Help An Atheist

[LogicTruthSeeker]

Please convince me to come back to Jesus. I need your advice and you to convince me.

 

[Sketcher]

What is keeping you from coming back to Jesus?

 

[americanvet]

Please convince me to come back to Jesus. I need your advice and you to convince me.

I can't. But I will pray for you.

 

[Luna1991]

Read your Bible. Maybe start with Mark? You don't need to read it in the hope that you'll have some extreme spiritual experience that will convince you. Just read it and ask God to tell you what you need to know right now.

And don't be afraid to talk to God, even if you don't believe he's there. Just tell him you don't know how t believe and feel lost. Ask him to convict you.

Don't stress, just ask God and read his word.

 

[crimsonleaf]

If you've heard and understood the gospel then the rest is down to God to grant you faith and repentance. If you sincerely want to turn to Christ, you will.

We can't debate you into believing. If you have genuine desire then you'll get there without us.

 

[seeking Christ]

What is keeping you from coming back to Jesus?

And the other railroad track is - what draws you to Jesus? (Stay in between these two rails and you'll be on track)

 

[dogs4thewin]

I would advise praying, figuring out what caused you to lose your faith and when you read the Bible start with the gospel of John. Mark is great, but John is very deep, and yet it uses very simple terms that are easy to understand like life and light.

 

[FutureAndAHope]

Hi,

I will share with you my testimonies of God communicating with me, and doing other stuff like healing. I have listed most of the miracles God has performed for me at Know God Personally I will also list one of my favorite ones below, I hope it helps you to see the reality of God:

One morning I got up and walked into the hall and I heard a voice that I believed was God say "How would you like to be stabbed in the Valley". The Valley was known as the rough end of town, and the voice scared me a little, I wondered if I had done something to offend God. I had planned to go down to the Valley to ask people out to church as was my habit at the time. In the end I went anyway regardless of the fear. I walked up to the first person I met and asked him if he would like to go out to church. He said to me "I am an atheist, I don't believe in God". I just said "fine", but hoped to change his mind. He then proceeded to unbutton his shirt and showed me scar marks up and down his chest and stomach. He said to me, "I was attacked by a knife wielding man in the Valley some time ago and spent months recovering in hospital, How could God allow that to happen to me". Then I knew why God had said in the morning "How would I like to be stabbed?". God understood this man, but had a good plan for him. Some weeks latter this man came out to church and became a Christian.

 

[aiki]

Please convince me to come back to Jesus. I need your advice and you to convince me.

We can give you reasons to trust in Christ and we can warn you of the dangers of rejecting him, but we cannot convince you to "come back to Jesus." Convicting people of their sin and convincing them of their need of a Saviour is a job God reserves for Himself. If you want to be a part of God's family, simply ask Him to convince you. He can and He will.

Selah.

 

[Eric Hibbert]

Please convince me to come back to Jesus. I need your advice and you to convince me.

No. If you need to be "convinced" to repent and receive Christ, then you're not ready to repent and receive Christ.

Either you're horrified by your sin and are repenting and crying out to God to save you through Christ's sacrifice or you're not.

 

[LogicTruthSeeker]

I know their is a God now, it's just I don't know which religion to follow. How am I suppose to know? I've prayed for weeks now everday for hours.

 

[seashale76]

Only God can draw people to Himself. Nobody is capable of convincing anyone of anything. I explored many, many, many different belief systems (read quite a few holy texts from them) as well. The best I can do for you is indulge in personal story time with you (from my blog post here):

My Journey to Orthodox Christianity:
I was raised Pentecostal. I wanted to believe that the holy scriptures were what they claimed to be, but I had some difficulties, I must admit. It does boil down to the ultimate question of whether God exists or not, and how does one know?

I don't consider what I went through to be a true deconversion. I had been a hard core believer for most of my life and never thought I'd change either. However, when it happened, it was enough for me to post a deconversion testimony on a website for former Christians.

It was heartbreaking for me and I really had a difficult time. I did go through my own dark night of the soul. At the same time, I was also overjoyed with not having to go to church anymore, as I truly lost all sense of church services etc. even being remotely useful or relevant to my life. It all seemed so pointless. I saw this huge disconnect between the Church that the New Testament spoke about and what I was seeing in the Pentecostal, Baptist, and independent Christian churches I had gone to every Sunday and Wednesday of my life.

I didn't consider going to those churches that were considered more 'liberal' because while social justice issues are important, I didn't see the point in calling themselves Christian if they were rejecting the fundamentals of the faith anyway. I figured I could be involved in helping others, be more honest with myself in the process, and sleep in on Sundays. Everything I had ever encountered in Christianity seemed to be well intentioned, but wrong somehow.

I began calling myself a Deist, but I wasn't satisfied with that and started researching other religions and philosophies. I liked Taoism, but I honestly didn't see anything else that I considered worth my time to believe in. I couldn't call myself an atheist because I had a few experiences in my life that made me aware of a spiritual world out there. However, knowing this didn't make finding the truth an easy process, and skeptics had a lot of good questions that I began to examine as my own.

Long story short, I was a jaded and bitter individual. I felt I had good reason to be as I had a lot of negative religious/spiritual experiences. I understand where people are coming from who are angry, because I can relate to an extent. However, my bitterness began to turn into hatred of all things Christian, to the point where I started to see that I was becoming the sort of person I didn't want to be. I didn't like myself at all.

I didn't give up my search though. I read a lot. I sent desperate, pleading prayers out for God (if He even existed) to lead me to the truth. It was coming across Orthodox Christianity on the net that piqued my interest. I thought I knew everything about Christianity- enough to know that all the groups I was familiar with weren't going to cut it for me. I found the only Orthodox book at my local Barnes and Noble and bought the beat up and bent copy of it. I read it, I was cautious about it, I tried to dismiss it (but it kept coming to mind), and I eventually decided that I wanted to go visit an Orthodox church. (This wasn't my first time in an Orthodox Church, and in fact, I decided to visit the same church I had once visited when I was seventeen-roughly twelve years before- for a comparative religions class in college. It had fascinated me to the point it was all I could talk about for at least a week, but I had no desire in those days before the internet was more than a university thing, to look into the faith seriously at that time.)

If I recall correctly, I think it was the Orthodox teaching on hell that really swayed me. It’s not the same. I could never buy into the whole Jonathan Edwards’ Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God thing where God hates everyone and just specifically creates people to torment for eternity. It never rang true. However, reading about what the Orthodox Church believes regarding heaven and hell, it did ring true to me.

I was very reluctant to go back to any sort of church again. The first Sunday my husband (who was agnostic at the time) and I even turned around in the church parking lot and went out for coffee instead. However, we eventually made our way in for Divine Liturgy.

How does one explain to someone else about experiencing the presence of God? All I knew was that it wasn't simply my own emotions wreaking havoc with me- some things come from outside of ourselves- and people who know themselves well can discern this difference. (I was raised Pentecostal and I am rather immune to situations designed to manipulate emotions.) It was like being confronted with all of the answers to my questions after my long search. I knew I had to convert. God was there. Christ is in the Eucharist- which is something I had difficulty accepting as I was raised to accept a very different thing as being the truth- but have certainly experienced beyond a doubt since my Chrismation. Can I prove this to you? No. Were our personal experiences enough to prove it to me and my husband? Yes.

I essentially discovered a Christianity that is an entirely different religion from what I knew before. I had to start over again completely. I couldn't go back to what I thought I knew and believed. I just couldn't. There was something missing there, or I wouldn't have been unhappy enough to leave in the first place. We have the same holy scriptures and belief in the trinity, but everything else is radically different. I somehow knew it was my only chance when I discovered the Orthodox Church.

Except, I personally need the Church. I can't go it alone. I need the liturgy, I need the Eucharist, I need the prayers of the Church, and I especially need all of the sacraments of Christ's Holy Church . I need to go the hospital for what ails me; the ark of our salvation. I need the medicine of immortality.

 

[Sketcher]

I know their is a God now, it's just I don't know which religion to follow. How am I suppose to know? I've prayed for weeks now everday for hours.

I would say keep it up, and be open - I also had a dark period in my life where I had been praying for hours, trying to believe, and not being able to. But I did not give up searching for God, and he eventually answered. I prayed that if what the Bible says about God and Jesus are true, and if what Jesus did could apply to me, he could have my life - I wanted (back) in, and I wanted to believe the truth. Long story short, that was years ago, I'm still in the faith, stable, deeply grounded, much more mature, and better educated. God grew me into a man who would never fall into the deception I had fallen into which eventually landed me in that dark place to begin with.

If you have any questions about Christianity itself (as that will factor in to what decision you make about what religion to follow) or have any specific obstacles to believing in it, please share. We will answer them to the best of our ability here.

 

[madetoworship]

Romans 11:25-32.

"I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in, and in this way all Israel will be saved. As it is written:

“The deliverer will come from Zion;
he will turn godlessness away from Jacob.
And this is my covenant with them
when I take away their sins.”

As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies for your sake; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, for God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable. Just as you who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God’s mercy to you. For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all."

Apostle Paul is address again "brothers and sisters" in Christ in the Church of Rome. That being the case, I think you can still gain insight from this passage regardless. You, like everyone else (believer or non-believer), are disobedient towards God. It's in our very nature. But we are disobedient that God has shown mercy on us. What separates those in Christ and those not, is God's calling (His mercy) which in this passage it says is IRREVOCABLE. Those that claim that they have accepted Christ and have turned from their faith, I question whether they were even called by God to begin with - We'll see on the day of judgement.

But it clearly states here that God calls those through others who have already received mercy or the calling.

So continue to seek after God and pray, that you too may have the eyes to see and the heart to receive God.

 

[ViaCrucis]

Please convince me to come back to Jesus. I need your advice and you to convince me.

What were the things that initially drove you away from Christianity? I'm not really big on trying to convince people to believe like me, but I'm more than willing to help try and sort out what you may want sorted out, based on my own experiences struggling in the Church.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[Hawkins]

I know their is a God now, it's just I don't know which religion to follow. How am I suppose to know? I've prayed for weeks now everday for hours.

Human witnessing by far is the most efficient and most employed way for humans to approach a truth, especially a truth with a historical distance from us.

No other gods and no humans ever realized this. Only the Bible God knows what it is. His personal witnesses were called to this purpose. The whole Israel was called to this purpose.


=======
Humans get to know the world since their childhood from books written by other humans. They gain knowledge through books written by others. This is a process of human witnessing. Even today humans rely heavily (like more than 90%) on human witnessing to approach the reality, not evidence. The creation of TVs and videos only make human witnessing more powerful. Humans choose to believe the media of which the reporters act as human witnesses to report what our daily world is and for other humans to choose to believe.

History is never evidenced. This is the nature of what history is. The more distant the history is, the more impossible for humans to dig up the evidence. History again by nature is a product of human witnessing. Humans in majority in their life time almost never examine evidence of history. Instead, they choose to believe or disbelieve what was written by the historians (they are human witnesses of history).

To ask evidence of history (especially the distant ones) makes not much difference to asking a male to give birth to a child. It is because in nature male humans don't give birth to children. And in nature, history is not evidenced.

At last but not least, even science exists in the form of human witnessing. Is the earth really revolving around the Sun. Humans in majority don't actually acquire evidence about it. They rely on what is written and said by the scientists (they are the human witnesses in this case). By the way, you need an extremely good telescope and other precision equipment for "earth running around the sun" to be evidenced to you.

So it is a joke, it is a delusion in reality to think that humans are actually relying on evidence to approach to the truth of this reality. In contrary, humans need faith all the times.

 

[Hawkins]

I know their is a God now, it's just I don't know which religion to follow. How am I suppose to know? I've prayed for weeks now everday for hours.

To deduce backward.

In order for a god to have human followers, he needs to leave humans with an infallible reference for humans to get to know him. If he failed to do so. It only means that 1) he never cares about humans, follow him or not, or 2) he doesn't exist.

For this infallible reference to be persistent along the whole path of human history, he needs to assign an earthly authority to make sure that his infallible reference will be kept persistent. Otherwise, there's never a version can be claimed to be geniune.

Again, gods failed to do so either don't care or don't exist. By far, only the Christian God successfully maintained such an earthly authority as a keeper of His infallible Holy Bible. Although this authority shifted in history from the Jews to the Catholics then the Protestants, they are keeping the same version of OT and with the Catholics and Protestants sharing the same NT.

 

[football5680]

The choice is obvious if you use simple reasoning and explore all option using pro's and cons.

Christian+God exists=Heaven
Atheist+ God exists=Hell
Christian+God doesn't exist=Nothing
Atheist+God doesn't exist=Nothing

 

[salida]

Maybe the info. below will help;

This is the tip of the iceberg.The bible has certain characteristics to conclude it could only be written by God. No other religious book does this.
Visit: www.TheBibleProofBook.com, (you will need acrobat reader for this), read The Evidence That Demands A Verdict by Josh McDowell a former agnostic- and Examine the Evidence by Muncaster a former athiest/The Case for Christ and The Real Jesus by Lee Strobel a former athiest.

100 fulfilled Bible prophecies
Reasons To Believe : Fulfilled Prophecy: Evidence for the Reliability of the Bible (science website)
Eyewitnesses to the Resurrection of Jesus Christ
Apologetics Study - Evidence For The Christian Faith
CRI | Christian Research Institute, The Bible Answer Man
BethlehemStar.net
The Star of Bethlehem: the facts about the star of Christ
Scientific evidence of star

Historical Accuracy(bible is the most accurate history book)
The bible is loaded with historical statements concerning events hundreds of years ago and has not
been proven incorrect in any.
(Bible compared to other ancient documents):
New Testament starts - at 25 years between original and first surviving copies
Homer - starts at 500 years
Demosthenes - at 1400 years
Plato - at 1200 years

Number of Manuscript Copies-New Testament - 5,686/Homer - 643/Demosthenes - 200/
Plato - 7/Caesar -10

Which religion?
With all of the different religions, how can I know which one is correct?

 

[salida]

I will pray for you.