The Reasons why "Just Following Jesus" Doesn't work

[Wyrd of Gawd]

There's not a single thing written by Jesus.  Not a single one.  So I'm not sure how you can be so sure that everything they said he said is what he actually said.  Especially since most of them aren't even fucking first hand accounts.

By revelation from God. When I meet God my parents sporadically took us to church, I didn't read the bible and my family didn't read it to me. The only reason I believe what the bible says is because I know who God is. God is the foundation of my faith not the Bible. Now don't get me wrong I believe what the Bible says, but only because it is backed up by my revelation of God.

There's a God character in the Koran.  Why don't you believe in it since it's supposed to be the same one as the biblical God?  After all, they are both ethnocentric Middle Eastern desert deities.

[Rekeisha]

By revelation from God. When I meet God my parents sporadically took us to church, I didn't read the bible and my family didn't read it to me. The only reason I believe what the bible says is because I know who God is. God is the foundation of my faith not the Bible. Now don't get me wrong I believe what the Bible says, but only because it is backed up by my revelation of God.

How do you know that the Devil isn't tricking you into believing the bible?

Why would he do that?

[Rekeisha]

By revelation from God. When I meet God my parents sporadically took us to church, I didn't read the bible and my family didn't read it to me. The only reason I believe what the bible says is because I know who God is. God is the foundation of my faith not the Bible. Now don't get me wrong I believe what the Bible says, but only because it is backed up by my revelation of God.

There's a God character in the Koran.  Why don't you believe in it since it's supposed to be the same one as the biblical God?  After all, they are both ethnocentric Middle Eastern desert deities.

Because the god of the Q'uarn is not God and you can ask a muslim if what a christian belive about God is the same as what they believe and they will say no. There is only one God and He has reviled Himself through the Bible, and creation.

[Rekeisha]

Was it an actual audible voice you heard, or a dream, or what?

I have never heard an audible voice from God. I have had dreams but the best I can explain it as is an impression or an idea. Sometimes a thought will be in my mind for awhile before I pay it any attention. In the past and even know certain scriputres or songs come to my mind in responce to certain situations.

[Cyberman]

And what makes you think it's "God" speaking to you?

[Rekeisha]

Hello TheRocketSurgeon (dig the name) I don't think you read my statement correctly. I said no argument could shake my faith because there isn't any real evidence that can be presented that would refute the reality of God. Also if it were up to me to stay a Christian I wouldn't stay a Christian, but bless the Lord it isn't. God is the one who will keep me to the end. At the very moment I gave my life to Christ is the very moment that I couldn't lose my faith. When I was younger I used to be afraid of losing my faith and I learned later that no one can take anyone out of the Father's hands. It says that God saves to the utter most. The most that I do with my faith is obey what God says. When I was covered by the blood of Christ and was justified by His sacrifice, by dieing on the cross and rising from the dead, there is nothing that can cause me to lose it because my salvation isn't up to me but God.

There is a difference though from mental assent and faith. There are may people who are willing to say that Jesus is the Christ and God in the flesh but have never put their faith in him for saving them from their sins. There may even be an emotional attachment to God or a love for the church but that doesn't save a person. Who cares if you think Jesus is God it won't save you. What saves you is actually repenting of your sins accepting Jesus's death on the cross as your death, and His resurrection from the dead as you raising to new life. Your assurance of this transaction is that the Holy Spirit takes up habitation in your body. Your desires begin to line up with God's desires and sin is no longer enjoyable. If you have never experienced that then you were never a Christian.

Ahh, the No True Scotsman™. Guess I shouldn't be surprised to hear it from someone so obviously fanatical. Don't worry, you're not even close to the first to tell me that load of tripe.

How can you possibly begin to guess how I felt? I assure you, I was as "on fire for Jesus" as anyone you have ever met. However, I also have a strong streak of skepticism and had spent much of my childhood reading books besides the Bible (I also have read the Bible all the way through as a Believer, in two translations: NIV and NKJV, and have taken a university-level course on the History of the Bible, in which we practically read the whole thing again). I was a saved, or as we called it "born again" Christian and was studying the Word in order to get closer to Him, to repent of my sins and follow the Word of God, as we all did.

The difference is that, when faced with things that conflicted with what I was being taught in my church, I did not reject them simply because I did not like where the evidence led. When I found contradictions and plain errors in the Bible, which I was taught to believe was the unquestionable, literal Word of God, I did not ignore what I had found. Indeed, at first I looked more closely into these things because I wanted to be closer to God, and I recognized that it was possible that I was being a "Bible idolator" instead of trying to know my Creator wholly... after all, if the men who wrote the Bible put something in there that was not in agreement with what we could discover about the world around us, it meant that the Creator had done what we found, not what those men wrote.

You know the funny thing about it? I can't tell one major way in which I'm different, in terms of "sin desires", now than I was in the past, although I do find it much easier to realize that many of the "sins" that the Bible attributes to God's will are actually silly things, but I do not harm my fellow man, I do not hold violence or hatred in my heart (less so than even when I was a Christian), and I seek to do good because it is the best way to live as a moral, social animal-- human, in other words.

That is why I say I do not think you are being honest. An honest person would recognize that what they feel isn't necessarily the truth; an honest person would admit that the book in which they place their faith as the Word of God seems to be the work of humans, since God in that book orders/contains genocide, slavery, and almost every form of intolerance the Bronze Age tribal sheepherder priests held... and strangely, God makes several very easy mistakes that the Creator of the Universe would have known, but that the Hebrews did not know. (For one example, look at Genesis 30:25-47, where it describes a type of inheritance/adaptation that was disproven by Gregor Mendel when he discovered genetics...until the 1800s, everyone thought what the Bible taught was true, but now we know better.)

God knows no more than Bronze Age desert people. Now why is that? Be honest. Try it!

I think you missed read me again I said that faith in God is not based in feelings. I believe you when you say that you felt on fire for God. I am saying that faith in God transends emotions and feeling. If I had to rely on my feelings then I wouldn't believe. I don't believe because it makes me feel good, I believe because it is the truth and I know God. My foundation is God, christ His crucifixion and ressurection for the forgiveness of my sin. That doesn't make me fanatical just a christian.

When I was in college I was in gross sin and that is one of the most painful times of my life. Partly because the image I had about myself was being destroyed and partly because I hated my sin. I hate sin it ruines everything. I hate seeing it in me and I hate the affects it has on this world. If the only difference between you then and you now is your lack of religion then you weren't born again. You were never changed. If you were truly born again then you would be a new creation. Your desires change and slowly or quickly you become more christ like. God doesn't just save us from the wrath of God but also from the hold on sin on our lives.

[Rekeisha]

And what makes you think it's "God" speaking to you?

God can make His divinity pretty clear. Also everything He has ever told me has been true. Everything He has done has been In His character. Before I ever read the Bible He told me His name and that He was beyond time. He has answered my prayers and the longer I know Him the more I can tell it is Him speaking.

[Cyberman]

You got all that from impressions and ideas?

[Wyrd of Gawd]

There's a God character in the Koran.  Why don't you believe in it since it's supposed to be the same one as the biblical God?  After all, they are both ethnocentric Middle Eastern desert deities.

Because the god of the Q'uarn is not God and you can ask a muslim if what a christian belive about God is the same as what they believe and they will say no. There is only one God and He has reviled Himself through the Bible, and creation.

That's like claiming that there was only one detective and he was Sherlock Holmes.

BTW, you may want to verify your word usage. "Reviled" is not the same as "revealed".

[Cyberman]

To be fair, though, the "God" character in that book does come off as needing to be reviled.