@Thandeka Just because I have read it and don’t agree with it, it doesn’t mean I haven’t understood. It is a book of inconsistency, it is a book that acknowledges other gods exist, and it a book that describes a god who will burn murderers while destroying whole cities with fire and brimstone without a thought.
Such a petty, cruel and foreign god is not worth my trust or time.
@Ceinwyn It's your choice if you'd rather serve other gods. You have the right to choose. It's just that once you make up your mind after you die and see that you don't like being on the other side there's no going back. Just saying.
@Ceinwyn Do you know what people have told me since I've been here...those who don't understand about God or who He is?
"Don't tell ME, God is loving! He slaughtered little babies in the Old Testament. He started wars and killed a lot of people."
WHY, God did certain things that they don't understand, doesn't matter. They see what they see and that's all they see. We cannot judge, what we don't know nor can possibly understand, this side of heaven. There is a better way, however, to interpret these difficult passages. Everything in the Bible becomes much clearer, when we have Jesus and the Gospel in mind. Our thoughts are not God's perfect thoughts. He can see the how and why of things that we can't yet see.
The death of babies does not mean God's love is lower than we thought. It means man's sins are greater than we thought.
God doesn't do things on a whim. He is sinless, perfect, and therefore, always "just", regardless of opinion. We shall see that when we cross over into eternity and we can see things more clearly, as they really are. It is irreverent to judge a perfect God.
These people were given hundreds of years to repent of their sins, but they wouldn't listen. They, themselves, kept sacrificing their own children, to idols.
The Bible never says God punished the children. In fact, all those children who died, went to heaven. Who ordered the killing of the babies in the Bible?
The massacre (or slaughter) of the innocent children, is an incident in the narrative of the Gospel of Matthew (2:16–18) in which Herod the Great, king of Judea, orders all male children, who are two years old and under in the vicinity of Bethlehem, to be executed.
@Ceinwyn Here's why God is identified as the trinity.
Though you won't find the terms "triune" or "Trinity" in scripture, the revelation of the Trinity is accomplished by the coming of God, himself, into human history:
God so loved the world, that He gave his only Son (Jesus), (John 3:16); God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us (Rom 5:5).
God is infinitely greater than we are; therefore, we should not expect to be able to fully understand Him. The Bible teaches that the Father is God, that Jesus is God, and that the Holy Spirit is God.
Think of a family. When you marry, you have the family unit, and you become as it were, "one" with each other as a unit, though there are 3 seperate individuals. Each have their individual role in that family, and personality. They confer with each other and thrive as a family, consulting each other about different issues that need to be resolved, or just everyday occurrences. They are in harmony with each other, in their way of thinking, yet called "one", as a unit.
The same goes for God. "GOD" consists of the Heavenly Father, His son Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, which make up the spiritual unit, representing "One", called GOD. All three individual persons, make up the Trinity, called God. One never functions without the other two, nor without consulting each other about anything. They are always in complete harmony.
In the beginning, these three are mentioned, when God created man: "And God said, Let US make man in OUR image, after OUR likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." Genesis, Chapter 1, Verses 26 to 31.
GOD THE FATHER, is our Father in Heaven, who created The Plan of Salvation, when man sinned, so that we would have a way to live eternally with God. That is the role he played in the Trinity.
GOD THE HOLY SPIRIT, whose role is to make us aware that we do have sin in our lives, speaks to our hearts and minds, our conscience, letting us know what is good and evil, and why we need Jesus. That being, that we need our sins forgiven, so we can have fellowship with Father God again, and have eternal life in heaven.
GOD, THE SON: Jesus is whom God the Father appointed as the only Mediator between Himself and mankind (1st Timothy Chapter 2, verses 5 and 6), and this is who Jesus goes to, to plead on our behalf, for forgiveness of our sins, when we ask Him to. Since our sins have separated us from Father God, we repent and ask for His forgiveness. Jesus then, intercedes on our behalf, with His Father. Why? Because God the Father Is so Holy, He will not look upon sin. If sin could enter Heaven, it couldn't be called Heaven. Nor would it BE Heaven.
If you remember nothing else, remember this:
Jesus died for ALL. HE TURNS NO ONE AWAY, WHO WANTS SALVATION THROUGH HIM. HE LOVES YOU MORE THAN WORDS COULD EVER SAY. HE WILL ALWAYS LOVE AND WANT YOU, NO MATTER WHO YOU ARE.
Right before Jesus died on the cross, He looked up into heaven and spoke to His Father in heaven, saying, "Father, into Thine hands, I commend my Spirit. It is finished!" And He gave up the Ghost and died. Meaning, that His mission to tell the world about His Heavenly Father, had been accomplished. Now people would know how to have salvation and eternal life in heaven with God. He wasn't about to leave us guess about that. It was not His will, that any should miss heaven.
Even though the word “Trinity” never appears in the Bible, God reveals himself throughout Scripture as one being (Deut 6:4, John 10:30) in THREE persons (Gen 1:2; Matt 3:16–17, 1 Pet 1:2).
@Ceinwyn We're all in the same spiritual boat. We all need Jesus because sin always brings condemnation and consequences to us. Not God. He only wants to save us from the condemnation sin brought us through our sin nature.
Does that sound like a god who wants to hurt you? No. Jesus died on the cross for one reason only and he had us on his mind when he did it. Sin always separates us from God...until...we ask God to forgive our sins, which He readily does, then forgets them forever. We can't be dragging our sins into heaven or it wouldn't and couldn't be called heaven. That means we have to have our sins forgiven and that's why Jesus came, to save us from hell, by for giving us of our sins when we ask him to. He turns no one away. As soon as God forgives our sins, we are then fit to enter the kingdom of heaven and we are reunited in fellowship with God. God not only said he loves us, he proved it on the cross. Who do you know who loves you so much that they would die for you to save you from hell? No one would. But Jesus loves you so much, He did. He was trying to show you that.
IF....we turn Him away without our sins being erased and forgiven by him, that will KEEP us seperated from Him for eternity. In all fairness, God cannot allow sin to be in heaven or it wouldn't be heaven. At least he didn't leave a stranded here to just go to hell. He said come to me and I will help you get to heaven when you cross over. But if we leave our soul to chance, our sins will still condemn us and we will be forever separated from God. Eternity is a very long time to get it wrong. This is not how we want our ending. An eternity separated from God, in hell. And not because he wants us there but because we refused to allow him to help us avoid hell. He made a special Plan of Salvation so that none of us would have to miss heaven. That's something everyone needs to understand. This is a choice we each make, whether we want to accept Jesus's Plan of Salvation or not. God doesn't send anyone to hell! We send ourselves to Hell by refusing to allow him to rescue us from hell. So if we curse him and tell him we want nothing at all to do with him and mock him, what is he supposed to do? We were the ones that rejected him, if that is the case. If we tell him no, then he is going to honor our request. No one has to miss heaven. Only by their own stubbornness and pride.
He’s not a god to forgive or forget, he drowned a planet and burned cities.
And I have no intention of entering heaven. Nobody I love is there.
What makes you think we're not in the same spiritual boat? That's what you said. God said we are. Who would know better? I mentioned why that is. If you haven't read it I hope you will. Because once you cross over into eternity, you will not be able to change your mind nor the place you are in, so this is very important.
And if you knew all the excruciating pain and torment Jesus went through on the cross for six whole hours, just to save us, I don't think you would say that. No one else did that for us. He forgave every one of our sins.
You can't know for sure if none of your loved ones are in heaven.
But basically it all comes down to your decision. But none of us will be able to use the excuse that we didn't know.
@ReflectionsInTime This Hebrew god you keep talking of has nothing to do with me. I have the love and protection of others, who have been with me since my first breath. Your god, jealous and vengeful as he is, who says thou shall not murder - and murders, he who says do not lust for another man’s wife -and impregnates another man’s wife, he has no power neither over me or where I walk. I am loved and lifted high by the gods of my home and my family.
@Ceinwyn No. That came from God's own Word. The God I talk about, has everything to do with you. He created you. He gave us a body, spirit, and soul. He told us what happens to us after we depart this world, so none of us would be left in the dark and have to guess, but we would know for a fact, what happens to us after we die.
When we die, our spirit and body separates. Scripture says the spirit and soul cannot be annihilated. Our spirit and soul lives on and it goes to either Heaven or Hell, which is entirely up to us. That is our decision, alone. God won't make that for us, contrary to what some believe. Where we spend eternity is up to us, and that's why we want to get it right and not guess about it, because once we cross over, there's no coming back. When the body dies, it remains in a slumber like state, in an unconscious state, until it is awakened at the time of Resurrection. There's a time when our spirit and soul shall reunite with our resurrected bodies. If we do nothing about that and leave our destination to chance, it automatically ends up in hell, because we allowed it.
Some laugh about hell and say they will be with her friends but that is not true to an extent. They may be in the same place with their friends but as far as being with them visually, no. Again, God did not leave us to guess. His word says that hell is a place of outer darkness, where we would be completely to ourselves as far as having "company". Outer Darkness means, for example, if you were to go into a cave and there was absolutely no light in the cave and it was so dark you could not even see your hand in front of your face, that is what hell is like. And Jesus came to save us from that, so none of us would have to go there.
He told us in His Word, exactly how to avoid hell and exactly how to have eternal life in heaven. Weather our loved ones are there or not, was their choice, not God's because he gave us all free will. Free will means he doesn't make our choices for us and he never will. Whatever happens to us in this life and afterwards, will be because of our own choices. Has nothing to do with God. He provided a Plan of Salvation for all who want it. So they don't have to go to hell because see what people don't understand is that sin Keeps Us separated from God until we ask Jesus to forgive us of our sins and save this from the consequences and condemnation of our own sin nature. When God gave us free will, that means we are responsible for our own choices. Not God.
It was prophesied 500 years before Jesus was even born, by Isaiah the prophet, that Jesus would come to be Savior of the world....be born of a virgin woman. That's why it is a Holy conception. The Incarnation of Jesus from God to man, is the work of the Holy Spirit. A miracle birth. The purpose of Jesus coming to earth, was to save the world from the consequences and condemnation that sin placed on them. We should be grateful that Jesus came down from heaven to make sure that we would know how to have heaven, because without Jesus to show us the way, we would have all went to hell. But he cared.
@Ceinwyn Do you struggle with yourself every day like this, because that's an unusual, but expected reply, for someone like you, and especially troubling, given your age. One thing you don't know, is that one day, you will have to explain to God, to his face, why you spoke that way about him. That's one appointment you'll not miss. I hope you don't talk the same to your mom and dad, with that arrogant, disrespectful mouth. Good luck with that attitude and theories about God.
@ReflectionsInTime The Ceinwyn chick told me to tell you there’s no point typing out replies if you’re going to block her before she can read it. There was other things too but I charge for conveying messages of that size.
