john76

"For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world" (John 3:17)

john76

It's funny that God didn't send Christ into the world to condemn the world, and yet that's the first thing, as we've seen, that Christians do.

Abel

John
If you are going to quote Scripture, then quote it in it's full context. Jesus did not come to condemn the world, true, but read the next two verses and you see why: John 3:18-19 "He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil."

I'm not comdemning you or anyone else. I am just a messenger. I'm telling you that God loves you (and so do I). God has offered mankind the greatest gift imaginable. Eternal life through faith in Jesus. I'm trying to show my love by telling you the truth. Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?

Earlier, you stated that you prayed for God to make Himself real to you, and He did not answer. Well, you just said you could not believe in Jesus. That's probably why God did not answer you. You do not believe. A child-like faith is what Jesus said is required.

debdodd
Thank you for taking note of my grammatical errors. If that is the worst thing I will be critized for, I'll take it. BTW, I love you too.

john76

Sorry. I got scared when you told me I am going to Burn - Glad you still love me - but will you still love me well done, or only medium rare?

shadowind

ok, so anything other then fear? and pain and what not?
besides wanting a paradise and a guardian to make all pains go away eventually, while after your done with his requirements. well anything not really superficial and hollow and driven by selfishness?

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remember "for mere impulse of appetite is slavery, while obedience to a law which we prescirbe to oursleves is liberty"-rousseau: the concept of the general will "if we can not reconcile all opions, then let us endeavour to unite all hearts."-?"to be is to be perceived"-? "‘We can be as honest as we are ignorant. If we are, when asked what is beyond the horizon of the known, we must say that we do not know’-Robert G. Ingersoll

john76

C'mon Abel. I know we play, but Jesus Christ never even existed. Why do you hold on so tightly to an ancient myth?

Abel

shadowind
The greatest reason to come to Jesus is because of the sweet love He has for us. Jesus said "Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends." He proved His love for us when He took our place on the cross to pay our sin debt. My record now reads "PAID IN FULL". My name is written in the Lamb's Book of Life. I'm telling people how they too can have their sins forgiven and a place reserved for them in Heaven.

John
I'm not playing. There is are some secular writings that make reference to Jesus Christ including Josephus, and Tacitus. Do you really want to know why I'm holding on to Jesus? Because He's holding on to me: John 10:28-30 And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand. I and my Father are one.

I can feel His presence with me. I don't expect you to understand, because you are not willing to allow Him in.

john76

Jesus is no more than a Christian re-write of older mythical sources. Are you really going to make me quote from my other posting? I guess you are, being silly quoting Josephus and Tacitus as you are, Abel. 'kay - here goes:

(1) "I remember first encountering the notion that the Jesus saga was formally similar to the Mediterranean dying and rising god myths of saviors including Attis, Adonis, Tammuz/Dumuzi, Dionysus, Osiris, and Baal. I felt almost at once that the jig was up. I could not explain away those parallels, parallels that went right to the heart of the thing. I felt momentary respite when I read the false reassurances of Bruce M. Metzger (may this great man rest in peace), J.N.D. Anderson, Edwin Yamauchi (may I someday gain a tenth of his knowledge!), and others that these parallels were false or that they were later in origin, perhaps even borrowed by the pagans from Christianity. But it did not take long to discover the spurious nature of such apologetical special pleading. There was ample and early pre-Christian evidence for the dying and rising gods. The parallels were very close. And it was simply not true that no one ever held that, like Jesus, these saviors had been historical figures. And if the ancient apologists had not known that the pagan parallels were pre-Christian, why on earth would they have mounted a suicidal argument that Satan counterfeited the real dying and rising god ahead of time. That is like the fundamentalists of the 19th century arguing desperately that God created fossils of dinosaurs that had never existed."

(2) "Another shocker: it hit me like a ton of bricks when I realized, after studying much previous research on the question, that virtually every story in the gospels and Acts can be shown to be very likely a Christian rewrite of material from the Septuagint, Homer, Euripides' Bacchae, and Josephus. One need not be David Hume to see that, if a story tells us a man multiplied food to feed a multitude, it is inherently much more likely that the story is a rewrite of an older miracle tale (starring Elisha) than that it is a report of a real event. A literary origin is always to be preferred to an historical one in such a case. And that is the choice we have to make in virtually every case of New Testament narrative. I refer the interested reader to my essay "New Testament Narrative as Old Testament Midrash," in Jacob Neusner and Alan Avery-Peck, eds., Encyclopedia of Midrash. Of course I am dependent here upon many fine works by Randel Helms, Thomas L. Brodie, John Dominic Crossan, and others. None of them went as far as I am going. It is just that as I counted up the gospel stories I felt each scholar had convincingly traced back to a previous literary prototype, it dawned on me that there was virtually nothing left. None tried to argue for the fictive character of the whole tradition, and each offered some cases I found arbitrary and implausible. Still, their work, when combined, militated toward a wholly fictive Jesus story."

(3) "I admit that a historical hero might attract to himself the standard flattering legends and myths to the extent that the original lines of the figure could no longer be discerned. He may have lived nonetheless. Can we tell the difference between such cases and others where we can still discern at least some historical core? Apollonius of Tyana, itinerant Neo-Pythagorean contemporary of Jesus (with whom the ancients often compare him) is one such. He, too, seems entirely cut from the cloth of the fabulous. His story, too, conforms exactly to the Mythic Hero Archetype. To a lesser extent, so does Caesar Augustus, of whom miracles were told. The difference is that Jesus has left no footprint on profane history as these others managed to do. The famous texts of Josephus and Tacitus, even if genuine, amount merely to references to the preaching of contemporary Christians, not reporting about Jesus as a contemporary. We still have documentation from people who claimed to have met Apollonius, Peregrinus, and, of course, Augustus. It might be that Jesus was just as historical as these other remarkable individuals, and that it was mere chance that no contemporary documentation referring to him survives. But we cannot assume the truth of that for which we have no evidence."

He probably never existed, and you are wasting you life thinking that he did. You are also scaring me with all the 'burning' talk; John

xxkayxx

Ok, I'm sorry for insulting you before. That was uncalled for, and I apologize. I didn't mean that YOU were a nutcase, but that your ACTIONS, as in coming on here and trying to say, even if you didn't mean it, that I'm too immature to accept god, were well, just as uncalled for as my accusation. Fair? Misunderstood insult for misunderstood insult, but lets move on.

You say that you feel God within you. Now we can say that we feel ANYTHING within us..doesn't make it true. I can say i feel it within me that blacks aren't equal to everyone else. Now theres alot of people that would argue with that. Not that i actually think that, it's just an example. I can lso say that i FEEL that fairies and leprechauns exist, agin, alot of people would argue with that. There's no substantial proof of there existence, so most people don't actually believe in them. Yet, theres about the same about of proof for God, though tons of people believ in him, or some other diety. I want actual PROOF.
The bible has been around for years, and I'm sure when you were younger you would play that game, where you sit in a circle and repeat a phrase over and over, then in the end it comes out to say nothin like what was actually said. Stories get mixed around over time if not written done on first account, so i put very little faith in some old book. And I'm sure that if you've ever read the bible, which of course you have, to me, it sounds very sexist. So why exactly should I put so much faith is such a book? If God is so great, shouldn't He have written it?
Now i haven't read but a few pages of the bible, only been to church but a few times, and i'm a very impressionable person. If you're going to convince someone of something, i think I'd be the easiest person to convince. And i hear the same old same old, so maybe you can give something that has nothing to do with what you feel inside you, and whats written down in a very old text book, i think I'd be very "open-minded" , (yet another thing you accused me of not being). So go for it =)
Also, don't say its because i havent "accepted God" or I'm not open enough for him to come to me. I've heard that all too many times, and it's getting old.

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If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing

john76

play nice 'kay' - don't ask 'Abel' questions that can't be answered.