Are you ready for the return of Jesus Christ? Have you been cleansed by His blood?
(returnofchrist.org)
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What exactly do you think I have done that I need repentance for?
That's exactly the Church's message, worship/accept Jesus and obey us or be condemned to hell. I've heard this countless number of times in my life.
I assume here by "His Son" you mean God's Son. So, you're saying, God has a son who is Lord, that is the Hebrew word adonai used to refer to the true God. And this son is also Christ, meaning the "anointed one" or "chosen one,". Christ comes from the Greek word Christos, which is equivalent to the Hebrew Mashiach or "Messiah".
Did I get this right? are you are telling me just embrace it, "believe in Jesus"? Faith is more important than reason. Is that what you are telling me?
Not either-or but both-and. I learned that faith and reason never conflict and I like sharing that liberating discovery with others.
Why do you you and u/PraiseGod, assuming you are two different individuals, want to convert me? what do I need to know more about Christianity than I already know? I know about Christmas and Easter and celebrate both. That means the birth and death of Jesus, which is all that the Church teach about him anyway. Nothing really in between.
Perhaps you are talking about the 18+ lost years the Bible is silent about. That's nearly two decades of Jesus' life missing from history, are you going to tell me that doesn't matter? or are you going to share this secret story with me, if I decide to convert? is this what you mean by "sharing that liberating discovery"?
"Christmas" and "Easter" are pagan festivals. They are not found in the Bible. The LORD God does not approve of worship in this way. As it is written:
Remember:
Christmas was established as a Christian festival in the 2nd century, and celebrates the birth of Christ. Easter was established by the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. The council decreed that Easter would be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the spring equinox. Easter celebrates Christ’s resurrection after he was Crucified on Good Friday. Both festivals/events tell a story.
The Bible also tells stories, from the beginning to the end. Why are the Christmas and Easter stories Bad (pagan) and Bible stories Good (holy)? both the festivals and the Bible are a product and receive the endorsement of the Roman Empire. They both were established/written by men who served the interests of the Empire.
I fully ejected "Christmas" and "Easter" from my life. Of course I retained Mosaic Firstfruits and also celebrated it as Resurrection Day (which is an internal question among 7th-day resters). Funny thing, 25 years later, I discovered there's enough evidence that the Christian tradition of Julian December 25 might well point to a confused echo that Jesus's annunciation, conception, "epiphany", genesis, and "nativity" might have occurred on 25 Dec of 5 BC, corresponding to his birth on the first of Tabernacles (6 Oct) in 4 BC. One intriguing line is that Haggai 2 prophesies this date as 24 Kislev and Simeon makes about ten references to Haggai 2 suggesting he could've recognized and approved the date.
Therefore one thing we need to do in getting along with those rampant 1st-day resters is to be open to a couple hints in the text that there may be good symbologic significance to some things they day even as they are overcome by evil symbologic significance that has infiltrated their practice unconsciously. There is a way by which everything is pure to the pure. Celebrating Mosaic Firstfruits and a 25 Dec conception nativity can be done without sin. (Technical note: for Gregorian-Julian alignment of 2 days the celebration should begin the evening of 23 Dec, making 25 Dec more of a diaspora date; but getting off work the evening of 23 Dec is what people do nowadays anyway.)
Yeah, I'm a c/Christianity mod, I jump in on such threads. But my nuance would be that I don't want you to "convert" anything unless it's what you want. I would think that everyone would want to be turned more toward what is true, and if that's the trajectory than specific turnpoints are less relevant.
Why do you celebrate Jesus's birth and death and what do they mean to you?
I don't keep secrets, I share what I have and others do too. I (and the churches in general) don't have explicit details on most of Jesus's upbringing. I have learned to spot Jesus in many other things, including the appearances of God sprinkled through the Scriptures, so that I've gotten to know him enough to know the kind of things he did from 9 to 29 AD, such that it's not important to me where he went or what he learned at that time because it can be judged by what can be known confidently of him.
I said specifically that it's a liberating discovery to know faith doesn't conflict with reason as you hinted they might. Belief that Jesus can do what he says has never conflicted with what can be found out by reason through facts and logic. You imply that the church has asked you to believe something contrary to logic. Permit me to apologize on behalf of the church for anything that might have given you that impression: there is never a contradiction, there is only a deeper logic that both transcends and subsumes any logical difficulty that may appear.
I didn't say that. I said "I know about Christmas and Easter and celebrate both". And if I was living in China, I would celebrate Chinese New Year, just as locals do.
Okay. So, you're not gonna tell me what Jesus did for almost two decades of his life, that the Bible keeps silent about. But, then you're telling me, it's Okay because of "what can be known confidently of him". We know next to nothing, almost zero, about Jesus. And here I mean the historical Jesus. We know plenty of what people who have never met him wrote about him decades later, after he passed away.
No, again I didn't say that. The Church didn't ask me to believe in anything, although some people I considered friends did. But that's to be expected, it's called brainwashing. As far as I'm concerned the Church is just a propaganda machine for TPTB and they serve the empire. So, let me just list a couple of things Church promotes. First, God exists as three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But these three are somehow also one God. Second, Jesus died for our sins. So, according to the Bible, we got kicked out of the Garden of Eden because we disobeyed God and we ate from the Tree of Knowledge. And Jesus died on the cross to redeem us, to pay the debt that we owe to God. Third thing is that eventually Jesus will return in what's called the Second Coming. My opinion, Church and TPTB probably didn't have someone like Sigmund Freud or Joseph Goebbels in Rome in 3rd or 4th century, that's why they came up with this gold nuggets.
So, what Christianity (Church) says is that if you believe in Jesus, if you accept him as your Lord and Savior, you will go to heaven. But if you do not believe in Jesus, you will burn in hell for eternity. This makes Christianity a missionary religion. Meaning, if you're a Christian, you not only must believe in Jesus, but you must go out and try to convert other people. Because if they don't convert to Christianity during the Last Judgement, they will burn in hell and you will have failed them. That's exactly what u/PraiseGod said in the message to me. And this is the problem I see with what you are doing.