Question regarding Faith...(adamah)

by tec 210 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  tec

  Tell you what: why don't you use your Heavenly connections to do something useful by assembling a comprehensive list of Jesus-approved scriptures in the Bible which ARE divinely-inspired and true, and which ones are the product of 'lying scribes'? Then everyone wouldn't have to "test" scriptures for themelves, resulting in many interpretations. Perhaps another voice-hearer could INDEPENDENTLY do the same, and we could see if Jesus is consistent with himself?

  (I know, it'll take a while, so I won't hold my breath).

  Oh, I definitely wouldn't hold my breath for something like that. Something like that would have to come from Christ, and He does not ask that. Just the opposite. If you want to know truth, then go to HIM. If you must start with what is written; then listen to what HE is written to have said, and then let HIM teach you.

  Not me, not men, not religion, not doctrines, not scholars, not intensive study that NO ONE in those earlier days would have even had access to.

  Listen to Christ.

  Simple.

  Peace,

  tammy
• 

  Qcmbr

  tec - your slipperiness is amazing - you manage to post thousands of words and yet say nothing of any use. When will you realise that telling people to listen to your version of Christ is to ask them to do something impossible. People cannot listen to something in your mind. If everyone could hear exactly what you can hear then most people posting on this forum (and indeed the world) with a christian background would be able to verify what you are saying. It is sheer hubris and very rude to demean the efforts of many , who now or in the past spent vast amounts of mental energy and time trying to hear Christ and heard nothing by suggesting that is all that is needed. One day I hope you will try and understand why your words are empty to those who have already experimented with hearing /listening/obeying and following Christ in a sincere and faithful way. One day you should put aside evangelical tec and the thought killing mantras that are too often used and try being a world citizen, listen to people and see why pat answers aren't enough for anyone but children, try and understand why people struggle to make sense of anything you say - hint it isn't always the hearers fault.
• 

  adamah

  "We're Jehovah's Witnesses, We speak out in fearlessness, Ours is the God of TRUE PROPHECY, WHAT HE FORETELLS COMES TO BE!"

  - A rousing lyric singing the praises of a JW's faith in Jehovah's prophetic powers. Keep that in mind.

  TEC said-

  You, however, fail to understand what faith is based UPON. Not upon hope... because faith gives hope. Hope is based on faith. Faith is based upon what is HEARD.

  "Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ." Romans 10:17

  Abraham heard God, and believed, and it was credited to him as righteousness. Noah heard God, and believed."

  One last attempt at explaining FAITH to TEC, who confuses when the Bible speaks of:

  1) hearing the Word, as relayed second-hand from others (eg preachers who testify about the Word of God)

  2) hearing the Word, first-hand (eg the gnostics, who believed that they were able to have personal experiential/perceivable interactions with God and/or Jesus).

  The Bible is FULL of accounts of mortals who had first-hand interactions with God, eg Abraham regularly heard (perceived) the voice of God and conversed with Him. For all Abraham knew, it was merely a figment of his imagination. So what took faith (and DEMONSTRATED Abraham's FAITH in God not being just a hallucination inside his head) was ACTING upon the conversations with the voice he perceived, without KNOWING whether it was just a voice inside his head or actually the voice of God. Only ACTIONS demonstrate faith.

  Rephrased, it wasn't the act of HEARING the voice of God that instilled faith per se, but it was ACTING upon the ORDERS or PROMISES made by the heard voice that DEMANDED and/or DEMONSTRATED Abraham's faith.

  Read that sentence, and THINK about it..... Now, read it again.

  Take Noah: he is said to have "walked with God" in Genesis (where he presumably heard the voice of God, although the conversation is only one-way: Noah doesn't SPEAK ANYTHING until AFTER the Flood is over, and he delivers the "Curse of Ham"), but the act that required a demonstration of his faith was building the ark, loading animals inside, and condemning mankind without KNOWING God would carry out the Flood (remember that God's mind had already been made up to destroy mankind/animals/plants, even BEFORE telling Noah of his plans). God had entered a COVENANT to build the Ark, in the PROMISE that Noah and family would be allowed on board. Contracts require FAITH: that's the very basis of contract law. So Noah had to build the Ark on FAITH, and that faith wasn't vindicated until AFTER Noah and family were on board, the doors were sealed shut, and the rain started to fall. Completing the Ark contruction contract was an ACT of FAITH.

  Others who observed Noah's actions of constructing the Ark (eg bystanders) thought he was a fool, and scoffed; his sons could see his acts, and could see THOSE works as visible EVIDENCE of his faith in God. (Not that it mattered to the bystanders, since God had already decided on the final passenger manifest and salvation wasn't even offered to them, unlike 2nd Peter's claim).

  In the case of Abraham, it wasn't perceiving the voice of God inside his head that was the important part of building his faith, but a question of if Abraham TRUSTED the prior PROMISE God had communicated to him about his son being the forefather of the Chosen People. So Abraham had to DEMONSTRATE HIS FAITH in God's promise by being willing to kill his own son, Isaac, having FAITH that God would not break his prior promise; Abraham had to act without hesitation, to demonstrate the depth of his trust in God. But again, the point is that hearing the voice of God was irrelevant: Abraham STILL had to act on the voice inside his head without KNOWING if it was a symptom of mental illness or God.

  Again, you're confusing the act of perceiving/hearing with the faith-building and faith-demonstrating part, even though that's exactly the point Jesus was making eg with Doubting Thomas, who was a "seeing (perceiving) is believing" kind of guy. While Jesus let him touch his wounds/flesh after resurrection, Jesus immediately chastized him for needing to confirm beliefs by using his sensory perceptions, rather than relying on faith, alone (i.e. the word-of-mouth reports of fellow believers). That same message of placing faith above visible evidence is repeatedly consistently thoughout the Gospel accounts, from the explanation of why Jesus wouldn't perform miracles, to why he would heal only those who already demonstrated a measure of faith in him, etc. Blind faith support beliefs MUCH better than evidence for some people.

  In some cases, eg Moses parents didn't even HEAR a voice of God telling them to place baby Moses in the basket, so they had to act on FAITH that Moses was somehow "special": there was no voice or vision. Same with Early Christians who died as martyrs: they didn't have Jesus making a personal appearance before they died to convince them their deaths weren't in vain. Same with the thief on the cross: his "deathbed conversion" to Christianity had nothing BUT faith on which to base the decision that the guy hanging next to him had friends upstairs: the clouds didn't part and he didn't hear God's voice saying, "Listen to my son".

  Same with JWs, as noted in the lyric above: they have NOTHING BUT faith upon which to support their hopes.

  Again, you're missing the POINT that per mainstream Christian theology, such visible SIGNS do NOT support beliefs via FAITH, but by direct KNOWLEDGE, which is considered an inferior proof for believing.

  (Apparently God doesn't want to make it TOO EASY for humans to believe in Him; that wouldn't be sporting, I guess.....)

  You really need to educate yourself on WHY the Early church fathers squashed those who claimed a personal experience with God (the gnostics), as they represented a threat to the authority of the Church.

  Wake up and smell the : Christianity is about POWER and CONTROL of people, and not about luv of Jesus. He's simply the lure that is USED as bait to gain control of the sheepol.

  Adam
• 

  tec

  tec - your slipperiness is amazing - you manage to post thousands of words and yet say nothing of any use.

  Nothing that YOU find useful. Not nothing that NO ONE finds useful.

  Which is not surprising, is it?

  "The path is narrow and FEW find it."

  But not because Christ is not speaking, or calling... indeed there are people on this forum who have heard Him, but do not recognize that it IS Him calling and speaking. Though they did follow His voice OUT, and it is HIS voice that taught them that the wts was not the truth... for example: those who hear the call to partake of His body and blood, and feel sick each year when they turn Him down, listening to the voices of strangers (the GB) instead. Same with some of those who remain in, knowing they should "come out of her, my people!"

  When will you realise that telling people to listen to your version of Christ is to ask them to do something impossible.

  I'd have to be telling them that first, for me to realize something about it. But I am not.

  People cannot listen to something in your mind.

  I'm not suggesting that they do. That is what YOU and a few others are claiming that I am doing... because to you, there can't BE anything else, and if YOU can't hear, then NO ONE can. But there are those who hear Him, even if not as clearly as some others to start (and those who have given witness to hearing Him also state that they were hearing Him long before they realized that it was Him speaking)

  None of them are listening to something in my mind.

  It is sheer hubris and very rude to demean the efforts of many , who now or in the past spent vast amounts of mental energy and time trying to hear Christ and heard nothing by suggesting that is all that is needed.

  I am not demeaning anyone's efforts.

  And it is not that Christ is not speaking to people... it is that they do not know how to hear Him, or even that they can. (how many religious leaders teach that Christ speaks, and if they do, how often is that other than through them or in signs, etc; where any contradiction to their teachings would be a 'demon'?)

  Like how we can read passages in the bible... but not actually SEE them (and I think everyone here CAN verify that, because we SAW what we were TAUGHT to see by the men we were listening to; but really we were blind to what was right in front of us. Blind, not because Christ rejected us... but blind because we were looking at someone other than Him). Same with hearing.

  Peace,

  tammy
• 

  cofty

  "The path is narrow and FEW find it."

  Isn't it strange the way christians claim to value humility, while making the most vainglorious assertions imaginable?
• 

  tec

  Those words belogn to my Lord, not to me.

  So its really Him you have an issue with, Cofty.

  And... I think we are just going back and forth, so I believe I am done, unless my Lord gives me something more to share.

  Peace,

  tammy
• 

  cofty

  I see you respond to my accusation that you are vainglorious with even more vainglorious fantasies.
• 

  adamah

  Isn't it strange the way christians claim to value humility, while making the most vainglorious assertions imaginable?

  Some people are readily-overwhelmed by paradoxes:

  
• 

  rubbeng

  marked
• 

  adamah

  BTW, we ALL have BELIEFS: these are ideas we personally accept (or claim to accept) as truths.

  Beliefs are a sub-set of KNOWLEDGE, i.e. facts, figures, ideas, concepts, trivia, etc that although we may learn about and understand the concept to add to our knowledge, we don't necessarily HAVE to accept that knowledge as true (eg as an atheist, I don't BELIEVE in God, but I understand the CONCEPT of God, and know a little bit about the basis upon which others believe in God). But if we DO, we accept that knowledge as our BELIEF.

  So what's the difference between religious FAITH vs secular CONVICTION?

  From:

  http://www.sunzu.com/articles/faith-and-conviction-same-difference-146031/

  Faith is a belief that has no absolute basis in observable fact - for example "There is a god". It may be supported by observed facts that can seemingly only be explained in the light of the belief, but nonetheless the belief itself is not a result of the observable facts. Indeed, in my interpretation, if it could be generated purely from the facts, it's not really faith - it's conviction. Faith requires NOT knowing for sure, in an empirical way, believing that something is true.
  
  Conviction, on the other hand, requires the exact opposite. It's the nominalisation of the passive voice of the verb "to convinced"; that is, it means the state of being convinced (to varying degrees of confidence). And in order to be convinced of something, there have to be observed (or at least acknowledged) facts from which the conviction has been derived. It doesn't matter whether one's interpretation of the facts is accurate, or accepted by other people - that's not the point, what matters is that the belief has come from facts that are believed to lead to it.

  Adam