[Superchicken]

I had a friend ask me yesterday what I thought Christians were specifically, and what the Church was specifically.

This may help you.

Christian: A Christian is someone who has repented/turned away from their past sins, and sinful nature, and has chosen to ask Jesus to forgive them for their sins. With this must also come the recognition of Jesus as your Lord and Saviour. Not just Saviour. The Christian is a person who lives life in light of God being their master who they have willingly given that position. You evaluate things that you should or should not do, think or say in light of whether it would be obedient to God.
That said the Lordship of Christ is something that is only something that can be lived up to as long as the person does this in response to the immeasurable love that God has lavished on them. You don't behave right because you want to earn your salvation, because you know that's impossible, you behave right out of gratitude and love for the one who sought you even when you were the most disgusting trashy whore of a person (in a spiritual sense).

The Church: is the universal body of Christians. Anyone who has made Christ their Lord and Saviour is part of this group. You are not part of this group because you have chosen to say I believe this, you are part of this group only if you have chosen to be a Christian.

Hope that clears things up for you.

[djohnson]

Originally posted by Superchicken:
I had a friend ask me yesterday what I thought Christians were specifically, and what the Church was specifically.

This may help you.

Christian: A Christian is someone who has repented/turned away from their past sins, and sinful nature, and has chosen to ask Jesus to forgive them for their sins. With this must also come the recognition of Jesus as your Lord and Saviour. Not just Saviour. The Christian is a person who lives life in light of God being their master who they have willingly given that position. You evaluate things that you should or should not do, think or say in light of whether it would be obedient to God.
That said the Lordship of Christ is something that is only something that can be lived up to as long as the person does this in response to the immeasurable love that God has lavished on them. You don't behave right because you want to earn your salvation, because you know that's impossible, you behave right out of gratitude and love for the one who sought you even when you were the most disgusting trashy whore of a person (in a spiritual sense).

The Church: is the universal body of Christians. Anyone who has made Christ their Lord and Saviour is part of this group. You are not part of this group because you have chosen to say I believe this, you are part of this group only if you have chosen to be a Christian.

Hope that clears things up for you.

Well said!

[Atomic Rooster]

.

[quandarry]

i always thought of myself as being more open and not confined to a belief that is rigidly structured and near sighted in vision. fanaticism and doomsayers always seem out of it and not a legitiment part or at least should not be...they seem dangerous in any belief.

as i understand it, jesus never meant a new religion based on his teachings to be constructed but a back to roots kind of thing that the beliefs of the time had strayed from. jesus was a jew and his religion was jewish . he did not preach christianity as it had not been invented yet...he himself was not a christian. i think there are actually people who think jesus was a christian and preached christianity.

james his brother or someone else was the architect of the jesus as christ the savior movement. other sects were also started but died from this time. eg. the mary cult.

i think i would be comfortable with zen jihad and voyageur and others with similar thinking in the same room. the fire and brimstone crowd are just too freaky. i don't think jesus would have approved of them but would chase them out of the temple as he once did 2,000 years ago.

thanx for all the responses.

i feel i am approaching a point in my life where i must admit to something or nothing. i prefer the something...nothing seems so empty and cold and dark. after all the hardest belief of all is that all that exists just popped into existence without a little nudge.

but in the end only the dead know or are totally oblivious.

[Zimphire]

Jesus indeed came to make a new covenant with us. That was his purpose.

[wdlove]

Evangelical, someone with good news.

To be a christian you must be born again. It's the miraculous work of God inside. To be born of water and spirit. It is a requirement to get into Heaven. To exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees to enter Heaven. To acknowledge that you are a sinner. A need to ask for forgiveness on a daily basis. To read the Bible and pray daily.

[olePigeon]

Not only are you not a Christian, but you're going to hell because you don't accept Jesus Christ as your savior (or so I'm told.)

[undotwa]

Originally posted by Zimphire:
Paul is big with the Catholics. I am not Catholic. Paul is just another man of God.

Catholics don't recognize Paul as a 'divinity' rather a 'Saint' - a holy man. Catholics recognize him as an important Church theologian and early preacher.

[undotwa]

To reject Jesus Christ as God means your essentially rejecting the entire New Testament. The New Testament is the only biography of Jesus that we have today. By rejecting the New Testament or parts of it, we have to ask: what do we base our faith upon? Our own beliefs? If that is so, we are our own prophet. It is yourself then who claims the bear the truth, which is wrong, because Jesus was the last prophet.

One has to take the New Testament at face value, and can't simply reject elements which one finds too difficult to believe. This is the challenge of faith: to believe something that doesn't make sense. The doctrine of the Trinity of an everlasting union between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit is based upon what is said in the Bible.

Essentially, to judge what is orthodox (correct) Christianity we must look at the Early Church Fathers, and see what they believed and what rituals they performed. Tradition of the Truly Catholic Orthodox Churches and Scripture should be one's guide for Faith.

The faith is katholicos, and thus there is only one true faith. And that has to be the faith of the early Church fathers, who first propogated the faith, because without them, our knowledge of Jesus would be nil.

So I end by saying: Take the New Testament and the Early Church Writings or leave it. Those are the only true guides we have today of what the orthodox faith is. If you have a different interpretation that you came up with to suit your needs and lifestyle, good for you, but don't consider yourself confirming to the faith of the original followers of Jesus Christ, those who first propogated the faith.

[Zimphire]

Originally posted by undotwa:
Essentially, to judge what is orthodox (correct) Christianity we must look at the Early Church Fathers, and see what they believed and what rituals they performed. Tradition of the Truly Catholic Orthodox Churches and Scripture should be one's guide for Faith.

Church is good, but it is not needed. Only faith and trust in Christ as your savior is. And doing your best to lead a Christian life.

Having congregation with other believers is a benefit though.

As far as judging orthodox, or "correct" Christianity, I would look to Jesus before I would Early Church Fathers.

[Xeo]

Originally posted by soul searching:
Wasn't he a deist? I remember reading some history book that noted that most of our founding fathers were deists.

He saw himself as Christian, but as a philosophical following of Jesus' teachings, not as his belief of God, but he was spiritual as well. See The Jefferson Bible, and particularly the letter on this page to Benjamin Rush. A quote that many our-forefathers-were-Christian believers use can be found in it's entire context in that letter.

Originally posted by Zimphire:
So he thought Jesus was a liar?

I'll refer you to the same letter. He believed he was following Jesus the way Jesus wanted to be followed.

[Zimphire]

Even though Jesus said otherwise?

That isn't very smart.

[Talk2Angus]

Not that we can answer that for u but with what u said, i would say no!!!

[voyageur]

Originally posted by MacNStein:
He said, "Ana Ana", which in Aramaic means "I am, I Am". Of course, this was a blasphemous thing to say as Ana "I Am" is a name for God. That's what made them angry and want to stone him. Even to this day certain Syriac dialects won't use that actual phrasing, instead they say "Anana" so as not to cause any issues.

FYI, at that time no one spoke Hebrew outside the temple, it was a ceremonial language.

I'm not that familiar with the bible, but none of the bible is written in Aramaic, is it? So how do we know what Aramaic words that Jesus used to answer the question of whether he was the son of God? Don't we only know what is written in the bible, i.e. the Hebrew translation of his words?

[Shaddim]

Originally posted by voyageur:
I'm not that familiar with the bible, but none of the bible is written in Aramaic, is it? So how do we know what Aramaic words that Jesus used to answer the question of whether he was the son of God? Don't we only know what is written in the bible, i.e. the Hebrew translation of his words?

The NT was originally written in Greek, not Hebrew, with the exception of Mark which was originally written in a Galilean dialect of Aramaic and translated to Greek, we no longer have the original Aramaic text (of course), but it is known that it existed at one time. George Lamsa, a world renouned scholar in ME languages reconstructed the NT into what would most likely be the phrasing and structure originally spoken, based on the Gospel of Mark and other recovered writings we have from that time period. He came to the conclusion that the phrase "I am I Am" is what got Jesus in trouble during that particular instance, given local customs and legend.

Saying "You say I am" wouldn't have hacked those people off in that way, so as to want to stone him. It would have required a seemingly blasphemous statement of Jesus' part.

No, this isn't "iron clad" evidence, but it is fairly solid, and what I would consider to be the most likely scenario.

[Xeo]

Originally posted by Zimphire:
Even though Jesus said otherwise?

That isn't very smart.

If you read some of that link I gave you, it's not a matter of believing that Jesus said the things that the Bible says, it's a matter of using the morals presented in it, whether Jesus really taught them or not. It is certainly possible to see the value in morals taught by the Bible without being caught up in the hocus pocus that it puts forward. Morals are something everyone can examine for themselves in all time periods.

That's what Jefferson went for. So if Jesus lied when he said "love everyone" and he didn't really mean it, Jefferson still would have put value into it, because he (and most of us) believe that is a good starting point for morals.

[zen jihad]

Originally posted by MacNStein:


Saying "You say I am" wouldn't have hacked those people off in that way, so as to want to stone him. It would have required a seemingly blasphemous statement of Jesus' part.

No, this isn't "iron clad" evidence, but it is fairly solid, and what I would consider to be the most likely scenario.

There's also the possibility that he deliberately played with the words. Knowing that Jewish custom at that period of time was well entrenched, and would not tolerate an tackling of the barriers they had erected arund the name of God, refernces to god, etc. So by 'rescuing' the phrase, 'Son of God' and implying that we are all Sons and Daughters of god, could be his motive.
Also, Jesus came from a rather poorer area of Palestine at that time, in which he could possibly be unaware of the formality of Aramaic naming conventions, just like he might have spoken a form of bad koine Greek. It might have at first been just an error, or ignorance on his part, but him realising the severity of using the word, might have been stuborn enough to just confront the mob with it.

All of this is supposing the events, and dialogues actually happened as such; and the writers of the Gospels didn't take great liberty in massaging these passages into new meanings.

Personally, I don't think Jesus, if he said those things, ever intended to imply he was the literal Son of God, or anything remotely like that. In anything, he merely meant he, like the rest of us, are, or can be sons & daughters of God.

[Zimphire]

Originally posted by zen jihad:
Personally, I don't think Jesus, if he said those things, ever intended to imply he was the literal Son of God, or anything remotely like that. In anything, he merely meant he, like the rest of us, are, or can be sons & daughters of God.

No. He said he was the messiah. Many many times in the NT Jesus claimed to be the one sent by God.

He even told his disciples that he would be rises in 3 days.

Why do you think he was crucified? He could have easily got out of it by denying he was the son of God.

[zen jihad]

Originally posted by Zimphire:
No. He said he was the messiah. Many many times in the NT Jesus claimed to be the one sent by God.

He even told his disciples that he would be rises in 3 days.

Why do you think he was crucified? He could have easily got out of it by denying he was the son of God.

What was the Messiah? How many Jews were crucified in that period alone? How many claimed to be the Messiah? Did he really rise from the dead? etc.

Being the Messiah does not automatically imply the |Son of God in Judaism. To be sent from God does not imply you are God.

[Zimphire]

Originally posted by zen jihad:
What was the Messiah?

The Messiah was the person Abraham was told would come from his bloodline to form a new covenant for man.

How many Jews were crucified in that period alone? How many claimed to be the Messiah? Did he really rise from the dead? etc.

Not sure how many Jews were crucified, And I believe he did.

Being the Messiah does not automatically imply the |Son of God in Judaism. To be sent from God does not imply you are God.

Yes, yes it does. For him to have died for our sins, his bloodline would have had to be pure. Considering we are all born into sin.

"Christ" is the New Testament word for the Messiah, the anointed ruler of God's people as predicted in the Old Testament. "Son of God" refers to Jesus' special relationship to the Father a unique position no one else has - the only begotten Son (John 3:16)

Matthew 3:17 - At Jesus' baptism, the Father spoke from heaven saying, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."

Matthew 16:13-18 - Peter confessed Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Jesus said that the Father Himself had revealed this to Peter,[John 6:69]

Matthew 17:5 - At the Transfiguration the Father again spoke from heaven saying, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." This is why we should listen to Him.

John 4:25,26 - Jesus acknowledged to the Samaritan woman that He was the Messiah (Christ).

John 9:35-37 - He told a blind man He had healed that He was the Son of God.

Matthew 26:63-66 - During His trial in the presence of His enemies, Jesus acknowledged that He was the Christ, the Son of God.

In addition, He allowed various other disciples to make such claims for Him (John 11:27; Matt. 14:33; John 1:29,34,49)

Did any other true prophet ever make such claims? Did God ever give approval to any other man to make such claims? John the Baptist expressly denied such claims for himself (John 1:19-22; 3:28).

John 20:28,29
After he saw proof of Jesus' resurrection, Thomas addressed Jesus as "my Lord and my God." Clearly Thomas is here calling Jesus "God."

If Jesus did not possess Deity, Thomas' statement would have been blasphemy, and Jesus should have rebuked Him. Instead, Jesus praised Thomas and pronounced a blessing on everyone who believes the same (v29)! Then John proceeded to claim that His record of Jesus' miracles gives us all reason to believe in Him (vv 30,31).

Hebrews 1:8
The Father said to Son, "Your throne, O God, is forever and ever" (quoted from Psalm 45:6,7). Note that God the Father Himself here addressed Jesus as "God" (cf. v1-9).

On both of these occasions people personally addressed Jesus as "God." Both times He allowed and accepted such language, and in one case God the Father is the one who so addressed Him!

Revelation 22:13 - "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last." Jesus is speaking, as shown by vv 12,16,20.

Exodus 3:13-15 - When God called Moses to lead Israel from captivity, He said, "I AM WHO I AM." He told Moses to say that "I AM" had sent him. This expression also describes the eternal, self-existing, unchanging nature of God. (See also Deut. 32:39; Isa. 41:4; 43:10,13; 46:4; 48:12.)

John 8:58 - When questioned about how He could be old enough to have seen Abraham (vv 56,57), Jesus said, "...before Abraham was, I AM." His statement clearly claims eternal existence, just like God used "I am" in Ex. 3:14. The Jews recognized this significance and tried to stone Jesus (v59).

Mark 2:3-12; Luke 7:48,49 - Jesus claimed to have power to directly forgive sins. This is a work only God can do.

Matthew 20:28 - He came to give His life a ransom for many.

Matthew 26:28 - He shed His blood for many for remission of sins.

John 8:24 - People who do not believe in Him will die in their sins.

John 14:6 - I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father except through me.

John 3:13-15 - Jesus claimed He came down from heaven so that whoever believes in Him can have eternal life. [6:40]

John 10:27-29 - My sheep hear my voice and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.

Matthew 28:18,20 - Jesus claimed to possess all authority in heaven and on earth; therefore, men should obey all His commands.

John 14:15 - He expects men to love Him, and this requires them to keep His commands. This is the kind of love that God requires (1 John 5:3).

Revelation 19:16 - Jesus wears the name "King of kings and Lord of lords." He has authority above the highest of kings and rulers.

John 5:22 - He said that the Father has given all judgment to Him.

Matthew 16:27 - He will come in glory with the angels and reward all men according to their works.

Matthew 25:31-46 - All nations will be gathered before Him, and He will send them into eternal punishment or eternal life.

Who else in the history of the world has ever made such claims and continued to receive a great following?

[Superchicken]

Originally posted by quandarry:
i always thought of myself as being more open and not confined to a belief that is rigidly structured and near sighted in vision. fanaticism and doomsayers always seem out of it and not a legitiment part or at least should not be...they seem dangerous in any belief.

as i understand it, jesus never meant a new religion based on his teachings to be constructed but a back to roots kind of thing that the beliefs of the time had strayed from. jesus was a jew and his religion was jewish . he did not preach christianity as it had not been invented yet...he himself was not a christian. i think there are actually people who think jesus was a christian and preached christianity.

james his brother or someone else was the architect of the jesus as christ the savior movement. other sects were also started but died from this time. eg. the mary cult.

i think i would be comfortable with zen jihad and voyageur and others with similar thinking in the same room. the fire and brimstone crowd are just too freaky. i don't think jesus would have approved of them but would chase them out of the temple as he once did 2,000 years ago.

thanx for all the responses.

i feel i am approaching a point in my life where i must admit to something or nothing. i prefer the something...nothing seems so empty and cold and dark. after all the hardest belief of all is that all that exists just popped into existence without a little nudge.

but in the end only the dead know or are totally oblivious.

quandarry I say this in the hope that you'll actually benefit from it. No idea if you'll get what I say, but you have always seemed like a really smart guy so here goes

There's a line from one of my favourite songs by the OC Supertones (available on the iTMS) called Wilderness. It goes:

Have you ever held in doubt
What this life is all about
Have you questioned all these things that seem
important to us
Do you really wanna know
Or are you a little scared
You're afraid that God is not exactly what you'd had
Him be
What should I hold to and what should I do
How do I know if anything's true
I'm somewhere in-between Canaan and Egypt
A place called the wilderness

I think perhaps you need to allow that while you've thought of things a lot, and listened to a lot of people (some of whom from the sounds of it have been talking out of their ass) you could be wrong, and very wrong. Something that people don't often realize is, God has no real reason to try and make sense to humanity. What reason do you have to try and explain romance to a two year old? Why not simply wait till the two year old is capable of understanding. You and I, are far bellow two year olds in comparison to God. Therefore not everything that He has put together is readily understandable. That said, while we can't do anything to make a two year old understand better than wait. God does have ways to open our minds up to His way of thinking. But even that is a slow process (you'd go nuts if it wasn't.)

If you honestly want to understand what Christianity is, I'm more than willing to talk to you about it, my iChat SN is ClayShaker Salty (AIM). Beyond that I can simply say, over the past few years I have gotten to know Jesus fairly well, and this past year I have studied the more scholarly aspects of Christianity, and a lot of what you have said seems to have come from people who had an intention in what they told you, in a lot of cases these people really only desire to confuse. Take it from someone who is a Christian of Christians (I figure I should give myself a tittle that separates me from the not so bright ones you've met.) You don't really have a full understanding of Christianity as it is right now, therefore you shouldn't look to say "it's not right for me" at this point. You could liken it to a Windows user who sees a an iSight and says that Final Cut Pro must not really be that good.

[quandarry]

thanks superchicken.

you are either a different person or you have matured tremendously in the past 6 months or so along with using spellchecker.



no offense zimph, but it's been people like you who have pushed me away from and questioned religion all my life. you sound as if you were there when jesus spoke. zealots are scary and that actually has a negative impact and pushes people away from religion (at least in my experience).

[ghost_flash]

Originally posted by quandarry:
thanks superchicken.

you are either a different person or you have matured tremendously in the past 6 months or so along with using spellchecker.



no offense zimph, but it's been people like you who have pushed me away from and questioned religion all my life. you sound as if you were there when jesus spoke. zealots are scary and that actually has a negative impact and pushes people away from religion (at least in my experience).

Huh. I'm amazed that you allow people to affect you that way. Michael Moore being a complete horses butt won't keep me from watching his movie...

Do people who speed, or get in accidents keep you from driving?
How about people who drink too much Root Beer ? Do they keep you from enjoying a Diet Root Beer?

...

[Superchicken]

Originally posted by quandarry:
thanks superchicken.

you are either a different person or you have matured tremendously in the past 6 months or so along with using spellchecker.

I honestly don't think I've changed that much... although I will admit I think I continue to grow... perhaps I just got used to MacNN and have learned what things you can say and how to say them to get your point across without getting flamed.

[Xeo]

Originally posted by Superchicken:
I honestly don't think I've changed that much... although I will admit I think I continue to grow... perhaps I just got used to MacNN and have learned what things you can say and how to say them to get your point across without getting flamed.

You've changed for the better. When you first went to school, you were a complete jerk. You've loosened up to a much appreciated level-headedness.

[Superchicken]

Originally posted by Xeo:
You've changed for the better. When you first went to school, you were a complete jerk. You've loosened up to a much appreciated level-headedness.

Uhh, well I have a little less to prove now. I eventually realized that while I can say how much I know, for the most part the majority of people on MacNN is either to wilfully ignorant or arrogant (actually both) to listen. You have people like Cipher who because he went to a catholic school and slept through classes is the world's premier theologian, you have people like Razor Razor who despite their obvious ignorance about just about everything actually have people listening. You eventually give up. If anyone actually wants to learn or understand anything from me, great. If not everyone here should know I know more about Christianity than just about anyone else here, so if anyone wants to know I'm here. Otherwise I have no desire to turn anyone away.

That said I also did try and take on MacNStein when I first realized he was a gnostic. He said some things that gave me the wrong impression, we fought and eventually I think realized both parties were smarter than the other gave them credit for. The sad part was that everyone was watching.

People always say I've changed for the better when they get to know me, almost everyone who actually knows me really likes me... I just give awful first impressions.

[undotwa]

Originally posted by Zimphire:

Church is good, but it is not needed. Only faith and trust in Christ as your savior is. And doing your best to lead a Christian life.

Having congregation with other believers is a benefit though.

As far as judging orthodox, or "correct" Christianity, I would look to Jesus before I would Early Church Fathers. [/B]

Our knowledge of Jesus comes from the Church fathers! It is they who wrote about him. They wrote the New Testament. If you don't believe them, then how could you believe in Jesus?

[undotwa]

Originally posted by Zimphire:

The Messiah was the person Abraham was told would come from his bloodline to form a new covenant for man.
[/b]
Not sure how many Jews were crucified, And I believe he did.

Yes, yes it does. For him to have died for our sins, his bloodline would have had to be pure. Considering we are all born into sin.

"Christ" is the New Testament word for the Messiah, the anointed ruler of God's people as predicted in the Old Testament. "Son of God" refers to Jesus' special relationship to the Father a unique position no one else has - the only begotten Son (John 3:16)

Matthew 3:17 - At Jesus' baptism, the Father spoke from heaven saying, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."

Matthew 16:13-18 - Peter confessed Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Jesus said that the Father Himself had revealed this to Peter,[John 6:69]

Matthew 17:5 - At the Transfiguration the Father again spoke from heaven saying, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." This is why we should listen to Him.

John 4:25,26 - Jesus acknowledged to the Samaritan woman that He was the Messiah (Christ).

John 9:35-37 - He told a blind man He had healed that He was the Son of God.

Matthew 26:63-66 - During His trial in the presence of His enemies, Jesus acknowledged that He was the Christ, the Son of God.

In addition, He allowed various other disciples to make such claims for Him (John 11:27; Matt. 14:33; John 1:29,34,49)

Did any other true prophet ever make such claims? Did God ever give approval to any other man to make such claims? John the Baptist expressly denied such claims for himself (John 1:19-22; 3:28).

John 20:28,29
After he saw proof of Jesus' resurrection, Thomas addressed Jesus as "my Lord and my God." Clearly Thomas is here calling Jesus "God."

If Jesus did not possess Deity, Thomas' statement would have been blasphemy, and Jesus should have rebuked Him. Instead, Jesus praised Thomas and pronounced a blessing on everyone who believes the same (v29)! Then John proceeded to claim that His record of Jesus' miracles gives us all reason to believe in Him (vv 30,31).

Hebrews 1:8
The Father said to Son, "Your throne, O God, is forever and ever" (quoted from Psalm 45:6,7). Note that God the Father Himself here addressed Jesus as "God" (cf. v1-9).

On both of these occasions people personally addressed Jesus as "God." Both times He allowed and accepted such language, and in one case God the Father is the one who so addressed Him!

Revelation 22:13 - "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last." Jesus is speaking, as shown by vv 12,16,20.

Exodus 3:13-15 - When God called Moses to lead Israel from captivity, He said, "I AM WHO I AM." He told Moses to say that "I AM" had sent him. This expression also describes the eternal, self-existing, unchanging nature of God. (See also Deut. 32:39; Isa. 41:4; 43:10,13; 46:4; 48:12.)

John 8:58 - When questioned about how He could be old enough to have seen Abraham (vv 56,57), Jesus said, "...before Abraham was, I AM." His statement clearly claims eternal existence, just like God used "I am" in Ex. 3:14. The Jews recognized this significance and tried to stone Jesus (v59).

Mark 2:3-12; Luke 7:48,49 - Jesus claimed to have power to directly forgive sins. This is a work only God can do.

Matthew 20:28 - He came to give His life a ransom for many.

Matthew 26:28 - He shed His blood for many for remission of sins.

John 8:24 - People who do not believe in Him will die in their sins.

John 14:6 - I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father except through me.

John 3:13-15 - Jesus claimed He came down from heaven so that whoever believes in Him can have eternal life. [6:40]

John 10:27-29 - My sheep hear my voice and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.

Matthew 28:18,20 - Jesus claimed to possess all authority in heaven and on earth; therefore, men should obey all His commands.

John 14:15 - He expects men to love Him, and this requires them to keep His commands. This is the kind of love that God requires (1 John 5:3).

Revelation 19:16 - Jesus wears the name "King of kings and Lord of lords." He has authority above the highest of kings and rulers.

John 5:22 - He said that the Father has given all judgment to Him.

Matthew 16:27 - He will come in glory with the angels and reward all men according to their works.

Matthew 25:31-46 - All nations will be gathered before Him, and He will send them into eternal punishment or eternal life.

Who else in the history of the world has ever made such claims and continued to receive a great following? [/B]

That is good Bible recitation Everything was revelent, and spot on.

[Xeo]

Originally posted by Superchicken:
Uhh, well I have a little less to prove now. I eventually realized that while I can say how much I know, for the most part the majority of people on MacNN is either to wilfully ignorant or arrogant (actually both) to listen. You have people like Cipher who because he went to a catholic school and slept through classes is the world's premier theologian, you have people like Razor Razor who despite their obvious ignorance about just about everything actually have people listening. You eventually give up. If anyone actually wants to learn or understand anything from me, great. If not everyone here should know I know more about Christianity than just about anyone else here, so if anyone wants to know I'm here. Otherwise I have no desire to turn anyone away.

That said I also did try and take on MacNStein when I first realized he was a gnostic. He said some things that gave me the wrong impression, we fought and eventually I think realized both parties were smarter than the other gave them credit for. The sad part was that everyone was watching.

People always say I've changed for the better when they get to know me, almost everyone who actually knows me really likes me... I just give awful first impressions.

Unfortunately, this post is an example of the attitude I thought you had shed. I guess you just don't go around saying it as much anymore.