From Rapture Ready

[aggle-rithm]

Worse. Chuck Mangione.

The Bible says "trumpet", not "flugelhorn".

Personally, I hope it's Dizzy Gillespie.

 

[Flo]

Nope. People who scare other people to mitigate their own fear are bullies and should be dealt with accordingly.

I think you've nailed it ...

 

[tsig]

Actually, it was ten thousand years. And the hymn was saying, "Don't even think about checking your watch, because you're going to be here a while."

It's "Amazing Grace"

"Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me....
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now, I see."

http://www.littleleaf.com/amazinggrace.htm

The theological point is that you are saved by faith alone, not works.

 

[paximperium]

You also have the falling away of people from Christianity in the last days.

You speak of this as if it is a bad thing.

The point is that God isn't evil for killing anyone let alone children. The children are not being punished and you shouldn't feel bad for them.

I feel bad for them. For you to not feel bad but continue to support an evil fantasy tells alot about what kind of person you are.

This life has suffering in it, you cannot escape that, and although you can blame God for it, you cannot judge him.

I sure as hell can judge the morality of your delusion. It is evil.

 

[aggle-rithm]

The theological point is that you are saved by faith alone, not works.

"...so you may as well steal, murder, and rape..."

 

[tsig]

You speak of this as if it is a bad thing.
I feel bad for them. For you to not feel bad but continue to support an evil fantasy tells alot about what kind of person you are.
I sure as hell can judge the morality of your delusion. It is evil.

I love how the word of his god leaps to his lips.

 

[Flo]

The point is that God isn't evil for killing anyone let alone children. The children are not being punished and you shouldn't feel bad for them.


The Bible specifically says that after the final Judgment God will remake the universe and the earth. At this point there will never be suffering again.

Words written by men, meaning "I don't care/want to think about whatever happens to other people, and even less about whatever I could be doing to alleviate their suffering. Let's just tell those crybabies everything will sort itself out somehow sometime while we enjoy our power and money ..."

 

[AWPrime]

What ages were you and what set off your meter - I have been trying to remember what Sunday School was like and the main memory is boredom and irrelevance to my life, I think?

I think I was about 4-5 when I first went and it stopped at about 9 (we moved away). And almost everything triggered it as so much was just illogical, it sounded as real as the easter bunny, although the bunny was a lot more fun.

 

[Chaos]

Words written by men, meaning "I don't care/want to think about whatever happens to other people, and even less about whatever I could be doing to alleviate their suffering. Let's just tell those crybabies everything will sort itself out somehow sometime while we enjoy our power and money ..."

Bingo!

 

[kmortis]

Again you have this myopic viewpoint of the world. Every child that is under the age of accountability is in heaven when they die. To be absent the body is to be in the presence of the lord.

Got a scripture reference for this?


Not that that would lend credibility to this statement, I would just like to know where the Bible says that there's an age of accountability. IIRC that's a piece of Catholic dogma that has, like most dogma, no scriptural backing.

 

[joobz]

Got a scripture reference for this?


Not that that would lend credibility to this statement, I would just like to know where the Bible says that there's an age of accountability. IIRC that's a piece of Catholic dogma that has, like most dogma, no scriptural backing.

That's in the Book of STFU. Chapter 5. Verse FU.

 

[Paulhoff]

Sure, that's exactly what that means...

The point is that God isn't evil for killing anyone let alone children. The children are not being punished and you shouldn't feel bad for them.

So, all Hitler had to say is that the so-called chirstian god told him to kill all the Jewish men, women and children and that is OK too.

Don't you see where this type of thinking leads too, or is your so-called god so short-sighted.

Paul

 

[Wildy]

Farencue, you have it right. Whatever the reason was that your prayers weren't answered with help from god, it was your fault. It's never god's fault, of course.

After reading your story, some (*cough, cough, Kathy*) people might say that your prayers were answered, in that you grew stronger and overcame your horrible past, and only with god's mysterious "help" could that have happened to make you the wonderful person you are today.

In other words: you're gonna get told some feel-good bull**** that only makes the person saying it feel good.

I've never liked people who say stuff like that. I find it appalling in a way. It's as if, when you do good, you couldn't have done it on your own, you must have had help. And that help came from God. But then when something bad happens it's not God who did it. It's something that you did.

I just wonder how they can think such a thing.

Or are they? The Devil tries to confuse believers, and modifying the Bible would be a very good way to do this. If these manuscripts go against something already in the Bible I would be suspicious of it.

How do you know that what is written in the KJV hasn't been tainted by the Devil to confuse believers?

 

[Foster Zygote]

Prophecy of the end times comes from the OT as well as the NT. Jesus, in the gospels goes through signs of the end times. One of these includes the rebirth of Israel as a nation.

You also have the falling away of people from Christianity in the last days. Christianity was just starting let alone be spread around the world when that was written.

These days true Christianity is rare and becoming rarer. You also have Daniels statement about the last days with knowledge increasing and people moving to and fro.

How about specific verses? You are giving the impression that you have been told by others that the Bible says certain things, but aren't much aware of the actual sources.

Sure, that's exactly what that means...

The point is that God isn't evil for killing anyone let alone children. The children are not being punished and you shouldn't feel bad for them.

This has to be one of the sickest things I've ever read. Are you truly able to brush off the images of murdered babies and children, hacked open and crushed by armies that you believe to have been commanded by your god, or are you so indoctrinated to reject the slightest doubt that you think that what you have said is the only acceptable response? Either way I am utterly disgusted.

The Bible specifically says that after the final Judgment God will remake the universe and the earth. At this point there will never be suffering again.

So God has to remake the universe? Why? I thought he was supposed to be infallible. If he's omnipotent, omniscient and infallible then why is this universe so displeasing to him? If suffering is a good and necessary thing then why will God's new and improved world be free of suffering?

I don't expect you to actually allow yourself to consider these inconsistencies in your mythos given that you are so determined to believe them that you feel obligated to pretend that the thought of slaughtering children in the name of Yahweh doesn't horrify you. As appalling as I find the stories in Joshua and Judges to be, I am at least comforted by the knowledge that the crimes described are mythical. But you not only believe in their veracity, you have to try to justify them as the acts of a good and just god. When moldy old myths and magic words are elevated to a status above the value of human life then the true horrors of hate and cruelty can be unleashed.

 

[tsig]

Got a scripture reference for this?


Not that that would lend credibility to this statement, I would just like to know where the Bible says that there's an age of accountability. IIRC that's a piece of Catholic dogma that has, like most dogma, no scriptural backing.

Uh let's see:

"suffer the little children to come unto me"

Any good bible beater could put this on his ideological anvil, heat it with rhetoric and make an iron-clad dogma out of it.

 

[tsig]

So, all Hitler had to say is that the so-called chirstian god told him to kill all the Jewish men, women and children and that is OK too.

Don't you see where this type of thinking leads too, or is your so-called god so short-sighted.

Paul

Hitler did say that. It was quite popular with the people.

 

[Foster Zygote]

If these manuscripts go against something already in the Bible I would be suspicious of it.

So the last 12 verses of Mark were penned by Satan? And what if something in the Bible contradicts something else in the Bible? The genealogy of Joseph offered on Luke is completely different from the genealogy of Joseph given in Matthew.

 

[Mr Clingford]

Uh let's see:

"suffer the little children to come unto me"

Any good bible beater could put this on his ideological anvil, heat it with rhetoric and make an iron-clad dogma out of it.

I've never understood the fuss about this verse, Luke 18:16, "Permit the children to come to Me" - nothing about life, death, pain or anything like that about it.
Basically stop using 400 year old English.

 

[LisaLynn]

Even as little kid I remember being sceptical about religion.....I really had a hard time believing all I was hearing about hellfire & damnation.

My mother was catholic-my father was protestant--neither were very religious and for awhile I was spared.

When I got to be 8 or 9 they were talked into giving me some kind of formal religious "training"......and it wound up being catholic.

The parish priest was one of these hellfire & brimstone Irish catholic lunatics who was always raving either about how much jesus suffered for us or about the exact & horrible nature of what hell was like and what was going to happen to us or anybody else that didn't follow catholic doctrine to the letter.

Problem was--my father was one of those protestants that was supposed to be evil & destined for an eternity in a burning hell.

I though my father was a pretty good guy....certainly not deserving of this---and luckily had enough of a conscience to decide the "good father" was full of it.

One day--I think I was about 15---one of my friends came over with a newspaper in his hands. The "good father" was the cover story.

He'd been convicted of raping an adult woman & was heading to the slammer. ( hey--a least it wasn't one of the altar boys).

I think that's the moment I knew I'd been right to trust my feelings.

My mother joined the Baptist fundy church that nearly destroyed our family when I was about 9. I remember her trying for years to drag my father to church and screaming at him about the horrors of hell and how he was going to go there if he didn't believe in her new found version of God. This caused HUGE fights because he wasn't really interested in God and had been raised a Calvinist, so he thought that if you weren't chosen to begin with you weren't going to heaven anyway so what difference did it make.

I remember my mother as being a fun loving, happy person before she got involved with that church. There was a line of demarcation where she joined and then became a totally different person. All of a sudden everything was RAPTURE, RAPTURE, RAPTURE, trumpet, trumpet, trumpet, new heaven, new earth, sin, sin, sin, etc.

In her defense, she had never graduated high school, didn't know a thing about science (even the basic stuff) and had no critical thinking skills whatsoever. She was very vulnerable to pretty much anything religious that anyone could come up with, it just so happened that the end times rapture stuff was what she latched on to.

If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. She was a happy person, but unhappy in her marriage, didn't have many friends and wasn't very educated. Here came these people that 'loved her', had all the answers and they were easy answers and not too hard to understand, and also they sent her to Bible classes and made her feel smart about knowing all this 'insider knowledge' about the rapture at a time when she had been upset about not finishing school and having dropped out of secretarial school.

Anyway, I understand what you're saying about how a lot of it never made sense. I used to think the same thing to myself about a lot of the rapture stuff my mom would talk about. It was just flat out insane.

 

[aggle-rithm]

Uh let's see:

"suffer the little children to come unto me"

Any good bible beater could put this on his ideological anvil, heat it with rhetoric and make an iron-clad dogma out of it.

Of course, it also says "Kids are stupid, so beat the crap out of them every chance you get."

Not in those exact words, of course.