why not search for the truth so far my understanding of christianity is congruent with my understanding of truth there have been many before me who have come to conclusions that are worded in ways that make sense to me by no means does that imply that i understand everything chris mussack
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re did he really rise in article apr athos rutgers edu ata hfsi hfsi com john ata writes i think you are vastly oversimplifying things we know that early christians suffered totures because of their witness to christ for example act it appears that the jewish rulers of that time had a particular aversion to even hearing jesus s name finally the first apostle s death james of zebedee was certainly not by rome s hand any more than the first martyr stephen the problem was that if one believed in the resurrection then one must believe in jesus as truly being the son of god and what he stood for and preached during his ministry on earth that would have been extremely difficult for some people especially those that had plotted to kill him the basic problem with your argument is your total and complete reliance on the biblical text luke s account is highly suspect i would refer you to the hermeneia commentary on acts moreover luke s account is written at least years after the fact in the meantime everyone he mentions has died and attempts to find actual written sources behind the text have come up with only the we section of the later portion of acts as firmly established moreover pauls account of some of the events in acts as recorded in galatians fail to establish the acts accounts what we need therefore is a reliable text critically appreciated which documents the death of christians for belief in the resurrection i would suggest you look at some greek and roman historians i think you will be disapointed randy
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re proof of resurection in article apr geneva rutgers edu jcj tellabs com jcj writes in article apr geneva rutgers edu smayo world std com scott a mayo writes i think christianity goes down in flames if the resurrection is ever disproved didn t paul write that if the resurrection is not true we are the biggest fools of all however whether you believe in christ or not his teachings e g love your brotherman as yourself even if only followed at a secular level could do a great deal to alleviate some of the problems we see today in the world even when i was a rabid atheist i couldn t deny that jeff johnson jcj tellabs com we also cannot fail to note the intense suffering a devastation which has been wrecked on our world because of christians who were certain they were following christ from captialist who have polluted the enviorment in strict obedience to the gensis command to subdue the earth to nazi s who have justly punished the jews for the killing christ as well as the other progroms the innocent women who were burned alive in accordance with you shall not allow a witch to live the moslems who were killed in the crusades the god fearing men destroyed by the inquistion the religious wars in spain france england etc christianity has undoubtedly caused the most suffering and needless loss of life by individuals whose certainity that they were following the instructions therein was unquestionable there is much to grieve randy
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question jesus alone oneness dear fellow netters from time to time a term like oneness pentecostals or something similar has occurred in posts to this group i also know that there is a movement called something like jesus alone i believe in the trinity and have no plans to change that but reently i was made aware that there is at least one person within our church who holds the view that there is no trinity in the near future we will discuss this item and i feel that i shall ask you my friends on this group for background information can anybody tell me the basic reasons for holding a belief that there is only jesus and vice versa the foundations for the trinity i shall appreciate both quotes from the bible and historical development thank you all in him bjorn s mail e mail bjorn b larsen bjorn b larsen delab sintef no sintef delab n trondheim tel norway fax
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re sex education in article apr athos rutgers edu jkellett netcom com joe kellett writes question for further discussion as they say in the textbooks why don t we teach safe drug use to kids instead of drug abstinence and how come we don t pass out bullet proof vests in school to promote safe gun usage chris mussack
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re did he really rise in article apr athos rutgers edu gene gross lambada oit unc edu gene gross writes of course they knew where it was don t forget that jesus was seen by both the jews and the romans as a troublemaker pilate was no fool and didn t need the additional headaches of some fishermen stealing jesus body to make it appear he had arisen since jesus was buried in the grave of a man well know to the sanhedrin to say that they didn t know where he was buried begs the question here again the problem with most of the individuals posting here you take the biblical account as though it were some sort of historical recounting in the modern sense i would refer you to john dominic crossans book the cross that spoke pub harper and row the earliest texts which we have make no reference to an empty tomb nor is an empty tomb necessary for a claim of resurrection modern evangelicals fundamentalists have completely missed what the point of resurrection is here the work of george nickelsburg s work resurrection immortality and eternal life in intertestamental judaism publ cambridge havard univ press is most helpful look at rom paul here has no need of an empty tomb additionally in cor here again there is no mention of an empty tomb he was raised note the passive he appeared no ascension either resurrection could be accomplished without ever disturbing the bones in the grave the whole idea of an empty tomb isn t broached in any of our texts until well after the fall of jerusalem by that time the idea of coming up with a body would have been ludicrious moreover mack has argued convicingly i think that the empty tomb story first appears in mark we have no texts before this which mention the tomb now you say that you think that the disciples stole the body but think on this a moment would you die to maintain something you knew to be a deliberate lie if not then why do you think the disciples would now i m not talking about dying for something you firmly believe to be the truth but unbeknown to you it is a lie many have done this no i m talking about dying by beheading stoning crucifixion etc for something you know to be a lie thus you position with regards to the disciples stealing the body seems rather lightweight to me as for graverobbers why risk the severe penalties for grave robbing over the body of jesus he wasn t buried with great riches so again this is an argument that can be discounted that leaves you back on square one what happened to the body again let me comment that the most plausible non christian scenario and the one typically suggested by sceptics who are knowledgeable about the nt is that the resurrection was a subjective event and the empty tomb stories are a result of accounts growing in the telling clh you are quite right here even the idea of a subjective mystical event as the foundation of the resurrection narratives is currently becoming more untenable see b mack a myth of innocence randy
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re latest on branch davidians in article apr geneva rutgers edu conditt tsd arlut utexas edu paul conditt wrote i think it s really sad that so many people put their faith in a mere man even if he did claim to be the son of god and or a prophet it is just as christ said about his return some will say he is in the desert or some will say he is in the wilderness but do not believe them for as lightning flashes east to west so shall the coming of the son of man be my paraphrase i think the verse is somewhere in john jon sig file broken please try later
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re accepting jeesus in your heart gsu uxa ecn bgu edu eric molas writes religion especially christianity is nothing more than a drug there is a certain truth to this statement only i would use the word medicine instead of drug with regard to the condition of the human soul christianity is first and foremost a healing medicine it also strengthens and enables one as healing takes hold to grow in new strength and health to live and be and to do that for which god created us some people use drugs as an escape from reality christ s medicine rightly allowed to work brings one nearer to reality and offers the clarity of understanding and the strength of spirit with which to meet it in a healthy human way christians inject themselves with jesus and live with that high small spelling correction added gerry palo compuserve com
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re assurance of hell in article apr geneva rutgers edu rexlex fnal fnal gov writes i dreamed that the great judgment morning had dawned and the trumpet had blown i dreamed that the sinners had gathered for judgment before the white throne oh what weeping and wailing as the lost were told of their fate they cried for the rock and the mountains they prayed but their prayers were too late the soul that had put off salvation not tonight i ll get saved by and by no time now to think of religion alas he had found time to die and i saw a great white throne if i believed in the god of the bible i would be very fearful of making this statement doesn t it say those who judge will be judged by the same measure now some have protest by saying that the fear of hell is not good for motivation yet jesus thought it was paul thought it was paul said knowing therefore the terror of the lord we persuade men a god who must motivate through fear is not a god worthy of worship if the god jesus spoke of did indeed exist he would not need hell to convince people to worship him today too much of our evangelism is nothing but soft soap and some of it is nothing but evangelical salesmanship we don t tell people anymore that there s such a thing as sin or that there s such a place as hell it was the myth of hell that made me finally realize that the whole thing was untrue if it hadn t been for hell i would still be a believer today the myth of hell made me realize that if there was a god that he was not the all knowing and all good god he claimed to be why should i take such a being at his word even if there was evidence for his existance join the pythagorean reform church repent of your evil irrational numbers and bean eating ways accept into your heart call the pythagorean reform church bbs at
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re did he really rise another issue of importance was the crucification the will of god or a tragic mistake i believe it was a tragic mistake god s will can never be accomplished through the disbelief of man jesus came to this world to build the kingdom of heaven on the earth he desperately wanted the jewish people to accept him as the messiah if the crucification was the will of god how could jesus pray that this cup pass from him was this out of weakness never many men and women have given their lives for their country or other noble causes is jesus less than these no he is not he knew the crucification was not the will of god god s will was that the jewish people accept jesus as the messiah and that the kingdom of heaven be established on the earth with jesus as it s head just like the jewish people expected if this had happened years ago can you imagine what kind of world we would live in today it would be a very different world and that is eactly what god wanted men and women of that age could have been saved by following the living messiah while he was on the earth jesus could have established a sinless lineage that would have continued his reign after his ascension to the spiritual world to live with god now the kingdom of heaven on the earth will have to wait for christ s return but when he returns will he be recognized and will he find faith on this earth isn t it about time for his return it s been almost years mike in article athos rutgers edu oser fermi wustl edu scott oser writes in article apr athos rutgers edu mcovingt aisun ai uga edu michael covington writes the two historic facts that i think the most important are these if jesus didn t rise from the dead then he must have done something else equally impressive in order to create the observed amount of impact nobody ever displayed the dead body of jesus even though both the jewish and the roman authorities would have gained a lot by doing so it would have discredited the christians and the two simplest refutations are these what impact the only record of impact comes from the new testament i have no guarantee that its books are in the least accurate and that the recorded impact actually happened i find it interesting that no other contemporary source records an eclipse an earthquake a temple curtain being torn etc the earliest written claim we have of jesus resurrection is from the pauline epistles none of which were written sooner than years after the supposed event it seems probable that no one displayed the body of jesus because no one knew where it was i personally believe that the most likely explanation was that the body was stolen by disciples or by graverobbers don t bother with the point about the guards it only appears in one gospel and seems like exactly the sort of thing early christians might make up in order to counter the grave robbing charge the new testament does record that jews believed the body had been stolen if there were really guards they could not have effectively made this claim as they did scott o
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etymology of easter for src in most languages the feast of the resurrection of our lord is known as the pasch or pasque or some variation thereof a word which comes from the hebrew pesach meaning passover in english german and a few related languages however it is known as easter or some variation thereof and questions have been asked about the origin of this term one explanation is that given by the venerable bede in his de ratione temporum where he derives the word from the name of an anglo saxon goddess of spring called eastre bede is a great scholar and it is natural to take his word for it but he lived and augustine began preaching in kent in the use of the word easter to describe the feast would have been well established before the birth of bede and probably before the birth of anyone he might have discussed the subject with it seems likely that his derivation is just a guess based on his awareness that there had been an anglo saxon goddess of spring bearing that name and the resemblance of the words thus if the said resemblance surely it is not surprising that a personification of spring should have a name similar to the word for dawn is not in istelf convincing the testimony or rather the conjecture by bede does not make it more so assuming that bede was right that would not justify saying that the christian celebration which after all had been going on for some centuries before the name easter was applied to it has pagan roots it would simply mean that the anglo saxons upon becoming christians and beginning to celebrate the resurrection by a festival every spring called it by the name that to them meant simply spring festival however bede s is not the only theory that has been proposed j knoblech in die sprach zeitschrift fuer sprachwissenschaft vienna offers the following derivation among latin speaking christians the week beginning with the feast of the resurrection was known as hebdomada alba white week since the newly baptized christians were accustomed to wear their white baptismal robes throughout that week sometimes the week was referred to simply as albae translaters rendering this into german mistook it for the plural of alba meaning dawn they accordingly rendered it as eostarum which is old high german for dawn this gave rise to the form easter in english yours james kiefer no i m not interested in restarting discussions of the propriety of celebrating easter however this seems like it contains enough interesting information that people might like to see it clh
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help hi everyone i m a commited christian that is battling with a problem i know that romans talks about how we are saved by our faith not our deeds yet hebrews and james say that faith without deeds is useless saying you fools do you still think that just believing is enough now if someone is fully believing but there life is totally lead by themselves and not by god according to romans that person is still saved by there faith but then there is the bit which says that god preferes someone who is cold to him i e doesn t know him condemned so a lukewarm christian someone who knows and believes in god but doesn t make any attempt to live by the bible now i am of the opinion that you a saved through faith alone not what you do as taught in romans but how can i square up in my mind the teachings of james in conjunction with the lukewarm christian being spat out can anyone help me this really bothers me in christ will dallas cowboys world champions
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re interfaith weddings bill burns was looking for a description of the differnces between the catholic and lutheran churches i d recommend prof william whalen s book separated brethren it s an overview of common us denominations intended for a catholic audience richard aquinas chonak norris mit edu seeking job change sys mgr vax sis cobol programmer unix c c x
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paul on weekly collections mark gregory foster writes concerning corinthians the idea was introduced to me once that the reason paul wanted the corinthians to lay aside money for the collection on the first day of the week was that this was when they received their weekly wages but the ancient romans did not observe a seven day week unless a man was working for a jewish employer he is unlikely to have been paid on the first day of a seven day week nor would a jewish employer have kept his wages over the week end see lev dt yours james kiefer
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about eliz c prophet rob butera asks about a book called the lost years of jesus by elizabeth clare prophet i do not know the book however miss prophet is the leader of a group the church universal and triumphant derived from the i am group founded by a mr ballard who began his mission in the s i am writing this from memory and may not have all the details straight for an old account check your library for a bnook by marcus bach after an eighteenth century frenchman appeared tapped him on the shoulder and offered him a cup of cosmic essence a major tenet of the movement is that there is a monastery in the mountains of tibet from which a monk descends to the lower altitudes every few centuries to preach and that all major religions have been founded by monks from this monastery typically the ballard family and their successors the prophet family related by marriage if i remember aright base almost all their teachings on messages they have allegedly received by telepathy from tibet i should be surprised if the book you mention has any scholarly basis yours james kiefer
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chanting of the passion mike rolfe writes if you know the latin one really beautiful way to hear the passion is its being chanted by three deacons the narrator chants in the middle baritone range jesus chants in the bass and others directly quoted are handled by a high tenor this is done in english same music as the traditional latin in many anglican parishes i should expect that many rcc parishes would do likewise the st matthew passion and st john passion of j s bach are direct offshoots of this tradition yours james kiefer
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muslim tithe sexism in genesis according to mdbs ms uky edu muslims tithe of their income perhaps there are some offshoots of islam that impose this on their followers but the standard tithe is of one s net worth once a year the same writer also objects to the bible for teaching that woman was created after man to be his helper etc this is presumably a reference to genesis suppose that that chapter had been written with the sexes reversed we have god creating woman and then saying it is not good that woman should be alone i will make a help meet for her feminists would be outraged the clear implication would be that god had started at the bottom and worked up making first the plants then the fish and birds then the beasts then woman and finally his masterpiece the male chauvinist pig the statement that woman is not capable of functioning by herself that she needs a man to open doors for her would have been seen as a particularly gratuitous insult the fact that the creation of woman from the dust of the ground was given only briefly and in general while the creation of the man was given in six times the number of words would have been cited as evidence of the author s estimate of the relative importance of the sexes the verdict would have been unequivocal no self respecting woman can accept this book as a moral guide or as anything but sexist trash i suggest that moses fearing this reaction altered his original draft and described the creation with adam first and then eve so as to appease miriam and other radical feminists of the day for some reason however it did not work yours james kiefer
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re proof of resurection in article apr geneva rutgers edu reedr cgsvax claremont edu writes we also cannot fail to note the intense suffering a devastation which has been wrecked on our world because of christians who were certain they were following christ from captialist in strict obedience to the gensis innocent women who were burned alive in accordance with you shall not allow a witch to live the moslems who were killed in the crusades the god fearing men destroyed by the inquistion the religious wars in spain france england etc christianity has undoubtedly caused the most suffering and needless loss of life by individuals whose certainity that they were following the instructions therein was unquestionable there is much to grieve i agree where in the gospels does jesus advocate any of the actions you mention i couldn t find witch or sorceress in my concordance is there something in the epistles about witches i m still working my way through the gospels jj the reference is ex it s witch in kj sorceress in rsv clh
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re help jon ogden jono mac ak rtsg mot com wrote it is a dead and useless faith which has no action behind it actions prove our faith and show the genuineness of it a good example of this is abraham referred to in the james passage hebrews says that abraham was justified by faith but his faith was demonstrated through his works i e he obeyed what god told him to do reading abraham s biography in genesis is very instructive he was a man beset by lack of faith a lot of the time e g lying about sarah being his wife on occasions trying to fulfil god s promise on god s behalf by copulating with hagar yet it seems that god didn t evaluate him on the basis of individual incidents abraham is listed as one of the heroes of faith in hebrews i e when it really came to the crunch god declared abraham as a man of faith he believed god s promises this gives us confidence although real faith demonstrates itself through works god is not going to judge us according to our success failure in performing works not by works of righteousness which we have done but according to his mercy he saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the holy spirit titus amazing grace hallelujah michael davis cs mcd brunel ac uk
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iterations of the bible hi i m not a religious guy so dont take this as some kinda flame thanx in advance i want to know why there are so many different versions of the bible there is this version of the bible i have read about and on the front page it says contains inaccurate data and inconsistencies thanx in advance shaz i m not sure quite what you mean by many different versions the primary distinction in versions you see today is in the style of the translation it s pretty unusual to see significant differences in meaning there are a few differences in the underlying text that s because before printing manuscripts were copied by hand slight differences resulted there are enough manuscripts around that scholars can do a pretty good job of recreating the original but there are some uncertainties fortunately they are generally at the level of minor differences in wording there are something like or places where whole sentences are involved but with recent discoveries of older manuscripts i don t think there s much uncertainly about those cases as far as i know no christians believe that the process of copying manuscripts or the process of translating is free of error but i also don t think there s enough uncertainty in establishing the text or translating it that it has much practical effect whether the bible contains inaccurate data and inconsistences is a hot topic of debate here many christians deny it some accept it though most would say that the inaccuracies involved are on details that don t affect the faith but this has nothing to do with there being multiple versions the supposed inconsistences can be found in all the versions i m surprised to find a reference to this on the title page though what version are you talking about i ve been referring to major scholarly translations these are what get referenced in postings here and elsewhere there have certainly been editions that are to be kind less widely accepted this includes everything from reconstructions that combine parallel accounts into single narrations to editions that omit material that the editor objects to for some reason or the other the copyright on the bible has long since expired so there nothing to stop people from making editions that do whatever wierd thing they want however the editions that are widely used are carefully prepared by groups of scholars from a variety of backgrounds with lots of crosschecks i could imagine one of the lesser known editions claiming to have fixed up all inaccurate data and inconsistencies but if so it s not any edition that s widely used the widely used ones leave the text as is weeeeelllllll almost as is it s been alleged that a few translations have fudged a word or two here and there to minimize inconsistencies because translation is not an exact science there are always going to be differences in opinion over which word is best i m afraid clh
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re help in article apr geneva rutgers edu lmvec westminster ac uk william hargreaves writes i m a commited christian that is battling with a problem i know that romans talks about how we are saved by our faith not our deeds yet hebrews and james say that faith without deeds is useless saying you fools do you still think that just believing is enough actually i don t think there is any conflict if we really understand what these passages say first what is faith if you study the meaning of the greek and hebrew words so translated i think you will come to the conclusion that the word means a lot more than mere belief faith means both trust and action if you do not put your belief into action it simply cannot qualify as faith i think this is what james means when he says that faith without works is dead and i will show you my faith by my works remember james was writing to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad this probably means he was writing to those who would hear the gospel much later and wouldn t understand the meaning of the original greek indeed i suspect james was writing to us today among others he intended to reach paul on the other hand wrote mostly to the people of the roman empire who generally understood the meaning of the greek another key to why there is no conflict is to look at paul s statements in their context i think you will find that when paul contrasts faith and works it is in the context of comparing the gospel with the law meaning the law of moses this was the great burden of paul s life as the apostle to the gentiles he would go convert a bunch of people then the judizers would come along and try to convince them that they also had to obey the law of moses cf acts chapter in this context paul condemns the idea of being saved by the works of the law saying that we are saved by the blood of jesus and our faith in him i believe that a better translation for today would be that we are saved by faithfulness i think faithfulness today has a meaning closer to what the original writers intended now if someone is fully believing but there life is totally lead by themselves and not by god according to romans that person is still saved by there faith i think you misunderstand romans what paul is really saying is that god prefers a faithful gentile who does not keep kosher to a kosher jew who fails to stay faithful in the more important matters of following the lord and having charity toward his fellows but then there is the bit which says that god preferes someone who is cold to him i e doesn t know him condemned so a lukewarm christian someone who knows and believes in god but doesn t make any attempt to live by the bible in the sense of faith described above you cannot have real faith and be lukewarm if you know god but are lukewarm unfaithful you are worse off than the person who never heard of him remember jesus in the parable of the pearl of great price mat and again in the one on the treasure hidden in the field mat indicates that the price of the kingdom of god is all we have i agree with you in general including the fact that pistis has some of the force of faithful however if you take that too far you can end up with something that paul definitely would not have intended being faithful means following god in all things to say that we are saved by being faithful is very close to saying that we are saved by commiting no sins i assume that s not what you meant i have almost given up on finding a specific verbal formula that completely captures this however i think paul is describing what i d call a basic orientation including aspects such as trust and commitment jesus speaks of it as rebirth which implies a basic change we may still do things that are sinful and may fail to show the new life in christ in many situations where we should but in any christian there had better be the basic change in orientation that jesus calls being born again clh
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re assurance of hell in article apr geneva rutgers edu rexlex fnal fnal gov writes if you haven t accepted jesus are your savior you re taking an awful chance as i say to the jehovah witnesses who no longer frequent my door if you are right and i am wrong then i will have lived a good life and will die and cease to exist but if i am right and you are wrong then you will die and suffer eternal damnation i don t mean to make fun at this point but its like dirty harry said you ve got to ask yourself do i feel lucky well do you a man s got to know his limitations don t be one of the whosoever wont s this is a ridiculous argument for being a christian so then you might consider switching from christianity to another religion if you were offered an even more frightening description of another hell how many christians do think there are who view it strictly as an insurance policy not many i know they believe in a message of love and compassion for others a faith based on fear of hell sounds like a dysfunctional relationship with god like a child who cringes in fear of a parent s physical violence many religions have concrete views of heaven and hell with various threats and persuasions regarding who will go where competition over who can envison the worst hell can hardly nurture the idea of loving your neighbor as yourself rex comments criticism welcome ken alvin ucsu colorado edu
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re question jesus alone oneness regarding jesus only believers our moderator writes there may be some misunderstanding over terms here i agree quite likely actually i believe jesus only originally was in the context of baptism these are folks who believe that baptism should be done with a formula mentioning only jesus rather than father son and holy spirit this may have doctrinal implications but as far as i know it does not mean that these folks deny the existence or divinity of the father i m not the right one to describe this theology and in fact i think there may be several including what would classically be called monophysite or arian two rather different views as well as some who have beliefs that are probably consistent with trinitarian standards but who won t use trinitarian language because they misunderstand it or simply because it is not biblical clh not biblical what then can they make of the end of matthew and jesus came and said to them all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me go therefore and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit and teaching them to obey everything that i have commanded to you and remember i am with you always to the end of the age other ancient authorities add amen nrsv the notes give no sense that this is emended do other texts contradict this regarding baptism or is a misunderstanding of the trinity the most likely explanation after all but maybe i simply misunderstand their views is anyone else out there forced to read this group with both a good bible and an unabridged dictionary christianity really is an education in itself david r tucker kg s drt athena mit edu arrgggghhhh when i talked about people who rejected trinitarian language as unbiblical i was speaking of trinitarian theology things like one essense and three persons obviously the three fold baptismal formula is biblical as you point out i normally use the term three fold in referring to mat while it is certainly consistent with belief in the trinity the trinity is a doctrine whose full formulation occurred in the th and th cent s it s unlikely that mat had in mind the fully developed trinitarian doctrine indeed the three fold baptismal formula is used by some groups that do not believe in the trinity the disagreement over baptismal formulae occurs because of passages such as acts which command baptism in the name of jesus there are a couple of other passages in acts as well this leaves us with sort of a problem we re commanded in mat to baptize in the name of the father the son and the holy spirit and in acts to baptize in the name of jesus jesus only groups baptize in the name of jesus they consider this consistent with mat because they say that jesus is the name of the father the son and the holy spirit i m not the right one to ask to explain what this means i will simply say that it does not appear to be normal trinitarian theology it is also an odd way of dealing with the idiomatic phrase in the name of those who use the three fold formula don t seem to have a standard answer to the passages talking about baptizing in the name of jesus i suspect that the most common explanation is to say that in the name of need not be a verbal formula to say that you baptize in the name of jesus may simply mean that you are doing baptism under jesus authority in the st cent context it contrasts christian baptism with the baptism of john or other jewish baptism of course there s a certain parallelism between these passages that suggests that we could just as well say that mat doesn t require the specific three fold formula to be used in baptism but simply characterizes baptism done by those who follow the father son and holy spirit one might well suspect that in the early church more than one baptismal formula was used so long as we consider following jesus to be the same as following the father son and holy spirit no great damage would be done by such a difference this does not mean that i think we should go back to using both formulae baptism is one of the few things that almost all christian groups now recognize mutually so i do not think doing something to upset that would be in the interests of the gospel this is reinforced by the fact that those groups that actually use in the name of jesus now do seem to have in mind a difference in doctrine but as i ve said before i m not the one to explain what their doctrine is clh
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daily verse and the lord s servant must not quarrel instead he must be kind to everyone able to teach not resentful those who oppose him he must gently instruct in the hope that god will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil who has taken them captive to do his will iitimothy
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re a question that has bee bothering me in article apr athos rutgers edu wquinnan sdcc ucsd edu malcusco writes in article apr athos rutgers edu atterlep vela acs oakland edu cardinal ximenez writes my problem with science is that often it allows us to assume we know what is best for ourselves god endowed us with the ability to produce life through sexual relations you assume this because you believe in a designing creator and you observe our ability to procreate for example but he did not make that availible to everyone does that mean that if science can over ride god s decision through alterations that god wills for us to have the power to decide who should and should not be able to have children but then you observe our ability to modify fertility through intelligence experiment and draw no similar conclusions about god designing us for scientific inquiry the use of the technology that it produces how is it that one ability is obviously from god and the other not i cannot draw a solid line regarding where i would approve of scientific study and where i would not but i will say this before one experiments with the universe to find out all its secrets one should ask why they want this knowledge i want to know the truth and hold the truth as the most basic of all ethical values because correct moral judgement relies on knowing the truth not vice versa moralities that assert that assent to a belief is a moral choice and not compelled by evidence inevitably cut off the limb they sit upon falsification of evidence conscious and unconscious follows corrupting both the intellect and the heart i will say that each person should pray for guidance when trying to unravel the mysteries of the universe and should cease their unravelling if they have reason to believe their search is displeasing to god malcusco if there is a god he has nothing to fear from truth as to imaginary gods and there followers be afraid be very afraid max
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re when are two people married in god s eyes i would like to get your opinions on this when exactly does an engaged couple become married in god s eyes i m waiting for an rc to speak up nobody has so i will those with bibles on hand can give the exact chapter verse at the time jesus told peter that he was the rock he said whatever you hold true on earth is held true in heaven and whatever you don t hold true won t be true in heaven therefore with respect to marriage the ceremony has to be done by an rc priest no big parties required just the priest the couple and witnesses divorce is not allowed but anullments are granted upon approval by either the bishop or the pope not sure if the pope delegates this function mark ashley disclaimer my opinions not harris marka gcx ssd csd harris com the lost los angelino
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re when are two people married in god s eyes in article apr geneva rutgers edu rjs po cwru edu richard j szanto writes in a previous article randerso acad sahs uth tmc edu robert anderson says i would like to get your opinions on this when exactly does an engaged couple become married in god s eyes some say that if the two have publically announced their plans to marry have made their vows to god and are unswervingly committed to one another i realize this is a subjective qualifier they are married joined in god s sight i have discussed this with my girlfriend often i consider myself married though legally i am not neither of us have been with other people sexually although we have been with each other we did not have sexual relations until we decided to marry eventually for financial and distance reasons we will not be legally married for another year and a half until then i consider myself married for life in god s eyes i have faith that we have a strong relationship and have had for over years and will be full of joy when we marry in a church first however we must find a church we will be living in a new area when we marry and will need to find a new church community anyway i feel that if two people commit to marriage before god they are married and are bound by that commitment rick szanto rick has nailed the problem down pretty well as i can find no scripture have i missed it that details when you are married i have to make some assumptions based on the principles of scripture it seems to me that it takes parties to make a marriage husband to be wife to be and god if you promise before each other and god that you will convenant together to be married then you are imo so why do we have the ceremonial part that seems to be there for connectedness in the body of christ my brothers and sisters ought to be involved so that there can be some accountability on both our parts that s part of the concept from hebrews about not forsaking the assembling of yourselves together as is the custom of some we need each other because lone ranger christians and lone ranger marriages smack of a self sufficiency that the i don t see in the nt does anyone see the paul simon i am a rock i am an island model anywhere in christianity song lyrics show your age further since marriage is a legal matter institution in the usa and many other places and such laws do not specifically go crosswise to the clear teachings of scripture we ought to obey them to avoid even the appearance of evil i thess so this would imply at least a civil ceremony before marriage but keep in mind we are at least doing all of this for the conscience of others because back to the beginning you are married when you and your intended promise each other and god to be in convenant imo what ch all think bobby akgua rjb in some states the kind of commitment described in richard szanto s posting can create a common law marriage indeed his posting itself might go a long way towards establishing that a marriage exists should the issue ever end up in court he might want to consult a lawyer who is familiar with common law marriage in his state clh
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re serbian genocide work of god on apr in serbian genocide work of god user james sledd ssdc sas upe writes are the governments of the united states and europe not moving to end the ethnic cleansing by the serbs because the targets are muslims bingo that and there s no oil there on apr in serbian genocide work of god user james sledd ssdc sas upe writes are the serbs doing the work of god hmm if this is the work of god then i m doubly glad that i don t worship him david hunt graduate slave my mind is my own towards both a mechanical engineering so are my ideas opinions palestinian and carnegie mellon university use golden rule v jewish homeland t h e r e i s n o g o d t h e r e i s n o g o d email bluelobster cmu edu working towards my piled higher and deeper it will be a great day when scientists and engineers have all the r d money they need and religions have to beg for money to pay the priest
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re the arrogance of christians dean and i write lots and lots about absolute truth and arrogance vbv r d eeap cwru edu virgilio dean b velasco jr writes i strongly suspect that we are reaching an impasse here which is why i deign from commenting much further i agree that we ll probably never agree and i m starting to feel frustrated and i m tired of having my conversations with my husband dominated by this topic just kidding i do have to say though that participating in this discussion has been a good learning experience for me my views on this topic have evolved and clarified through this and i suspect that we may not disagree as much as we think i admit that i m strongly prejudiced against evangelical christianity and i may not always be rational in my reactions to it i grew up in ec and went to an ec college it was definitely the wrong place for me and i react strongly to any implication that ec or conservative christianity has any sort of stronghold on true christianity i shudder when i remember the condescending attitude i had about other christians who didn t adhere to the ec model i have come to see that my real objection to this whole notion of absolute truth is the actions i have seen it lead to i have had some very bad experiences with evangelical christians claiming to know the truth and judging me or others based on their belief that they have the answers knowing the truth doesn t seem to leave a whole lot of room for others opinions i can accept your belief in absolute truth as long as you don t try to use that belief to try to force others to comply with it and you are very careful that you don t hurt others with it love your neighbor seems to go totally out the window when one knows the truth and believes that everyone should be living by that truth other people have convictions about the truth every bit as strong and sincere as yours based on careful searching prayer and their relationship with god don t dismiss them because god didn t lead them to the same conclusions as yours this is not directed personally at you dean carol alvin caralv auto trol com
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re being right about messiahs in article geneva rutgers edu desiree bradley mindlink bc ca desiree bradley writes i must have missed the postings about waco david koresh and the second coming how does one tell if a second coming is the real thing unless the person claiming to be it is obviously insane one rule of thumb is that if a person is making the claim they are wrong i was just reading john this morning i think that is the right chapter anyway it is close and i don t have a bible at work to check with and in it jesus is talking to his disciples about his impending death and he says that he will be going away and then later he will be with them he said something along the lines of i will be in you and you will be in me again i cannot provide the exact quote or citation anyway my understanding of this is that the second coming will not be an outward event it is an inward event christ will come to live in our hearts and we will live in him if you look for a person you will be deceived it seems to me that the jews had been looking for a messiah that would be a political or military leader and so didn t recognize jesus when he came jesus tried to show that his kingdom was not of this earth a lot of what i have seen written about the second coming seems to based on an expectation of christ coming back and finally taking over the world and running it the way it should be it sounds a lot like what the jews were looking for the first coming wasn t like that and i see no reason for the second coming to be like that either oh and by the way i don t expect it to happen once there is no one second coming there are a lot of little ones every time christ comes into someones heart christ has come again peace will william taber will taber dg com any opinions expressed data general corp will futon webo dg com are mine alone and may westboro mass change without notice when all your dreams are laid to rest you can get what s second best but it s hard to get enough david wilcox
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was jesus black the people who post to this particular newsgroup are either too cowardly too arrogant or too apathetic to discuss this issue since i have yet to see any discussion grace my computer screen while it holds particular interest to the african american community everyone has something to gain from discussing it as any knowledgable person should know christianity has been used in this country to tighten the spiritual emotional mental hold slavery placed on the minds souls hearts of african americans this was most effectively done by the display of white icons of jesus in slave churches to encourage the godly superiority of slaveowners it wasn t enough that the slaveowner was your provider but he was also your god to be looked upon with unconditional love loyalty and to be worshipped with great pride but how culturally biblically accurate are these icons pictures statues of a black jesus have been found in european countries as that of a black madonna but what about biblical physical descriptions of jesus his hair being compared to that of wool his feet to that of brass and think about the area of the world where all biblical actions took place i welcome all intelligent commentary on this important topic flamers need not reply sherlette p s i expect at least this type of response it doesn t matter what color his skin was his actions what he did for mankind are what counts this is true i am not questioning this but he walked the earth for decades as a human this part of his existence intrigues me and as for saying that it doesn t matter to a member of a physically emancipated people who is still struggling for mental emancipation believe me it matters the general attack on the members of this group seems unjustified there has been discussion of this issue in the past we can t discuss everything at once so the fact that some specific thing hasn t been discussed recently shouldn t be taken as a sign of general cowardice arrogance or apathy in past discussions no one has been outraged by suggestions that jesus could be black and it has been suggested by a few scholars but the concensus is that he was most likely semitic as you probably know there is a tradition that portrayals of jesus in art tends to show him as one of the people thus you wouldn t be surprised to find african art showing him as black and oriental art showing him as oriental there are good reasons relating to christian devotion to think of him in such a way it s also good now and then to have that image challenged and to think of jesus as being a member of xxx where xxx is the group you least respect clh
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re accepting jeesus in your heart dan johnson asked for evidence that the most effective abuse recovery programs involve meeting people s spiritual needs i responded in step programs like alcoholics anonymous one of the steps involves acknowleding a higher power aa and other step abuse recovery programs are acknowledged as being among the most effective dan johnson clarified what i was asking is this please show me that the most effective substance absure recovery programs involve meetinsg peoples spiritual needs rather than merely attempting to fill peoples spiritual needs as percieved by the people a a s r c regulars or snoopy you are asking me to provide objective proof for the existence of god i never claimed to be able to do this in fact i do not believe that it is possible to do so i consider the existence of god to be a premise or assumption that underlies my philosophy of life it comes down to a matter of faith if i weren t a christian i would be an agnostic but i have sufficient subjective evidence to justify and sustain my relationship with god again this is a matter of premises and assumptions i assume that there is more to life the universe and everything than materialism ie that spirituality exists this assumption answers the question about why i have apparent spiritual needs i find this assumption consistent with my subsequent observat ions i then find that god fills these spiritual needs but i cannot objectively prove the difference between apparent filling of imagined spiritual needs and real filling of real spiritual needs nor can i prove to another person that they have spiritual needs seanna watson bell northern research pray that at the end of living seanna bnr ca ottawa ontario canada of philosophies and creeds god will find his people busy opinion what opinions oh these opinions planting trees and sowing seeds no they re not bnr s they re mine i knew i d left them somewhere fred kaan
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re hell black sabbath in article apr geneva rutgers edu jprzybyl skidmore edu jennifer przybylinski writes i may be wrong but wasn t jeff fenholt part of black sabbath yes he was he also played jesus in jesus christ superstar before he became a christian he played in black sabbath right after he first got saved but then left it link hudson
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could anyone answer this question i ve heard it said that the accounts we have of christs life and ministry in the gospels were actually written many years after the event about years or so is this correct if so why the big time delay i know all scripture is inspired of god so the time of writing is i suppose un important but i still can t help be curious ivan thomas barr contact me at u athmail causeway qub ac uk the gospels aren t dated so we can only guess luke s prolog is about the only thing we have from the author describing his process the prolog sounds like luke is from the next generation and had to do some investigating there are traditions passed down verbally that say a few things about the composition of the gospels there are debates about how reliable these traditions are they certainly don t have the status of scripture yet scholars tend to take some of them seriously one suggests that mark was based on peter s sermons and was written to preserve them when peter had died or way about to die one tradition about matthew suggests that a collection of jesus words may have been made earlier than the current gospels in the ancient world it was much more common to rely on verbal transmission of information i think many people would have preferred to hear about jesus directly from someone who had known him and maybe even from someone who studied directly under such a person rather than from a book thus i suspect that the gospels are largely from a period when these people were beginning to die scholars generally do think there was some written material earlier which was probably used as sources for the existing gospels establishing the dates is a complex and technical business i have to confess that i m not sure how much reliance i d put on the methods used but it s common to think that mark was written first around ad and that all of the gospels were written by the end of the century a few people vary this by a decade or so one way or the other clh
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copt net newsletter this is to let you know that the fourth issue of the copt net newsletter has been issued the highlights of this issue include easter greating christ is risen truly he is risen the holy family in egypt part anba abraam the friend of the poor part a review of the coptic encyclopedia a new dictionary of the coptic language this newsletter has been prepared by members of copt net a forum where news activities and services of the coptic orthodox churches and coptic communities outside egypt are coordinated and exchanged if you want your name to be included in the mailing list or have any questions please contact nabil ayoub at ayoub erctitan me wisc edu copt net editorial board
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re did he really rise in article geneva rutgers edu parkin eng sun com michael parkin writes another issue of importance was the crucification the will of god or a tragic mistake i believe it was a tragic mistake god s will can never be accomplished through the disbelief of man i finished reading a very good book the will of god weatherhead this was very helpful to me in applying thought to the subject of the will of god weatherhead broke the will of god into three distinct parts intentional will circumstancial will and ultimate will he weatherhead also refuted the last statement above by michael parkin above quite nicely summarizing despite the failures of humankind god s ultimate will is never to be defeated god s intentions may be interfered with even temporarily defeated by the will of humankind brought down by circumstance his ultimate will the reconcilication of all humankind will never be stopped time after time weatherhead used the cross as the best description of this process at work his points paraphrased were god s intentional will was for jesus the christ to live out a full life and perform the work of the living god the failures sins and deviousness of humankind frustrated god s intent for his son despite the circumstance god s ultimate will was revealed in the cross as jesus willingly not my will lord but yours died for the redemption of all humankind the cross was utterly triumphant overcoming even the most cruel of circumstances this world to build the kingdom of heaven on the earth he desperately wanted the jewish people to accept him as the messiah if the crucification was the will of god how could jesus pray that this cup pass from him was this out of weakness never many men and women have given their lives for their country or other noble causes is jesus less than these no he is not he knew the crucification was not the will of god it was not the intentional will of god it was the circumstancial will thus enabling the victory of the ultimate will god s will was that the jewish people accept jesus as the messiah and that the kingdom of heaven be established on the earth with jesus as it s head right intentional will just like the jewish people expected if this had happened years ago can you imagine what kind of world we would live in today it would be a very different world and that is eactly what god wanted men and women of that age could have been saved by following the living messiah while he was on the earth jesus could have established a sinless lineage that would have continued his reign after his ascension to the spiritual world to live with god now the kingdom of heaven on the earth will have to wait for christ s return but when he returns will he be recognized and will he find faith on this earth isn t it about time for his return it s been almost years we know neither the time nor the place he will return as a thief in the night peace rob legal mumbo jumbo follows this mail post only reflects the opinions of the poster author and in no manner reflects any corporate policy statement opinion or other expression by network systems corporation
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re help in article apr geneva rutgers edu lmvec westminster ac uk william hargreaves writes hi everyone i m a commited christian that is battling with a problem i know that romans talks about how we are saved by our faith not our deeds yet hebrews and james say that faith without deeds is useless saying you fools do you still think that just believing is enough some deleted now i am of the opinion that you a saved through faith alone not what you do as taught in romans but how can i square up in my mind the teachings of james in conjunction with the lukewarm christian being spat out can anyone help me this really bothers me dear will i ve never replied on this thing before so i hope it gets thru ok i had a few thoughts faith on its own if not accompanied by action is dead james faith is both belief and action if i say that i am a great swimmer but i never go swimming am i really a swimmer and will people believe that i am likewise if i say i m a christian but i never talk to god am i really a christian my faith is demonstrated by my action the fact that we talk to god proves we have faith satan believes in god but does not follow him in a similar vein i have recently been challenged by john v says we know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands i find this verse quite encouraging as it could imply that if we have come to know him then we ll obey his commands cos he lives within us and we cannot help but obey what he says i tend to feel that as we daily submit ourself to god he will keep changing us into the likeness of jesus and his fruit and works will be automatically produced in our lives hope this helps james holland rcfec westminster ac uk
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re hell black sabbath i may be wrong but wasn t jeff fenholt part of black sabbath he s a major brother in christ now he totally changed his life around and he and his wife go on tours singing witnessing and spreading the gospel for christ i may be wrong about black sabbath but i know he was in a similar band if it wasn t that particular group yes but jeff also speaks out against listening to bands like black sabbath he says they re into all sorts of satanic stuff i don t know mark dotsonm dmapub dma org
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re am i going to hell in article apr geneva rutgers edu tbrent ecn purdue edu timothy j brent writes i have stated before that i do not consider myself an atheist but definitely do not believe in the christian god the recent discussion about atheists and hell combined with a post to another group to the effect of you will all go to hell has me interested in the consensus as to how a god might judge men as a catholic i was told that a jew buddhist etc might go to heaven but obviously some people do not believe this even more see atheists and pagans i assume i would be lumped into this category to be hellbound i know you believe only god can judge and i do not ask you to just for your opinions excellent question timothy i hpoe the answers you get will be satisfactory as we can not understand the mind of god but to attempt to answer you clearly god of the bible has given us humans relativly little about how he intends to judge mankind the first test is those who have beleived that jesus christ is the son of god and that his death and resurrection was sufficent to serve justice for all the acts we commit that are wrong in the eyes of god the bible calls this sin for those who die before the end of the world have already died it is more complicated to explain without lapsing in to cliche god must judge people on the baasis of their works in this world however there is no plus and minus system for god he has declared that he can not tolerate spiritual imperfection thus he can only based your worthiness to live with him on the wrong in your life good people yes even christians are going to constantly sin before god the christian hoever thanks god that christ has given his life for his sin s penalty the proscribed punishment for sin is death just as the proscribed punishment for robbery is time in jail god then cannot ask for anything but punishement for those sins he does not want to condem the bible says in john that god did not send his son in to the word to condem it but that through him it might be saved when i realize that i have sinned and i do with painful regularity i must approach god and ask him to not hold thew sin against me i have that right and privlige only because of christ as for jews they are promised that they must believe on the messiah who would come and dis come in jesus of nazereth muslims i fear have been given a lie from the fater of lies satan they need christ as do us all for those who don t have that right in the view of the bible they stand olone in their defense are you going to hell i can not answer that for you i can only say that perhaps it is eaiser to ask and answer how can i not go to hell that step is much more rewarding stan toney stoney oyster smcm edu my opinions are my own you may borrow them p s stay in touch and keep asking questions not just to us but to god as well he listens too
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re when are two people married in god s eyes to recapitulate a bit the essence of marriage is two people s commitment to each other if two people claim to be married in their hearts but are not willing to have the marriage recognized by church and state that s prima facie evidence that the commitment isn t really there there are obvious situations in which christian marriage is possible without a civil or church wedding if you re stranded on a desert island or if your state forbids the marriage for an unjust reason e g laws against interracial marriage the legal concept of common law marriage is meant to ensure that the state will recognize marriages that did not start out with the usual ceremony and record keeping pastorally i m concerned that people should not use being married in god s eyes as an excuse for living together without a formal wedding one has a duty to have one s marriage properly recorded and witnessed but there are also people who have been through a wedding ceremony without making a genuine commitment and therefore are not married in god s eyes right michael a covington associate research scientist artificial intelligence programs mcovingt ai uga edu the university of georgia phone athens georgia u s a amateur radio n tmi i think the last statement is dangerous i believe as long as someone has formally undertaken the responsibility of marriage they have a moral obligation even if their intention was not right other people are involved in the marriage covenant if they believed in good faith that a marriage occurred then i think there are obligations created to them of course there are situations where intent can cause a marriage not to exist the classic example is when it s done as part of a play but these are exceptions and should be clear to all parties clh
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re assurance of hell in a previous article lfoard hopper virginia edu lawrence c foard writes did you know that jesus talked more about hell than he did about heaven thank you for this info what respect i had for the man now has been diminished tenfold i promise never again to say how wise or loving this man was i have a hard time understanding this attitude if the gospels are the least bit accurate then there can be little doubt that jesus belived hell was a reality as a teacher what would be the wise and loving thing to do if people in your audience were headed there to warn them it would however be rather cruel and or sadistic to believe that such a place exists and then remain quiet about it the only scenario i can envision in which dimished respect would be justified is if jesus knew there was no such place as hell and spoke about it anyway just to scare people unless you would accuse jesus of this i would encourage you to reconsider what a loving response is when you perceive someone to be in danger dave weaver he is no fool who gives what weaver chdasic sps mot com he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose jim elliot
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re serbian genocide work of god james sledd jsledd ssdc sas upenn edu wrote are the serbs doing the work of god hmm i ve been wondering if anyone would ever ask the question are the governments of the united states and europe not moving to end the ethnic cleansing by the serbs because the targets are muslims can does god use those who are not following him to accomplish tasks for him esp those tasks that are punative james sledd no cute sig but i m working on it are you suggesting that god supports genocide perhaps the germans were punishing jews on god s behalf any god who works that way is indescribably evil and unworthy of my worship or faith revdak netcom com
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re atheists and hell we look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come nicene constantinopolitan creed i always took the resurrection in this statement to mean the resurrection of the soul but i guess resurrection does strictly mean the raising of the physical body i have some questions on this point the next time you go to church you can check the better creed that is the apostles creed it says the resurrection of the body should have learned that on the first go around but what s a body without a little bit a soul i always thought that christians believe the descent into hell was pretty much immediate and that there are people burning in hell right now where will my soul which by the way i don t believe in exist until that time at the risk of offending everybody i will interject the th century point of view christ descended immediately into the bosom of abraham to set captives captive he preached to the saved for three days before drawing them with him back to this earth i m no expert on this part but matthew says about the death of jesus tombs were opened and the bodies of many saints who had fallen asleep were raised and coming forth from the tombs after his resurrection they entered the holy city and appeared to many nab regarding the hell of the damned of which you speak christ did not see it ps acts although it saw him cf is concerning the abodes of the dead i don t want to subject my brethren to further anguish so i will direct you to contact me through e mail if you are genuinely concerned will the new body i will have be created out of the same atoms that my body now is made of or will it be built from scratch your new body might be something like adam s before his fateful encounter with the just one acts cr trans vulgate filled with infused knowledge absent of concupiscence and immortal it would probably be a little glorified too since i will have a physical body i assume it will need a physical place to exist in where is this hell in the center of the earth do you think we could find it if we dig i wouldn t recommend it it s really hot down at the center of the earth you know the normal geothermal gradient and all that regards boundary the catechist no teneis que pensar que yo haya venido a traer la paz a la tierra no he venido a traer la paz sino la guerra mateo vulgata latina
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re the arrogance of christians in article apr athos rutgers edu aa freenet carleton ca mark baker writes i am asking you to believe in things not visible i don t know if this is believeing blindly or not i m not sure how blindness comes into it i do not deny reason indeed i insist upon it but reason only draws conclusions from evidence if you decide in advance that your reason will act only on the evidence of the five physical senses then you cut reason off from any possibility of reaching a conclusion outside the physical sphere beyond the rather provocative if inconclusive conclusion that the physical sphere is not self explanatory so your are saying to rely on our feelings and experiences since this is the only other source of information left to us how can you then convince somebody that your feelings and experiences are the correct ones then if you can t show somebody visible and measurable effects if my experiences say that there exists no god and yours says there does where does that leave us since we are only going on experiences then both of us are correct within our own personal realities furthermore the trouble with feelings and experiences is that they can lead you astray as the tragic outcome of waco illustrates i am sure that many of koresh s followers really believed in him but i think that you and i will agree that they were being misled finally how on earth do you come to the conclusion that the physical sphere is not self explanatory when you only rely on the five senses christians claim that they have received a different kind of evidence which they call faith and which is a gift of god that is this evidence is the evidence of a thing which chooses to reveal or hide itself the evidence of the senses cannot tell you is such a ting exists reasoning on the evidence of the senses won t help either but christians do reason of the evidence of faith and do claim that this evidence is wholly consistent with the evidence of the other senses and indeed that the evidence of these other senses is part of god s revelation of himself to us you must be using a definition of evidence that i am not familiar with to me evidence is something you can show others unambiguously that what you are saying is true however i agree with you that belief in a diety is a matter of faith it is not something you can share around others must experience it independantly unfortunately as i have explained above this puts belief down to a matter of experience my impression is that christians do not have the monopoly on reason evidence and faith as far as any of these things can go in a previous article phs d vaxc cc monash edu au says you are right that science and reason cannot prove anything however if we do not use them we can only then believe on faith alone and since we can only use faith why is one picture of god e g hinduism any less valid than another e g christianity faith as i have said is not opposed to reason it is simply a new source of evidence on which reason may operate it is clear that human beings have many systems for explaining the evidence of the physical senses and similarly there are many systems for explaining the evidence provided by faith religious believers in general and christians in particular use reason to help sift through the evidence to come to a clearer understanding of the evidence provided by faith science claims with good reason to be the most valid system for explaining the physical universe and christianity claims also with good reason to be the most valid system possessed of the best evidence for explaining gods revelations of himself to man at the risk of repeating my argument as i have explained previously the trouble is that moslems buddhists jews etc will all say that they claim with good reason to be a valid system possessed of the best evidence for explaining gods revelations to man for buddhists it should read for explaining the non existence of god so not only must you prove your own case you have to disprove theirs alt messianic is a good place to see people strong in the belief of their own faiths and with their own good reasons if you doubt that christians use reason read this newsgroup for a while and you will see rational debate aplenty i know that all people can use reason i never claimed that they don t i just wish to make sure that their arguments are well founded it goes without saying that if i make a blunder that i expect people to correct me once we have all gone through this process of removing the non essential and contradictory bits we should hopefully have made some progress towards the truth mark baker the task is not to cut down jungles but aa freenet carleton ca to irrigate deserts c s lewis don lowe department of physics monash university melbourne victoria australia
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looking for christians in urbana illinois i apologize if this post isn t entirely appropriate for the newsgroup i would like to correspond with any christians attending the university of illinois at urbana champaign i will be transfering there in august to complete my ph d and i thought it would be nice to correspond with people before i moved out steven h schimmrich department of geological sciences non semper ss csc albany edu state university of new york at albany ea sunt quae ss albnyvms bitnet albany new york videntur
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re am i going to hell in apr geneva rutgers edu tim asks i have stated before that i do not consider myself an atheist but definitely do not believe in the christian god the recent discussion about atheists and hell combined with a post to another group to the effect of you will all go to hell has me interested in the consensus as to how a god might judge men as a catholic i was told that a jew buddhist etc might go to heaven but obviously some people do not believe this even more see atheists and pagans i assume i would be lumped into this category to be hellbound i know you believe only god can judge and i do not ask you to just for your opinions this is probably too simplistic for some but john saus for god so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life genesis and he abram believed the lord and he reckoned it to him as righteousness i don t find anywhere that god restricts heaven to particular ethnic groups or religious denominations or any other category that we humans like to drop people into but he does require that we believe and trust him in hebrews it says that god spoke of old by the prophets the old testament but in these last days he has spoken to us by his son jesus christ and we learn of him through the pages of the new testament the bible tells us what we need to believe for those who have never heard i leave them in god s capable care he will make himself known as he desires it behooves each one of us to act upon the knowledge we have if you reject the claims of jesus and still go to heaven then the joke s on me if you reject him and go to hell that s no joke but it will be final gerry the opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer
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re atheist s views on christianity was re accepting jeesus in your heart in article apr athos rutgers edu jasons atlastele com jason smith writes one of the laws of nature specifying cause and effect seems to dictate at least to this layman s mind there must be a causal event no reasonable alternative exists the big bang model supposes a temporal singularity at the point of origin there was no time for a prior cause to occur in if you want to invent fables for the surrounding context fine but one fable is only as good as any other why should i prefer to believe in a god that just exists as opposed to a singularity that just happened or giant puce subspace iguanas that fling universes off their tongues like gobs of spit as far as i can tell the very laws of nature demand a why that isn t true of something outside of nature i e super natural i believe the genetic code will be entirely deciphered in our lifetimes but we will not see man convert entirely inert material into self sustaining reproducing life ever i ve never been much of a prophet though i can t even picture new york in my mind i don t believe any technology would be able to produce that necessary spark of life despite having all of the parts available just my opinion just your opinion and unfortunately wrong self assembling molecules have already been produced entirely from inert matter and have spontaneously mutated into a more rapidly assembling form on exposure to ultraviolet light both abiogenesis and the beginnings of evolution today saw this in nature early last year biological vitalism is dead and has been dead for many many years give it up life is not a spark life is the self organization of systems poised between chaos and order until the king returns jason your king baldly and repeatedly stated he would be back within the lifetime of some then present and alive soon soon he said over and over as have many would be messiahs it is nineteen ninety three of years anno domini tell me tell me where is he nowhere at all q e d max g webb i should have watched this more closely we had a discussion about the first cause etc not long ago i m not up for a replay there was also a detailed discussion of the point max brings up here about the initial singularity the geometry near the big bang is very interesting time turns into space so there is no before clh
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re losing your temper is not a christian trait from article apr athos rutgers edu by ruthless panix com ruth ditucci coming from a long line of hot tempered people i know temper when i see it one of the tell tale signs fruits that give non christians away is when their net replies are acrid angry and sarcastic i do hope that you are not suggesting that merely because a person replies in an acrid angry and sarcastic manner that this demonstrates their non christianity the simple fact is that there is not a christian on the face of the planet that i know of that is perfect i have been known at times to have a fit of temper or a sulk but this does not make me any the less a christian one of the points of being a christian as i perceive it is to become more like christ this statement inherently suggests that we are not already like christ jesus never unrighteously lost his temper i do jesus was perfect i m not we in the net village do have a laugh or two when professed born again christians verbally attack people who might otherwise have been won to christianity and had originally joined the discussions because they were spiritually hungry instead of answering questions with sweetness and sincerity these chrisitan net warriors flame the queries you must understand that this is because christians often forget to treat others as our role model christ would this is because we are human and falible i for one do not pretend to be infalible and i hope that my fellow men will bear with me when i make mistakes this surely is not too much to ask when i make every effort to bear with them you don t need any enemies you already do yourselves the greatest harm and don t we know it again i say foolish foolish foolish again i say we are all human to my brethren this ms duticci has a valid point and we as christians ought to heed the warning in her article we oftimes discredit ourselves and our saviour in the way that we treat others strive towards the goal set us by our lord but in the meantime remember there is no condemnation for those who are in christ when you blow it go easy on yourself forgive yourself as your father in heaven forgives you and remember and this is something i firmly beieve and cling to one day we shall see him face to face and in that day we shall finally be perfected i look forward to seeing you there rrrrr oo bbbbb r r oo oo b b r r oo oo b bb robert pomeroy r rr o o b b rrrr o o bbbbb u i teach cs keele ac uk r r o o b b r r oo oo b bb r r oo oo b b r r oo bbbbb ps if you want to draw anything to my attention then please mail me direct because i don t often read the news pps if i have offended anyone with this article i beg your forgiveness in advance
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re hell black sabbath in article apr geneva rutgers edu salaris niblick ecn purdue edu rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrabbits wrote jeff fenholt claims to have once been a roadie for black sabbath he was never ever a musician in the band he was in st louis several months back the poster i saw at the christian bookstore i frequent really turned me off it was addressed to all homosexuals prostitutes drug addicts alcoholics and headbangers or something like that well if i showed up with my long hair and black leather jacket i would have felt a little pre judged i have seen jeff fenholt speak and i didn t find him judgemental i think that the wording for that add was certainly inappropriate but i think they were trying to say that headbangers would like the program but i would not put headbangers in the same class as alcholics etc it is condescending and i believe that jeff was wearing black when i saw him by the way fenholt played jesus in jesus christ superstar personally i m a headbanger at times too but i have a hard time with what most of the secular metal groups promote free sex and drugs my opinion that many promote these aren t my thing i have found several good christian metal groups that i like jon jon ogden jono mac ak rtsg mot com motorola cellular advanced products division voice data they drew a circle and shut him out heretic rebel a thing to flout but love and i had the wit to win we drew a circle and took him in
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re losing your temper is not a christian trait in article apr geneva rutgers edu jcj tellabs com jcj wrote i d like to remind people of the withering of the fig tree and jesus driving the money changers et al out of the temple i think those were two instances of christ showing anger as part of his human side yes and what about paul saying be ye angry and sin not let not the sun go down upon your wrath ephesians obviously then we can be angry w o sinning jon jon ogden jono mac ak rtsg mot com motorola cellular advanced products division voice data they drew a circle and shut him out heretic rebel a thing to flout but love and i had the wit to win we drew a circle and took him in
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re harrassed at work could use some prayers well i ll email also but this may apply to other people so i ll post also i ve been working at this company for eight years in various engineering jobs i m female yesterday i counted and realized that on seven different occasions i ve been sexually harrassed at this company i dreaded coming back to work today what if my boss comes in to ask me some kind of question your boss should be the person bring these problems to if he she does not seem to take any action keep going up higher and higher sexual harrassment does not need to be tolerated and it can be an enormous emotional support to discuss this with someone and know that they are trying to do something about it if you feel you can not discuss this with your boss perhaps your company has a personnel department that can work for you while preserving your privacy most companies will want to deal with this problem because constant anxiety does seriously affect how effectively employees do their jobs it is unclear from your letter if you have done this or not it is not inconceivable that management remains ignorant of employee problems strife even after eight years it s a miracle if they do notice perhaps your manager did not bring to the attention of higher ups if the company indeed does seem to want to ignore the entire problem there may be a state agency willing to fight with you check with a lawyer a women s resource center etc to find out you may also want to discuss this with your paster priest husband etc that is someone you know will not be judgemental and that is supportive comforting etc this will bring a lot of healing so i returned at only to find that ever single person had already left for lunch they left at or so no one could be bothered to call me at the other building even though my number was posted this happens to a lot of people honest i believe it may seem to be due to gross insensitivity because of the feelings you are going through people in offices tend to be more insensitive while working than they normally are maybe it s the hustle or stress or i ve had this happen to me a lot often because they didn t realize my car was broken etc then they will come back and wonder why i didn t want to go this would tend to make me stop being angry at being ignored and make me laugh once we went off without our boss who was paying for the lunch for this reason i hope good mr moderator allows me this latest indulgence well if you can t turn to the computer for support what would we do signs of the computer age in closing please don t let the hateful actions of a single person harm you they are doing it because they are still the playground bully and enjoy seeing the hurt they cause and you should not accept the opinions of an imbecile that you are worthless much wiser people hold you in great esteem darin johnson djohnson ucsd edu luxury in my day we had to make do with bytes of swap
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