Do Christians believe that Christianity is the only true religion?

coffee4u said:

You might want to read my reply above. I think this covers this part.

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I don't think it does.

coffee4u said:

I don't see anything wrong in hypotheticals or what ifs.

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There is a rule in place at Christian Forums that would cause me to be sanctioned if I answered your question honestly and fully. I'll have to excuse myself from doing so.

coffee4u said:

Christians don't have all the answers, there is a lot that we don't know like a jig-saw puzzle with missing pieces, but we trust that God has all the pieces and has reasons that we can't yet see.

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In a debate, that's a damning admission. Let me explain.
You've just said that you don't know why God is doing things.
Therefore, you cannot rule out the possibility that your opponent's criticisms of God are correct.
Therefore, you cannot say that God is good, wise and right. The most you can say is God might be good, wise and right, and that you hope so, but can't be sure.

coffee4u said:

You would rather not have free will? I think most people rather enjoy their free will.

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If I didn't have free will, I wouldn't mind, would I?

coffee4u said:

Not sure what you mean here. The angels were created with free will too, that is why 1/3 of them fell to became whats known as demons.
Those who go to heaven have chosen God. Heaven is only a temporary place. The ultimate plan is a new heavens and new world.

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Do angels and humans in heaven have free will?
If so, it's only a matter of time before one of them introduces sin into heaven.

coffee4u said:

To dwell in heaven no, but certainly God is going to judge people for the sins they committed.

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That does not seem to answer my question. I asked: Are you suggesting that there is the possibility that sin might one day enter heaven?

coffee4u said:

I certainly don't think so. My position is I trust God to know the best way even if I may not understand it. It is us who doesn't understand, not God who is failing to deliver.
I think the mistake is trying to make God into what we think a God should be rather than finding out who he actually is.

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Again, you've just admitted that you don't know. For all you know, God could be wrong and evil rather than right or good. you've just given up the argument. Which shows commendable honesty.

coffee4u said:

A mix of immortals and mortals in a fallen corrupted world? Doesn't sound like a good idea to me. If you are immortal you wouldn't want to face infinity with diseases and other maladies. That is whole point of the new earth to come. It will be immortal humans with a perfect world.

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Why would diseases and maladies be a problem if you were immortal and perfect?
On the contrary it sounds an excellent idea to me! The perfect humans could help the imperfect and make the world a better place.

coffee4u said:

Not for God it isn't.
2 Peter 3:8
But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

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That is an ad hoc rationalisation in the Bible. Can you blame Peter? Jesus prophecied he'd come back soon, but he didn't. So Peter is in a spot of trouble, and gets out of it by saying, "Of course you realise that for God, "soon" is relative."

coffee4u said:

I assume different people have different reasons. But your precise reasons for being here, no.

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Seriously? You have no idea why I might be here, in a forum that invites nonbelievers to challenge Christian ideas?

coffee4u said:

That is called judgment.
God didn't just come out of nowhere and 'squish people' Noah preached for over a hundred years that the flood was coming.
Genesis 6:3
And the Lord said, "My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh; yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years."
Some people think that is the age of mankind, but no it was the countdown to the flood and Noah preached that whole time he didn't just build the ark.

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As I said: God has reacted before by squishing people.

Hazelelponi said:

He only had one son... so this should be worded his only son, and that one son's freinds, whom he adopted as sons too because of their love for his son...



At any rate have a nice night. We are getting too far into parts you don't understand and analogies can only go so far.

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On the contrary, the analogy is working nicely. You yourself told me he was a negligent parent, so it's natural the family would be falling apart.

Incidentally, it's the middle of the afternoon where I am.

Good night!

Hazelelponi said:

The family includes one child, not many...

The nation of Israel was brought into covenant with God because God took mercy upon their forefathers, and chose them to bring forth the Messiah, whom was brought into the world to save as many as possible.

This isn't a bad parent, unless you think God allowing His Son to die so that many others may live is bad parenting... in which case you'd never allow your child to be a doctor (because they'd expose themselves to potential diseases which may kill them), never allow your child to join dIictors without borders (far more dangerous than mere doctoring in certain areas), never allow your child to join the military, never allow your child to be a police officer or a fireman etc.

While certainly there are parents out there like that, if not for the parents who were willing to sacrifice their children for the sake of others this world would indeed be a miserable place.

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Goodness me, you're all over the place.
The family has only one child, or many of them?

"Unless you think allowing your son to die is bad parenting"? Yes, that does sound like bad parenting, now you come to mention it! You try to rescue the point by speaking of hazardous professions that help others, but that's hardly comparable, is it? The plan was for Jesus to die. That was the whole point of the story!

I notice you've also conveniently forgotten how the parent allowed other children to terrorise his family without doing anything to stop them (although that's inconsistent too, of course - in the Bible God did do things to stop them - floods, bear and so on - but these were scattered actions and, according to the story itself, ineffective.

Every time you try to repair a hole in the analogy of a loving father, you tear another one. Do keep on if you like!

RDKirk said:

Why should we answer that question? What's in it for us?

As Christians, our concern is to preach the Gospel and make disciples around the world. Frankly, if answering that question doesn't lead to those goals, it may be entertaining for you, but it's a waste of a Christian's time and a distraction from our mission.

So what is the "mission case?"

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Hello RDKirk. I'm just trying to gather information. You don't have to answer, but I'd be grateful if you could.
The reason is because another user, a Christian, informed me that all religions were equally valid. I had a suspicion that most Christians don't agree that Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and the many other religions are as valid as Christianity, so I thought I'd test it.

Aussie Pete said:

God has placed before your very eyes everything you need in order to believe. You have met Christ if you have met a born again Christian. You've certainly heard from Him because you are on this forum. We may not speak as clearly as we should, we may not have all the answers to all the questions, but there are some on this forum who know Jesus, who is a real, living Person.

You might like to be the President of the USA. Nice work if you can get it. However, there are certain qualifications. I could not be because I'm not a US citizen. If you want to be in heaven in the next life, you need to qualify in this life. There are two conditions. First, you need to admit that you are a sinner. Next, you need to accept God's way of forgiveness.

The issue is that you are spiritually dead now - everyone is born that way. So God's intent is to make you spiritually alive. That is extremely simple. Everything necessary has already been done. All you have to do is accept.

No, you do not get a second chance. The Bible is clear on that. We all have an appointment with death and then the judgement. God has one initial judgement, those who are alive spiritually and those who are not. Would you like to have a dead person next to you in your home? Likely not. God likewise is not going to accept the dead into His home.

If you are serious about wanting to know if there really is a God, then do yourself a favour. Ask God to reveal Himself to you. Be as honest as you can. You can say that you do not believe. God knows that anyway.

I don't recall a time when I did not believe that God was real. I wanted nothing to do with God, who I viewed something like a cosmic bully looking for people to beat up. My idea was to make myself invisible to God and hopefully He would leave me alone. When I was 12, I had a family situation that troubled me greatly. I did something I'd never done before - I prayed. The situation was resolved the same day. I felt like an idiot, I tried to rationalise it as coincidence, but I knew better really. It did not cause me to become a Christian. That came about 9 years later. But I've never forgotten that time. God is real. He will answer you.

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The interesting thing is, just a short while ago I spoke to another person who said something very similar to you. He said there was plenty of evidence that God was real, and that I should pray to Him and look into it.
The thing is, he was a Muslim.
So what should I do? Should I look into Christianity first, or Islam? Looking at it objectively, is there a reason to choose one over the other? Shouldn't I test both to see which one is true?
It's quite a hard choice to make.

RDKirk said:

Why do you care? Will you become a Christian if this question is answered?

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I'm just interested to see how Christians view their own religion. If you don't want to answer, you don't have to. Over a dozen users have been kind enough to answer so far.
Have a nice day!

Hello Coffe4u,
I'd just like to start by saying that your reply has been quite courteous, something of a rarity around here, where conversations tend to range from formal to abrupt to downright nasty. So thank you for that.
I'm about to disagree with quite a lot of what you just said, but I hope I won't cause offence by doing so.

coffee4u said:

Well sure, only I thought being an atheist meant you were very sure that God, heaven and hell were made up. If you think there is a possibility doesn't that make you an agnostic? That is how is use to be anyway.

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In fact, most atheists are agnostic atheists. Briefly, gnosticism concerns knowledge and theism concerns belief. The two are not on a spectrum. So being an agnostic atheist means you lack evidence for God (gnosis, knowledge) and so you lack belief (a-theism).
It's just a fancy way of saying I can't say for certain that God doesn't exist, but since I lack evidence that He does, I can't make myself believe in Him or see any reason to. This is also my stance with the tooth fairy, Santa Claus and the Loch Ness Monster, any of whom could just conceivably exist, but I don't seriously think they do.

All I meant earlier was that if Heaven exists, of course I would want to go there. But I don't believe it does.

coffee4u said:

What part was missed?

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Oy. I forget now. Perhaps it wasn't important.

coffee4u said:

I know there are rules. I wasn't ask you to break them so we will leave that here.

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Thank you. I've been caught out by them before, saying things I thought were fine, but turned out not to be.

coffee4u said:

I am not a debater. I drop in here every now and then to answer questions as honestly as I can. Not good enough? Oh well.

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Well, sure, you and I aren't having a formal debate. Still, you tell me things that you believe about God, and if I point out what I think of as mistakes in your reasoning, it might be worth thinking about them.

coffee4u said:

I trust and know that God is Holy, just and loving.

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And yet God works in mysterious ways. Therefore, believers cannot know that He is good. When He does things that require you to say "I don't know why He did that" - well, maybe the reason is because He isn't good.

coffee4u said:

If you never experienced free will you would not know what you were missing is true

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Well, that is what we were talking about, wasn't it? How God could have created humans differently.

coffee4u said:

but if God came down right now and removed your free will I doubt you would like it.
God gave us free will because he wanted following him to be a choice. It means something when somebody chooses a thing rather than robotically doing as programed.

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And the angels who didn't rebel against Him made a choice to...obey Him? As do humans who go to heaven? They made a choice, and that means they will never again disobey, never sin?
That sounds horrible. Think about it. You are telling me that no human or angel in heaven will ever disobey God. That sounds exactly like they had their wills removed. If they still have their wills, it doesn't matter what choice they make. You must admit that they are still capable of choosing evil. It happened once before, it can happen again. Given that they'll be in heaven forever it's statistically certain to happen again. You follow me?
The alternative, of course, is that God is somehow able to create/transform beings into individuals that do have free will and will never use it to sin.
Which begs the question: why didn't He do that in the first place?

coffee4u said:

The human soul and spirit go to heaven not the body. The soul cannot sin anymore. This is what life is for, it is our time to make the choice. There is no changing the choice after death.

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Quite simply - why not? The soul is still alive. It can still (I think, perhaps you can clarify) choose. Why would it sin no more? What's to stop it?

coffee4u said:

Sin cannot dwell in heaven. Once in heaven there is no wanting to sin because the body is no longer there.

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You said that twice now. I'm curious. How do you know? And why does that work?
After all, the angels sinned, and presumably they did not have bodies. And why would not having a body stop you from sinning anyway? I mean, I suppose hormones and so on, lust, anger, etc., yes - but a disembodied soul can still think and choose, can't it? So why couldn't it choose to do evil?

coffee4u said:

In heaven we will know and understand it all.

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The thing is, if you can't explain something, then you can't assert it.
You tell me quite a lot of things, but then you say you just don't know. You know?

coffee4u said:

But me admiring I don't know all the nitty gritty details or why God did this thing or that thing does not affect my trust in God. Faith is having trust even when you don't have all the details. If you are with someone you really trust and they yell stop! You stop. Maybe they saw a snake and you didn't. If you carry on walking asking why as you go you will probably be sorry that you did.

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coffee4u said:

No doubt they thought soon meant soon by their time, but Jesus meant soon by God's time. The full number of gentiles has to come in and then the Jewish nation before the end.

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That just sounds silly, honestly. Come on. Let's be straight. Jesus had been alive in a human body for over thirty years at this point. He should have known how to speak clearly.
The thing is, if Jesus did mean He was going to come back soon, and He didn't, then you and Peter and the whole of Christianity are wrong.
Well, perhaps you are wrong.

coffee4u said:

I can make guesses, but those could be wrong. I assume different people have different reasons.

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I'm here because it's interesting to debate, you can learn a lot, and you can help a lot of people to understand their religion better. I can't speak for all nonbelievers on here, but I wouldn't be surprised if they had similar motives.

coffee4u said:

All people need to do is repent for God to withhold judgment. He isn't asking us to toss our first born into a volcano.
Jonah 3
10 When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.

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God won't ask us to sacrifice our children? But that's exactly what He did do, in a famous story. Yes, apparently God relented, although I hope Abraham had the money to pay for Isaac's therapy for the rest of his life. But that's not the point. The point is, yes, God did tell a believer to kill their own child.
Also, you still have to deal with the fact that God drowned the whole world. Getting a preacher - one man - to tell people the world would be destroyed, I don't think is a mitigating factor. Honestly, it sounds more like an excuse.

cloudyday2 said:

Your poll results show 26 votes for "1" and 1 vote for "2" which in my opinion is misleading. I often watch Christian TV here in the US when I visit my mother, and the pastors give sermons on the various festivals of Judaism or organize pilgrimages to the Holy Land and so forth. The Christian electorate in the US has been solidly supportive of Israel's foreign policy - often possibly at the expense of our more practical national interests in the region. The founding of the modern state of Israel is believed by many Christians to be a fulfillment of prophesy that will usher-in the Second Coming.

Look at the "Jewish Community Center" sub-forum here in the outreach part of CF. There is not much activity in that sub-forum, but its very existence here at CF shows the nuanced attitude towards Judaism and God's Chosen People. This attitude seems to be more pronounced among the fundamentalist Christian sects who emphasize Bible reading. Older and more liturgical Christian sects such as Catholics, Orthodox, and Lutherans have tended to be hostile to Judaism until recent decades. Modern Catholics, Orthodox, and Lutherans are of course ashamed of that past behavior.

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None of this weakens my case in any way, I'm afraid. These people you see as being sympathetic towards Jews and Judaism - how many of them suggest it would be a good idea to stop being a Christian and instead become a Jew? None of them, of course. No matter the respect for Jews and Judaism, its place in Christian history and its shared values, Judaism is seen as best as an incomplete and unformed relative to the Christian religion and at worst - as it has very often been over the course of Christianity's history - as actively hostile to Jesus, the "Christ Killers". No serious Christians suggest that the Jews are right when they say that Jesus was not resurrected and was not the Son of God, and nobody really sees Judaism and Christianity as equally correct. Which is, of course, what the poll, small and humble though it be, shows.
The Catholics, Orthodox and Lutherans who you mentioned are feeling shamed by the Holocaust (I'm sure you know that Martin Luther was a virulent anti-Semite), and a lot of the American support for Israel is due to the more extreme Protestant sects who see Israel as a key element in their Rapture-Ready End Times prophecies in which many Jews will convert to be Christians.

Aussie Pete said:

Of course. Islam certainly is monotheistic. They have a problem with the idea of God being 3 in one.

When Islam began to make the news, for all the wrong reasons, I read a lot of commentary from both sides of the fence. Some Muslims argued that Islam is not what the so-called extremists make it out to be. So I had a look at the history of Islam.

The place to start is always the beginning. With Islam, it was founded by a self proclaimed prophet named Mohamed. Christianity was founded by a man who claimed to be God's Messiah and Saviour. What kind of men were they?

Mohamed was your pretty typical warlord. He murdered, raped and pillaged his way to the top. He had few enemies because anyone who opposed him was killed without compunction. Reading his story reminded me of Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito, to name but a few dictators. I think Mohamed was probably worse, if that were possible. He was a paedophile and claimed to be a prophet of God.

Mohamed shed the blood of his enemies. Jesus shed His blood to save His enemies. Mohamed formed a great army to impose his rule. Jesus chose disciples who would learn His ways of peace and love. Most of the first disciples died for their faith. Mohamed's army killed anyone who got in the way.

Jesus said that His kingdom is not of this world. Mohamed employed pretty much the same tactics as other warlords. He was very good at killing. He was a good strategist and employed any method that worked to achieve his aims.

My suggestion is to examine both. However, choosing Islam is irrevocable. It's a death sentence to quit. If you live in the right geographical area, you'll probably get away with it, but I'd not be reliant on that.

Choosing Christ may cost your life if you live in a Muslim or Hindu nation. North Korea kills Christians and their families, Christian or not. China locks up Christians as does Iran and Indonesia. Iran kills Christians who were formerly Muslim. So does Pakistan, Afghanistan and a number of other Muslim nations.

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AussiePeter, you have given a thoughtful and interesting answer, and I thank you for it.
I don't want to seem facetious, but I do see a problem here.
Beginning with Islam: the things you have said are certainly matters to think about. But really, what does it matter if Mohammed and his people did all the things you say they did? If Allah is the one true God, then Muhammed must have had good reason to do what he did. And I must say, I have heard Muslims speak about Allah, and they paint a rather different picture of Muhammed than this.

And then how about Hinduism? Should I look in to that as well? I mean, this is the fate of my eternal soul we're talking about here. If I'm wrong about Hinduism, I could end up as a worm in my next life, which sounds a horrible existence.

And the problem is, there are a great many other religions, and it seems to me that all of them claim to be true, and I would have a hard job proving that any of them are wrong. Indeed, if they claim divine revelation, I don't see how I could prove any of them to be wrong.

And then, back to Christianity - how logn should I wait while testing it? Supposing I do as you say, and nothing happens? Supposing I pray devoutly to God but I hear nothing back from Him. How long should I wait until I try out my next religion? A week? A year? A score of years? It's beginning to look as if one lifetime might not be enough to explore one religion, never mind all the ones I will have to check.

So you see, this is by way of leading me to the Shell Problem that I started a thread on recently
Religion is a cosmic shell game
I haven't meant to lead you up the garden path, and am grateful for you taking the time to answer my question. But I cannot see that it helps me much. Rather, it leaves me with more trouble than I had before.