St.Paul vs Mussolini?

Let me put it more briefly...do you believe the Christian faith would be stronger without having organized churches?
Yes. Because many "religious" pass over all responsibility for their religious lives to their church.

When your relationship with God and your response to His will is all your own personal responsibility then you take things more seriously.


All Praise The Ancient Of Days
 
Have you ever wondered why God did not present the ONE TRUTH to all human cultures...instead of just those in the west?

Well that is not true. The disciples went out in all directions from Israel. Christianity was the major religon of the middle east before islam started its persecution of it. There was a Christian community in india before the Europeans got there. Also Christanity went south through etheopia and through north africa. It expanded more rapidly to the west because the mediteranian sea allowed for quicker travel.

That would have prevented billions of Asians, Africans, Pre-Columbian Americans etc. from having to spend time in the lake of fire...while waiting for Jesus to descend into their midst and present his case.

You seem not to have read my post where i said no one will be in the lake of fire until after the final judgement day. ( oh 2 exceptions the Beast and the false prophet will get in there before then ) As for Hell it is described as an unpleasant place but once again i believe the time spent there has no relation to the time we experience here in the universe.

Heaven and Hell are not in the universe, therefore they are not bound by our time. As i have stated before God sees all our times from His Time. So the actual time spent in Hell for those who go there might be very short indeed in their perspective.


All Praise The Ancient Of Days
 
Yes. Because many "religious" pass over all responsibility for their religious lives to their church.

When your relationship with God and your response to His will is all your own personal responsibility then you take things more seriously.
I fully agree on this point Adstar. For example, you know how people go to the gym and work out on the exercise bike WHILE reading a novel? This is how many people attend religious services...where its easy to be nothing more than a spectator.

It would have been beneficial also to have dropped the conception of Jesus as an idol and a sacrifice...as Jesus himself did not require worship from his followers, nor did he articulate any notions of his own suffering as a universal atonement for the sins of the world.

It would have been better to have remained as you say...a *relationship* in which you are called to fully participate towards Christ in the same way that a knight serves his king.
 
I fully agree on this point Adstar. For example, you know how people go to the gym and work out on the exercise bike WHILE reading a novel? This is how many people attend religious services...where its easy to be nothing more than a spectator.

True. In the catholic service i attended every week for nearly 20 years. Everything was corri graphed. What the priest said and our responses. It was almost a blend of ceremony and a military parade ground drill. A lot of people where on auto pilot.

I remember having an interesting discussion with my dad. He is a catholic. He stated as a firm belief of His faith that every human being was going to die. That no one will avoid death. Part of the catholic church service is a recitation of the statement of faith. This is said every Sunday. In the catholic version part of it says:

"He will come again in Glory to judge the living and the dead and His kingdom will have no end"

Now my dad was over 60 when we had this discussion. He had been reciting the statement of faith every week for probably 57 years, But it was so automated that He actually did not hear what he was saying.

It would have been beneficial also to have dropped the conception of Jesus as an idol and a sacrifice...as Jesus himself did not require worship from his followers, nor did he articulate any notions of his own suffering as a universal atonement for the sins of the world.

Totally disagree. That’s throwing the precious baby out with the dirty bath water. Jesus is God made flesh. therefore worship of Him is worship of God. Jesus is no idol. He is real.

It would have been better to have remained as you say...a *relationship* in which you are called to fully participate towards Christ in the same way that a knight serves his king.

:D poor analogy there me thinks. A knight serves his king by smiting his enemies and acting as an iron fist of oppression to keep the peasants down.

That's not what Jesus calls me to be or do.


All Praise The Ancient Of Days
 
:D poor analogy there me thinks. A knight serves his king by smiting his enemies and acting as an iron fist of oppression to keep the peasants down.
Theres a saying most ancient of days Adstar...

'The use of a thing is not defined by the abuse of a thing'.

Does Jesus not refer to a kingdom? His comtemporaries misunderstood him to mean the overthrow of the Romans and an earthly Hebrew kingdom restored...while Jesus spoke of an eternal kingdom to be found within the human heart.

This theme of conflict between the inner and outer worlds was best dramatized by Boorman's 1981 film Excalibur...with Wagner's music as the soundtrack.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGm-zkRNj58&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2-6znm-Fqo&feature=related
 
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The problem a lot of Christians have and it seems you also have the same problem is not understanding that the Kingdom of Jesus within us, That being the Kingdom of Spirit is not the final materialization of an actual physical and perfected spiritual kingdom.

Too many cannot accept both Kingdoms and realise one Kingdom is just a kingdom in waiting for its final materialisation.

So looking forward to the final form of the kingdom is in no way denying it's current form, that which you call inside. It is a kingdom of the Holy Spirit indwelt Christian who live and die but await their resurrection/rapture into the final state of the Kingdom.


All Praise The Ancient Of Days
 
The problem a lot of Christians have and it seems you also have the same problem is not understanding that the Kingdom of Jesus within us, That being the Kingdom of Spirit is not the final materialization of an actual physical and perfected spiritual kingdom.

There is proof of many kingdoms - but the one you refer to is elusive and subject to manipulation and exploitation. Beware of those who make claims of the after life but have nothing to say of this life. :shrug:
 
His comtemporaries misunderstood him to mean the overthrow of the Romans and an earthly Hebrew kingdom restored...while Jesus spoke of an eternal kingdom to be found within the human heart.

I don't think so: Christianity's Messiah was an abject failure here. Easy to talk when another people are genocided and a so-called Messiah turns cheeck. How unlike Moses, the world's most believed and vindicated human who stood up to genoide? :shrug:
 
The disciples went out in all directions from Israel. Christianity was the major religon of the middle east before islam started its

There is no proof any deciples existed. There is proof for Paul, but not of what is ascribed to him in the Gospels. The writings attributed to the apostles were Roman latin, centuries later. It is grotesque to imagine any Jews would condone anything in the Gospels: in the same century, 1.1 Million Jews gave their lives and their nation confronting Rome's heresy law. Factor it in.
 
That being the Kingdom of Spirit is not the final materialization of an actual physical and perfected spiritual kingdom.
This is not the teaching of Jesus but of an anonymous author who came after his lifetime...as is the notion of Jesus as God...or 'God in a Bod' so to speak.

Jesus made it crystal clear when he knelt to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane that his will and God's will were not consubstantial. Of course, one has to wonder WHO was recording his thoughts at the time.

Every Christian has to decide who they want to follow, because the various authors of the new testament were not consistent...nor was the choice of authors decided by anything other than fallible catholic priests.

I maintain that Yeshua-Bar-Yosef embodied the feudal ideal, with himself as Lord but not King...and that the Kingdom is not of this earth.
 
So be it.

A lot of people dismiss what they cannot understand. And people who have no love for the Love of the truth as given by Jesus are blocked from understanding deeper things. God will send them strong delusions and they will believe in the Lie and will be condemned.

How terrible for one to reject the Gift of God.


All Praise The Ancient of Days
 
And people who have no love of the truth as given by Jesus
Yes and we just explained exactly what the teaching of Jesus is...as is spelled out in the gospels with great clarity.

Its even more striking translated directly from the language Jesus and his disciples actually spoke.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamsa_Bible

But you choose to follow the Greek commentators...the blind leading the blind...into the chasm of fire.
 
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