Christ died and the sacrifice has been made for all mankind whom 'accepts the gift'. Free will, free thinking, people each one, all decide for themselves whether they will accept GODS Great Salvation. It is their for the taking.

Gosh and you call yourself a christian... CHRIST DID NOT DIE...

Why would you limit his truth in this way?

Didn't He though? Being Christian means that you believe Christ suffered and died on the cross to pay for the sins of mankind, and that He rose again from the dead after three days in the tomb. So He did die, but He is alive.

She so answered that beautifully

This is a gross oversimplification of a very elaborate mythology of a God who demands blood sacrifices before he can forgive disobedience.

Also, before you can accept Christ as your savior you must first accept Satan as your enemy.

Christ is meaningless without Satan in this mythology. Satan must be placed before Christ because without Satan Christ would have no purpose.

Moreover, the entire mythology demands that all men have rejected God and have chosen to be disobedient to God. Otherwise they wouldn't need salvation.

The whole mythology is a very negative adversarial relationship with a creator.

Keeping in mind that this entire myth must be accepted and believed on faith alone one must ask why anyone would want to put their faith in such a negative relationship with God.

There are better pictures of God available that are much more worthy of your faith.

A better picture of God

One picture of God has come from the ancient shamans who worshiped God in a very positive light. They have recognized that God is a spirit that is both masculine and feminine in nature. They also believe that God is truly omniscient in nature, not removed in some external foreign spirit world.

In their mythology they view God as two 'dieties' one a Goddess, the other a God. Although these are not truly separate gods, they are merely metaphors for the feminine and masculine aspects of God, or the yin and yang of nature.

They view God as the creator and see God as smiling upon creation and creativity in general. Therefore the followers of this mythology see acts of creativity as something that the God(s) bless. They also believe that the God(s) will gladly assist anyone who wishes to create good things.

Many people view this as 'magick', but in reality it's just the power of God flowing through creative people who have requested the assistance of the God(s). Keeping in mind that there is always only one God, but the shamans prefer to view God as the two aspects of yin and yang. Therefore while it may appear to be polytheist in practice, it is actually monotheistic in principle.

It is a nice feeling to view God as both the Mother and the Father of creation. We can visualize them as such and in this way turn to God as either Mother or Father without conflicting interest. Neither the Goddess image nor the God image is seen being more important, and certainly not in competition with each other since they are ultimately just two different aspect of the same spirit.

However, having said that the image of the Goddess is often used as the focal point of interaction with God. The reason being that femininity is what gives birth to life, and therefore it is the feminine aspect of God that is seen as giving rise to all creative processes. However, the masculine aspect of God is much involved in precisely how the creative process becomes manifest.

As will all religious myths, these are merely methods that help us to view God and communicate with God. But this particular vision is quite positive and loving. There is no blanket presumption of guilt and evil intentions, and no one is required to seek 'salvation' unless they personally feel a need for it.

This religion does not believe that all of mankind fell from grace from God, and they certainly don't believe that God would be so mean as to have Her son butcher on a pole. Ironically many people who have believed in this religion have actually been burnt to death on poles by the same people who worship the mythological God that does these sorts of atrocities. Showing that monkey see, monkey do, can often apply to the followers of these negative dogmatic religions.

In any case, if you're going to put your faith in a mythology why not choose one that is friendly toward God? There is nothing more beautiful that to realize that God truly is love and you're not automatically guilty of things that you truly haven't done.

God loves you and She wants to help you create without accusing you of being Her adversary. So before you accept Satan as your enemy and Christ as your savior and enlist in a never-ending Holy War, you might want to look into the some of the ancient beliefs of the early shamans who were often referred to as witches. Once understood you might begin to realize that their religion is the most loving of all

Blessed Be

I have to admire your sheer arrogance. For someone who has never read the Bible or been a Christian to correct a Christian? That gives me a belly laugh.

All sins start in the Human heart. If there was no Satan, people would still sin. So Satan is a minor piece of the puzzle, other than his role in the end times.

Anyways...Thanks for the post "dewdrew", I would give you a high five, but there isn't an emoticon for that.

Denying my history is your own delusion.



Well, clearly this is a matter of demoninational interpretation. There are many Christian denominations that beleive that Christ's death was all about defeating Satan.

But I won't argue with a Paper Pope of Protestantism. Clearly you've rejected the body of Christ by chosing Prostestantism in the frirst place. You've rejected the Pople and then became a self-appointed Paper Pople and you have the audacity to call me 'arrogant'?


There would be no need for Christ if it weren't for Satan.

That's a fact of the mythology that you worship. If you don't like it you should chose a different mythology to worship. Don't blame me.

It's obvious from your posts that you have not read the Bible or attentively attended church. I'm not faulting you, millions of people haven't. But I won't tell a lie, even when you insist it's the truth.



Abra,

I wonder if you even believe your line of bull. Nobody who has any knowledge of the Bible believes it. Jesus defeated DEATH on the cross. I honestly believe that if you ever read the Bible you would become a Christian. No right thinking, honest person could do any different.

Denouncing truth doesn't make it go away.

The truth is that the Bible is a negative picture of the relationship of man and God.

It claims that man fell from grace from God.

Do you refute that?

It claims that all men are sinners.

Do you refute that?

It claims that God sacrificed his own son to suffer and die to pay for the sins of man.

Do you refute that?

It claims that to receive salvation a person must accept that Jesus suffered and died to pay for their salvation.

Do you refute that?

What part do I have wrong Spider?

How is this a positive picture of God?

It Claims that all men are guilty of opposing God and they all must accept that Jesus suffered and paid for their opposition to God.

Tell me where I'm wrong.

Tell me how I can worship this myth and go to this God with positive respect without confessing that I have opposed God and was the reason that he had to have his son slaughtered on a pole for my sake.

I don't believe I have ever opposed God Spider. And therefore this mythology is nothing but negative.

There's no way to get to the Christian God expect through negativity. You must confess that you are guilty of opposing God before you can be accepted by God.

Tell me a way to get to this God outside of the act of 'salvation'.

I await your answer.

And if there is no other way to get to this God outside of a request for salvation then how can you say that I don't know what I'm talking about?

This is precisely all that I'm saying.

I suppose some people wouldn't notice that you changed the subject, I have not. Those who are wrong, know they are wrong and don't want to admit so will often change the subject. Since I know the reason why you are changing the subject, I will take that as an admission that you were wrong and move on with you.

I know it's hard for you to imagine, but God has very high expectations for us, which we don't meet. And when we don't meet those expectations (which is every day), God is willing to forgive us as long as we admit to our failings and submit to Jesus as our Lord and Savior. Jesus' death was inevitable, it was going to happen some day, he was a man. The particular way that Jesus died was picked by mankind and prophesied about in the Old Testament. I suppose Jesus could have died of old age in his bed and his sacrifice would have been the same: God, our creator, lived and died as a human being. And in dying, Jesus took the sins of all the world into the grave with him, but because he himself was without sin, he was able to overcome death. On the cross, Jesus defeated death by dying without sin.

Jesus has already said that there is another way, don't sin...ever. Since Jesus is the only one to ever walk that path, I think you should take what's behind curtain #2. Take an honest look at the commandments and look at your own life. Anyone who does that must admit to being a sinner, at least under the law outlined in the Bible.

The tradition of blood sacrifices on the earth was brought here by the galaxy draconian empire who have been doing ritual blood sacrifices and conquering planets long before our solar system and the earth ever entered this galaxy.

The New Testament is a fiction written by Roman aristocrats to create a new religion in the on going battle between different factions who seek power and control over the ignorant population of humans.

Where is the logic in a blood sacrifice to pay for sins?

What are sins?

(Sins are disobedience of the ruling Lord and Master, punishable by death.)

In other words, someone must die according to the law, made by the almighty God.

Disobey and you die.

Or kill some innocent creature for your sins.

Makes a lot of sense right?

I don't think so.

If you think so, please explain to me so I can make some sense of it.

JB

I have read the whole Bible and am not a Christian.

This is your standard tactic and it's truly beyond getting old.

I haven't changed anything.

Chrisianity is a religion of negativity and failure of God's unrealistic expectations of prefection.

This seems to be your condensed view based on your last post.

You're just confirming my original assertion that Christianity is a negative religion.

The only way to get to God in this religion is through the negative act of confessing that we are total failures and unworthy of God's love on our own to the point where he had to restort to sacrificing his own Son to pay for our miserable failing.

My asserstion that Christianity is a negative picture of the realationship between God and man stands.

And no one has changed the subject.

Christianity is a negative picture of the relationship between man and God.

That was my original assertion and apparently it is still holding up just fine thank you.

Did I hear someone's chains rattling in here?

No, we were discussing your fallacious claim that "Christ is meaningless without Satan in this mythology."

You then changed the subject to your general disagreemwents with salvation. Sorry, but that's a change of subject. You past two posts haven't even tried to support your position that (I repeat) "Christ is meaningless without Satan in this mythology." That is simply not true and anyone with a cursory idea of what the Bible teaches knows that.

I've read the whole Bible too Ruth save or skipping over some of the 'begats' and a few other trival things that weren't worth getting bogged down with.

I was once asked on these forums if I read the Bible completely. Being an honest person I confessed that I have not, because I have skipped over various parts of it.

The Christians then try to stab me in the back with honesty that by trying to claim that I've never read the Bible at all which is total hogwash.

And Spider knows that it isn't true.

He also knows that it's a lie to accuse me of never having been a Christian.

I was a very devoted Christian for the first thrity year of my life. I tried to make sense of the Bible in depth. I've given it far more attention than it ever deserved.

I might like to remind everyone at this point in time that the great Isaac Newton spent a great deal of his life devoted to Bible study too and he also came to the conlucion that it can't be true.

So I'm in good company.

Really?

What objections did you have for accepting the Bible as the truth, if you don't mind my asking.

Abra,

The only thing I know is that you have not shown a cursory knowledge of the Bible. You are often surprised to hear Bible quotes. You are flabbergasted by simple concepts related to God and salvation. Simple answers that are found within the text somehow elude your grasp. You have not read the Bible or you read it when your mind couldn't grasp what you were reading. Without trying to be offensive, just being honest: You show no working knowledge of any of the concepts taught in the Bible.

Well that's a given Spider.

Maybe it would work better for you if I state it this way, "Christ is meaningless without sin in this mythology".

Many people attribute the origin of sin to Satan.

You clearly do not as you said that you believe man would sin on his own without Satan.

That's a trivial personal interpretation that really has nothing to do with the religion overall.

I think the vast majority of clergy would attibute sin to Satan. But I seriously have no desire to get into that debate.

The actual point that I was trying to make is that the religion is a negative picture of God.

And Jesus would not be required if it weren't for this negativity.

I see no reason to argue petty concrete interpretations of details when it's the overall concept that I'm trying to get across.

Show me a way to the bibilcal God of Christianity that doesn't rely on the concept of sin. (i.e. Negativity)

That's my actual point. Everything else is a petty side-show.

I love that you cause so much friction to Spider, James...

His inate desire to show how and where you cannot be remotely appropriate in your words is so interesting.

Perhaps you have a grasshopper there, Sensai..