Are you ready for the return of Jesus Christ? Have you been cleansed by His blood?
(returnofchrist.org)
You're viewing a single comment thread. View all comments, or full comment thread.
Comments (26)
sorted by:
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.