Posts by Cold Steel

14

why does the Wt hate Jesus so much?

by Crazyguy in

even in the anniversary year were they claim jesus being enthroned for a hundred years they talk and say jehovah is king, its still all about jehovah, i don't get it?.

Cold Steel

Seeing that the early Christians associated Jesus as the Old Testament Yahweh, it still hasn't dawned on them. They still think he was an angel and have even depicted him with wings.

58

i really can't wrap my head around how people can still consider god loving with such atrocious biblical accounts such as, 1 samuel 15, (god ordering the slaughter of amelikite baby's and children) 2nd kings 2, forgot the verses (god sending bears to maul 42 children) and many others.have you ever asked a witness or anyone elsewhat they think about these accounts?

what was their response?

i'd love to ask one, but unfortunately i'm still physically in the cult and i wouldn't want to raise any suspicions.

Cold Steel

John Preston: ...God told Eve she would die if she ate the fruit without Eve having the slightest inkling of an idea about what death was. Didn’t know the consequences and was ignorant of disobedience until the disobedience was carried out. Yet God cursed us all because of a mistake of eating fruit and listening to a snake. Then punishes snakes instead of Satan....yet he says he’s merciful and loving.

That’s a very superficial way of looking at it from a theological aspect. I prefer to think of it as God intending that we should fall. After all, if He didn’t foresee what would happen before He placed them on the earth, He wasn’t a very omniscient God, was He? And because He knew what would happen, He arranged for the atonement before Adam and Eve even stepped onto this planet. Also, because He values free agency, some believe that He had our prior permission and approval before being born.

When Adam and Eve were created, they were created as immortal beings; however, they had no glory, nor did they have a knowledge of good and evil. Had they not fallen, they would have continued on without the ability to become like their Father. Unfortunately, to do this, they had to pass through death and receive the benefits of an eternal sacrifice. Thus it was all worked out in advance. We accepted death, a veil of forgetfulness, and the free agency to follow the promptings of both good and evil. We had a lot to lose, but we also had a great deal to gain.

Both the Greek Orthodox and the Mormons take this view, more or less, and if you read the New Testament books by John, he explains that because of Christ, man has the ability to inherit everything that Christ did. Because of Jesus’ sacrifice, man has the power to become equal to Christ, who is one with the Father. Instead of living out eternity as pasty, naïve beings with no power of reaching out eternal potential, we have the power of being resurrected to a host of varying glories, the greatest of which is to become like Christ and of having access to all knowledge, all glory and dominion. In short, Adam and Eve, by falling, were as essential to our eternal potential as was Jesus.

As an Eastern Orthodox website puts it:

In Eastern Orthodoxy deification (theosis) is both a transformative process as well as the goal of that process. The goal is the attainment of likeness to or union with God. As a process of transformation theosis is brought about by the effects of katharsis (purification of mind and body) and theoria. According to eastern Orthodox teaching theosis is very much the purpose of human life. It is considered achievable only through a synergy (or cooperation) between humans’ activities and God’s uncreated energies (or operations).

Also:

St. Athanasius of Alexandria wrote, “[Jesus] was incarnate that we might be made god”. His statement is an apt description of the doctrine. What would otherwise seem absurd—that fallen, sinful man may become holy as God is holy—has been made possible through Jesus Christ, who is God incarnate.

So the above would not have been possible without first, the fall, and the subsequent atonement. Living forever in a garden would have stifled mankind, which would have been condemned to an eternity of stagnation. As the children of God, we have a brighter future outside of a garden environment, which is why it’s always stunned me that Jehovah’s Witnesses would want to return to such an existence.

Now how much of the story of Adam and Eve is figurative, and what the mechanics of the fall were, I don’t know. But I believe very much in Jesus, and Jesus certainly thought of Adam as a real person. I’m perfectly willing to make the leap of faith and continue to watch the fulfillment of prophecy unfold. Then, if I’m right, so much the better. And if I’m wrong, I’ll never know it. But I would have lived a happier, more fulfilling life.

I can’t imagine any atheist feeling ebullient about his or her realization that there is no God. They may feel some relief that they can live their lives free of any guilt over the most heinous acts imaginable and not have to worry about eternal consequences in an afterlife, but I’d think ultimately facing the last moments of life, when they can expect the lights to go forever out on their existence, would be a terrifying transition. They may go out like Stalin, shaking their fists defiantly at the heavens, or, more likely, timidly, like the woman I saw in the medical facility where I worked. Just months earlier, she had joked about being an atheist and about how she’d finally find out if she was right. But in the end, the stoicism went right out the window. I walked into her room and saw her clutching the hand of her young male nurse, a physical trainer, tears welling up in both eyes, and pleading, “I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!” (As if he could change the inevitable.)

It would be interesting to see how many of the atheists on this site will make that transition. Will their last thoughts be how amazingly amusing and insightful Cofty’s remarks were on this forum in the days they so eloquently traded snippets? Or will they face the end like a condemned man about to be escorted from this life against his will, but wise enough to know he can’t avoid its inevitability. So he counts the steps to the execution chamber, his mind swirling in anticipation of the nothingness he was returning to.

Those who have had “near death” experiences have a near consensus in saying, upon their return, that they will never fear death again. To me, even if there is no future, I’d rather depart this life thinking that there was. But it’s up to each man to make the choice. As one ancient prophet said, “When men are learned, they think they are wise.” Either way, what we know about what’s out there in the many billions of universes and galaxies would blow our minds.

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20

1500 year old text reports Jesus not Crucified

by designs in

found in 2000 with a group of antiquity smugglers this bible contains the gospel of barnabas according to the report in the national turk.. written in aramaic this gospel account was omitted by the church during the period of the council of nicea.. the text maintains a story similar to islam regarding jesus being a great prophet.. is has a reported value of $28million and is said to be in the museum of ankara.. http://moorishharem.com/culture-detail/1500-year-old-bible-that-jesus-christ-was-not-crucified-vatican-in-awe/.

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Cold Steel

Almost every man alive can trace his origins to one man who lived about 135,000 years ago, new research suggests. And that ancient man likely shared the planet with the mother of all women.

Interesting theory. I noted it overturned a previous theory which "suggested that men's most recent common ancestor lived just 50,000 to 60,000 years ago."

So, who was the man's father and mother? And who was the father and mother of the woman?

But over time, the male chromosome gets bloated with duplicated, jumbled-up stretches of DNA, said study co-author Carlos Bustamante, a geneticist at Stanford University in California. As a result, piecing together fragments of DNA from gene sequencing was like trying to assemble a puzzle without the image on the box top, making thorough analysis difficult.

Hmmm...but didn't someone say that life migrated from the simple to the more complex? Sounds here like Mother Nature doesn't do very good job of house cleaning!

By assuming a mutation rate anchored to archaeological events (such as the migration of people across the Bering Strait), the team concluded that all males in their global sample shared a single male ancestor in Africa roughly 125,000 to 156,000 years ago.

Why would they do that? Most people got to the Western Hemisphere by migration through the Atlantic or Pacific. The Bering Strait theory was pretty much decimated years ago.

"It's very exciting," Wilson Sayres told LiveScience. "As we get more populations across the world, we can start to understand exactly where we came from physically."

As long as it's not the Kardashians or Lady GaGa.

20

1500 year old text reports Jesus not Crucified

by designs in

found in 2000 with a group of antiquity smugglers this bible contains the gospel of barnabas according to the report in the national turk.. written in aramaic this gospel account was omitted by the church during the period of the council of nicea.. the text maintains a story similar to islam regarding jesus being a great prophet.. is has a reported value of $28million and is said to be in the museum of ankara.. http://moorishharem.com/culture-detail/1500-year-old-bible-that-jesus-christ-was-not-crucified-vatican-in-awe/.

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Cold Steel

... Simple systems become more complex over time. That's a quite fundamental concept. Claiming otherwise is like claiming that people have always flown in aeroplanes rather than benefiting from the gradual development from simple concepts to complex understanding of physics and engineering.

I have major problems with simple becoming more complex, despite it being a fundamental elements of evolution. People haven’t always flown airplanes, driven in cars and built railroads, but these are all examples of intelligent designs becoming more complex. One can’t help but wonder how simple biological samples can become more complex. What would be the motivating factor? And how could it happen without intelligence? If a man lands on a distant planet and finds the wreckages of complex dwellings, weapons and conveyances, he would immediately know intelligence was required to produce it. When life goes from simple to complex, it would seem self evident that intelligent design is involved. Of course, this begs the question of why a Supreme Intelligence would need to go through this evolution on each planet it created? If the Creator knew how to create complex life forms, why would He need to create simple life forms and progress to ever more complex designs?

Both science and religion have problems they can’t answer, and religion, unlike science, doesn’t claim to be able to provide proof. And though science and religion seem to be on entirely different levels, science is very far off from being able to disprove religion. In my own religion, the Lord has stated that “in that day when the Lord shall come, he shall reveal all things; things which have passed, and hidden things which no man knew, things of the earth, by which it was made, and the purpose and the end thereof—things most precious, things that are above, and things that are beneath, things that are in the earth, and upon the earth, and in heaven.” At times it seems there’s no end to the carrot stick promises of future resolutions by religion, but that’s what Christianity has always promised: Atonement. Not only man to God, but science to religion. And though it seems that the two are forever irreconcilable, now, Christians have faith that this will not always be the case.

Jeffro: Since Daniel was written in the 2nd century BCE, it's unsurprising that it's accurate about World Powers up until that time.

Sorry...I don’t buy it. Methodist scholar Margaret Barker has written that Isaiah, Ezekiel and Daniel all have more in common in their outlooks on the political situation and the temple than later writings. Apocalypses were never popular among the elite ruling classes and even among Christians, the Apocalypse of John barely made it. To this day many scholars don't think it should be included. In Europe, it's despised. Critical reviewers, so called, believe that any prophetic book that turns out to be accurate must have been post-dated because, after all, we all know prophecy is impossible. Also, a number of traditional biblical scholars have been openly critical of the way the Wikipedia has recounted, as facts, theories “imposed by militant atheists” regarding its section on the book of Daniel.

One notable error in Daniel is the story that it was Nebuchadnezzar who went mad for seven years. Historically, this did not fit with what is known about Nebuchadnezzar. But it does fit Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, a statement attributed to Nabonidus, a successor to Nebuchadnezzar:

The words of the prayer which Nabonidus (Nbny), king of Assyria and king of Babylon, the great king spoke when he was smitten with a severe inflammation by the command of the Most High God in the city of Teiman (error for Tema): I was smitten for seven years and I was put far from men. But when I confessed my trespasses and sins he left me a seer. He was a Jew from the exiles of Babylonia. He gave his explanation and wrote that honor should be given and glory to the name of the Most High God.

This seer most assuredly was Daniel. At least there is a strong reason for thinking so, as it was Daniel who made the prophecy. It’s thought that a scribe replaced the name of Nabonidus with the more popular name of Nebuchadnezzar. This does not mean, however, that Daniel did not minister to Nebuchadnezzar.

Daniel 2:40 bears little resemblance to the claimed interpretation of “Rome, divided into East and West”, which is just as spurious as the claim that a mixture of ‘clay and iron’ represents ‘nation states’ that are in some way different to previous nations.

Books have been devoted to this topic. I believe the interpretation you proffer is not in the least credible. It was contrived and pushed by those who wanted to place the establishment of the Kingdom of God (the stone) to an earlier date so it would correspond to the days of Jesus.

You say Daniel 2:40 bears little resemblance to Rome. Well, you’re entitled to your view, but to me it sounds exactly like Rome, which was associated with iron for more than five hundred years: “And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron: forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things: and as iron that breaketh all these, shall it break in pieces and bruise.”

If this isn’t a prophecy about Rome, it certainly will do until one comes along. Of all the empires, Rome was clearly the greatest, most powerful, most technologically developed and had the greatest legal system. It ruled by iron, not bronze. After it was divided into two empires, it split into nation states, some strong, some weak. It was during those kings that the Lord would set up a kingdom that would never be destroyed and would not be governed by men. It will eventually break up all the other nations of the earth. Besides the prophecies in Chapter 2, there are also the prophecies regarding the “little horn,” which was identified as the Antichrist, the one described by Ezekiel in chapters 38-39 and by other prophets, including John. This leader has not yet made his appearance, but if Daniel is correct, he will manifest himself within the next several decades. So only time will tell.

58

Bible Atrocities

by Trapped in JW land in

i really can't wrap my head around how people can still consider god loving with such atrocious biblical accounts such as, 1 samuel 15, (god ordering the slaughter of amelikite baby's and children) 2nd kings 2, forgot the verses (god sending bears to maul 42 children) and many others.have you ever asked a witness or anyone elsewhat they think about these accounts?

what was their response?

i'd love to ask one, but unfortunately i'm still physically in the cult and i wouldn't want to raise any suspicions.

Cold Steel

Even Hitler Provided explanation for his atrocities, just like you did.

God doesn’t need for me to provide apologies for why He did what He did, or does. If He is God, He has the right to do as He wishes and will command His people. But you, who know nothing about the times, the context of God’s actions, the people the Israelites were facing and the warnings that had been issued to them, are perfectly willing to stand in judgment of God. I feel perfectly secure in promising you that you’ll have the opportunity of presenting your charges against Him on the day of judgment.

But, if the “brilliant” Cofty is right and God doesn’t exist, then no one is right or wrong. As atheist playright, philosopher and author Albert Camus, put it:

If we believe in nothing; if nothing has any meaning and if we can affirm no values whatsoever, then everything is possible and nothing has any importance. There is no pro or con: the murderer is neither right nor wrong. We are free to stoke the crematory fires or to devote ourselves to the care of lepers. Evil and virtue are mere chance or caprice.

At the point where it is no longer possible to say what is black and what is white, the light is extinguished and freedom becomes a voluntary prison.

Camus, by the way, changed his views and became a Christian after having written some of the most bitter and antagonistic things about God. At the end, he simply could not believe that your friend Hitler and his ilk would end up the same as those who lived good, honorable, decent lives. So the argument boils down to this: If God lives and if He guided Moses and the Israelites, as recorded in the Bible, then all those He ordered killed were simply placed in a penalty box, as it were, to await later administration of the gospel when Jesus preached to the spirits of the dead (see 1 Peter 3:18-19). Or, two, if God does not exist, then it doesn ’ t matter who killed who, for all will receive the same reward. Thus, who are you or anyone else to judge anyone??

Mormons don't mind a good massacre...

Many inaccuracies here, including the charge that those who carried out the massacre were members of the Nauvoo Legion, which existed in Nauvoo, Illinois. Those who carried it out were individual members who may have been part of the local militia (where every man was considered a member of the militia).

I can’t completely blame the Mormons of the time. Their flocks had been scattered and stolen, they had been run off their lands and an extermination order had been signed by the governor of Missouri, their wives and children raped and murdered. Now they were in the mountains of Utah, and in California newspaper editors were calling for their eradication by the U.S. Army. Wagons full of people heading to California were going through Utah’s valleys hurling insults at the Latter-day Saints and threatening them with further violence once they had the numbers. Mormons had been murdered at the Haun’s Mill Massacre, including men, women and children. Brigham Young had told the saints to let the wagons pass in peace, but he also warned the leaders of the trains to take care in their treatment of the saints and not to insult them or their women, or use foul language. I don’t condone what happened, but the people in the wagons failed to heed Young’s warnings.

Again, it’s the ignorance of the times and events that lead people to casually judge them. People who attempt to blame Young or the church on the massacre are ignoramuses. It was the last thing we needed, and Young, most of all, knew such an atrocity would be a powder keg. And after the War of 1861, the U.S. Army was dispatched. Fortunately for us, the weather and lack of food had the expedition starving and in need of supplies. Had not Young shown the compassion he did, the expedition would have been a one-way trip. It was called the Utah War, Buchanan’s Blunder, the Mormon War or the Utah Campaign. But regardless of what actually happened, it did not come from the church, nor was it a directive of revelation. It was cold blooded murder. See this write-upfrom our perspective. Also this video, which is the first of several.

pt1 Mountain Meadows Massacre

Samson in Hebrews 11 is considered a man of faith.

Who said he was a man of faith? The Lord did not condone one thing that Samson did. Did he deliver the people of Israel? No. He’s an example of a failed hero who didn’t live up to his potential. He did everything you said and he committed fornication with a Philistine woman, which alone was a serious sin. Murdering to pay a gambling debt alone will alone condemn him. And cruelty to animals also was an outrage.

I don't know where you got the idea he was a prophet, man of God or man of faith. He, rather, was a man who missed his calling. And he did not deliver Israel. If that's how the Jehovah's Witnesses see him, they missed the point completely. Samson, blind and bound to two pillars, was to be killed. But people love strength, and the Greeks loved Heracles, even though he could lose his temper and kill people at the drop of the proverbial hat. Like Samson, Thor and others, he wasn't too bright. Yet he, and not Theseus (his cousin), was the one found on most urns. But Samson's story is worth being told.

The only book I'd remove from the Bible is the Song of Solomon. Still, I can see why it was so popular.

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58

Bible Atrocities

by Trapped in JW land in

i really can't wrap my head around how people can still consider god loving with such atrocious biblical accounts such as, 1 samuel 15, (god ordering the slaughter of amelikite baby's and children) 2nd kings 2, forgot the verses (god sending bears to maul 42 children) and many others.have you ever asked a witness or anyone elsewhat they think about these accounts?

what was their response?

i'd love to ask one, but unfortunately i'm still physically in the cult and i wouldn't want to raise any suspicions.

Cold Steel

Cofty, your ignorance continues to completely baffle me. The scriptures never boasted of any such thing. The virgins and infants I view as being liberated from a horrifying future in profligate cultures. Of course the Israelites married them.

BTW, ever read about Carthage and how it killed infants by the tens of thousands? Then for some reason the Romans came and wiped them out, and for centuries to come their historians and writers wondered why they had done it.

The Lord also gave the Cananites a chance:

Thus saith thy brother Israel, Thou knowest all the travail that hath befallen us: how our fathers went down into Egypt, and we have dwelt in Egypt a long time; and the Egyptians vexed us, and our fathers: and when we cried unto the Lord, he heard our voice, and sent an angel, and hath brought us forth out of Egypt: and, behold, we are in Kadesh, a city in the uttermost of the border: Let us pass, I pray thee, through thy country: we will not pass through the fields, or through the vineyards, neither will we drink of the water of the wells: we will go by the king's highway, we will not turn to the right hand nor to the left, until we have passed thy borders.

But the Cananites refused. "Thou shalt not pass!" was the reply.

Again, the peoples the Lord condemned, the Cananites and giants were degenerates. Have you ever read the scriptures and about Balaam?

Please post your examples of what you find so offensive.

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31

When a JW's life comes close to its end...

by suavojr in

talking with a long time elder last night, was very revealing.

he has been a jw for over 60 years, a man that was incarcerated in cuba in his early 20s and faced great loss and suffering over his beliefs and for being born in a communist country.

this brave man is now brittle and low-spirited.. while nightfalls on his life, he is made aware the end is near.

Cold Steel

Just because his faith is misplaced does not mean we return to a cold nothingness. People can believe what they wish, but man is said to be God's crowning achievement, and our struggle in this life is a struggle between good and evil, overseen by a God who can not and will not deny us our free agency. Christianity is based on the notion that any evil, any suffering, in this life is an experience that will help us in the next. I've read far too many near death experiences that are so incredibly consistent (regardless of cultural backgrounds) to discount a life after death.

As one scholar wrote “If this is what liberation from the [Christian] ‘myth’ makes you—a vulgar and sometimes duplicitous crank, cackling with malice and spite—then I would prefer to spend the few brief years left to me (before I dissolve into the irreversible and never- ending oblivion many [atheists] prophesy for me and all humankind) with people who have not been liberated.”

He also noted:

A neighbor and friend was stricken with multiple sclerosis in her midtwenties and now, in her thirties, lies bedridden in a rest home. Barring some incredible medical breakthrough, this is her life. Absent hope for a life to come, this is all she will ever have to look forward to. My own father, for the last six years of his life, blind from an utterly unforeseen stroke suffered during routine and relatively minor surgery, was incapable of any of the activities in which he had once found satis faction and pathetically asked me, every few weeks, whether he would ever see again. What comfort would there be in saying, “No, Dad. This is it. Nothing good is coming. And then you’ll die.”

Of course, something may be unpalatable and unpleasant yet accurate. I can certainly understand coming to the sad conclusion that this is in fact the truth about the human condition: That we live briefly, then we die and we rot. That so, too, do our children and our grandchildren. And that so, also, does everything we create—our music, our buildings, our literature, our inventions. That “all we are is dust in the wind.”

But I cannot understand those who regard this as glorious good news.

He quotes famed playright, philosopher and author Albert Camus, a noted and prolific atheist:

If we believe in nothing; if nothing has any meaning and if we can affirm no values whatsoever, then everything is possible and nothing has any importance. There is no pro or con: the murderer is neither right nor wrong. We are free to stoke the crematory fires or to devote ourselves to the care of lepers. Evil and virtue are mere chance or caprice.

At the point where it is no longer possible to say what is black and what is white, the light is extinguished and freedom becomes a voluntary prison.

A good friend of mine knew Camus during the war and up until the time he died in an automobile accident. He said that at the time he died, Camus had completely rejected his views of atheism and was even contemplating entering the Catholic priesthood. I studied several of his works, including The Myth of Sisyphus, a cynical look at religion. My instructor, also a dedicated atheist, never told us that Camus reneged on his atheistic beliefs.

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58

Bible Atrocities

by Trapped in JW land in

i really can't wrap my head around how people can still consider god loving with such atrocious biblical accounts such as, 1 samuel 15, (god ordering the slaughter of amelikite baby's and children) 2nd kings 2, forgot the verses (god sending bears to maul 42 children) and many others.have you ever asked a witness or anyone elsewhat they think about these accounts?

what was their response?

i'd love to ask one, but unfortunately i'm still physically in the cult and i wouldn't want to raise any suspicions.

Cold Steel

Many of you seek to judge God from a distance, knowing nothing of the circumstances that existed in the days of Moses. Certainly, if God was not leading the Israelites in the desert, one can make the case that one ancient people were slaughtering another ancient people to get their property, women and land. But what do you know about the Midianites, their practices or their religion? Were the attacks on them unprovoked? And, if so, why would the Lord require their blood from Israelite hands?

Actually, the heathen Midianites practiced infanticide through ancient rites of murder, heating up ovens in the shapes of their gods and sacrificing their infants by placing them in the furnaces and beating their drums so loud as to drown out their cries. They also engaged in the most profligate of orgies as part of their religion. Thus, in most cases, infants and virgins (who had not taken part in these rites) were spared, while men were put to death.

Who is their judge, but Yahweh? The deaths of the wicked weren't arbitrary acts of barbarity on the parts of the Israelites, but the judgments of a just God. But what if you don’t buy into that? What if they did commit evil by ruthlessly murdering the occupiers of the lands they wanted? If that’s the case, then there was no God leading them. And if their God didn’t exist, nor does exist, who sets the moral standards for the universe? Since there’s no punishment of the wicked, there’s no reward for the righteous. Both sides in the battles were simply victories or defeats, and it mattered not who did what to whom, because there’s no eternal arbiter.

God was very specific on how to treat these other peoples, and the Midianites themselves broke a treaty with Moses that ended in their demise. The biggest problem is trying to judge God from a very far distance, not knowing anything about the situation.

20

1500 year old text reports Jesus not Crucified

by designs in

found in 2000 with a group of antiquity smugglers this bible contains the gospel of barnabas according to the report in the national turk.. written in aramaic this gospel account was omitted by the church during the period of the council of nicea.. the text maintains a story similar to islam regarding jesus being a great prophet.. is has a reported value of $28million and is said to be in the museum of ankara.. http://moorishharem.com/culture-detail/1500-year-old-bible-that-jesus-christ-was-not-crucified-vatican-in-awe/.

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Cold Steel

Jeffro: It is a very well established fact that 'Adam' never existed, so hinging the supposed 'ransom' (even though knowing you'll get something back after 3 days isn't really a ransom anyway) on the supposed actions of an obviously fictional character should be a clear sign to any educated person that the story about Jesus is just as fake as the whimsical folklore of Genesis.

You're correct to say that if Adam didn't exist, then Jesus would not be required to make the atonement which would bring us back to God. Where many disagree, however, is that we don't believe that it's a well established fact that Adam never existed.

Did men leave the trees for caves and evolve into hunter-gatherers? Did he go from uncivilized, uneducated and base to what he is now? Or was he created and placed on this world by a Supreme Intelligence who taught him and gave him the benefit of revelation?

If one looks at the quality and quantity of divine revelation, of prophecy that was fulfilled to the last dot and tittle, it's difficult to explain away. Daniel's vision of the empires from Babylonian to the Romans:

In chapter 2, Nebuchadnezzar dreams of a statue with body parts made of different materials, which Daniel then interprets as four kingdoms:

Head of gold Interpretation given: The Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar is the head of gold.[v.37-38]
Chest and arms of silver Interpretation given: After Nebuchadnezzar an inferior kingdom shall arise. [v.39] Medes & Persians
Belly and thighs of bronze Interpretation given: A third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth. [v.39] Greeks (Alexander the Great).
Legs of iron with feet of iron and clay Interpretation given: A fourth kingdom, strong as iron. [v.40] Rome, divided into East and West
The feet and toes partly of potter’s clay and partly of iron, show it shall be a divided kingdom. [v.41] Emergence of nation states

God provided many such prophecies as a means of evidence that He knows the end from the beginning. Isaiah 53 is a biography of Christ many centuries before he lived and died. Biblical prophecies dictate the two destructions of the Jews and their restoration. They outlined their scattering to the nations of the world and their gathering back to the lands of their inheritance. Jacob's blessings to his sons in Genesis 49 contain many prophecies regarding the tribes, their inheritances and their being driven into the lands northward. Only Judah would hold the scepter until the coming of the Messiah, which happened exactly as prophecied. Finally, the prophets dictated what must happen in the last days. The reemergence of Israel as a nation, that it would take over barren wasteland and turn it into fountains and gardens. That it would be a "burdensome stone" for all people and that it would be attacked by its neighbors (see Zechariah 12-14 and Revelation 11) and rescued at the last moment by the returning Christ.

All these prophecies, and many more, convince me that God does exist and that "in that day when the Lord shall come, he shall reveal all things -- things which have passed, and hidden things which no man knew, things of the earth, by which it was made, and the purpose and the end thereof -- things most precious, things that are above, and things that are beneath, things that are in the earth, and upon the earth, and in heaven." Then we'll know whether Adam was a figurative representation or an actual person. Until then, I've seen some pretty amazing things in my own life, both good and evil.

But everyone has to make up their own minds. I'm not narrow enough to think that atheists and agnostics (or Jews) go to an eternal fiery pit because of what they believe or don't believe. I believe, as the scriptures state, that men are judged on what they do. At the same time, I believe man can know the things of God, and until then, I think man was placed on the earth and that Adam most likely existed.
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14

Christians, this girl hit it right on the head!!

by Crazyguy in

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yxineydnky&feature=player_detailpage.

Cold Steel

Well, who knows what Jesus said or if he even existed? He didn't write anything down. Heresay I tell you!

When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am? And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets. He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?

And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.

And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. --Matthew 16:13-17

Now about the midst of the feast Jesus went up into the temple, and taught.

And the Jews marvelled, saying, How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?

Jesus answered them, and said, My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me. If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself. --John 7:14-17

If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord. --James 1:5-7