Basically I can give my opinion and what I think the answer is. I know a lot of people on board believe in God, but for me, I do not. But if you want God I believe you can have him, her, it. I just dont believe in God, but that should effect anyone elses belief(s). But do I believe there is going to be an end of the world? Nobody can say whats gonna happen. But I am pretty sure there never will be. I believe its all mythology and mind control. ((Again, my belief(s), do not want to offend anyone who does)).
After 2000 years since JC was executed ,why have we heard not a whisper from GOD ALMIGHTY ?
by smiddy 268 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Rose Mary
God conveyed to writing committee of JWs many times—eg. He said the generation of 1914 will not pass away without seeing the end of th world. In 1922 he inspired them to bring out a book entitled MILLIONS NOW LIVING WILL NEVER DIE. Then in 1995, he told them to abandon the teaching of 1914!
Are these not examples of God speaking to man today?
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smiddy
So it would seem that christians in the main are what they are because of an accident of birth being born in a Xian land ,and GOD is only interested in them , providing they have faith that he/she exists .
Bugger the billions of humans who by an accident of birth are born in non Xian lands, for the past 6000 years.
Wouldnt you think , if he/she really did exist ,God would speak the same message to all humans without partiality ?
But then again the GOD of the bible is partial isnt she/he only directly dealing with a small group of people to become one nation for the first four thousand years, if you beleive the bible that is.
smiddy
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mP
@smiddy
Its hard to tel the difference between Hitler and God, they share so many similar views for the same reasons.
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cofty
If Cofty had experienced the things I have he/she would attribute them to an intelligence beyond ours and beyond the main premise that physics relies on, cause and effect - Seraphim
No I wouldn't. I'm not superstitious.
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DeWandelaar
Let me say this:
In the bible God revealed himself to (a portion of) mankind ALL the time! The prophets he used backed their claim up with miracles etc. Even Jesus stated that his miracles where proof of his origin. In our time (for more then 2000 years mind!) we do not get proof of anything that helps us get faith. In order to have faith we need to be witnesses of something happening/occuring, right?
Now... in ALL generations that you see in the bible you see they wanted something of proof! Gideon got proof, Mozes got proof, John the Baptist got proof etc etc etc... Is it blasphemous to ask for proof then? Does it mean I do not believe or try to counterattack Holy Spirit? No... that is absolutely not the case! Why? According to the accounts in the Bible it isn't because asking for proof is no sin!!
I am not saying there is no God... I am just saying I would like to see proof so that I can follow his commands and will... I am willing and God knows I am willing!
Thing is also that people want to believe. The story of the priest that was praying for a girl after a carcrash was NOT seen by 69 persons and also not on any of the photo's... people believed it was an angel! ... 2 or 3 days later a bisshop claimed he was there and he did the prayers. So evidently 69 persons were fooled ALTHOUGH they had faith in something! Why? Because they saw NO evidence there was a human being around and saw it as evidence of the contrary. Now that is the big flaw of a lot of religious people: they think that if the answer to a question is NOT A then it MUST be answer B! Black and white thinking... cult-thinking.
I have heared more of these stories (a kid that almost fell from rolling stairs in a mall... a guy catched her and when the father wanted to thank him he was nowhere to be seen). Does it mean there was an angel? Well... the carcrash incident shows that if 69 persons can be fooled in believing something which isn't 1 man definitely could have a mental blind spot at that moment.
Do the above things mean I am mocking people? Absolutely not! I am not trying to let other people look like a fool ... there are a lot of reasons why these things can occur. In the situation of the car attack everyone is focussed on helping the girl! There is emotional stress... and when emotionally stressed people are in a "survival"-condition... they have a narrow focus. They could not have seen the guy even if he was using a megaphone of some sort because they were busy helping the girl.
Am I a non-believer all of a sudden? No... I am not... I just want to see some legitimate proof!
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*lost*
DeWan
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MrFreeze
Give me a break Cold Steel. Imagine if you were suffering from some horrible disease and a doctor who could help cure you refused saying "Don't worry about it. You'll be cured when you are dead." I'd say that is a pretty cruel thing.
Is this what we are supposed to have faith in?
I guess all those people who have never heard of Jesus through no fault of their own are just supposed to magically believe in him and have faith in him.
Supposedly, Jesus showed miraculous signs. God performed miraculous signs back in Bible times. Can you explain to me why we no longer see such miraculous signs? Sorry, but "The world is so beautiful and wonderfully created" and "Jesus will speak to you if you have faith and are willing to see" are NOT miraculous signs. Imagine the good that might be able to come out of the whole world if he just revealed himself in an OBVIOUS way. Not in a "Oh, you have to read the Bible with an open heart" way.
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adamah
Joliette said-
Basically I can give my opinion and what I think the answer is. I know a lot of people on board believe in God, but for me, I do not. But if you want God I believe you can have him, her, it. I just dont believe in God, but that should effect anyone elses belief(s). But do I believe there is going to be an end of the world? Nobody can say whats gonna happen. But I am pretty sure there never will be. I believe its all mythology and mind control. ((Again, my belief(s), do not want to offend anyone who does)).
Yeah, but you're only stating your CONCLUSIONS (and demonstrating your accepting attitude, with a "whatever everyone else believes is OK by me" attitude, which is great, but actually does no one else any good on a DISCUSSION forum based on SHARING one's beliefs).
See, I don't really care WHAT people believe or conclude, as much as WHY they believe what they do. Call that selfish, but it's actually the OPPOSITE, in the big picture: we cannot IMPROVE our personal beliefs unless we are willing to evaluate AND alter them. That's the process of growth.
While all-accepting sentiments DO keep the peace, they're actually reinforcing the status quo, too, which is question: if people took that attitude 2,000 yrs ago, we'd all be living by candlelight, praying to Zeus for blessings, and dying at an early age from easily-treated diseases after sacrifices to Aesceplus (God of medicine) failed to cure us. Religious ideation retards human progress, and hence comes at a cost to society.
Dewan said-
While I fully agree with your point, let me edit that to make it factually correct for the real situation we face today:
In the bible God IS SAID TO HAVE revealed himself to (a portion of) mankind ALL the time! The prophets REPORTED TO HAVE BEEN used by Him ARE SAID TO HAVE backed their claim up with miracles etc. Even Jesus ALLEGED that his miracles were proof of his origin. In our time (for more then 2000 years mind!) we do not get proof of anything that helps us get faith. In order to have faith we need to be witnesses of something happening/occuring, right?
Point being, people believe in the Bible which is simply a recorded record of what someone wrote, often-times even a hundred or so years after the actual event is said to have occurred, where the eyewitnesses to the original event are since long-dead.
(I wonder if someone were to dig up Tolkien's 'The Hobbit' 2,000 yrs from now after some natural cataclysmic event wiped out 99.9% of the Earth's population, and conclude there were tiny creatures who walked the Earth by taking it as a literal history instead of seeing it as a fictional work, or even set up a religion awaiting the return of the Messiah Bilbo, praying to him to return to redress the current "evils" they experience in their lives.)
Reza Aslan (author of the book, "Zealot: the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth") makes a point about how ancient peoples didn't THINK in terms of writing history, and hence weren't concerned with factual accuracy (which is a fairly new concept to humans), but instead were trying to convey universal "truths" (truisms) to others. However, factual accuracy has been valued in more modern times, so we have Bible literalists emerging who are so focused on FACTS that they PROJECT their own modern Worldview on others who lived long before, and hence they're completely blinded and unable to recognize that the Bible wasn't written with the goal of factual accuracy (which in itself is a sign of non-omniscience: an "all-knowing" God implies being factually-correct, at least in today's word, since 'the Devil is in the details').
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL6E4eMX-4k
Adam
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DeWandelaar
@Adamah: I started the sentence with "in the Bible" ... that alone is already suggesting what you improved in my further writing. This due to the fact that English is not my native language. It means that I make mistakes in the texts. I am glad though that you still understood the point I was saying ;)
By the way: I DID see the Gorilla :P