How is faith in God attained?

I'm not sure why the question of, "how did pre-Jesus people attain faith in God?", is so difficult.

So far we have this from IceAge:

1) By having faith.
2) Faith is a gift.
 
Well God obviously didn't care what we did before Jesus got here. He works in mysterious ways. </sarcasm>
 
Yea! but Icecrapage writes nothing more then one or two sentences in every post he makes, this guy is not a good communicator of his beliefs, very vague non-serquitus statements only lead to more misunderstanding. See with those two he has answered nothing!
 
I'll just assume IceAge has no answer for now. Hopefully he is thinking of a coherent response instead of the scattered, incoherent explanations he has given thus far.
 
Godless said:
Nice circular admission to a context. Thus it's upon faith, that you rely the message to be true, not that it's truth, It's you that have to have faith, that what you read, must be literally believed. Thus admitting truth, before any evidence of the context can be proven to be reliable.

That's why the old cliche "Don't question our doctrine, to believe that it's truth you must have faith"
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You have not read what i said, Maybe you just cannot understand. Or maybe you are ignoring it. Whatever the case so be it.


All Praise The Ancient Of Days
 
nds1 said:
What is the Message of Jesus? Please explain what I have to agree with in order to attain faith.
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Salvation through agreement with God and reliance on God. Rather than salvation by achieving the will of God, an imposable task for faulty humans.



Also, on what basis do you personally agree with the Message of Jesus? Is the message logically sound? Is it appealing to you? Can you please explain how I should judge the Message?
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I agree with the central message of the Love of God for those who love His will but cannot perform his will and are not puffed up with pride or arrogance but with contrition, meekness and joy at the mercy of God towards them.



Should I judge it based on its being logically sound?
Should I judge it based on its extreme attention to detail?
Should I judge it based on weather it sounds truthful or not?

So how should I judge the truthfulness of the message?
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Well chose a form of judging that you think would be best in such a central and eternal matter of importance. There is no point me telling you how to do it you will chose whatever means that you deem fit.



What separates the Message of Jesus from the Message of Mohammad?
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I cannot believe anyone would not see the conflict between the Words of Jesus and the words of muhammed. Have you read what Jesus said? have you read what is in the quran?




nds1 said:
If God came to them in an undeniable manifestation, then they would have knowledge of God's existence, not faith.
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God did not come to each and everyone of them via direct revelation. Only on a very few occasions where His direct manifestations viewed by a large mass of people and the bible says that those people ended up rebelling against the will of God anyway. God has through history both OT and NT manifested Himself to people directly, usually to cause the individual to become a messenger of His will. Wether people hear the Message from a Messenger or wether they read it in a book makes no difference. Once the Message is received then it is up to the one receiving the message to accept it or reject it.



All Praise The Ancient Of Days
 
So you decide wether the message is foolish or wise
So you decide wether the message is truth or a lie
So you decide to accept or reject the message.

Proof?? To those who believe, the proof is within the Message itself. Any other kinds of proofs are just decorations unnecessary and not to be relied upon.

Those who are demanding proof before they accept the Message have in fact rejected the Message already.
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Is it beyond your capacity to see that this is circular? That it relies only on "faith" of what is writen, that there's no evidence of that message to be true, only that the source claims to be the word of god and it's truth!

Yes I've read your non-serquitus non sense, perhaps now you can make a logical argument without the circular context.
 
nds1 said:
In any case, if we attain faith by reading the gospel, then how did Abraham or Moses attain faith in God?
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By hearing and believing His Word...that they both (Moses, Abraham) already understood the rudiments of the Gospel is revealed by the Pentateuch, the Gospel of John, and by the writer of the book of Hebrews.

Moses wrote of Christ and Abraham...Jesus confirms both knew the rudiments of the Gospel and the writer of Hebrews states catagorically that when faced with the test of sacrificing Isaac, Abraham was convinced God would raise him from the dead. All this is REVEALED by the Word of God Written. At the beginning of what is commonly referred to as 'Christianity', the Gospel was preached/explained using the old testament...think about it.

The Gospel is in fact 'proclaimed' throughout the Bible... The Books of the New Testament are the icing on the cake...a gracious accommodation on His part for you.

If I were you, I'd start reading, hearing, and believing--but--I'm not you, thank God.
 
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Photizo,

Do you believe Jesus performed the miracles described in the Bible and rose from the dead after three days?
 
Salvation through agreement with God and reliance on God. Rather than salvation by achieving the will of God, an imposable task for faulty humans
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I find the last part of your statement interesting. "Faulty humans".. You know, humans did not create themselves to be 'faulty'. The only one that can be blamed for a faulty creation is the creator. Any reason why he made faulty beings?
 
The Message of Jesus:

Salvation through agreement with God and reliance on God. Rather than salvation by achieving the will of God, an imposable task for faulty humans.

So if we agree with the message above, then we have faith in God?

Sorry Adstar, but agreeing with the message above assumes that a God exists. So you need faith in order to agree with the message, you don't get faith by agreeing with the message.

That would be the equivalent of:

nds1: Adstar, how can I attain faith in God?
Adstar: You must agree with the Word of God.
nds: But in order to agree with the word of God, I must first have faith that a God exists.
Adstar: ?

Adstar said:
I agree with the central message of the Love of God for those who love His will but cannot perform his will and are not puffed up with pride or arrogance but with contrition, meekness and joy at the mercy of God towards them.
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On what basis do you agree with the message?

Is it logically sound?
Does it sound truthful?
 
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Photizo, do you believe in Rama or Krishna, the Hindu avatars?

Do you believe in the Vedic Hindu scriptures or the Bhagavad Vita?
 
IceAge,

You have faith in God, and in Jesus. How did you come to have faith in them? It really is a simple question, yet you still haven't answered it.

I asked you how the pre-Jesus had faith and you said they had faith by having faith that Jesus was coming. LOL. Well then how did they faith that Jesus was coming? Their parents told them he was?

IceAge, what about the Hindu scriptures, the Vedas, the Bhagada Vita, are they just BS according to you? Rama and Krishna were fairly tales, right?

In order to believe in something or have faith in something, there must be a basis for that belief. If someone told me that they had a dream and God talked to them and told them that Jesus was not the Son of God, and they really sounded sincere, would you believe them? I don't think I would. The basis for that belief would be someone telling me something is true. I don't think believing something just because someone told you it is true is the correct way of thinking.

Mohammad proclaimed to everyone around him about his dreams of Gabriel. Everyone around him believed him. He could have been outright lying and could have just made everything up. Yet how many die-hard Muslims are there who grow up under a Muslim family and therefore attain faith in the Muslim God, Allah? How many Indians in India grow up under a Hindu faith, and worship Brahman? How many Chinese grow up and attain faith in Buddah?

Al these people grow up and are told something by their parents. They look around, see what everyone else is doing in their culture, and assume it is the ultimate religion.
 
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Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you asked how I became saved.

But as I'm sure I have said before, faith is a gift from God, but it must be recieved to do any good.
 
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