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I was watching television one day when a person who called himself “a prophet of the airways” prefaced his prophecy by quoting Habakkuk 1:5 to his viewers. He did it to set the stage. What followed was a vague but plausible prophecy. The studio audience burst spontaneous display of ecstasy. The...

You obviously didn’t post this for people like me. Who did you post it for? Do you understand why - in general - it isn’t an effective approach, no matter what theology a person embraces?

IF I wanted to deceive people I would have a target in mind. I would go after the lonely, the bored, the ignorant and the desperate. I would ”give the people what they’re looking for. Tell them what they want to hear. Show them what they want to see.”

IF I wanted to deceive people I would play on gullibility. I would “pull a rabbit out of my hat,” shout “Hallelujah! Praise God!“ and I would have “plants” in the audience. Then I would offer the audience a way to “support and be a part of the work, of the Lord’s work.”

IF I wanted to deceive people I would restrict what they were reading to what I was writing, or to writings which I had control over, and discourage them from looking to anyone else for guidance and instruction. I would wrap it in love.

That’s historically accurate. This is where the church began: Jews who believed that one of their Jewish contemporaries - Jesus of Nazareth - is the promised Messiah.

I commented in post # 530 that I agreed with that, which you say is challenging your response. I’m content to leave it at that.

I’m not challenging what Jesus said to the thief. I simply asked you where paradise is.

Asking “Where is paradise?” = Championing “Jesus lied to the thief”? I don’t think so.

Goliath roared; then lost his head. That’s the way it goes with giants.

“Then he brought them out and said, ‘Sirs, what must I do to be saved?’” (Acts 16:30, NABRE)

Known or knowable only to a few. Known or knowable to you, but few? How few? The Few. The Proud. The Marines? The satanists?

Arcane?

If not here then there. But where is there? With a person, yes. But the person himself isn’t paradise, is he?

Good people? What good people? I’ve been reading comments on the forum which assert that there are no good people; that only one is good - God.

Where is paradise?

No one besides the angels was with God from the beginning. For the readers’ consideration, the trinitarian commentary in the NET on Genesis 1:26. https://netbible.org/bible/Genesis+1

“No responsible New Testament scholar would claim that the doctrine of the Trinity was taught by Jesus, or preached by the earliest Christians, or consciously held by any writer of the New Testament. It was in fact slowly worked out in the course of the first few centuries in an attempt to give...

“The Trinitarian dogma was formulated and explained with the use of metaphysical concepts that acquired new meanings in the theological context and could in turn influence ontology.” (Pawel Rojek, “Exploring the Porous Boundaries Between Theology and Philosophy”)...

Trinitarianism is dependent on Greek metaphysics. What came before it isn’t. That new way of thinking is what gradually moved the church from unitarianism (Jerusalem) to trinitarianism (Nicaea). It’s an incredible story.