₦airaland Forum

techmo:
all this crappy names you called don't even exist in Isreal

Jesus means wild pig in greek and latin, and was used to mock Yeshua Son of Mariamah, Prophet of Isreal God Yahweh YhWh, nobody bears Moses or Aron, its an invention of same European colonialist what isreal has is MohSah and Ebrahim.. just has no place in kaduna is called Zaria European changed it from ZauZau to Zaria because of their colonial agenda, Christmas is also an European Pagan Mass and Yeshua wasn't born in 25 December winter but around spring or autumn, Yahweh only commanded his followers to celebrate Pass Over and the Day Abraham celebrated his faith and almost sacrificed his son, Esther is also fully European

ever wonder why Jews don't associate with Christians? and only 2% of isrealites are Christians? because they know European and their scheming better than Africans

Where do you guys come up with all theories?... Please stop listening to some nutjobs on YouTube.

GRIMMJOE:
Born too late too explore the Moon, born too early to explore the Galaxy.

Well not really. There's so much about the moon we haven't explored yet and it will still take decades (if not centuries) to scratch below the surface.
And with our current technology (no sci-fi stuff) we can begin to explore our galaxy with the right funding... It would probably be a one way trip though.

So if you truly interested, go for it.

Hakeem12:
Exactly. The fact that there are earth like planets in habitable zones, 550 light years away too far for current telescopes to handle, let alone next generation of telescopes shows we still have a lot to figure out about the universe. But some people think they have it all figured it in a text that claims the earth is five thousand years old. I basically stopped arguing with religious people because, you can't explain anything to anyone that has abandoned logic.

My childhood interest in astronomy and how the earth began in the first place made me an agnostic atheist. While I do not believe in the existence of any deity, it seems to me that the universe lies and will always lie beyond the grasps of any intellectuals on earth, I may be wrong though.

Well.. out of the roughly 4000 exoplanets we've found and confirmed, alot are gas/ice planets and what we know about the conditions of the others make them hostile to complex life. The closest earth like exoplanet we've found is Kepler-1649c about 300light-years away. It's roughly similar to earth in size and temperature but the first major problem is that,it revolves around a red dwarf, which are known for their flare activity,making life very challenging for potential life. Coupled with that, we know next to nothing about its atmospheric conditions(ability to keep water or not) or the planets mass(whether it is truly rocky or a water world). There are other exoplanets estimated to be closer to Earth in size or temperature, such as TRAPPIST-1f or TRAPPIST-1d. But other than Kepler-1649c no other planet is considered to be close in both of these values that also lies in the habitable zone of its system."

The Copernican principle that earth is just another random rock that supports complex life is really no longer the prevailing principle in cosmology. The more we've surveyed our universe in the last decade or so and the more we understand the precise conditions needed for complex life to thrive and observe the universe, the more we understand that earth sits in a privileged position. Even simple things that didn't seem important a couple of decades kinda are unique to earth amongst all the planet we've seen so far, E.g the planet to moon ratio, the size and impact of other planets in the solar system, the position of our solar system within our galaxy and even the position of our galaxy within our super galaxy. So even though our planet is but a tiny speck of rock in the universe, the more we find out about the fine tunement that allows for complex life as we know it, the rarer earth seems to be. Of course that's not to say there are no planets in the universe that can support complex life but contrary to what we believed a couple of decades ago, they might not to be as numerous as we thought.
We probably should take care of this one because almost anywhere else will kill us in an instant or make life harder than living in the worst desert on earth.

What's your take on the Fermi paradox with relation to the Drake equation?

Maximus69:
I wasn't talking to you Sir, you carried the matter on your head then blasphemously calling upon the of Jesus who warned his own followers never to take vengeance!

It's your type that will quickly carry tyre and PMS to burn someone who stole a cube of maggi but if your own profile is made public you'll start begging for mercy!

Normalizing is not the case here, sinners ought not to judge sinners~ Jesus of Nazareth

During wars when there is no more law and order to be kept, armed men and women move around unhindered with weapons stealing and raping at will.

So if someone is caught doing it God's word says the best thing is to ask him to pay the bride price of the victim and marry her. But there is injustice in this world and most of you don't think deeply before jumping out to deliver your stupid Judgment.

If God's word says the rapist (man) should be tasked to pay the bride price of the victim and marry her, what about happens if the rapist is a female and the victim is a male?

This your reply shows you still don't get it and you are bent on reinterpreting the scriptures to justify your position.

My last 2 post stands in that case.

Maximus69:
You're really funny my guy!

You misconstrued the whole thing!

I'm judging myself already because i'm now a Christian!

If not because i believe in the teachings of the one i'm quoting, i'll be like "that's in the past now we need to stone this one that's been caught doing it"

It's my conscience couple with my faith that's speaking now not ordinary me Sir!
Otherwise nobody will hear of this, even my girlfriends that i forcefully did it with back then never thought it to be a crime till today!

It's the spirit of God that's against those acts that's now disturbing me so that i find it difficult to speak against someone who was caught doing the same thing!

I'm not holding anyone back from judging a rapist Sir, all i'm saying is

"if the law now say (stone a rapist) the stone in the hand of Maximus69 will drop off his hand'""

Baba stop spending so much energy trying to normalise it.
Nobody is saying you should pick up stones to stone anybody but rather than pointing fingers at everybody else doing it , maybe just maybe you can use your experience to teach the ones coming behind to do better.

I'm a graduate today because those who had gone before me and had the issues similar to my own were able to use their own experience to advice me. I would have easily been a dropout if not for those who spoke to me then.

Maximus69:
It's like most of you aren't getting something clear on this matter!

Someone coming out publicly to say
I'm guilty of the same offence
Never meant he deal horrible things like what was involved in the one discussed.

For instance when talking about STEALING let me list all those who fall under that category
©Child took his/her classmates item.
©Child stole parents money.
©Child stole meat in the pot.
©Wife took cash from husband's pocket without telling him.
©Pickpocketing.
©Stealing yam, goat, cow or something else.
©Armed Robbery.
©Disguising as handicap to beg.
©Embezzlement of public funds.
And so on.
Now an armed robber is caught and you're asked to render judgment on what should be done to this armed robber, of course if he has killed someone during the operation that led to his arrest, then he will be charged on two offences.
But if it's using a gun to scared the owner to forcefully collect an item, a righteous judge will be confused because deep down in his heart, he knows he's not better than the THIEF if he has ever done any of those things listed above!

I was a Muslim and those three females i forcefully had sex with back then were my girlfriends, in fact none of them raised her voice to protest during the event. All i just know is i forced them and later we continue with our boyfriend girlfriend thing.
So if someone now ask me what should be done to someone who did the same thing, of course i'll feel challenged to come and say anything because i did it before but it might have been on a different setting yet RAPE is RAPE!

That was back then, i'm now a Christian and i now know the weight of forcefulness, if anyone wants to raise his or her tongue against an offender, think deeply in your heart, "have i ever been involved in any of such?" if yes is your answer, then be warned because
Whatever you measured out to others is exactly the same measurement you'll be repaid! ~ Jesus of Nazareth! Matthew 7:1-5
That's why i was confused when handling the issue of forcefully having sex!

I'm not one to claim self righteousness and Lord knows I have my own weaknesses but if truly this is how your mind works, oga you need Jesus.
In one breath you're saying "I know what I did was wrong" but in the next breath you are saying "Everybody else does it and look here's an article to prove that, so nobody should talk or judge me". I pray that one day you truly understand the gravity of what you have done so that you can get to a point where you can say " I don't care if the whole world is doing it, I know what I did was wrong... No stories, no excuses". ( I'm not just talking about only rape here)

I also pray that as long you have this kind of mindset, God will always raise people that will stand against you propagating this type ideology.

MuttleyLaff:
Acehart my brother, it takes clout for Maximus69 to come out and publicly admit to a past deed. He clearly is a changed man from way back then, and as since made peace with His Maker.

Now, no one has condoned rape of any sort here on the thread, certainly not Maximus69 nor I, but for someone like khia, to be casting the first stone, and be forming holier than thou and I am holy pass you, is just taking the biscuit. Who is she to curse/condemn whom God has not cursed/condemned. The guy is a new creation, old things have passed away. All things about him have become new.

Maximus69, did not shared that past of him to gloat or to glorify that dastardly moment of weakness act(s), he was trying to make a point that went the wrong way and gave misleading perceptions. At every point, I confronted him, but you can see, he never gave me face or a response

The bible tells us no sin, is greater than another sin, that sin is sin, so who does khia think she is, to be wriggling in the dagger into Maximus69

khia is AA, whose partner is Ndigbo. She is a strong originally African woman, who gives as good as she takes, she isn't a push over. She is no emotional wreck. She can look after herself, only that she is just a hypocritical, confused of her ancestral roots sanctimonious black racist Israelite wannabe. I owe her and nobagger apologies.

Good riddance to bad rubbish, I'll say. Mtcheew

Naa Baba you are wrong on this one... I don't know khia or your history with her but saying because nobody holy pass,so she has no right to stand up to a man who clearly isn't deeply hurt by what he has done and worse still has been twisting the Bible to justify his acts is not the right thing to do.
When David realized the gravity of what he had done, he broke down but when Saul was confronted with his, he was more like " well the deed has been done ,so we move".

Maximus69 can't hide behind being a new creature while still justifying certain things as normal. Someone who has realized the gravity of what he done won't have spent the past 3 pages normalizing rape as part of life and not that really a big deal so clearly he doesn't still understand the pain he might have caused (probably because he's never had to confront it before).
Just as Maximus69 can't hide behind new creation while still justifying certain things, we also can't hide behind no body holy pass while still saying we are the light of the world but refuse to stand against darkness.

If we all say since nobody is without sin so let's not speak up against evil, then the apostles wouldn't have had the right to write their letters to the churches and the OT prophets won't have the right to prophesy against the nations. We have to keep dealing with the sins in our own lives while we continue to speak out against evil in the world, especially from those who use the Bible as a shield.

Yes Sin is sin and we are all liable of death , that's why we need Jesus. But some evil have a greater effect on us ,our environment and our neighbors than others. The effect a murder will have on a family is drastically different from the effect a theft will have on the same family.
Even in the old testament some sins carried the death penalty while some just required compensation.

I might not agree with JW on most theological issues but I refuse to believe the organisation is the way Maximus69 has painted them out to be on this thread.

LordReed:
None of which provides evidence for your god or any god for that matter.

Well it does proof that there is something outside of our universe that kick-started it. Of course this could mean anything on its own but when you couple it with the extremely precise initial conditions that was set at the moment of the big bang for everything to work out the way it did, one has to atleast consider that the creator must be a personal being. For example, the cosmological constant alone has a precision of 1 part in 10^120(that's like trillion times greater than any precision humans have been able to achieve)...if this value wasn't exactly this precise, the universe would have expanded too slowly or too quickly. Not to talk of the gravitational constant, the mass to energy ratio and many other initial conditions that had to be precisely set and are all independent of eachother, for the possiblity of the kind of universe and life anywhere on this planet. One has to at the very least consider the possibility of being a deist.

The bible says nothing about your god being outside of space-time nor does it say anything about the universe having fixed laws. If anything the bible implies that the universe can be manipulated by your god at any time and that your god lives in the universe.

The universe was created and has a beginning in finite time: Genesis 1:1, Isaiah 45:18,John 1:1-3,Col 1:15-17 etc
The material universe was not made from that which is material, visible or detectable: Heb 11:3
The universe functions according to fixed laws: Jer 33:25, Psalm 104:19.

Yeah, the Bible does show that God does bypass the laws of nature because He is sovereign over them but contrary to popular belief, the instances are not as often as people think.

your god lives in the universe

Well not the way you think and definitely not live
The Bible constantly talks about God being transcendent(totally other) and can't be compared to anything within creation. The Bible says in 2chronicles 2:6 "But who is able to build a house for Him, for the heavens and the highest heavens cannot contain Him? So who am I, that I should build a house for Him, except to burn incense before Him?"
Even when David decided to build a temple because his heart was in the right place even though God didn't require it, the isrealite temple was unique from every other temple in the ancient world because it was the only one that didn't have any image of its God in it.
The book of acts says "The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything."Acts 17:24‭-‬25
At the same time,the Bible also talks about God being immanent. He does reach out to his creation and we see instances of this in the scriptures, which we understand today as theophany.
So the God of the Bible is both transcendent and immanent.

You seem to think I have not read the Bible before or something. There is no context that excuses the those atrocities

Yea, I believe you must have read the Bible before but probably read it the way most of us were taught for so long to read it, which obfuscates the meaning quite a bit.
You see, the Bible is written for us ,as it was intended to communicate to everyone everywhere but at the same time the Bible was written in a particular language, culture and against the backdrop of a particular worldview.
Understanding the worldview and original culture helps us get closer to the meaning of the text. The message of the Bible transcends the culture but the form itself is culture bound.

Secondly, the whole Bible is one unified story with hyperlinks going back and forth and understanding how each book or chapter is structured and fits into the whole story helps us better understand not just that particular text but the entire story of the Bible. Problem is we have always been taught to read the Bible as a disjointed collection of verses and chapters. We pick John 12:41 today then tomorrow it's Isaiah 6:1-10 but we were never taught how to see the connection between the two and how it fits into the biblical story so we endup missing what the author was truly trying to say.

Thirdly, the Bible is not a book, it's a library. Meaning it contains different genres of literature and even one book can contain multiple genres in it. Recognizing the type of genre one is reading does help in interpretation as it would be wrong in reading a poem like a Narrative or a Narrative like prophetic.

All in all, even if you don't agree with the Bible, I believe it better to let the Bible speak on its own terms and not agree with it than to disagree with the Bible because one misunderstands what it is truly saying.

LordReed:
The is no evidence that says the universe is not eternal. We do not know what preceded the big bang so we cannot say whether the universe is eternal or not. Besides nature still is not evidence for your particular god since you have not provided sufficient evidence to rule out any of the other god claims.

Yeah,it's true we do not know what preceded the big bang because it will always remain unknowable to us, but as long as we have in inflationary big bang model as our theory of how the universe got started then the implication is that, this universe, this particular one we are part of has a beginning and is not eternal. Even with the inflationary big bang model ,it's still anybody's best guess what exactly happened at some of the earliest moments of the universe around the10^-36 seconds(that's like 0.000000000000000000000000000000000001 seconds) and 10^-32 seconds, i.e like what started the inflation? Is it still ongoing today, constantly spitting out pocket universes with ours being on of those universes? what stopped it at the 10^-32 secs when normal expansion took over? Or if the universe started out as pure space? But what we do know is the universe didn't exist in a steady state and the more people study black holes, the clearer the picture will be.

As I said earlier, the Bible stood alone as the only holy book that has a universe with a beginning, a universe with fixed laws and a creator outside of space-time itself. And the Bible does also say, aside of the book of nature, God is always ready to reach out to anyone who is willing to get to know Him.

Also, context is kinda really important not just with the Bible but with many other things in life. A simple statement like "He's gone" can be interpreted in many different ways if no context is provided. I know I've personally had to call people up because they took a message I wrote out of context and got mad because they misinterpreted it.
And if you are curious about the flood story, I believe "the bible project" (the youtube channel of the video I posted last) has a pretty good short overview of that story.

GRIMMJOE:
Oh they are related, even with your basic knowledge you still choose the least possible explanation of the universe, a God, not just any God, but the one that contradict it's self in his own book, then comes out and contradict science.

This shows that you're just scared of going to hell, so you chose a higher authority just in case it exist. Shame on you.

Hmmm, ok.

Now that you brought it up... personally, I don't think the subject of hell as ever really held any central point in my Christain life. I can't even remember the last time I thought about it, or if I ever really did think about it... I guess on a subconscious level John 3:16 "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." has held more of a central point for me in my Christain faith.

Anyway,it is well. Enjoy the rest of your week.

LordReed:
[b]Evidence that can be used to point to anything is evidence of nothing. [/b]If this same nature is used as evidence of some other types of gods then we have no reason to believe any.

Well not really... The whole point of gathering evidence is to narrow down our assumptions. Most of the other types of gods are subject to the same constraints within the universe as we are and their holy books assume the universe itself is eternal. As I said earlier, it's not just the book of nature we have but also the book of scripture and God reaching out to those who truly want to know him.
The Bible is the only holy book(and holy books that take the Bible as it's source i.e Islam, Mormons) that claims the universe itself has a beginning and it's creator is transcendent to the universe.

Besides the god of the bible is a vengeful god. How else do you explain the need to kill both the unborn and little children?

Yea, I know that part usually trip 21century readers up ...that's because we usually read those passages out of their ancient near eastern context and sometimes we read them out of the literary genres context.

Here a quick 8mins video that I believe does a pretty good job in putting a couple of those passages in their context, incase you are interested just for the sake of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqOqJlFF_eU

Edited

LordReed:
He created them to ease his loneliness but when they turned out wrong by reason of the agent he let run amok in the first place he decides that best solution is to torture them eternally. The caveat being if you believe in his absent self you don't go to be tortured but he refuses to give sufficient interaction to establish his reality so people like me don't believe so our end is to be tortured. SMH.

We've been there and done that. Jesus like the rest of it is comforting fiction, ain't no magic sky wizard coming to save you.

I agree with you that the type of God Op is portraying is a wrathful and self absorbed God. That's definitely not the God of the Bible though.
But @bolded, the Bible says "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world." Psalm 19:1-4a
God has given us two books, The Book of Nature (Everybody reads this) and the Book of Scripture. The Bible also says the HolySpirit is in the world today convicting the hearts of men(that is like tugging at people's hearts).
So basically no human that as walked on this earth can say they did not have the opportunity to know God and noone who truly wanted to know God can say God didn't reach out to them.

Just my two cent.

GRIMMJOE:
Yawns, no one yet knows the truth of this world, Einstein theory is still inconclusive, but it holds more to the rest. (there are more so called theory of how this world came about, not just God and big bang)

Einstein's theory of Relativity is one of the very few well attested and rigorously tested theories in all of science till date.
You can say you do not agree with it and it would be great if you can give reasons why and maybe present any other theory you believe more accurately describes the physics of the big...as you said, science thrives on questioning. Or you can say you don't know much about it,which is also a totally acceptable answer as no one knows everything. What you can't say is, we don't know anything about anything that describes our physical universe just because there are still things we do not understand well enough. If that's the case, We might as well stop going to school and also believe the technologies man has developed over the centuries that depend on the things we do know are based on magic.( I.e people who say it's oyinbo witchcraft that keeps a plane in the air.)

And sir, our discussion is not about the big bang. Our discussion has been about the property of time and how it relates to existence.

I'll take the other things you wrote as you blowing off steam as they are not directly related to our discussion.

GRIMMJOE:
All what you wrote was trashed when God said he's the beginning and the end. For a beginning to exist time must exist, God nevered said he's Omnilock.

Ok so, the statement "I am the beginning and the end" is a title used by Jesus in the book of revelations and is usually accompanied with the statements "I am the Alpha and Omega", "the First and the Last". To put things in context, the book of revelations is a apocalyptic book detailing the end of all things(current universe).It's at this time God is going to deal with evil on a cosmic scale and usher in a new universe with new physical laws ,where there's no pain, no death,no suffering etc.
So in Genesis 1, we have "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth", John 1:1-3 expands on that with "In the beginning was the Word.....verse3: All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made." and finally the book of revelation reveals to us how the second coming of Christ is bringing everything to an end in this age.
So when we have the statement " I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end." It means God/Jesus is the beginning of all things and He is also the end of all things. It's not that He has a beginning or an end.

And yea, The Bible does talk about God being transcendent:Psalm 90:2, Genesis 1:1, Genesis 21:33, Colossians 1:16-17, Revelations 10:6 and so on.

Just some education, humans are 3 dimensional being, but what we see are 2 dimensional, that's why you can watch a movie on a flat screen, anything you can see can be painted on a picture.

I don't see how this is relevant to our conversation but just a slight adjustment to put what you said in perspective. Yes, our eyes take in information in 2d but our brain recreates those images into 3d by using things like the difference in images from both eyes, motion, relative size etc to determine depth.
It just like how our eyes sees images upside down then our brain turns it the right way up. Again I really don't see how this helps our conversation but I would agree with you that our system is pretty amazing.

See why science will always be ahead of religion that shut down peoples brains, also you assume the 4th dimension is time, nobody knows what the fourth dimension is even Einstein.

@bolded... It's pretty weird you would make this statement. The concept that we live in a universe whose fabrics is 3-dimensions of space and 1-dimension of time connected together(Hence why it's called space-time) is nothing new. Objects with mass don't only move through space but also move through time and the faster you move through space, the slower you move through time. Gravity is not a force that attracts objects together but the warping of space-time itself. That's the basics of the theory of Relativity, which has been around for over a 100yrs.
It's also weird you would say Einstein doesn't know this as he is the one who actually proved it and it's his prove of this particular theory that catapulted him into stardom.

[quote author=MuttleyLaff post=90394097][/quote]My oga, Happy Sunday.
Hope the weekend has been good.

odinson1:
Yeah you got it right

Proof to me will be this:
-There should be video or photo evidence
-God must appear to every single person on earth simultaneously at the same time,this way,there would be videos, pictures,news stations would broadcast it... and when more that 50 people see him at the same time with Their clear eyes...that would be proof to me

Thank you

Lol... If that's what proofs mean to you, we might as well throw away alot of the scientific and historical discoveries of the past millennia or so.
If you really want to have a real conversation, you can always mention me

Have a good Sunday.

budaatum:
You must read the entire book in order to understand that as the wrathful God evolved into the loving Jesus Christ, so too do the ideas in the Bible evolve over time.

Sorry for butting in. I agree with alot of things you've said on this thread but I just want to quickly touch on this one point.

For starters, The God of the Bible cannot evolve or change in His very nature.
"For I am the Lord, I do not change (Malachi 3:6)."
"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning (James 1:17)".
"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Hebrew 13:8". Etc

Secondly, the concept that the God of the old testament is more of a wrathful God while Jesus in the new testament is the new and improved loving God is sort of a misreading of the nature of God by reading the old testament out of its ancient near eastern context. As you have rightly noted in this thread, reading the Bible in context is paramount to understanding it.
The biblical authors constantly speak about the love of God in both and the new testament.
"Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 1John 4:8"
“But you, O Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.” Psalm 86:15"
“Your love, O Lord, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies. Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your justice like the great deep. Psalm 36:5-6”
“‘Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,’ says the Lord, who has compassion on you.” Isaiah 54:10".
We have to remember again that God does not change.

Paul writing in the new testament talks of Jesus being the express image and exact representation of the invisible God. So basically instead of us having our own conception of God and trying to fit Jesus into it,we should rather look at Jesus to see the exact nature of God.

May I suggest a book.
Is God a Moral Monster? Making Sense of the Old Testament God by Paul Copan . I haven't read it myself but I've heard good things about it and how it helps readers view the old testament stories in their original ancient near eastern context.

Have a good one.

odinson1:
That's what i asked you,how are you sure God is the all in all of the Universe, pls dont quote bible verses for me as proof
.

I really don't understand your question, but I'm guessing it has something to do with proving the existence of God and that He created the universe?

If I got you right, what would qualify as proof to you?

Myer:
Christ is to Christianity what Mohammed is to Islam and Abraham is to Judaism.
It's important to know that all are religions simply trying to make sense of life and trying to create a fictitious ideal world.

Well, there is kind of a big difference.
You see, Muslims see Muhammad as a prophet but Christains see Christ as God. That's a huge difference in outlook.
With that said, I do understand your point of view. I do not agree with it, but I get it.

odinson1:
And how do you know of all this?

Let me guess,you read it in your bible

Naa, most of what I wrote comes from standard general relativity and modern cosmology. You can look them up yourself.
The only part that comes from the Bible is the part on what the Bible claims about God.

GRIMMJOE:
If humans ask "who created me?" shouldn't God also ask who created him?

Well not really. You are assuming that God is constrained in time like the universe and all that is in it.

Ok so, firstly it is established that we live in a universe with a single dimension of time, where time cannot be stopped or be reversed. Any entity constrained in a such a universe must at some ultimate point have a beginning or a creation event. So the word "to create" in this context means: For something (which wasn't in existence before) to appear at some point within this single linear dimension of time. Think of it as time being a straight line that keeps going forward and different things appearing at different points on this line.

The space-time theorem also establishes that time itself has a beginning and was created. This implies that there must be an agent outside of time itself that brought it into existence. The claim the Bible makes repeatedly is, God created the universe which includes both space and time,therefore God himself cannot be subject to linear time and he need not have a beginning or an ending. In that sense, the word "to create" cannot be applied to Him.

Finally, just as a 2d character living in a 2d world would lack the language to express anything that has depth because his entire world is constrained to only "up & down", "front & back" , we also lack the language to express how a being exists outside of linear time.
Questions like who created God?What was God doing before the universe was created? Etc cannot be applied to an entity that brought time itself into existence. And because of our contraints of reference we cannot even begin to think of the right types of questions to ask.

Kobojunkie:
The reason I pick to post from the Easy-to-Read Version of the Bible is so as to both bypass and shove the "interpretation" Bull.Piss where it belongs, - simply read and understand what is written as it is written there in English as plain as day.


I keep expecting a straightforward answer from you...

...Did God lie when He said, "People will not have to teach their neighbors and relatives to know the Lord, because all people, from the least important to the most important, will know me.” This message is from the Lord. “I will forgive them for the evil things they did. I will not remember their sins.”?

It is well... Stay safe out there

Kobojunkie:
Other believers? Did God command us to seek the counsel of these "other believers" before we accept what He commands or says?

I took those verses right from the Easy-to-Read Version of the Bible.

Doing God's will or accepting His commands is different from interpreting the scriptures. These are two different concepts.
And yes ,concerning understanding the scriptures,we learn from faithful witnesses who have come before us so that one day we can teach those who come after us. 2Timothy 2:2
It goes without saying though that ultimately Scripture properly interpreted is the final authority on all matters of faith. Not any body or organisation, hence why I wrote
jamesid29:
If you believe the orthodox reading is wrong(which is a possibility, as we learn everyday with new information), it would be great if you can work me through why you think your novel interpretation is correct..

I took those verses right from the Easy-to-Read Version of the Bible.

Quoting a scripture is different from interpreting it.
E=MC^2 means nothing except you tell me what it means and why it means what it means.
I'm asking you to show me how you arrived at your own interpretation and why it is truer to the Text as compared to the orthodox understanding of it.

Kobojunkie:
...Did God lie when He said, "People will not have to teach their neighbors and relatives to know the Lord, because all people, from the least important to the most important, will know me.” This message is from the Lord. “I will forgive them for the evil things they did. I will not remember their sins.”?

Sir,I believe I've already explained to you how you are misreading that scripture and I've also suggested you go lookup how other believers have understood it for over 2000yrs if you don't agree with my assertions.

If you believe the orthodox reading is wrong(which is a possibility, as we learn everyday with new information), it would be great if you can work me through why you think your novel interpretation is correct.

For starters, in your view and considering the context of the chapter
a) To whom was the prophesy intended for?

b)Which future was the prophesy talking about? Is it after the exile,before the resurrection,after the resurrection,at the second coming of Christ or at the age of the new heaven and new earth? Can you provide any Jewish or Christain thoughts that support the future you pick?

c)Can you provide any biblical quotation from any prophet or new testament author that sheds more light on the passage and supports your interpretation?

d)Can you provide any cultural context that supports your interpretation?

e)How does your interpretation fit into the overarching story of the Bible as a whole?

To be clear sir, this is not a test of intellect and I don't expect you to have all the answers but I believe if anyone is going to bring a new way of looking at the text, they have to show how they arrived at it so that it can be challenged and see how it holds up. Otherwise everyone will come up with their own private interpretation and there's no longer objective understanding.

Edited

Kobojunkie:
How did God bring man into partnership with God in the Old testament?
.

Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, the whole nation of Israel,Gideon, the judges,David, Solomon, the prophets etc.
To be clear, God partnering with man doesn't in anyway mean we are on par with Him or that He needs us. We are created to be God's images(representatives on earth, sort of like middle management) and even though man fell, the Bible story shows us that God in His faithfulness didn't give up on us despite we continuously dropping the ball but kept working through man to bring about His redemptive plan. Again as I said earlier, God does do things without any human agency but that's usually the exception not the rule.
Ironically the fact that God chooses to work with and through humans is one of the reasons why we pray and intercede for others. We are not called to be passive observers but to be active partakers in the story of our world. I know that's a bit of digression and we can spend a whole day talking on why we pray but I just wanted to quickly put that out there.
Lastly, Just because God chooses to work with and through humans doesn't mean we are the ones doing it, ultimately it is God who is bringing about His will.Ultimately God was the one who brought the children of Israel out of Egypt and not Moses even though God chose to work through Moses. God in His faithfulness decided to dignify us by making us partakers in His story.

What gives you the sense that now God still wants to keep that which He did in the Old testament, in this new testament ?

Covenants change, God doesn't.

As for the Jer 31:31-34 part, you don't have to take word for it sir. People have been reading the text for over 2000 years and you can read how others have parsed it over the years( right or wrong, the contention and discussions, commentaries and breakdowns etc).
One thing is we shouldn't read a scripture in isolation or we might read our minds into it. We have to read every scripture in its own context and in the context of the overarching story of the Bible.

Kobojunkie:
It is not a question of whether they are convertible or not. Contrary to what you may have been told, God converts His own all by Himself.

Did God lie? If you believe yes, then feel free to continue trying to shove God at them.
Funny thing is contrary to what your pastors/deacons/preachers/GOs/Primates have told you of Heaven, preaching the gospel will never get you into Heaven.. it is not even a requirement, as far as Jesus is concerned. He was clear about what you will have to do to get into His kingdom and preaching did not make His list.
God wants to teach the people by Himself! Going against God's own command in the name of doing God's work, are you certain you are doing God's work?

Actually that's not really true sir. If there was no need for preaching and engaging people with the gospel and truth about God, there won't have been a need for the apostles. Jesus won't have given the commission to his disciples to go and preach the gospel to the ends of the earth and paul& the other apostles won't have spent the rest of their lives in mortal danger trying to propagate the gospel everywhere they went.
Truth is , from the old testament to the new,God has always brought man into partnership with Him in bringing about His will. Not because He needs to (obviously He is God and there are many places in the Bible He bypasses human agency) but because He wants to.

Just like in the old testament, believers are called into partnership with God by spreading the gospel by words and deeds even though ultimately it is God the Holy Spirit that does the convicting and converting.
As in the old testament,God can and does bypass human agency in bringing people to himself if need be, either through dreams or visions etc as in the case of Paul (There are people who came to the faith this way today),but that is usually the exception not the rule. Most of the time people come to the faith by interacting with other believers.Romans10:14, Acts 10(Peter and Cornelius the centurion),Acts 16:9-33(Paul and the city of Macedonia) and so on.
God is Just and He will always get the knowledge of Him to all

As for Jer 31:33-34 you quoted, I believe you are slightly misunderstanding it because if you read it in context of the entire chapter, Jeremiah was prophesying to the house of Israel and Judah, that compared to the present covenant where they needed scribes and religious leaders to teach them God's law and how to implement it in their everyday lives(the Jewish Talmud is about 60 volumes), the new convenant will be written in their hearts and those things will no longer be needed as each person will know God personally. Compare that to the new testament where all 613 laws was pulled under one umbrella of Love(love God with all your heart and love your fellow humans as yourself). Basically the more you grow as a believer, the more you get know God and the less you need people to tell you what's right and what wrong in different facets of life.

hakeem4:
From what I posted, any Muslim or Christian who condemns those atrocities I listed up there are just trying to be ostentatious. He claimed that they were all commandments of the old testament.....

@bolded... Maybe, maybe not. It's your prerogative to believe either one and I respect that.
But like I earlier pointed out, nothing in your discussions with him was remotely inching towards the question of whether morality is inextricably intertwined with religion or dependent on it.
Anyway, it is well ..

hakeem4:
I never mixed religion with politics. I was just trying to tell you that religion is not the source of our morals

Nah, you are the one now being dishonest. Your initial premise was trying to rope him into saying Jesus was advocating for the breakdown in the rule of law.
What you just introduced now is a whole different concept and discussion entirely.

Maximus69:
The way Jesus commissioned Christianity it wasn't something you would just wake up one day and walk up into any building with the thought of being one of his followers.

You must have learnt so many things from his followers who were sent to come and teach you in your home, meditate thoroughly on what you've learned, pray fervently to God to help you in practicing this different and strange line of thought then prepare your mind for fierce opposition from all sides before you can become one of Jesus' true followers! Matthew 10:32-38

Thanks!

Sir, You just created a whole different version of christainity based on works.

How did Paul get saved or what was Paul and Silas reply to the jailer when they were asked what they need to do to be saved in Acts 16:29-33?

9because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.Romans 10:9–10 (ESV)

MuttleyLaff:
jamesid29 hey, long time no see around.

Baba Ravi Zacharias RIP, nailed the concept of trinity on its head.

Fact is, God can't be boxed. I love the multi-dimensional illustration Baba used and so why I stamped my like on that post.

Hey boss, yea it's been a minute. Hope you are good

Rozz:
wao thanks alot

You are welcome... Have a wonderful day