passion9

Cute, but no. Both covenants are a blood covenant, the old involved a person being under a law (including animal sacrifices and the 10 Commandments) and being punished as such. However, under the new covenant the animal sacrifice was done once and for all on the Cross at Calvary (Jesus, the holy, spotless Lamb) and by accepting Christ into your life and recieving the Holy Spirit (which is a completely different story, recieving the Holy Spirit and repentance are 2 things which are greatly misinterpretted) you are no longer under the law. Christ 's sacrifice is the atonement for our sins and the Holy Spirit is God's deposit in us to show that we are His.

As far as what you asked Fenton, no that is not true. God is still a wrathful, jealous God, it says that numerous times in the NT. However, God's next "outpouring of wrath" will not come until the prophecies in Revelations are met. He is still the same as He was in the OT, and as He will be when rapture occurs, but the next time He does punish us for our sins it will be the final time. He is only being patient because it is His wish that none should perish, and He will no come back until all prophecies are complete.

Grace and Peace

Edit: The new covenant is also different in the respect that we now can communicate directly with God and He with us. So many of the more drastic measures are not so much needed because of the conviction that the Holy Spirit brings us. Once we realize that we are sinful, how bad sin actually is, and the fact that we cannot do anything about it... that's when Jesus and His sacrifice becomes so important, and when Christianity steps out of the realm of "religions" and into it's true form, a relationship with a loving God (though still jealous and having the same qualities that He had in the OT).

Yellum Notnef

Why does God need a blood covenant? And even more bizarre is that the second blood covenant was made with Gods own blood.
And whats God so jealous about? Other Gods?

I have some other cute questions about Revelations and the Rapture,but they will have to wait until tomorrow.

passion9

As a result of the Fall, we are no longer holy and blameless in God's sight and God cannot live where sin does. If you remember He actually walked in the Garden with Adam and Eve before the Fall. Now that we have sin keeping us from God, something must be done to eleminate it so that we can be atoned with God (or to God). In the OT, only the choice animals that were owned were supposed to be given as a sacrifice (and many time it was not, which is seen throughout the OT) because they were "perfect" and their blood atoned for our sins. Blood was required because the punishment for sin (or back in the OT, breaking the Law) was death so a sacrifice was required.

Now in the NT, Jesus was our blood sacrifice, if we accept Him we accept not only Hs death, but His ressurrection. That shows that while we were dead in sin we can be reborn through the Holy Spirit and live with God again in harmony.

The reason for jealousy is this, God created us to dwell with Him... you can see in Genesis before the Fall how it says He was pleased with what He had made and with His creation, mankind. Now when we give our love to something else (in OT, idols... like Baal... in NT, anything we make our idol, for example sex, or drugs, or anything other than God that we make our "god") He wants to express His love for us and have it returned to Him, that is why He went as far as to send His own Son to be our sacrifice, the only One who was still sinless.

And please save your ? about rapture and Rev... I have enough of my own I guess that's what Hebrews 11:1 means

Grace and Peace

Thor Q. Mada

passion9,

What an incredible load of B. You know on which forum you are?
Just quoting that silly book will get you nothing but sneers and laughs.
Which century are you from by the way??
I you issit being an imaginary person, that is your right, but do it somewhere else.

navi_cat

This has probably so been covered before, but...

Fundamentalist forms of religion are appealing to the masses because it gives a strict guidleine of what to and not to do. If you follow the guidelines, then you're doing pretty good [or so you think] and can believe yourself to be better than the "wicked." Since you're behaving in a godly manner, then you're cool with the guy unlike these other people. Humans eat up that whole superiority thing... I think it comes from us not having a natural predator. =)

It's a no-brainer sort of way to live your life... much like watching Fox News or MSNBC, heh.

Buddhism calls for you to meditate, work at realising your potential and place in the world... how many people can handle that? Not enough.

Then again, what do I know? I just got here.


As a side note, I don't think Mormonism is growing so much as the population of Mormons is growing. Those crazy Mormons.

echidna

Hi passion9. Is that why there are several thousand different Christian denominations, some of which are intent on killing each other ? I can assure you that they've all read the Gospel & I would suggest most are familiar with Jesus Christ.

lpetrich

(me on warniks beating up peaceniks and becoming the only ones around...)

passion9:
Then how does that explain the rise of Christianity, the first church was a very peaceful movement (the book of Acts). ...

Including such gentle and loving rhetoric as "You snakes and brood of vipers, how can you escape being sentenced to Hell?"

The early Christians engaged in extremely vicious factional disputes, and when one faction was made the Roman Empire's official religion, it ruthlessly suppressed all the others.

Psycho Economist

Back to the Original Post...

Authoritarian flavors of monotheistic religions grow quickly because...

1. They breed lots of new followers in-house.
2. They keep their membership in line by teaching their followers that there are painful costs associated with leaving for other faiths (even other sects within the same faith).
3. They actively recruit, not only generally but from mainline groups within their faiths.

Increase the size of the market, create artificial switching costs for customers and sell, sell, sell!

We are the one true denomination of the one true faith! If you visit a lousy CoC church, Satan will take your soul!

Old Man

No. By the time Christianity conquered the Roman emperors, it was not early Christianity but late. The church was full of false teachings and heresies by that time. If you want to criticize Christianity proper, you need to stick with the Pauline conception, and not waste time on corrupted versions, which were neither fundamentalist, nor in many cases Christian at all.

HelenM

With all due respect, I don't see why a non-Christian would want to confine themselves to objecting to what you in particular consider to be 'Christianity proper'.

Do you?

I would think they would object to whatever anyone who calls themselves a Christian, claims 'Christianity' to be, to the extent they have objections to it.

Helen