Understanding the bible

[Minimalist]

Repenteth means sorrow or sadness, not regret. God was saddened by the depth of man's fall

Omniscience means that your fucking god should have known how it would turn out when he started. You cannot get away from the corner you have painted yourself into. Either your god is omnipotent and omniscient or not. Make up your mind. I don't care as your god is as phony as all the others but you have a problem with your own bullshit.

[Godscreated]

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OK enough of that, here's the way I see things when it comes to those who eventually leave Christianity. I do believe there are those who leave and were Christians, however I can not see that they can deny God, Satan does not deny God, these that leave, reject God and His plan for mankind.

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I don't think it's possible for someone to deconvert while still accepting that God is real. I'm not saying that they go from believing to claiming that he, a deity, doesn't exist at all, but rather that the Christian deity can't be shown to be real.

I don't know of any cases myself where the unbeliever still holds the belief that a particular deity is real. That's an oxymoron.

Why, Satan and the fallen angels knew God, they still know He exists, they have rejected who He is, not His existence. All the Christians in my church know God is real, they do not need physical sight to believe, through the Holy Spirit we see God as plain as we see the church building when we enter the parking lot. Faith in God leads to believing ie. knowing. Once a person truly experiences God that person knows God exists, once a person knows God exists that person can never truly deny He doesn't.
Not a oxymoron, rather a rejecting of who God is. I do not know many who have rejected who God is, it's rather rare, even to the point of being extremely rare. This is why I can know that those who say they were Christians and say God is not real, never truly believed He does exist.

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Those who leave and deny God's existence never really believed, as you stated, actually had an experience with the Holy Spirit. When one has experienced the Holy Spirit working in their lives it is something unforgettable and undeniable. Now I'm not talking about a lightning strike kind of moment, but a peaceful experience of revelation.

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This is what I meant by subjective. Your experience will be different to mine. Not only that, but only you know what you have experienced and how you experienced it, no one else. So with that being said, how can we even begin to establish a way of knowing if someone was ever (or even is) a Christian? My experience was unforgettable because literature has never made me weep before, yet there I was Bible in one hand and wiping tears with the other. But as I said, it's all subjective so there's no concrete way of knowing for sure if e.g. I was a Christian. Isn't it most logical to just leave it up to the individual to determine that?

Maybe you need to talk to a group of Christians and see what they have experienced through the Holy Spirit. I can tell you that if you were to ask people in my church you would hear many comments, yet there would be a similarity between each person. So for those I know as Christians they would not reject God, they have experienced Him through the Holy Spirit. As for my church God and our experiences are not subjective, indeed they are real and our experiences are much the same.
Leaving it up to the individual is not what Christ wanted, you need to remember, Christ formed the church so that those who are believers will share in their experience with God.

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The scripture come alive and you see truths revealed that only Christians can understand, unbelievers can not, you understand things which happen in your life are not coincidental, they are God lead. When active in the church one will find God puts one into positions that are not necessarily comfortable, so God can show one that He is working in one's life. God will show one that He can work His will through one, and that person reaps the joy of what is done. People who experience the Holy Spirit can see God and His wonders through the scriptures, and things He does in their lives.

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I can see why believers would testify to all this, but I guess my problem with it all (or rather the unsolved problem within Christians themselves) is the never ending debates over the right interpretation. This is definitely a problem because in the eyes of some Christians certain experiences of other Christians have to be discredited as being from God and therefore it's mere nonsense, or as my church calls it 'religious baggage'. A big one of these is speaking in tongues. I've had Christians friends persuade me either for or against speaking in tongues as being 'legit'.

As for things like speaking in tongues, these things must conform to scriptures, this takes deep study with the Holy Spirit guiding one to the truth. These differences make up the many denominations, as long as each believe in salvation through Christ the Son of God then we must consider them Christian churches. Remember the Church is the bride of Christ, and as biblical speaking, the bride is to serve the Groom and the Groom to provide for the bride. Want a hint to speaking in tongues, it's plural.

So I guess the greater picture here is that if we don't have a crystal clear definition of Christianity itself, then people's claims of God working through them can go either way as being genuine or false, because there's no real way of comparing it to the Bible.

It is the unbeliever that has a problem with the definition of Christianity, not the Christian church. Yes there's a way to determine what the scriptures say about how God works through them, allowing the Holy Spirit to guide one through scripture to reveal the truth. This however leaves the unbeliever without the ability to understand the deep meanings within the scriptures, the Holy Spirit will reveal salvation to the unbeliever, but will not work through them to understand the scriptures and the way they work in a believers life.

[Epimethean]

Speaking in tongues takes deep study? Linda Blair did it easy. Satan FTW.

I do like the ""Bride of Christenstein" notion, though. Can we give the church a black and white beehive do?

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"Would you say that Gott isn't a good source at all then?"

I would say, read Plutarch, read Luke-Acts, and do so in the Greek or with a good concordance. After that, read the scholarship outside of the christian set. Finally, after forming your own conclusions, read Gott. I find Gott to be far from the last word. After all, she's just another internet preacher.

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

Speaking in tongues takes deep study? Linda Blair did it easy. Satan FTW.

I've seen speaking and SINGING in tongues. I got dragged to a Pentacostal revival*,a mixture of theatre,humbug and mass hysteria. My dog has more depth than those cretins.


*obviously by a young lady whose panties I badly wanted to remove. Made the mistake of answering honestly to the breathless enquiry "Well, what did you think of THAT?" No pantie removing for me.

[Anomalocaris]

*obviously by a young lady whose panties I badly wanted to remove. Made the mistake of answering honestly to the breathless enquiry "Well, what did you think of THAT?" No pantie removing for me.

I was cunning enough to try to withhold my answer. But alas she open her mouth again and showed me how not worthwhile had been my restraint.

[Minimalist]

What guys will do to get laid is amazing.

[FallentoReason]

Why, Satan and the fallen angels knew God, they still know He exists, they have rejected who He is, not His existence. All the Christians in my church know God is real, they do not need physical sight to believe, through the Holy Spirit we see God as plain as we see the church building when we enter the parking lot. Faith in God leads to believing ie. knowing. Once a person truly experiences God that person knows God exists, once a person knows God exists that person can never truly deny He doesn't.
Not a oxymoron, rather a rejecting of who God is. I do not know many who have rejected who God is, it's rather rare, even to the point of being extremely rare. This is why I can know that those who say they were Christians and say God is not real, never truly believed He does exist.

It's a very subtle point you're trying to make and I know what you mean. I guess for me it was kind of like having my eyes closed while talking to someone who claimed to be something, and then when I had the courage to open my eyes to confirm it all I saw was myself in the mirror. Sorry that probably wasn't the best analogy but it's rather early in the morning!

Maybe you need to talk to a group of Christians and see what they have experienced through the Holy Spirit. I can tell you that if you were to ask people in my church you would hear many comments, yet there would be a similarity between each person. So for those I know as Christians they would not reject God, they have experienced Him through the Holy Spirit. As for my church God and our experiences are not subjective, indeed they are real and our experiences are much the same.
Leaving it up to the individual is not what Christ wanted, you need to remember, Christ formed the church so that those who are believers will share in their experience with God.

I've heard many testimonies and I have to agree that they all have a common theme amongst them. I also see their reasons for needing something to comfort them as some of these people had rather dark pasts. There's others where the correlation between the experience and God seems rather arbitrary.. But who am I to judge their own experience. As I said, it's all subjective and there's no way of really being able to test any of it.

As for things like speaking in tongues, these things must conform to scriptures, this takes deep study with the Holy Spirit guiding one to the truth. These differences make up the many denominations, as long as each believe in salvation through Christ the Son of God then we must consider them Christian churches. Remember the Church is the bride of Christ, and as biblical speaking, the bride is to serve the Groom and the Groom to provide for the bride. Want a hint to speaking in tongues, it's plural.

Christ always mentioned the Church i.e. singular. I think ideally Christianity is meant to be unified under one 'denomination'. Otherwise Christ would of had/wanted many brides and I think that sounds very suss =)

If the requirement for a church is to teach salvation through faith in Christ, then that is saying something about the individual and their requirement for 'membership'. According to this I was definitely a Christian then.

It is the unbeliever that has a problem with the definition of Christianity, not the Christian church. Yes there's a way to determine what the scriptures say about how God works through them, allowing the Holy Spirit to guide one through scripture to reveal the truth. This however leaves the unbeliever without the ability to understand the deep meanings within the scriptures, the Holy Spirit will reveal salvation to the unbeliever, but will not work through them to understand the scriptures and the way they work in a believers life.

I understand that the Holy Spirit is key to making everything fit. The problem is how do I know I really have it? The problem for me when a Christian in this case says 'just believe, let God work through you' is that to me it's like I have a bike without wheels and the Christian says 'just have the faith that it will work' but I can clearly see I'm going to get nowhere.

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I would say, read Plutarch, read Luke-Acts, and do so in the Greek or with a good concordance. After that, read the scholarship outside of the christian set. Finally, after forming your own conclusions, read Gott. I find Gott to be far from the last word. After all, she's just another internet preacher.

Ok, sounds like a plan. Thanks for that.

[The Grand Nudger]

Why, Satan and the fallen angels knew God, they still know He exists, they have rejected who He is, not His existence. All the Christians in my church know God is real, they do not need physical sight to believe, through the Holy Spirit we see God as plain as we see the church building when we enter the parking lot. Faith in God leads to believing ie. knowing. Once a person truly experiences God that person knows God exists, once a person knows God exists that person can never truly deny He doesn't.
Not a oxymoron, rather a rejecting of who God is. I do not know many who have rejected who God is, it's rather rare, even to the point of being extremely rare. This is why I can know that those who say they were Christians and say God is not real, never truly believed He does exist.

What color tiara does your god sport? Every believer of every faith "knew" their god was real, you cant all be right, but you can all be wrong. Way to cheapen the painful experience of those who have utterly lost the faith they once held as deeply (and who's to say, perhaps more deeply) than yourself.

Speaking of Satan and his fallen angels. As you say, the story tells us that they knew god. Still, they decided he was a big enough douche for a hostile takeover. Now, we could imagine that the large majority of these angels were absolute dumb-asses (god has a bad track record in the smarts dept) but at least a few of them likely would have had legitimate gripes. Now, we don't know anything at all about this god (despite your babbling to the contrary) and we already have legitimate gripes. All it would take for a full blown rebellion is that god did exactly what he did all day every day....and clicked his tongue incessently-and many human beings would be driven to murder.

Thankfully, this is all fairy tale bullshit and adults don't swallow fairy tale bullshit like it was a documentary, do they? Honestly, take just a half step back here and consider what you're proposing. A magical war between mythical creatures.......





(at what point does it become "okay" in a normal conversation between sane people to invoke monsters as elaboration upon a point of contention?)

[Zen Badger]

So if everything that has happened is part of gods "perfect plan" why does he then regret what he's done

Genesis6:7 And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.

Generally when a plan I've conceived comes out exactly as I've planned it I don't regret it.

Repenteth means sorrow or sadness, not regret. God was saddened by the depth of man's fall, His love was so great for man and man had left their creator. Yes He knew this great fall was coming, but like I said God's love was so great it still saddened Him, this is how terrible man had become.

Way to go buddy, you are making no sense at all.

Here is the definition of repent from dictionary.com

"to feel sorry, self-reproachful, or contrite for past conduct; regret or be conscience-stricken about a past action, attitude, etc. (often followed by of ): He repented after his thoughtless act.
2.
to feel such sorrow for sin or fault as to be disposed to change one's life for the better; be penitent.

So even though god(by your own admission) had planned for man to fall.
And then condemned him for the sin of doing exactly what god had intended him to do in the first place. He feels sorrow at what man had become.

Even though, since this was gods plan all along, man had no choice in the matter at all.

[Minimalist]

A magical war between mythical creatures.......

Which is what passes for reality in G-Cs world!