There is a lot here and I shortened it quite a bit.
Sin:
When you are total love you judge nothing. God knows the limitations of the flesh, he knows why you did what you did. There is no sin, there is only you being
well
you. You are exactly as he created you. No more or no less. When you die you will understand the flesh as he does.
You will not condemn sinners in the flesh, you will only welcome them into the kingdom of heaven.
Wait wait wait. There is no sin? Then there is no repentance either, and Christ died for nothing. Try that again, if you'd like.
No Death of You:
The number one question, and is not for this thread, is
How do you define you? You are a piece that surpasses all understanding, that is to say, we are more than anyone thinks.
God created Death of the flesh. This is done for a couple of reasons.
1) We need to experience what it is like to go without before we enter his house. Remember that experience leads to understanding -> compassion -> love -> No judgments
2) God is not all power, yes he knows the location of every hair on your head, this is because there is a fixed number of them. The universe is a constant state of change (evolving) and God knows the state of every particle at any given moment. Your life is burned onto the very fabric of space and remains there until the universe ends. You die when there is nothing left.
You are forever in the mind of God.
3) Life seems to be based on simple things built together to make things more than the pieces that make them up. We will evolve into the next life. We will be more than the pieces that make us up, we will be more than our experiences, and we will exist in a different state.
OK, I'm having a
really hard time understanding what you're getting at. Every post of yours I've read seems to have quite a bit of truth to it, but then there's a sentence in the midst of it all that throws the whole thing off. It's almost cryptic.
Free will,
Before the apple was offered, god told them not to eat of the tree. They had no choice, they did not eat from it. The devil came and offered them a choice between eating and not eating. At that moment they had a choice.
They had a choice. They simply went with the obvious choice of obedience. And like genez put forth, free will was exercised before the snake showed up when either Adam or Eve tacked on the rule that they couldn't even touch the tree or they would die. (Adam may have added it to make sure Eve (or himself even) didn't even go near the tree, or Eve might have added it in her own mind out of fear of God, *shrug* God knows.)
There is no fall of man. This is an illusion based on guilt. Adam and eve can not except that they chose not to listen to god. They judged themselves lesser than how god created them. They in affect judged Gods created different than God. They, in effect, judged there understanding to be more than gods. And we know this is impossible.
Adam and Eve lived in paradise and in innocence with God. The fall of man is that they sinned - that is, fell short of the Glory of God. When they sinned, they were cast out of the garden and were punished. Where are you getting these ideas of yours anyway?
*note - you often use except as in exception, 'leave out' when you seem to mean accept - 'allow in'*
One proof that the bible is man made are the notions that nakedness is shameful. Look around at all the other creations of god; their outer layers are god given. The fall of man was the birth of ego. To much to go into here so I will stop.
Nakedness wasn't shameful until the knowledge of good and evil was imbibed. Then it
became shameful because innocence was lost, and lust stepped in. The bible is not man-made, only written with human hands. You must never have had the experience of the Holy Spirit of God coming to rest on you. It's not like God just gave Moses, John, or Isaiah a general outline with a minimum page requirement and just let them get to it. No, God was there to guide their words and word choice. He inspired their thoughts and intervened in order to maintain the truth. If this is not true, then what kind of God would allow the principle collection of spiritual instruction to be untrue? The bible may not be quintessentially perfect, because it was made through man (not by), but with the Spirit to guide the reader, the truth is easily received from its pages.
You will have much to say about this thread.
That. . . may... be true.
LowlyTortous,
I read chapter 3 in revelations.
I do not take much stock in revelations because it probably was thrown in there because they had to put something in with the apocalyptic style of writing since, in Jesus' time, it was a common style used. It was also probably coded to keep it from the roman
As much as it was 'coded' with metaphors, history repeats itself. There is more than one portion of prophecy that can be applied to more than one event. Though the church in laodicea may have been an actual church at one time, each of the seven churches in the beginning of revelation can speak to distinct churches at any given time, or to an era of the entire body of believers on earth. Each passage, though colored by the time in which it was written, is part of a living truth that transcends time, because God transcends time, and it was His Spirit that inspired the authors of the bible.
The opposite of this neutral would be a zealot. If you believe that the bible is literal then this passage forces you to take the stance that there is no right or wrong. The writer told them to take a stance, good or bad, but take one.
Christ (the speaker in most of revelation) told them they are useless being lukewarm, that He would rather they be hot or cold. Hot or cold does not mean right or wrong, hot is being fully committed to God, lukewarm is being 'involved' and cold is being not at all committed or involved. If you can't understand how God would rather someone be a heathen than on the fence, ask God to reveal the truth to you.