God is...

[themickey]

Church is a nice benefit though

Yeah I know, church is all about benefits.

 

[themickey]

The singers aren't Amish or Mennonite either.

Hill Billy?

 

[Overnight]

..Furthermore, virtually none of your posts have communicated any of your own personal experiences that would support any of your arguments at all. I have no problem debating back and forth about something but you've got to give me more of your own personal experience than generic statements like the Bible has fulfilled prophecies that deserved your attention and credibility.

Oh Baron, friend, you are walking into the quagmire here.

Welcome to the world of the RED pill.

 

[ph1l]

Then, in A.D. 650, a group of Arab scholars produced a unified version and destroyed all variant copies to preserve the unity of the Qur’an. The Bible was unified from the time of its writing. The Qur’an had unity forced upon it by human editors.

​

Now its been years since I was into bible study, but I recall reading somewhere there are manuscripts removed from earlier versions of the bible.

Some books were apparently removed from the Bible.
https://pennbookcenter.com/how-many-books-were-removed-from-the-bible/
How Many Books Were Removed From The Bible? Best Update 2022

From the year 1611 that the Bible was translated out of Latin to English. Back then, the Bible comprised a total of 80 books along with also the past 14 books, which now have been excluded, composed the ending of the Old Testament and were as follows:

• 1 Esdras
• 2 Esdras
• Tobit
• Judith
• The rest of Esther
• The Wisdom of Solomon
• Ecclesiasticus
• Baruch with the epistle Jeremiah
• The Songs of the 3 Holy children
• The history of Susana
• bel and the dragon
• The prayer for Manasses
• 1 Maccabees
• 2 Maccabees

The reason could be conflicts with other parts of the Bible.

Among those books that are especially intriguing is the “Wisdom of Solomon.” ... what you see in this book will make you question what you’re told to consider him.
...
This truly disrupts everything we thought we understood. Solomon really and genuinely seems terrible. He’s also alleged to be the cleverest person ever.

 

[Baron]

But God does give us evidence and reasons to believe. It is not blind faith. But it’s also not absolute proof in a philosophical sense. The Bible also uses the word “understood” when teaching the concept that things are so clearly understood by people about God that they have no excuse.

God says there is sufficient evidence to give an understanding of Himself. There are at least three basic ways the Bible discusses that bring about this understanding that can lead to belief or suppression of the truth leading to unbelief.

1. The Testimony of Creation

Psalm 19:1-4
1The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of His hands.
2Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
3Without speech or language,
without a sound to be heard,
4their voice has gone out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.​

Rom 1:19-20
19For what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from His workmanship, so that men are without excuse.​

Basically, from God’s perspective, the evidence is so plain that you have no excuse if you don’t see it. This is not blind faith.

God shows people that He exists.

Rom 1:18 says people suppress this knowledge because of their sin. They don’t want it to be true because of their sin.

18The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness.​

The typical way people suppress this knowledge has been to turn to idolatry. Idolatry was universal until recent times when it has been replaced by evolutionary theory. See Romans 1.

It seems that God has even predicted that in the last days people would reject and mock Him and the promise of Jesus return because of evolutionary theory.

2 Peter 3:4
They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.”​

Could this verse really have been a prediction that evolutionists would teach natural selection? Does it tell us that evolutionists would believe that all things have continued without intervention by God or any beings, but natural processes only? The Big Bang is certainly the evolutionists version of creation. It would appear that saying the following would not be inconsistent with the meaning of this verse:

They will say, "Where is the promise of His coming? For all things continue since the Big Bang, through the time of our ancestors, and into the present, by natural processes, without Divine intervention."
(My own revision of the verse).​

The timing of this will be in the last days.

2. The Testimony of Prophecy Fulfilled

This brings me to the second way that God has provided us with evidence for belief, and that is through prophecies fulfilled. Many times in the Bible God says that prophecy is given so that we can know that the Lord is God, or so that we can believe. Jesus even told his disciples, “I have told you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe.”

The Bible is a big book. Scholars generally say that over ¼ of it was prophetic when it was written. Much of it has already been fulfilled. Prophecies would often be given in one book of the Bible and then the fulfillment confirmed by other authors in later books. There are still many prophecies that apply to the future and seem to be extremely relevant to the time period we are in, based off of the many passages of Israel’s return to her homeland and the events described in Ezekiel 37-39.

Ezekiel 39:28, 29
“...then they will know that I am the LORD their God, for though I sent them into exile among the nations, I will gather them to their own land, not leaving any behind. I will no longer hide my face from them, for I will pour out my Spirit on the people of Israel, declares the Sovereign LORD.” Ezekiel 39:28, 29​

3. The Testimony of Direct Revelation of God

Direct revelation was sometimes given to prophets during Old Testament times. Some of these messages have been recorded for us in the Old Testament.

In several places parts of the New Testament also claim direct revelation or guidance from God.

There is also the work of the Holy Spirit in an unbeliever’s heart to reveal the validity of the message of the Bible, see John 3:8. Jesus also described the work of the Holy Spirit like this,

And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment. John 16:8​

There is a conviction that can come, as described in John 16:8, from the Holy Spirit, that does not exist in any other religion. I have experienced this myself many times. Here are two passages that I think do a good job of showing what I mean:

Isaiah 6:5 shows the response Isaiah had to seeing God:

Then I said: "Woe is me, for I am ruined, because I am a man of unclean lips dwelling among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of Hosts."​

Luke 5:8 tells Peter’s reaction to a miracle Jesus did that Peter had doubted beforehand. Peter suddenly realized some of Jesus’ majesty and power.

When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!”​

Idolatry and other religions do not teach of a good and holy God who is very offended by our sin, yet still offers reconciliation without any personal merit. This is unique to Christianity.

The message of the gospel speaks to our hearts. We know we are guilty, and when we come to realize a glimpse of the absolute perfection of God’s character and how fall short we fall, this should drive us to pursue reconciliation with God through the salvation He promises through simple faith and repentance toward Jesus. However, we are given a choice to respond correctly or to continue in our own ways.

The main reason people do not want to believe this is because, as Jesus put it, “men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” John 3:19

Ok, first of all, you keep quoting very limited portions of the Bible as some sort of evidence of your beliefs, and I totally get where you're coming from. But if you take your approach and apply it to any other area of life, nothing you've quoted would hold much water at all. For example, in my estimation, the average Christian is familiar with about 25% of the Bible, and that's being very, very generous. In reality, most Christians that I know are familiar with less than 10% of the scriptures. But for the sake of argument, let's stick with 25%.

Would you say that a person would be considered an expert, or even authoritative, in any subject on the planet by reading 25% of one book? Imagine if you read 1/4th of a book on mathematics, or history, or science, or politics, and then deemed yourself an expert? Or let's go to the extreme and pretend you read 100% of one book, believed it to be true, and now have everything figured out in life. It sounds so ridiculous but that's exactly what believers do. They get the bare bones thumbnail sketch of biblical teaching and then proceed like they are now experts in pretty much all of life's critical questions. How did creation come to be? No problem! How to handle any situation in life? It's all right in the scriptures! What happens when we die? It's all laid out in black and white!.... and the list goes on and on. And when I step back and observe that behavior, the famous quote from Osho instantly comes to mind:

"The less people know, the more stubbornly they know it."

 

[themickey]

I think OP may rue the day he started this thread, bet ya he doesn't do it again.

 

[userque]

With all due respect, I have presented to you arguments based upon real-life personal experience,

Your answers are not full. For example, you gave an example of how you would just say "you don't know."

I asked you for clarity, and gave a specific example and asked would you also give that same answer to the example question. There is nothing wrong with getting clarity during a debate. Yet you want to vilify doing that during a debate, and labeling clarifying as "arguing."

and your responses are always one of two approaches: You either argue by asking me another question or you argue based upon a premise of comparing religion to science.

I asked how you would respond to a scientific question. Would you give it the same scrutiny as you do religious questions. My premise was that you are biased, which is a fair position to investigate during a debate.

I asked more that once because to date, you haven't answered the simple example questions.

I never once stated that I was a scientist or that science is superior in any way to religion

Nor did I. Again, I wanted to see if you would answer secular questions in the way you say you answer religious question. My questions are clear and simple to any reader, imo. Nothing complex or complicated.

I'm not sure why you keep trying to steer the conversation down a route that pits religion vs. science.

Read above for my intention.

Once again, words are being put into my mouth. You could simply have asked me my intentions (rather than claiming to know them), like I did you with your prophecy timeframe restriction. And also, I actually made posts setting forth how religion and science actually work together.

Furthermore, virtually none of your posts have communicated any of your own personal experiences that would support any of your arguments at all.

Once again, ASK.

I generally don't bang on about myself unless it's relevant to making my point. Rarely is one data point (me) relevant. I've been busy trying to get you to clarify your positions.

Now maybe we could have progressed to where the discussing focused on me personally, but you never asked any questions; and I never got past discussing prophecy (again!?).

It'd be different if you posted, "I've asked you questions, but you don't answer any."

I see this everywhere and IRL. It's like questions have become a thing of the past ... like cursive writing.

Folks, if you want to know something, just ask.

I have no problem debating back and forth about something but you've got to give me more of your own personal experience than generic statements like the Bible has fulfilled prophecies that deserved your attention and credibility.

In this case, my premise is that a scripture that documents fulfilled prophecy evidences the super natural, etc. It's that simple, and the logic would proceed from there, but we never get that far. Non-believers seem to really have a problem facing up to prophecy.

1. What personal information should I have included that's relevant to my premise?
2. ... that would help you understand the premise?
3. ... that would normally be included by others?
4. Why don't/didn't you just ask me what you think should be included; just like I've been asking you questions that I am curious about?

I renew my unanswered questions.
I get it if you no longer want to debate.
I'm good either way.

 

[userque]

I don't know much about Eddie James ministries, except that the words to this song are excellent and his website says he works with troubled youth, which is awesome!

Eddie rescues, restores, and disciples youth who are coming out of drug addiction, street life, gangs, violence, abuse, and perverse lifestyles through his recovery and Discipleship ’N Art programs. These highly effective programs have empowered youth to experience a life in freedom and discover their true significance.
https://www.eddiejames.com/about​

Nice! Modern style, upbeat.

 

[studentofthemarkets]

I think OP may rue the day he started this thread, bet ya he doesn't do it again.

Actually, this is kinda fun, though time consuming. I'm not getting done what I should be doing tonight! lol

 

[userque]

Actually, this is kinda fun, though time consuming. I'm not getting done what I should be doing tonight! lol

Not a response a troll wants to hear. LMAO!

I hope he doesn't play poker. It's so easy to read that you love this stuff.