(08-02-2023, 07:04 AM)727Sky Wrote: The video was made 7 years ago...so much for the 48 month prediction. I grew up around Baptist and First Born preachers who swore the second coming was just around the corner and everyone needed to live in fear/love of god's glory or face eternal damnation.. All those preachers are dead now and wasted their lives in fear of something they had no control of.
The religious factions preach and proclaim tolerance while in truth anyone who does not fall within their sects hierarchy are condemned to a fate worse than death that last forever. The first Born proclaimed everyone else was going to hell unless you were of the church of the First Born. Probably got that view from the Catholics of long ago ?
Thousands of years of stifled growth and advancement due to some written words supposedly by a god who promises paradise after you are dead yet written by men who seek power "today" or live in a fantasy world of their own creation ..
A god who would condemn all non christens to a hell for all eternity is not my kind of mythical Sky Fairy being I feel like bending a knee to; but I realize I can be very hard headed at times..
I think I was about 23 years of age living and flying in S.E. Asia when I decided I would read the New Testament from cover to cover. No preacher, no intermediator or interpreter just me and the good book. I was surrounded by Buddhist and their ways of thinking so I was having questions on the meaning of life and religion. Buddhist do not believe in a God just in case you did not know... just the natural order of the universe when it come to death and rebirth. They are probably FOS too but they are some of the finest people I have ever met in some ways. All religions are some form of a racket once men get their hands on the power and wealth it can bring IMO.
Matthew 15:23-28
King James Version
23 But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us.
24 But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
OK the man Jesus says he came for the jews and not the Canaanites
25 Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me.
26 But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs.
Woa Bubba! Even today you call someone a dog in most old cultures you better be prepared to defend yourself from an ass whopping. Simple as they claim a dog does not know who its father was which is still a big deal in some cultures as it also infers your mother was a Whore..
27 And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table.
28 Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.
Notice he says her faith had cured her daughter... That is eastern type religious stuff and belief system spoken by the man himself. Supposedly this event with the Canaanite woman was the opening for the non Jewish gentiles to enter the faith as most of the Jews were not converting to Christianity thus him coming for the Jews was not working out very well and never did...... I always thought Paul and his mad ravings plus some of the horrific things done to Christens by the Romans while they smiled and did not cry out was what helped the religion as much as anything.
Whatever greases the wheels of society and brings peace and happiness IMO is a good thing... Yet consider that when the beheading starts or the burning at the stake begins it is man's society doing these deeds not some Sky Fairy.
I liked the old bible god for if someone pissed him off the retribution was soon to come and in some cases almost none were spared; or so the stories by man has said.
One thing about this stuff is we will all have the answers once we are dead or we will be dead and know nothing.... either way is fine with me as I think of the billions who have gone before all of us . We may get on the other side and say, "Wow I could have had a V-8 instead of worrying !"
That's the take of more and more non-christians these days, and it's usually because of the reasons you've cited - this and that faction of the allegedly same religion preaching one another into hell because they belong to different factions or sects. It's not a good look, and doesn't leave a good impression. It turns people away.
Lots of allegedly christian factions preach all others but themselves into hell - the First Born, Seventh Day Adventists, Catholics (still to this day - I had a Catholic tell me that if I didn't get right with God I was hell-bound, and 'getting right with God' meant I had to be a Catholic... she didn't mince words! I told her I'd see her in hell, then) and the list goes on and on.
I have to wonder if ANY of them have ever even cracked a Bible open.
Now, in my various trips through the Good Book, I have only ever found ONE requirement. Not a bunch of them, and certainly not an adherence to any particular sect of Christianity as a requirement for escaping hell. That ONE requirement is that one believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Savior. Nowhere does it say that one has to even believe Jesus is God (which I don't), it only says one has to believe he is the Savior. That's it. No other requirements. In the Bible, even baptism is not a requirement - it was some janky men that made that into a requirement. In the Bible, all it says is that it's the answer of a clear conscience to God... but doesn't say that it a requirement to pass the Pearly Gates.
God doesn't deal in fear, only men do. With God, one is either in, or out. There is no in-between, and no amount of fear will change one's status as either in or out. Fear is useless in regard to legitimate religion. No amount of it will change the ultimate disposition
It's only men who use fear to control people, not God. So any one who tries to "fear" you into church, or their way of thinking, is not speaking for God, they speak only for themselves, and I would avoid their church like the plague it is.
And, as you aptly point out, in the end we will know the Truth, or we will know nothing at all, and either way is fine. No need to fear it. What comes, comes. Neither fear nor confidence will change it in the least. There is no avoiding it - it one day comes for us all, so what is the point of fearing the inevitable? I see no point in it at all.
ETA: I think Buddhists are mighty fine folk, too. I'll never forget this one little Buddhist monk that used to bring me food nearly every day while I was standing guard duty. It might be a loaf ot sticky rice wrapped in a banana leaf with some mystery meat looking stuff running through the center of it (not sure what it was, and I never asked, but I thought Buddhists were vegetarian... I don't know if that extends to not serving any meat, though), or something he called "grass tea" that had little gelatin cubes in it,, or a branch of longans or lychee, or even once a coconut still in the husk that I really had to work at to get the benefit of. We had a lot of long conversations, the one I remember best was about "The Naga". I got the feeling that he didn't much believe in the Naga, but he never said so. All in all a fine little fella that I never had any sort of disagreement with.
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