Joan of Bark

WHICH word of God? There are so many, and they don't agree. "Anyone who works on the sabbath shall be put to death", says the big guy in Exodus. "The sabbath was made for man, not the other way around", claims his son. Clarification, please.

BenefitOfTheDoubt

Not according to Catholics and Pentecostals and such, but according to the Bible it is!!! Acts 17:11 "These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so." These Jews did not just accept Paul's word for it when he said "Jesus is the Messiah that the Prophets wrote about" but they searched to see if he was telling the truth. Faith simply defined is trust, but if that trust is not in God's revelation of himself--if it is in just say-so's and fantacies, you can call it "faith" and it will be faith too, but not faith in God! It will be faith in your own opinions, or in your pastor, or in the pope, or in some other man.

Only for those who refuse to have faith in God and choose to have faith in fantasies.

Faith is about believing something that someone said (that is as of yet unproven) based on other things they said that have been proven. If you told me "tomorrow it will rain" why should I have faith in that? But if for the last 10 years you have correctly predicted the weather, I could have faith in that (yet unproven statement) based on your previous (proven) statements.

Did God say thousands and thousands of years ago concerning Ishmael (the ancestor of the Islamics) in Genesis 16:12 "He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone's hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers"? And based on that accurate and proven statement, may I not also have faith that he is correct when he says in Zechariah 14:12 "And this shall be the plague with which the LORD will strike all the people who fought against Jerusalem: Their flesh shall dissolve while they stand on their feet, Their eyes shall dissolve in their sockets, And their tongues shall dissolve in their mouths"--especially when I see for myself that Islam is attempting to arm itself to the teeth with nukes and that nuclear war of the West and Israel against all the Islamic nations is inevitable? But, oh, I shouldn't believe that, right?

Didn't God predict that all nations would hate the Jews, way back before he even formed the nation of Israel? Back in Deu 28:37 "And you shall become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword among all nations where the LORD will drive you"? And has it not come to pass time and time again? Antisemitism is rampant everwhere, and has been for centuries!

And didn't God predict the arrival of the pope of Rome and the Roman Catholic church, the antichristian and false-church, when God said in 1 Tim 4:1-3 "Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry [i.e.homosexual paedofile Catholic priesthood], and commanding to abstain from meats [i.e.Fridays in Lent] which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth"????? How beyond all human reason it is to think that after God so clearly laid that out, a sect of those claiming (ever so falsely) to be Christians would actually teach those demonic doctrines which he clearly condemned. Yet it happened! And since he was right on that, should I not believe he is also right when he says "Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven"?? (Heb 12:26)

Apikorus

And didn't God predict the aberrant ministry and swift execution of Jesus when God said in Deuteronomy 18:20,

But the prophet that shall speak a word presumptuously in My name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.'

Spanky

I don't, I just gave you the BenefitOfTheDoubt and spoke in a language you can understand. It is an old language I learned long ago and have no further use for it now.
By the way, this part of the forum is not used for bashing Catholics and Pentecostals. It is used to for discussing Biblical CRITICISM and HISTORY.

Sorry I felt the need to respond to that OP. I hope you find your answer!

BenefitOfTheDoubt

Because atheists can't bash evil religions like Catholics, Pentecostals, Baptists, and Muslims---no, only true Christians. Alright, if you love the pope, you can go to Virginia and marry him.

Apikorus

Do you love Jimmy Swaggart?

jjramsey

False dichotomy. God could have made it so that those who wanted to know him had to work at it, but still made it clear that there was someone to know in the first place. As it stands, all the things that used to be thought of as hints to his existence--such as the order in the universe, morality, numinous experience--have turned out not to be valid pointers at all.

Joan of Bark

Any book that contains as many (vague) predictions as the Bible is bound to be (approximately) correct some of the time, just like a broken clock. Many of Hitler's predictions came true, also, which justified for many their 'faith' in him. This argument can be made for every nut job and work of philosophy in history, especially when one interprets predictions in the loosest sense. For instance, what makes you think that "all" nations hate the Jews? That's an incredibly eurocentric idea; most nations on Earth don't even know who the Jews are! And I could argue that more nations hate people with black skin. Unfortunately, hatred against those who are perceived as different has been common in the world for a long time. You need to learn some history.

pharoah

There was no Ishmael, no Esau, no Moab, no Ham, etc. These characters were all literary inventions by the Hebrews to heap scorn on their enemies and to justify their atrocities (if they really happened at all).

Let's look at Zechariah 14:

2 For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city.

Do you honestly believe that ALL nations in the world will gather together to battle Israel?

16And it shall come to pass, that every one that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles.

Doesn't this contradict the gospels and Revelations, which claims that all of the wicked will be thrown into a lake of fire? Are you keeping the feast of tabernacles right now? Or do you believe that it has been abolished but will make a miracalous reappearance during the "end-times"?

The irony here is profound. Antisemitism is largely a product of Christianity, spurred on by the rabid anti-Jewish messages of Paul and the gospels.

Jesus and Paul may not have ever expressly forbidden marriage, but it is clear that they thought it was the lesser of two evils, as the passages below amply demostrate. They strongly believed that it was better not to marry.

Spanky

We don't care what brand they are. They all fall under the same category: WRONG!
So what's the difference to us? Catholicism is stupid and ritualistic. Pentecostals are ignorant actors who think that "speaking in tongues" is babbling gibberish. (it meant speaking in other languages! Mormons. . .mormons. . .I just feel sorry for them. We bash them all the time. I just don't insert myself into a discussion and start preaching and waving my finger!
:devil1: God save us from your followers!:devil1: