Superiority Complex.

[ephraimanesti]

I do have one small problemo, to which God should I bend my knee? tell me honestly which God I should choose and why that particular God?

Easy does it, big fella! One thing at a time. First off, let's work on you getting the knee-bending down pat, and exhibiting of the humility which accrues from that. Then we'll work towards steering you into a loving relationship with your Lord, God, and Savior.

One more time...Atheists do not reject Gods they just don't believe in or think about any of them, period,
the person who is not a stamp collector, does he tell people that he does not collect stamps or does he just not think about stamp collecting? is he called a non-stamp collector?

MY BROTHER,

Seems like you "think about them" a whole large bunch! You have a multitude of derogatory Posts attacking the existence of God and the beliefs of those who hold that He does. Does this not make you either a hypocrite or a liar or are you, in reality, not really an atheist at all but a double agent or, worst case scenario, are you in the midst of some kind of identity crisis? In any of those events, God can help you know.

ephraim

 

[razeontherock]

It's an "okay" that is how you feel and it's perfectly valid. I disagree with the evidence but your opinion of "faith" is your own and you are entitled to view it however you like.

This needs a little more. Faith serves a different role in Judaism than it does in Christianity. You are literally saved by Faith, and it comes via Grace, i.e., G-d's miracles, including Moses. So to you Faith is not the substance, but Grace. We are saved by Grace, and it comes via Faith; so for us, Faith is the substance. Scary how many Christians on this board think they are saved by Faith, which leaves them at great peril and accounts for many of those that have fallen away. Hope they find Judaism!

 

[razeontherock]

Let me clear up my previous statement to avoid confusion. In the past, people looked up at the sun and thought it was a god. That's how I feel about the God explanation of the universe. I think there's a better and probably more complex answer than God out there,

G-d is more complex than our Universe.

 

[razeontherock]

Well then, the Holy Spirit isn't doing it's job with me, is it?

It takes 2 to tango.

 

[razeontherock]

So you think that all Atheists have problems because they can not see why anyone would believe in something that was not there? I fear that's just wishful thinking on your part.

No, people having problems is universal.

 

[razeontherock]

The problem is that you are a human being with human judgment. You are claiming personal omniscience and infallibility. That is what is arrogant.

There was, and is, no such claim.

 

[razeontherock]

I said this some time ago, but it probably bears repeating here.

Anyone who believes does so because God has first of all called him or her by name. Our belief is by the grace of God, and our faith is by the grace of God; we do not effect it for ourselves.

Anyone who has not yet found the evidence they need to believe is not to blame for that, imo, because I also would not believe, if I had not seen the evidence that I need to see. For some reason best known to himself, God made this clear to me at an important moment, and I have trusted him ever since.

A lot of Christians may huff and puff about people believing, as if it is a choice, but in my view it is not a choice. Non believers can no more choose to believe what they do not see, than I can choose not to believe what I do. The challenge, in both cases, is to accept the other person's point of view as valid, and refrain from comments about moral weakness, which frankly say more about the person making the comment than they do about having faith in God.

Well put C! But I ask you, when you "came to Faith," (or however you may prefer to put it) did it require no effort on your part? Personally, to answer G-d's call took more effort than anything else I've ever done. And it continues to do so. Mark here will attest that is (at least part of) what makes such a thing so fulfilling.

I would also submit that most NC's here are hearing G-d's call otherwise they wouldn't be here for more than a drive-by. I know I heard it for many years before truly answering, and it could also be said my answer continually becomes "more true." (Or something along those lines.

 

[Glass*Soul]

I would also submit that most NC's here are hearing G-d's call otherwise they wouldn't be here for more than a drive-by. I know I heard it for many years before truly answering, and it could also be said my answer continually becomes "more true." (Or something along those lines.

I would submit that you are not hearing most of the NC's here.

 

[JohnCR]

MY BROTHER,

You really MUST do your own homework and not get your misinformation off the Web from Sites with atheist agendas.

Hitler was a pagan and held all Christian religion in contempt. Examples?:

"German priests and pastors were exiled to Dachau for preaching love of neighbor, for insisting that Jesus was a Jew, for warning S.S. men that they could not abjure their faith to achieve promotion, for offering requiem Masses even for relatives of Communists." (The Priests of Dachau/William O'Malley)

"It is through the peasantry that we shall really be able to destroy Christianity because there is in them a true religion rooted in nature and blood. One is either a Christian or a German. You can't be both." (1933 speech)

"Do you really believe the masses will ever be Christian again? Nonsense. Never again. The tale is finished . . . but we can hasten matters. The parsons will be made to dig their own graves just as Polish priests are doing."(1933 ibid)

"When the Reich minister for church affairs, Hanns Kerrl, died in 1941, Hitler remarked that "Kerrl, with the noblest of intentions, wanted to attempt a synthesis between National Socialism and Christianity. I do not believe this is possible, and I see the obstacle in Christianity itself. . . . Pure Christianity--the Christianity of the catacombs--is concerned with translating the Christian doctrine into fact. It leads simply to the annihilation of mankind. It is merely wholehearted Bolshevism, under a tinsel of metaphysics." (Remark to reporter in 1941)

"The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity's illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew." (Hitler's Table Talk)

Honesty and accuracy, my brother, are important.

ABBA'S FOOL,
ephraim

Honesty and accuracy? Hitler's mother was Catholic. Hitler's father was Catholic. Hitler was raised a Catholic and used Christianity in his justification for antisemitism.

Hell, I can quote Hitler too:

"I would like here to appeal to a greater than I, Count Lerchenfeld. He said in the last session of the Landtag that his feeling 'as a man and a Christian' prevented him from being an anti-Semite. I say: My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. .. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison." (at the Bürgerbräukeller on April 12, 1922)

"I confess that I will never ally myself with the parties which aim to destroy Christianity. Fourteen years they have gone arm in arm with atheism. At no time was greater damage ever done to Christianity than in those years when the Christian parties ruled side by side with those who denied the very existence of God. Germany's entire cultural life was shattered and contaminated in this period. It shall be our task to burn out these manifestations of degeneracy in literature, theater, schools, and the press—that is, in our entire culture—and to eliminate the poison which has been permeating every facet of our lives for these past fourteen years." (speech to the Stuttgart February 15, 1933)

"For eight months we have been waging a heroic battle against the Communist threat to our Volk, the decomposition of our culture, the subversion of our art, and the poisoning of our public morality. We have put an end to denial of God and abuse of religion. We owe Providence humble gratitude for not allowing us to lose our battle against the misery of unemployment and for the salvation of the German peasant." (radio address October 14, 1933)

You are well within your rights to say Hitler was misunderstanding and misusing Christianity, but he was a self-proclaimed Christian.

 

[razeontherock]

I would submit that you are not hearing most of the NC's here.

While this response might hold true for you, let me point out you are unique from "most of the NC's here." And while it in no way makes me superior, I might be a tad more familiar with what hearing the "call of G-d" looks like, especially within a person that's not really answering it so well. :o Yeah, first-hand experience there too ..

 

[ephraimanesti]

Honesty and accuracy? Hitler's mother was Catholic. Hitler's father was Catholic. Hitler was raised a Catholic and used Christianity in his justification for antisemitism.

You are well within your rights to say Hitler was misunderstanding Christianity, but he was a self-proclaimed Christian.

MY BROTHER,

You are correct that Hitler used Christianity in his justification for antisemitism, but get the WHOLE story IN CONTEXT--Hitler, while he was in the process of building his Party and solidifying his power, did indeed PUBLICLY promise to nurture and protect Christianity under his regime. However, once he was firmly entrenched, he quickly turned and began the destruction of Christianity in the Third Reich. The websites you garner your quotes from quote from Hitler's early years rising to power, not from his pronouncements when the reins of control were firmly in his grasp.

Hitler was a youthful fascination of mine, probably because of the overwhelming evilness of what he accomplished, so i know a bit about his belief system. HE WAS, IN NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM A "CHRISTIAN."

As Carroll and Shiflett write in their chapter entitled "Christianity and the Third Reich": "Adolf Hitler might have been a baptized Catholic, but he didn't preach even a 'perverted' form of Christianity, or any form at all. He was a blood-and-soil primitive, a pagan determined to save and ennoble Germany by sweeping all trace of Judaism and Christianity from the national stage. His jarring anti-Christian sentiments naturally were not regular fare in Hitler's public pronouncements, especially in the early years, when he adopted a pious front for political advantage. But they always represented his true feelings and the feelings of the Nazi leadership he assembled, which teemed with christian-haters of stunning virulence.

"The wonder is not that many Christians failed to bear witness to the imperatives of their faith--to do good is noble, but also hard--but that those who did do good were plentiful enough to give us hope, and resolute enough to have earned a more hallowed place in memory than they have been granted by those eager to saddle Christianity by any means possible, with the evils of Nazism."

Any attempt to pass Hitler off as a Christian is DISHONEST and UNTRUE! Get and proclaim the whole story!

ABBA'S FOOL,
ephraim

 

[razeontherock]

Would this be a bad place to point out the connection between Hitler and the Pope? Not saying it makes Hitler any more Christian or even Catholic, rather the other way around ...

 

[ephraimanesti]

Well then, the Holy Spirit isn't doing it's job with me, is it?

MY DEAR BROTHER,

The Holy Spirit is a person--not an "it".

That aside, the Holy Spirit can only accomplish His duties when we are completely surrendered to His Power and completely open and receptive to what He is trying to do in our Hearts.

However, in order to receive the Holy Spirit in the first place, there is a process to be completed:

"When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, 'Brothers, what shall we do?'

"Peter replied, 'Repent and be baptized, everyone of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.' " (Acts 2:37-38)

The Process being:

#1. Believe the Gospel

#2. Repent of your sins

#3. Be Baptized, letting your old sinful ego die in the water and be raised up a New Creation, with God's new Life in control of your being in its place

#4. Receive the Holy Spirit, and keep the Temple cleansed so as to be a fit habitation for God to indwell you

#5. Surrender COMPLETELY to the Holy Spirit, listen to His (still small) voice, and be obedient in all that you are told.

SIMPLE! Have you done these things prior to your expecting the Holy Spirit to do His thing?

ABBA'S FOOL,
ephraim

 

[Riski]

MY DEAR BROTHER,

The Holy Spirit is a person--not an "it".

That aside, the Holy Spirit can only accomplish His duties when we are completely surrendered to His Power and completely open and receptive to what He is trying to do in our Hearts.

However, in order to receive the Holy Spirit in the first place, there is a process to be completed:

"When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, 'Brothers, what shall we do?'

"Peter replied, 'Repent and be baptized, everyone of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.' " (Acts 2:37-38)

The Process being:

#1. Believe the Gospel

#2. Repent of your sins

#3. Be Baptized, letting your old sinful ego die in the water and be raised up a New Creation, with God's new Life in control of your being in its place

#4. Receive the Holy Spirit, and keep the Temple cleansed so as to be a fit habitation for God to indwell you

#5. Surrender COMPLETELY to the Holy Spirit, listen to His (still small) voice, and be obedient in all that you are told.

SIMPLE! Have you done these things prior to your expecting the Holy Spirit to do His thing?

ABBA'S FOOL,
ephraim

I'll pass.
(would you call this a derogatory post?)

 

[scraparcs]

You have to be able to believe the Gospel in order to believe the Gospel.

That's like asking you to believe the Book of Mormon. It's easy. Just believe the Book of Mormon already.

Not so easy, huh?

 

[ephraimanesti]

I'll pass.
(would you call this a derogatory post?)

Nah--you civilized, bro.

ephraim

 

[ephraimanesti]

You have to be able to believe the Gospel in order to believe the Gospel.

MY SISTER,

To arrive at a belief in the Gospel, you have to put it to the test--i.e., you do what it says--as summarized above--and see if it delivers on its promises.

If it does, than you have found the Truth.

If it doesn't deliver, keep looking.

SIMPLE!

ABBA'S FOOL,
ephraim

 

[scraparcs]

MY SISTER,

To arrive at a belief in the Gospel, you have to put it to the test--i.e., you do what it says--as summarized above--and see if it delivers on its promises.

If it does, than you have found the Truth.

If it doesn't deliver, keep looking.

SIMPLE!

ABBA'S FOOL,
ephraim

How long must one keep testing it?

 

[ephraimanesti]

How long must one keep testing it?

MY SISTER,

Until you are certain that you have made your best--most honest, most open, most self-aware, most humble, most focused--effort at following Scriptural directions and that God's Word has either passed or failed the test as a result.

Looking back, it took me about one and a half years to arrive at certainty--but then i was carrying a whole bunch of baggage through the process. May your burden be lighter!

ABBA'S FOOL,
ephraim

 

[scraparcs]

MY SISTER,

Until you are certain that you have made your best--most honest, most open, most self-aware, most humble, most focused--effort at following Scriptural directions and that God's Word has either passed or failed the test as a result.

Looking back, it took me about one and a half years to arrive at certainty--but then i was carrying a whole bunch of baggage through the process. May your burden be lighter!

ABBA'S FOOL,
ephraim

That's it? I've tried for a lifetime and not gotten too far.