Biden - It's not Easter! It's Transgender Day!

[Dan Clarkston]

Does God love those who deliberately misrepresent him?.......and that this unfathomable love is unbearable to them?
I doubt you understand the connections I'm making in saying these things Jack.

Saul of Tarsus also had a particular image of how God is and behaves.....and his attitude and behaviour reflected it....until he met Jesus.

The difference here is Paul repented turning away from his sinful lifestyle while many today think they can be saved by believing only and they can continue doing sin and still be saved. They are in error.

 

[Rella ~ I am a woman]

Of course, the creation includes the supernatural realm as well. For all you or I know, there have been numerous other creations prior or contemporaneous with this one.

I have wondered but never put much stock into something that one cannot find out about.
You are right, of course.

I assume God's creativeity and relationality are infinite. Ours may be a specific creation with specific types of beings for a specific divine plan.

Good point.

I doubt God sees any of it as intricate at all. And we don't know that it's only on one planet. What theology doesn't suffer from this "defect"? Many of the most popular strike me as little more than silly cartoons.

Certainly a theory, but it just doesn't fit the facts of the phenomenon. Someday I'll describe my 1971 daylight disk encounter in the company of an arch-skeptic who just about wet his knickers. I suppose demons, if there actually are any, could use any phenomenon for demonic purposes, but "demonic" as an explanation for the phenomenon itself just doesn't fit. I just went through this exercise with a couple of wackos who ascribe vast bodies of human experience to the demonic in order to preserve their cartoon Christianity, so I'll leave it there.

Interesting. I do believe... and I will leave it at that.

The beauty of being me is, I don't have to explain it. If you are suggesting it inevitably supports Calvinism, this is not the only reading.

No, not Calvinism. I am very anti-Calvin. Just was answering another place and this popped up just as soon as I had read you.

My theology does not compel me to harmonize the unharmonizable Bible. My explanation for a considerable amount of what Paul says is: Paul really had no more idea about the ontology of Christianity than me, you or the people I have on Ignore.

 

[St. SteVen]

Dramatically off-topic, but: I was reading Origen, one of the most educated and profound thinkers of the early Christian centuries, and was surprised to find an analysis of whether the moon, stars and other heavenly bodies are things or living beings. To my astonishment, he concluded they were living beings. This was 200 years after Jesus. I think we forget how primitive these times were.

A lesson for modern-day literalists, perhaps.

I think that is related to the idea of The Divine Council of God. (gods)

/

 

[St. SteVen]

Who created the thief to kill steal and destroy? Why does the weapon formed against us not prosper against us?......Who formed the weapon? Who gave the devil permission to sift Job? Why did Jesus say to Pilate you would have no power over me except it be given by God? We need to see the sovereign hand of God in all things. This is why we are to fear God and not man and devil.

Wouldn't that make God responsible?
You seem to be on both sides of the argument. (discussion)

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[St. SteVen]

St. SteVen said:
Were we in fact formed from the dust of the ground?

The only person we are told was formed from the dust in the ground was Adam. NOT even Eve. So were we. NOOOOO because we each came from the inside of a womans body that was designed by God when He pulled her from Adam.

Well... let's see now...
If God pulled Eve out of Adam, and Adam was made of dust, what was Eve made of? (dust)

And technically... (hold onto your hat) ( another belief I firmly hold is Adam was not the first man.

Doesn't it mess up original sin if Adam wasn't the first man?
Was there a race of humankind that did not sin?
(and weren't from Adam's line) ????

/

 

[Scott Downey]

His wish for genuine relation and communion...

Does He have no relations and communion with His heavenly angels?

You may be right but seems like it is quite an intricate set up for a handful of centuries in relation to eternity on only one planet.

UFOs..... = demonic

Just a side question. As I am one of free will believing how do you explain the following (See the emphasized text)

Romans 9 NRSVUE

Romans 9​

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New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition​

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God’s Election of Israel​

9 I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience confirms it by the Holy Spirit—
2 I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.
3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own brothers and sisters, my own flesh and blood.
4 They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises;
5 to them belong the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, comes the Christ, who is over all, God blessed forever.[a] Amen.
6 It is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all those descended from Israel are Israelites,
7 and not all of Abraham’s children are his descendants, but “it is through Isaac that descendants shall be named for you.”
8 This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as descendants.
9 For the word of the promise is this: “About this time I will return, and Sarah shall have a son.”
10 Nor is that all; something similar happened to Rebecca when she had conceived children by one husband, our ancestor Isaac:
11 even before they had been born or had done anything good or bad (so that God’s purpose of election might continue,
12 not by works but by his call) she was told, “The elder shall serve the younger.”
13 As it is written,
“I have loved Jacob,
but I have hated Esau.”
14 What then are we to say? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means!
15 For he says to Moses,
“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,
and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”
16 So it depends not on human will or exertion but on God who shows mercy.
17 For the scripture says to Pharaoh, “I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I may show my power in you and that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.”
18 So then he has mercy on whomever he chooses, and he hardens the heart of whomever he chooses.

God’s Wrath and Mercy​

19 You will say to me then, “Why then does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?”
20 But who indeed are you, a human, to argue with God? Will what is molded say to the one who molds it, “Why have you made me like this?”
21 Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one object for special use and another for ordinary use?
22 What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience the objects of wrath that are made for destruction,
23 and what if he has done so in order to make known the riches of his glory for the objects of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory—
24 including us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the gentiles?
25 As he also says in Hosea,
“Those who were not my people I will call ‘my people,’
and her who was not beloved I will call ‘beloved.’ ”
26 “And in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’
there they shall be called children of the living God.”
27 And Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, “Though the number of the children of Israel were like the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will be saved,
28 for the Lord will execute his sentence on the earth quickly and decisively.”[b]
29 And as Isaiah predicted,
“If the Lord of hosts had not left descendants to us,
we would have fared like Sodom
and been made like Gomorrah.”

Israel’s Unbelief​

30 What then are we to say? Gentiles, who did not strive for righteousness, have attained it, that is, righteousness through faith,
31 but Israel, who did strive for the law of righteousness, did not attain that law.
32 Why not? Because they did not strive for it on the basis of faith but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone,
33 as it is written,
“See, I am laying in Zion a stone that will make people stumble, a rock that will make them fall,
and whoever trusts in him[c] will not be put to shame.”

See here now, you got to stop reading that bible!
It will definitely challenge your preconceived notions of reality!

 

[Scott Downey]

If God's word does not change you, then I think you must be dead.
The world and the religious philosophies of it, including the strangely weird Christian ones are aimed like arrows to bring to you spiritual death.
While Jesus comes to bring you the more abundant life with God.
You can trust what the scriptures actually say and teach, but you cannot trust someone else to interpret them for you, as no scripture is of private interpretation.
The Holy Spirit is your TEACHER, no one else can teach you to know the real God or the real Christ.

John 6:35
Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

John 6:37
All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.

John 6:45
It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Therefore everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me.

 

[Rella ~ I am a woman]

If God's word does not change you, then I think you must be dead.
The world and the religious philosophies of it, including the strangely weird Christian ones are aimed like arrows to bring to you spiritual death.
While Jesus comes to bring you the more abundant life with God.
You can trust what the scriptures actually say and teach, but you cannot trust someone else to interpret them for you, as no scripture is of private interpretation.
The Holy Spirit is your TEACHER, no one else can teach you to know the real God or the real Christ.

ummmmm ???????

John 6:35
Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

John 6:37
All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.

John 6:45
It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Therefore everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me.

 

[Scott Downey]

ummmmm ??????? View attachment 44101

A New Covenant​

7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second. 8 Because finding fault with them, He says: “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— 9 not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they did not continue in My covenant, and I disregarded them, says the Lord. 10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 11 None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. 12 For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins [b]and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.”

From Hebrews 8
And
1 John 2

26 These things I have written to you concerning those who try to [a]deceive you. 27 But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you [b]will abide in Him.