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Questions...

InChrist

Free4ever
I appreciate the concern but I haven't been hurt by anyone... I just came to realize over time that life is meaningless and that I hate my existence.
Well, maybe you have come to realize, at least partially what King Solomon realized...life is meaningless apart from God. He tried everything under the sun; wealth, women, power, pleasure, ritual religion, etc., etc. to find fulfillment, but remained unsatisfied and found everything to be void, vanity and without meaning. It's not that everything in the world is of no value, rather that apart from God human efforts and pursuits are meaningless. This is what Solomon realized because he tried everything, but found no satisfaction when he... left God out. Yet, he came to the conclusion that purpose was found in serving and living for God...

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter:

Fear God and keep His commandments,
For this is man’s all.
For God will bring every work into judgment,
Including every secret thing,
Whether good or evil. Ecclesiastes 12:13-14
 

stvdv

Veteran Member: I Share (not Debate) my POV
We must trust the devil. He is hatred anyhow so it should be fun.

What?!?!?! I definitely don't trust Satan. Who are you? What's wrong with you?

That makes you a non believer.

My first thought is "MonkeyFire is the believer ... the believer in Satan". And "Jos at least is not a believer in Satan".
To call someone who does not believe in Satan a "non believer" is a totally false statement IMO. I do not believe in Satan.
 
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Jos

Well-Known Member
Well, maybe you have come to realize, at least partially what King Solomon realized...life is meaningless apart from God. He tried everything under the sun; wealth, women, power, pleasure, ritual religion, etc., etc. to find fulfillment, but remained unsatisfied and found everything to be void, vanity and without meaning. It's not that everything in the world is of no value, rather that apart from God human efforts and pursuits are meaningless. This is what Solomon realized because he tried everything, but found no satisfaction when he... left God out. Yet, he came to the conclusion that purpose was found in serving and living for God...

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter:

Fear God and keep His commandments,
For this is man’s all.
For God will bring every work into judgment,
Including every secret thing,
Whether good or evil. Ecclesiastes 12:13-14
I'm a nihilist so even if God exists I still think life would be meaningless.
 

stvdv

Veteran Member: I Share (not Debate) my POV

1: Christians believe Jesus is the only way to God
2: Christians believe in Hell and Satan, I don't

Those are 2 major points I disagree on. Even at age 10 this did not feel right.
 

Jos

Well-Known Member
1: Christians believe Jesus is the only way to God
2: Christians believe in Hell and Satan, I don't

Those are 2 major points I disagree on. Even at age 10 this did not feel right.
Why do you disagree? Why didn't it feel right?
 

MonkeyFire

Well-Known Member
My first thought is "MonkeyFire is the believer ... the believer in Satan". And "Jos at least is not a believer in Satan".
To call someone who does not believe in Satan a "non believer" is a totally false statement IMO. I do not believe in Satan.

You've been warned. You can't kill Suffering.
 

Deeje

Avid Bible Student
Premium Member
Hope I'm not drowning you with too much information......the Bible is my passion. I made it a goal to understand it, not just read bits of it.
Its like a big jigsaw puzzle....you can have all the pieces, but unless you know where they fit, the picture is incomplete.

That verse kinda negates free will, doesn't it, when it says God has to draw us to Him first rather than we seek Him out?

Jesus said as part of his prophesy of the "conclusion of the system of things" (or "the end of the age") in Matthew 24:14....

"And this good news of the Kingdom will be preached in all the inhabited earth for a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come."


Do you see in that verse why it was so important for Jesus' disciples to preach about his Kingdom? It was to be a "witness" (or testimony) to all the nations before God brings this whole system of things under the devil's control, crashing down. (Daniel 2:44) So its people's response to the preaching about his Kingdom that stirs their hearts and brings them to God's attention in the first place. As he sees a positive response, then he will draw that person to his truth.

Do you see all the churches sending their people out preaching? If not, why not? (Matthew 28:19-20)

God is choosing citizens for residency in his incoming Kingdom. He examines all of us very carefully and when he sees a good heart, he invites us to be a guest in his tent. (Psalm 15:1-2) We come into a spiritual family that encompasses all races and languages....people from all walks of life and backgrounds.....God is not partial, but welcomes all. (Acts 10:34-35) But they must be united in what they believe. (1 Corinthians 1:10)

1 Samuel 16:7..."For the way man sees is not the way God sees, because mere man sees what appears to the eyes, but Jehovah sees into the heart.

Our hearts speak louder than our mouths do.

Is it really worthy it to let him have the power to do all the evil he's doing though?

How else will people know how diabolical he really is? Do you not wonder at the depths of human depravity and wickedness? There is a word in the dictionary that describes this well...."INHUMAN". It simply means "not in the realms of normal human behavior". It comes from outside of humans and we know who is behind it.
God's capacity for good is contrasted by the devil's capacity for evil. We will never want to see anything like this again. Aversion therapy works.

But God doesn't need to prove anything to anyone...

If he wants humans to choose him as their God of their own free will, then he most certainly does. All we have to do is read about what God gave humankind in the beginning....this is what Jesus paid with his life to get us back. That is what I want more than anything this life has to offer. Jesus tells us how to qualify for it...and none of it is really that difficult.

Does Satan know that He will lose? And if he does, why does even bother doing anything? This whole thing would have been a waste of time from the beginning...

Have you ever heard of "rule or ruin" as a principle for those who will sacrifice everything to prove a point? The devil knows that his time is short and he hates the thought that his time is fast running out.....he knows he can't win, but he will take as many down with him as he can....as many as he can deceive.
 

Deeje

Avid Bible Student
Premium Member
How could He know what death meant if there was no death before God created man? I thought the world was without sin and death before man was created...

There was death in the animal kingdom that Adam would have observed. They breathed the same air, ate food and drank water, had the same blood running through their veins and it was Solomon who lamented that we humans were now no better off than the animals. (Ecclesiastes 3:19-20)

But why is it lesson continuing to be taught for so long? Hasn't there been enough suffering?

God does not operate in Earth time. He lives in a realm that is timeless. It is only taking a lot of earth years to accomplish.

Peter wrote...."However, do not let this escape your notice, beloved ones, that one day is with Jehovah as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day." (2 Peter 3:8)

Its only been a few 'weeks' actually.

I just don't like the fact that anything can be taken away from you at anytime.

There is nothing that we can lose in this world that God cannot restore in the world to come. If we remember that, then nothing we lose is more important than our everlasting life. Faith is rewarded. (Hebrews 11:6)

But Jews don't accept Jesus as Messiah right?

Sadly, no. Jesus gave them every opportunity to accept him as Messiah, but only a remnant were prophesied to be saved. (Romans 9:27-28; Romans 11:5) Unlike Jesus, the Pharisees were very negligent shepherds.

So evolution is true?

Not the way they tell it. They refer to adaptation (something they can test and observe) and then suggest that it went way further than they can prove. They are determined that God cannot exist and they will kill him off at every opportunity. Those who try to combine creation and evolution by suggesting that God simply began the process, have sold out to peer pressure, like a bunch of immature teenagers. Where is the faith that God did exactly what he said he did. The Bible agrees with true science, but not the theoretical kind that can change on a whim tomorrow.

But in the beginning of the book of the Gospel of John it says that Jesus has always existed and was God...

It doesn't really. Have you ever read John 1:1 in the Greek? An interlinear makes it plain that Jesus is not God. There is no word for the monotheistic God of the Jews in the Greek language. For Greeks, all their gods had a name and collectively, they were just referred to as "the gods". Translating the God of Israel into Greek, because the Jews had stopped using his name, was difficult so they used the definite article (THE) to describe this God.

Its a bit like someone with the same name as a celebrity...e.g. if you said your name was Denzel Washington and someone said not THE Denzel Washington....you would have to say no, just a guy with the same name. If you said that you were "with" Denzel Washington, could anyone then suggest that you must be him if you were with him?

John 1:1 in Greek reads...."In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with THE God, and the Word was god."

It is hard to be "with" someone if you ARE that someone. Also we have to ask about "the beginning"...since God is an eternal being, (with no beginning or end) what "beginning" is this speaking about? The Word is Jesus and he had a beginning (Revelation 3:14)

John 1:18 says..."No man has seen God at any time; the only-begotten god who is at the Father’s side is the one who has explained Him."

How many people saw Jesus? Is God "begotten"? If he is, he needs a begetter....someone who gave him life.
 
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Deeje

Avid Bible Student
Premium Member
But if he was perfect, doesn't that mean that it would be impossible for him to sin? God can't sin because He has a perfect nature so if the angel had a perfect nature then he shouldn't have been able to sin...

Free will means the ability to make choices, even bad ones. Its why Adam and Eve could choose to disobey. That is why God had laws written....so that in our fallen, imperfect state, we would choose to do the right thing and stay out of trouble.

How can a human with an imperfect nature, live a sinless life?

Since the sin we inherited from our first parents is in our DNA, it is impossible for us to live a sinless life. That's why we are covered by Jesus sacrifice. His blood is a 'propitiation', which means it covers our sin over like a blanket....like it never happened. It is totally forgivable as long as we are sincerely repentant and try hard not to repeat our mistakes. God does not expect us to do the impossible. Paul knew this. (Romans 7:14-25)

But Satan, the other rebellious angels and unrepentant humans are all spiritual beings who are disobedient but will live forever in hell...

This is not a Bible teaching. It is another adoption by Christendom to scare the pants off little children and gullible adults, so that they could control them. There is no such place as hell. Everlasting life is promised only to the righteous....why would God grant everlasting life to the wicked, only to torture them...he is not a fiend! He has no need to do any of that...he will just leave them in death, never to see life again.

Hell in the Bible is "sheol" (Hebrews) or "hades" in Greek. Neither is a place of torment.....it is a place where the dead sleep. (Ecclesiastes 9:5; 10)

Again I suspect Trinitarians will say that the Trinity is impossible for humans with a limited understanding to fully comprehend.
And doesn't the Bible talk about a Godhead?

They will try to justify their doctrine because their entire belief system rests on it. But the Bible does not mention a "godhead" at all. This is a mistranslation, like the word "hell". According to Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon, the·oʹtes (the nominative form, from which the·oʹte·tos is derived) means “divinity, divine nature.” (Oxford, 1968, p. 792) Being a true “divinity,” or of a “divine nature,” does not make Jesus as the Son of God, coequal and coeternal with the Father. He clearly said that the Father was greater than he was.

So praise and worship is ultimately just obedience?

We honor God by our obedience and we bring praise to him by allowing him to mold our personality despite all the rot going on around us. This is the mark of a true Christian....being able to hold to the principles that God's word teaches in spite of all the influences around us to do the opposite.

I read recently where many in the churches are succumbing to the world's standards, watching pornography, being entertained by extremely violent or spiritistic movies and computer games...which often glorify bloodshed, satan and demonism. Many are approving of SSM as well. How foolish to fall for the bait. The fallen flesh is no match for the devil without God's spirit. (Proverbs 3:5-6)

Fair point but TBH if I don't know if Unitarians or Trinitarians have it correct since both sides have good points.

It is up to you to check these things out for yourself. Only you can makes decisions about your future. What God is offering is nothing like life in this world.

Rather than offer life to everyone without condition, God sets reasonable conditions for our salvation. After all, life was conditional right from the beginning.....it was a simple case of 'obey and live...disobey and die'. They were the only two choices back then. What choices do we have today? Its a minefield....but not one where there is no safe path out. We have a map and a compass.

I hope your journey is successful.
 

InChrist

Free4ever
I'm a nihilist so even if God exists I still think life would be meaningless.
You are certainly welcome to your own perspective, but nihilism strikes me as quite fatalistic and depressing, which I also believe to be false.

And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’ Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man’s devising. Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.
Acts 17:26-30
 

stvdv

Veteran Member: I Share (not Debate) my POV
Why do you disagree? Why didn't it feel right?

At age 10 I thought very simple. I lived in Holland, year 1974.
So if people lived in an island near New Zealand and never heard about Jesus this would be unfair to them (Jesus is the only way)
There were people on earth long before Jesus lived, so those people had no chance; this totally made no sense to me
Later on Christians tried all kind of loops to get around that, but it never made sense to me

I never was good in believing "blind". I have never seen Satan nor God, so it always felt strange to "believe" to me in this "God picture".
They talk about God as a Father in the heavens who created the Universe. It's like believing that an ant can create "the Netherlands"
If God is human like (like a Father) then He must be very huge to be able to create the universe, which is pretty big.

At age 10 this did not make sense to me. Still now, this God concept makes no sense to me.
Satan concept I find really sickening. So I stay far away from that. It is fine with me if others fancy to believe in this, but I don't want this in my mind
 
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stvdv

Veteran Member: I Share (not Debate) my POV
You've been warned. You can't kill Suffering.

I see suffering as an unavoidable side product when being alive. Nothing to do with Hell and Satan.

I agree to disagree on this one.
Love, Peace and Blessings to you
 
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Hockeycowboy

Witness for Jehovah
Premium Member
Does Satan know that He will lose? And if he does, why does even bother doing anything? This whole thing would have been a waste of time from the beginning...

You ask some good questions!

And I've read @Deeje 's response some. (I'm a JW, too, so Deeje and I agree on spiritual things.)

Talking about 'Satan knowing'....please think about this: one of Jehovah God's purposes for Jesus was for him to die, right? Then why did Satan want to kill him? (Satan put it into Judas' heart, remember? Luke 22:3-4.) You'd think Satan would've wanted to keep Jesus alive forever! But Satan just can't understand spiritual issues...he and the demons had that ability taken away from them. They are in "dense spiritual darkness."
 

Shantanu

Well-Known Member
Is that smile because I admitted my limitations or because you agree with me or is it something else?
One is always able to study and find out the truth about God and become infallible in ones undertakings (become God in human form). It is achieved through yoga of truth accommodation, the Hindu path that I have personally identified as something that has worked for me.

I smiled because I believe every person should be able to believe in whatever they find as the truth without being proselytized by someone else. So I was just acknowledging your comments as something that I have been through in the past.
 
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Jos

Well-Known Member
Hope I'm not drowning you with too much information
No it's OK.
Do you see all the churches sending their people out preaching? If not, why not?
No they don't but IDK why?
Do you not wonder at the depths of human depravity and wickedness? There is a word in the dictionary that describes this well...."INHUMAN". It simply means "not in the realms of normal human behavior". It comes from outside of humans and we know who is behind it.
God's capacity for good is contrasted by the devil's capacity for evil. We will never want to see anything like this again. Aversion therapy works.
I understand that it's good to learn things but because of evil, horrible things like rape, killings, starvation of little children etc. happen. Is it worth it to allow humans to suffer so horribly like that to prove a point?
Have you ever heard of "rule or ruin" as a principle for those who will sacrifice everything to prove a point? The devil knows that his time is short and he hates the thought that his time is fast running out.....he knows he can't win, but he will take as many down with him as he can....as many as he can deceive.
All that Satan does is ultimately meaningless and makes no sense given he'll lose... Did he know he would eventually lose even before he started? Also why create certain humans knowing they would be deceived or go to hell?
Sadly, no. Jesus gave them every opportunity to accept him as Messiah, but only a remnant were prophesied to be saved. (Romans 9:27-28; Romans 11:5) Unlike Jesus, the Pharisees were very negligent shepherds.
I heard that Jews rejected Him because He didn't fulfill any of the Messianic requirements for being a Messiah
They are determined that God cannot exist and they will kill him off at every opportunity.
Not all of them... some of them are Christian.
Those who try to combine creation and evolution by suggesting that God simply began the process, have sold out to peer pressure, like a bunch of immature teenagers. Where is the faith that God did exactly what he said he did. The Bible agrees with true science, but not the theoretical kind that can change on a whim tomorrow.
So God use a form of adaptation but was directly involved in the process?
It doesn't really. Have you ever read John 1:1 in the Greek? An interlinear makes it plain that Jesus is not God. There is no word for the monotheistic God of the Jews in the Greek language. For Greeks, all their gods had a name and collectively, they were just referred to as "the gods". Translating the God of Israel into Greek, because the Jews had stopped using his name, was difficult so they used the definite article (THE) to describe this God.
Hmmm, I didn't know that. I guess I have a lot to learn
 

Jos

Well-Known Member
Free will means the ability to make choices, even bad ones.
Did Satan have a perfect nature before He became evil?
Since the sin we inherited from our first parents is in our DNA, it is impossible for us to live a sinless life.
I understand that but the question I asked had to do with Jesus... how could He, having a fully human nature, live sin free?
There is no such place as hell. Everlasting life is promised only to the righteous....why would God grant everlasting life to the wicked, only to torture them...he is not a fiend! He has no need to do any of that...he will just leave them in death, never to see life again.
But in the story of the rich man and Lazarus, the rich man ended up in hell and also why would God describe hell as being a place of torture and everlasting fire if there's not gonna be an everlasting fire or anything at all?
They will try to justify their doctrine because their entire belief system rests on it. But the Bible does not mention a "godhead" at all. This is a mistranslation, like the word "hell". According to Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon, the·oʹtes (the nominative form, from which the·oʹte·tos is derived) means “divinity, divine nature.” (Oxford, 1968, p. 792) Being a true “divinity,” or of a “divine nature,” does not make Jesus as the Son of God, coequal and coeternal with the Father. He clearly said that the Father was greater than he was.
Hmmm, OK, didn't know that
I read recently where many in the churches are succumbing to the world's standards, watching pornography, being entertained by extremely violent or spiritistic movies and computer games...which often glorify bloodshed, satan and demonism. Many are approving of SSM as well.
Wasn't this inevitably supposed to happen given that God prophesied it would happen? If He prophesied it then it's impossible for it not to happen right?
It is up to you to check these things out for yourself. Only you can makes decisions about your future. What God is offering is nothing like life in this world.

Rather than offer life to everyone without condition, God sets reasonable conditions for our salvation. After all, life was conditional right from the beginning.....it was a simple case of 'obey and live...disobey and die'. They were the only two choices back then. What choices do we have today? Its a minefield....but not one where there is no safe path out. We have a map and a compass.

I hope your journey is successful.
Thanks for answering my questions.
 
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