₦airaland Forum

Gwaine,

And again, I am not saying you personally have "the hug god" as I was not saying that you have "the suburban god".

I am just saying that we must not use our personal relationship with God as an excuse not to actually obey God and do good works in this world.

Gwaine,

The "suburban god" is one of the most popular gods.

However there is one god that is pretty close to that one, --- "the hug god".

This is a god that came to love you and desparately needs you to love Him.

You must spend all your time just loving him and not worrying about anything else.

This "hug god" has the same effect as the "suburban god" in that it makes people apathetic and complacent about whatever is going on in the world.


Jesus orders us:
(Mat 5:16) Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in Heaven.

We were created for good works.

(Eph 2:10) For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them.

Jesus gave himself so that would become a people zealous for good works.

(Tit 2:14) who gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from all iniquity and purify to Himself a special people, zealous of good works.

We must be careful to maintain, good works.

(Tit 3: Faithful is the Word, and as to these things, I desire that you strongly affirm that those believing God might be careful to maintain good works. These things are good and profitable to men.

Fruitfulness is part of good works.

(Tit 3:14) And let ours also learn to maintain good works for necessary uses, so that they may not be unfruitful.

We should be provoking one another to good works.

(Heb 10:24) and let us consider one another to provoke to love and to good works,

Our good works lead unbelievers to Glorify God.

(1Pe 2:12) having your conduct honest among the nations, in that which they speak against you as evildoers, they may glorify God in a day of His visitation, seeing your good works.

We are judged by our treatment of others.

Mat 25:31-46 But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He shall sit on the throne of His glory. (32) And all nations shall be gathered before Him. And He shall separate them from one another, as a shepherd divides the sheep from the goats. (33) And indeed He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats off the left. (34) Then the King shall say to those on His right hand, Come, blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. (35) For I was hungry, and you gave me food; I was thirsty, and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger, and you took Me in; (36) I was naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me. (37) Then the righteous shall answer Him, saying, Lord, when did we see You hungry, and fed You? Or thirsty, and gave You drink? (38) When did we see You a stranger, and took You in? Or naked, and clothed You? (39) Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and came to You? (40) And the King shall answer and say to them, Truly I say to you, Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brothers, you have done it to Me. (41) Then He also shall say to those on the left hand, Depart from Me, you cursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his angels. (42) For I was hungry, and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty, and you gave Me no drink; (43) I was a stranger and you did not take Me in; I was naked, and you did not clothe Me; I was sick, and in prison, and you did not visit me. (44) Then they will also answer Him, saying, Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister to You? (45) Then He shall answer them, saying, Truly I say to you, Inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me. (46) And these shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into everlasting life.

I can appreciate someone talking about loving God and praying for others.

Let us look clearly at what the writer of Hebrews says:

Heb 5:13-14 For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

Heb 6:1-3 Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, Of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. And this will we do, if God permit.

In my opinion far too many Christians are running around stuck at the milk stage, trying to convince people that they have faith towards God, that they know Jesus died for their sins, and worrying about going to hell (eternal judgement).

But clearly the bible refers to those things as the early and easy things of the Christian walk.

Jesus saved you. Christians can stop worrying about what God has done. That's finished.

You found that truth.

Christians need to get on with the business of doing 'good works', which if you want to remind yourself by going back to the above list: is the reason Jesus saved you.

Gwaine,

If you start in Genesis.

Eve wanting an item, she could not have.

Move along to Saul, (whose name means sheol--hell) and the thing we find there, is that he has kept all the items, that God told him not to keep. Samuel tells him God has taken the kingdom from him for disobedience.

Move along to the verses that all Christians acknowledge as being about the devil in Ezeikiel, God tells satan, it is because of the abundance of your trade and merchandising that you have sinned and led the whole world in sin.

Move along to Habbukuk and you find there that the evil people have taken people, lands and other material goods, to set their nest on high (keep their people safe).

Move along to Jesus Christ, you will find that He only mentions one other god versus the True God of the Bible: The god of mammon. The god of money. He never mentions a god of drinking, in fact he drinks, he never mentions a god of false religious symbolism, in fact he is accused many times of not looking pious enough.

Move along to Paul who warns us against going after riches. James who says that God sent the gospel to the poor and the rich were the ones who dog us in this world. Peter who says that false prophets preach to get rich, using christian people as merchandise.

Then go to the end of the bible and in the book of revelations chapter 18, the LovePeddler of Babylon is all about the money and merchandise and trade, selling souls and men. She has led the whole world astray.

And do not miss that God is coming to destroy the LovePeddler of Babylon.

The bible is clear in it's focus.

But what do we find in Christian churches today?

1. Prosperity gospel is main preaching. So the god of mammon is definitely being preached.

2. Christians giving blood sacrifices to the god of mammon, everytime a baby is killed in an abortion, 33,000 people die EVERY DAY from starvation, even though the money spent on Icecream cones bought on the street in America, would pay to feed every person for a year and the money that Americans spend on christmas presents for their pets would be enough to give adequate health care to all the people in the world. Gleefully talking about not helping welfare mothers and children eat, as the right thing to do. Etc, etc.

3. Christians joyfully supporting the war in Iraq, even though only the most dense person in the world, does not understand that this war was for economic reasons (oil and cash).

4. Ever see the christians who run around church screaming --money cometh, in their churches? So the god of mammon is fully lodged in these churches. Christians will run up to you and say things like: I ain't letting nobody interrupt my prosperity walk.

5. Sex sells and Christians are being sold sex just as much as the non-believer, in this world. Christians and non-believers focus on sex -- christians either on homosexuals or on teenagers getting pregnant(abortions).

Yet what does the bible say?

Jer 22:16  He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well with him: was not this to know me? saith the LORD.

When someone cares about the poor and needy that is a sign that they love the Lord.

Pro 29:7  The righteous knows the plea of the poor; the wicked cares not to know it.

Christians should be focused on the 33,000 children who die everyday from starvation that they can prevent.

Pro 31:9  Open your mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy.

We Christians need to be pleading for the poor and needy, not for the fat and greedy.

Pro 31:20  She stretches out her hand to the poor; yea, she reaches forth her hands to the needy.

A good woman is in the caring for the poor business.


The bible is absolutely clear.

I do not think I need to tell you why it would be in the interests of what is called 'Western Christian Civilization' to keep people focused on getting themselves rich, sex, cussing, and personal sins and making sure that people never focus on the trade and merchandise sins that the bible is more focused on.

The bible is just used as prop to justify their economic violence.

What did Jesus do, when he saw religion being used to make money? He got a whip and chased the money changers out of temple.

Economic sins were the cause of Jesus getting violent in the bible.

Sexual sins by the adulteress in the bible? Jesus just forgave her.

A lot of us have purposely been taught WRONG FOCUS by those who benefit from this policy.

Gwaine,

Please do not take that personal. It is not meant to indicate in any way that you are a hypocrite.

I, as an American, am used to people confusing the 'suburban god' with the True God of the Bible.

Gwaine,

I live in a world, where the bible writes about the poor and helping the poor in over 1000+ verses.

It writes about cussing -- ZERO TIMES.

Yet every other Christian will run up to me and claim, cussing means your not a true Christian! But issues concerning the poor?

Not a peep.

This is what I mean about 'hypocritical'.

People do better when they know better.

So I am not saying you are doing that, at least not purposely, but I frequently meet Christians who do not know what the bible says nor means, instead their on some white glove hunt to prove that 'suburban values' are the same as 'godly values'.

I am simply pointing out they are not the same.

HINT

Abeem says that Nigerian banks honestly report thefts.


CLUE

Numerous articles say that American and European banks do not honestly report thefts.


Result

Nobody trust Nigerians Banks, except Nigerians.

Everybody even Nigerians love European and American Banks.


[size=16pt]Your Black. Get used to it. [/size]

Please take a CLUE from the banks.

Nigerians will NOT gain a good reputation by talking to the police about all the crime Nigerians are committing.

Snitching for a better reputation, will just give the Media more times to show the world Nigerians in handcuffs.

Plus the laughing they will do in their homes at the idea that you guys are doing this to yourselves by turning the people in.

and i keep a big bank, oh i think dey like that!



Wellllllll, Yeah.

How can you go wrong with lyrics like that?

Gwaine,

I do not know about this.

I tend to be against the common thing that Christians do: Make up sins and then accuse people of violating them.

I am not saying your doing that because I know you are following the time honored traditions of cultural or nominal christians.

When Paul says I considered it DUNG? Isn't he saying I considered it SHYTE?

In the exact same way that we mean it, when we say: that ain't worth jack shyte?

This idea that one has to be following some old hypocritical Victorian code of ethics to be considered Christian or not sinning, just seems very fishy to me.

Abeem,

Is your point that the bankers of Nigeria do things differently?

Not so around the world.

http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=221092006

Banks acknowledge about £500m of such fraud a year in the UK - up from £213m in 2000 and £62m in 1995. But banking insiders have told Scotland on Sunday that as much as another £500m was discovered by the industry but never reported to police, under a controversial policy of dealing in-house with any theft of £2,000 or less.


And another:

http://www2.cddc.vt.edu/www.eff.org/Legal/prosecuting_computer_criminals.article

It is also probable that some major victims, like banks and telecommunications
companies, continued earlier policies of dealing with invasions of their computer systems without invoking the criminal justice system. Such invasions have always
presented difficult public relations problems, with corporate victims weighing their desire for prosecution against a feared public perception that their computer
systems are vulnerable to hostile interference.


And Another:

Bankers Mistrust

http://www.house.gov/science/ch27.html

Banks and financial institutions have notorious reputations for not reporting computer crimes. We have heard of cases in which bank personnel have traced active hacking attempts to a specific person, or developed evidence showing that someone had penetrated their systems, but they did not report these cases to the police for fear of the resulting publicity.

In other cases, we've heard that bank personnel have paid people off to get them to stop their attacks and keep quiet. Some experts in the industry contend that major banks and trading houses are willing to tolerate a few million dollars in losses per week rather than suffer the perceived bad publicity about a computer theft. To them, a few million a week is less than the interest they make on investments over a few hours: it's below the noise threshold.

Are these stories true? We don't know, but we haven't seen too many cases of banks reporting computer crimes, and we somehow don't think they are immune to attack. If anything, they're bigger targets. However, we do know that bankers tend to be conservative, and they worry that publicity about computer problems is bad for business.

Odd, if true. Think about the fact that when some kid with a gun steals $1000 from the tellers at a branch office, the crime makes the evening news, pictures are in the newspaper, and a regional alert is issued. No one loses confidence in the bank. But if some hacker steals $5 million as the result of a bug in the software and a lack of ethics,

Who do you entrust with your life's savings?


And another:

http://www.rtmark.com/old/more/harvardjournal2000winter.html

See Jim Benson, Cyberterrorism Resource Center (visited Nov. 8, 1999) (reporting that British computer hackers have extorted $ 1.6 million as "cyber-ransom" from two banks. The banks did not notify the authorities or the press for fear of hurting investor and depositor confidence). Publicity could expose the targeted company's vulnerability, thereby increasing the chance that Internet terrorists could succeed in their plan to disrupt the company's activity.