Interesting fact to think about

AV1611VET

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If you want the true religion to be determined by popularity, then maybe you should consider that only 29% of the world is Christian.
He said, 'every nation,' not 'everybody.'
 
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AV1611VET

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And it's really only in the past 250 years or so that Jesus has become known world wide.
That's because the United States of America never heard of Him until 1776. :doh:

And continuing that logic, South Sudan never heard of Jesus until 2011.
 
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AV1611VET

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I think @ViaCrucis clearly explained why none of this is particularly surprising.
I'd like to know one person's name who was evangelized at the end of a gun barrel.

And in fact, anyone who tries that tactic won't go unnoticed:

Matthew 11:12 And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.

The Church is the Bride of Christ, and Jesus isn't going to allow someone to force His bride on Him at the end of a gun barrel.
 
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ViaCrucis

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That's like saying it's hard to call crime "crime," when it's at the end of a gun.

TIL that AV1611 believes the Gospel is the same thing as crime.

-CryptoLutheran
 
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AV1611VET

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Did you just unwittingly blame colonialism, imperialism and genocide (cultural and actual) on your deity?
No.

He blamed every nation on earth as hearing about Jesus.
 
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Rajni

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I find it noteworthy that 1 Timothy 4:10 says that God is the savior of all men, "especially those that believe", not "exclusively those that believe". It has been my observation, however, from bringing this up in the past, that the implication of that small detail is pretty much unwelcome in churchdom overall; it seems that God being the Savior of the whole world is fine as long as He doesn't end up too successful in accomplishing that goal. ;)
 
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Rachel20

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I find it noteworthy that 1 Timothy 4:10 says that God is the savior of all men, "especially those that believe", not "exclusively those that believe". It has been my observation, however, from bringing this up in the past, that the implication of that small detail is pretty much unwelcome in churchdom overall; it seems that God being the Savior of the whole world is fine as long as He doesn't end up too successful in accomplishing that goal. ;)


That just kills Calvinism (good). He's the savior of all men, because he came to save all men, and all can be saved.

For the Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them ... Luke 9:56
 
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RoseCrystal

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I'd like to know one person's name who was evangelized at the end of a gun barrel.

And in fact, anyone who tries that tactic won't go unnoticed:

Matthew 11:12 And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.

The Church is the Bride of Christ, and Jesus isn't going to allow someone to force His bride on Him at the end of a gun barrel.
You are kidding, right? Maybe have another look at the history of Christianity and how 'the good news' was actually spread to the world. And what happened to those who refused to accept it. Maybe start with the Inquisition. Believe what we do - or die, and justified from their point of view I guess, I mean let's not forget the bible does support mass murder.
 
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OtherSheep

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For therefore we both labour and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe. - 1 Timothy 4:10

Think about this. If Jesus is the savior of all men, do you think that it's a coincidence that every nation on this planet has heard about Jesus? Is it a coincidence that the Bible is the most famous book on the planet and the story of Jesus' death on the cross is the most famous story in human history?

Atheists often scoff at Christianity and say that it's just one random religion among thousands of religions. But clearly that's not true at all.

No offence meant, but evangelism will explain the coincidences you mention... that and the advent of the printing press.

What I believe is happening is this: that what's coming upon the world requires the specific faith in Jesus' words to survive, via the Gospels of Matthew and John, as two witnesses to the events of the Life of Jesus, along with the Revelation and any Scriptures Jesus mentions, including especially Daniel.
 
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OtherSheep

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You are kidding, right? Maybe have another look at the history of Christianity and how 'the good news' was actually spread to the world. And what happened to those who refused to accept it. Maybe start with the Inquisition. Believe what we do - or die, and justified from their point of view I guess, I mean let's not forget the bible does support mass murder.

The Inquisition is the bad seed of Satan sown with the good seed of God. Satan is the father of liars and murderers. Jesus says Thou shalt not kill. His good seed will not, ever, for any reason. During the Sermon on the Mount, He tells us "But I say unto you..." about hating your enemy... surely genocide requires hatred?

Because God says don't covet, kill, or steal. ... Don't look at what doesn't belong to you, kill the one to whom it belongs, and steal what you wanted out of his cold dead hands. Having given the 10 Commandments, how likely is it that God changed His nature into the complete opposite of Joshua's Conquest?

Jesus repeats the parts of the OT that have been given by God to Moses... never does He say that living by the sword will be rewarded... so that we can know the true nature of God. And respond accordingly. Don't let this hurt your feelings, but you are laboring under a delusion that needs to be corrected.
 
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JackRT

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And it's really only in the past 250 years or so that Jesus has become known world wide.

I would make it more like 500 years but that's a quibble. The reality is that Christianity was spread through colonialism and all the evils that brought to those being colonialized --- forced conversion, ethnic cleansing, genocide, slavery and racism. The echoes of that echo down to the present day and explains why Christianity and white people are regarded with suspicion almost everywhere.

A great deal of the history of the past 500 years involves what has come to be called the "Doctrine of Discovery". This originated as a series of papal bulls issued in the 15th and 16th centuries. Essentially this doctrine stated that if a man should discover a land in which none of the inhabitants were Christian then he had the right to claim this land for his (Chtistian) sovereign. If these people refused to be converted and resisted their new condition, it was justifiable to exterminate and/or enslave them. In a USA Supreme Court decision in 1823 a form of this doctrine was taken into US law. Sadly this decision formed the legal basis for the ethnic cleansing and attempted genocide of the aboriginal peoples and nations of the USA. We speak grandly of "the rule of law" but we broke almost every treaty we ever signed with these people. Is it any wonder that we are viewed with great suspicion?
 
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OtherSheep

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The reality is that Christianity was spread through colonialism and all the evils that brought to those being colonialized --- forced conversion, ethnic cleansing, genocide, slavery and racism. The echoes of that echo down to the present day and explains why Christianity and white people are regarded with suspicion almost everywhere.

In an effort to correct this not-quite accurate... "history"
... we got the name... didn't play the game.

The term crypto/converso/marano applies. We have learned that the Spanish Inquisition wasn't done by a racial Spaniard. And the slavers are known to Bible readers as Ishmaelites. The readers of Herodotus are told that it was the Phoenicians. Columbus tried to enslave the Natives, found that they didn't tolerate it, and bought what was sold by Ethiopians. Caesar sold a million Celts in his day.

But conversion at the point of a sword is what made cryptos in the first place. Many of these cryptos ended up as heads of the same place that forced them to hide their identity or die. ... and now you know the rest of the story. ... Christians finally had a law put in place to keep from becoming slaves of Middle-Easterners, too.

But in America, White Christian slaves were called Indentured Servants... who were never allowed to pay off the cost of their debtor's-prison(interest) trip overseas... unlike their more-fortunate black-slave counterparts. In Australia, Welsh people were sent to work in the mines, on the thin and mouldy pretext of a stolen crust of bread or wormy old apple. Because this sort of work, after all, is what slavery was all about... just as it was with the Gulags of Bolshevik Russia.
 
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