Hi stamp,
You responded to my post:
Don't you? how do you think things would be for you had you been born in America into a Muslim family? would you think you had a false religion?
I suppose I'd be finding places to face Mecca three times a day to pray and I'd likely belong to a mosque and my wife would wear a covering over her head all the time because I'd believe that I was practicing true religion. But, I don't know if one day someone wouldn't share the gospel with me and I'd come to the knowledge of the real truth. There are muslims who come to the realization of the truth and there are muslims who draw their dying breath praising a non-existent deity of their own imaginings and training and learning. As I said, there have been false religions nearly since the beginning.
They are all false, do you have any evidence that they are not? how many of them do you believe? all of them or just one of them?
Just one. However, you, as an agnostic aren't going to believe that because you don't think anything can really be known about a god. That's fine, but it isn't true, as I understand the Scriptures. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob can be known through His word, His Spirit and His Son. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is the only God who has proven to us, through the death and resurrection of His Son, that He can do what He has promised to do for those who will believe.
Now again, I fully appreciate that you don't see or understand things this way. That's fine, but that's my understanding of what I read in the Scriptures.
Well, that's exactly what I'm explaining to you. See, as an agnostic, you don't think that anything can be known of God. I don't agree with that understanding of yours. I believe that a lot can be known about God. Many things He has told us in His testimony of Himself as to who He is and all that He has done. However, this issue of 'how' he selects those who Jesus said could only come to him by the calling of the Father and those that God elected to do the work that they have done for Him upon the earth, that part about God is not known because God has not made that knowledge known to us.
It's more likely that men know their own minds.
Well, I think I know my own mind pretty well, but it's not the mind that God is after...it's the heart. Most men have no real idea how utterly depraved and wicked their hearts are without God. But again, you're not likely to understand or agree with that. You're one who lives by proof. The only things you're going to believe solidly about spiritual things, if anythings at all, are only those things that you can touch and feel and see proven by formulas and scientific methods. I'm not. I'm a man who's perfectly satisfied that God has told me the truth and that He has provided sufficient proof for my mind and heart that He is there and He loves me and done all the things that He has told me in His word that He has done. I'm a man who does believe that 2,000 years ago after a man named Jesus was crucified on a cross like thousands of Roman criminals of his day, that he was raised from the dead and that he was seen by over 500 people in the next few weeks and that he did go back to visit with his disciples and comforted them and gave them great joy when he appeared alive to them. I believe that such an event really did happen in real time upon the earth among real people living real lives and it is that belief and that belief alone that truly sets faith in Jesus and his Father apart from all the other religions.
They all have great moral messages, for the most part. They all have determined followers. But they don't any of them have the testimony so well supported by so many diverse people, that some adherent came back to life after they drew their last breath on the earth and was witnessed by many just walking about like a regular guy.
Do you think that everyone who does not believe in your God is bitter? I'm not and neither is anyone I know.
If what the Scriptures say is true, you will one day.
I do in fact feel quite lucky that I was not born into a religious family.
I suppose it's good that you feel that way.
God bless you,
In Christ, ted