Are you ready for the return of Jesus Christ? Have you been cleansed by His blood?
(returnofchrist.org)
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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.
Yes, no contradiction, all kinds of things are unities in one sense and pluralities in another sense, so it would be natural for God to be so too.
Some use the debt metaphor but it's not the most straightforward and not the clearest thing to be drawn from the Bible. If someone gave you this somewhat sloppily, I apologize. The fact is that in our own lives we've made mistakes (without needing to blame Adam), and that Jesus agreed to suffer the consequences of our mistakes so that we wouldn't have to (e.g. consequences like everyone else's anger at the things you failed them in), and that the Father accepted this substitution so that everyone who demands anything from you for your mistakes can be pointed to Jesus who promises to make it right for them too. (He also gives us all the blessings he earned by his righteous life.) As the good Samaritan says, whatever debts the sick man accrues, charge me with them instead. It's simpler to understand that way.
The Bible doesn't say you've failed if you don't convert people in some number, that's indeed a pressure tactic and again I apologize if you got that impression from people. It actually says we can't convert people, none can be converted unless the Father does the work of drawing them. Our responsibility is not to force change but just to share truth and let the Spirit work where he wills. There's a key text in Ezekiel, if God tells you to warn a person and you don't, you're responsible; but don't let a lying spirit or attitude make you think you have to warn everybody when you can't, because that's not its point. Christianity is not about "must"! It's about what we joyfully get to do after someone else (Jesus) did what he must.
So, like I said, I have truths and I enjoy sharing them and people can take them or leave them, and I rejoice when people take them. (And I rejoice when I'm corrected that what I thought was truth wasn't actually complete.) Zero pressure. If it's pressure, I call it churchianity because it's not life in Christ anymore. I've even gotten a bit more liberal as I've aged about the second coming and hell, because rightly understood those are not about pressure either, though they would take a bit longer to explain and you didn't raise a specific question there about them. But I hope that shows that I am confident my news is pretty good.
I like the way you phrase this, "the Bible doesn't say". How about Jake, Mike or Adam don't say... it would be more accurate. After all the Bible didn't write itself. Or fell from the sky on a printing press.