i don't want to high jack african gb's thread but something got me thinking.... moses, abraham were inbred and hearing god's voice... paul never met jesus yet he is the only apostle coming down like a hammer of gays and has this "close bond" with timothy.
then there is the issue of "horus" the egyptian god and is this where the story of jesus comes from.
i have searched the internet for information on horus and have not had much luck finding anything authorative either way.. my question is do you or don't you believe in the bible and why or why not?
I believe that God tries to talk to us.
We only speak a crude pidgen language that easily distorts who he is and our interpreters have not served him/us well.
We have to listen to God at a different "frequency".
If you believe God only use the Bible to "talk" to us then you don't believe the Bible.
hi.
this is inspired by another thread, but heres something that always bugged me.... if god wanted to know if abraham really was faithful... then why didn't he use his abilty to look into his heart and find out?
instead of putting the poor man and his son through a near death/ murder situation??
It's been great reading this discussion. I was supposed to vaccuum my apartment and clean the fridge this afternoon because the move is done now. I am just reluctant to leave the forum.
I love all you guys.
Keep on knocking, keep on asking.
I have til Tuesday to keep my internet--the countdown is on!
hi.
this is inspired by another thread, but heres something that always bugged me.... if god wanted to know if abraham really was faithful... then why didn't he use his abilty to look into his heart and find out?
instead of putting the poor man and his son through a near death/ murder situation??
God can read hearts--but we don't read God's heart very well.
The great horror that many feel when they read the OT is the blood and gore of it all.
The God that Jesus showed us was not that kind of God.
The God who "so loved the world that he gave his only be-gotten son" yielded that son to a world that so despised the gift that they killed Jesus.
Is it relevant to say that God did not kill his own child? He gave his son and both he and Jesus knew what would happen--but is that the same as killing him? If I gave myself as a hostage to save my brother, knowing the captors would kill me would my father be a murderer?
Is it too fine a point to make that Abraham was to learn and to demonstrate for us that giving his own hopes and his own beloved to God could only be grasped through this experience?
It is also important to me that the word burnt offering had no blood associated with it.
We are to be "holy living sacrifice" as Romans says. We do not kill nor do we kill ourselves --but we live wholey for God.
Are we humans able to grasp the length and heigth and breadth of God's love without a living example of it?
What words existed at the time to tell Abraham how much trust it would take to follow God's purpose?
What example was there to show us now the wrenching "born-again" in a death? Really we can't communicate it.
I can only say as others have: God is Love , He neither explicitly commanded a killing nor did he permit it.
If Jesus is the one to show us what God is like then let us see that even at death he did not say "Why did you kill me?" but "into your hand I give my spirit."
Is the test for any of us more this: can we trust God with our life? Is he the killer God of caprice and double -tongued trickery?
Bottom line on the Genesis story: If Abraham refused to use the word "sacrifice" in his story and only used the word "burnt offering", why not honor him and God by the distinction.
Or do we just prefer to think of God as an arbitrary SOB who tells us he is one thing, can run contrary to it and call it good anyway.
What real benefit is there believing that God always was able to make his thoughts clear to us? Jesus had to come to make it clear who his father really is and we still love to think of God as slightly monstrous?
God tempered the faith of Abraham and through the trial reassured Abraham and Us that he is trustworthy and his ways are truly higher than ours. If all we want to see is a very linear and crude test of obedience that requires God to suspend his own laws----what is wrong with us? The words allow for a different story.
I won't tell it anyother way.
mrsjones claims after 17 years of marriage she has never cheated on her husband, not even once.
this is a direct contradiction of what billy paul tells us.
i'll let you decide: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfr6jmjoga8.
Right--I wouldn't read the book or watch the movie-- and it's not because marriage is always so easy. Just the whole premise brings faithfulness down.
i go to a women's discussion group on sl, second life, which is a virtual community where you do all sorts of things, including entertainment, discussion groups, media, and just socializing through the use of animated avatars which can be quite realistically human or whatever you want them to be, really, aliens, elves, dragons, vampires, etc.. anyway, a woman there brought to the discussion a situation where she had her real life husband wants to divorce her for a witness woman he had met..and get this...she had come to his door after the couple separated and offered him a bible study, and apparently instead, it turned into a romance and then, according to the woman, her husband and this woman are hitting the sheets.
(you're not supposed to call on the opposite sex alone, and do doubt this is one reason...too many lonely witness women who'd jump on the first piece of dude they meet!
lol).
Hilarious!
what do you get?.
if you stop treating the book like it's a magical device, what do you get?.
what is it really saying?.
Guber,
My personal reference points for mapping the value of the Bible roughly begins with the story of Abraham at the same time that I think of Jesus.
The story of Abraham's test at Genesis 22 is the keystone for me because it reveals the limits of second hand accounts to show us anything.
I realize the scriptures have been subject to so much interference that it requires a certain il--logic and anti-faith to call these tamperings "God's Word" but Genesis 22 stands out for several reasons ,here are a few:
1) Of the editing that was arguably done to the OT around the time of David's reign, only Genesis 22 was untouched.
2) It also stands as a monument to faith.
3) It is an embarrassment to Christians but not to Christ.
I think that the stories people told about God were supplied with conclusions/ morals to them that did not always fit.
I think that we have a hard time talking about our own experiences that we have had with God or that we suspect had to do with God. I think that the Bible stories don't even allow us to very easily plot the general coordinants of the God stories because some hasty souls went ahead and tried to do it for us.
It is certain that any words used to express stories of God will screw the story up.
I'm going to post this and I am sure this will not make any sense.
Maeve
i hear quite a bit of criticism about jehovah's witnesses enforcing 1 corinthians 5:9-13. while jehovah's witnesses have a formal system of maintaining the organization's core values; egocentric, self-worshiping secularists have an informal system of rejecting those of whom they have nothing in common with.
http://www.objectivistcenter.org/cth-32-390-religion.aspx.
most major religions have believed in the existence of a supernatural realm, a realm beyond the natural world of physical objects and bodies governed by causal laws, the world we perceive with our senses and can study by rational methods.
Alice,
For me, supporting religion and faith is an un-endurable strain. And when this publishing house decided to incorporate as a religion the abomination took up residence in the holy place , so to speak.
But all institutional religions do the same and they all become the same monster.
What happened to Jesus when the Children of Abraham became wrapped up in themselves as a religion? They tortured and killed Jesus.
You don't leave God if you walk out on the organized religion--especially if that religion is the WTBTS.
And I am impressed that you keep coming on this site, you must have a brass neck----
--------or else you want your freedom more than you want friends.
a teenage boy had just passed his driving test and asked his father as to when he could use the family car.. .
his father said he'd make a deal: 'you bring your grades up from a c to a b average, study your bible a little, and get your hair cut.
then we'll talk about the car.'.
so for my thousandth post, i decided to tell you guys that i'm applying to compete on wipeout canada.
my kids, the ones i love, are making me :).
i expect to get my butt kicked.
You for you! But know this--If they take you, you can run but you cannot hide!
i didn't want to hijack highdose's thread because i apparently went off on a rant when attempting to simply comment, so i thought i'd start my own thread.
this has been something that has just recently become more apparent in my thinking and bugs the crap outta me!:.
if it is a universal fact that god exists and can read people's hearts.....then why is there the statement that only jw's and those "ignorant" of jw teachings will live?.
God is better than we think.
