₦airaland Forum

johnydon22:
Wonderland awaits my bros, don't miss your chance!!!

Oya go ant eat.

Pr0ton:
Thousands of ways kid! The superior of all is our mind! That little atheistic-oriented mind does great things than the boring, hurting, hope-bashing, horror-springing, etc religious one. It adds more meaning and beauty to life. Unlimited freedom of thinking and many more wonders. It's your job to figure out others..

No need for the names "Adult" ..Just tell us how you live better than us or add more beauty to life than us.

johnydon22:
I am the one doing you a favour here trying to save your soul so you wouldn't miss the rapture.

Jesus gave me this instruction to give to you all last night when we talked on phone and he told me he would have been here already if not that he stopped to water his horse.

so this should be on my terms, i am the one doing you a service here... send me yo email bros so i can send me A/C.

Money is the root of all evil, bro J has appointment me to keep all your evil for you so you can join in when the rapture comes which is like really really soon.

So bros time is running out, make a decision now and be saved !!!

"Money is the root of all evil huh
What did you say you were before again? Catholic or christian?
lol
So obvious

Go back and tell bros J that we wont fall for such cheap scam, you can always restrategise

johnydon22:
Isn't it remarkable, Christians laugh at 'Alice in wonderland' as a fairytale but they are hoping to go to Wonderland

Christians dont laugh at alice in wonderland, where on earth do you get your facts?

Atheists need to write a book or something on the principles of atheism. One of those principles must be: Christians are not living life atall.
One can only wonder

johnydon22:
Kai bros why are you like this naaaaa. . . Just your email address na, i don't have the patience to wait for NL pm.

remember time is almost out, so you've got to stop taking chances... you might be waiting for NL pm to deliver and Jesus arrives and then you are fuck_ed..

Don't say i didn't warn you..

Lets do it in the fast way naaa... Email abeg abeg... !!!

Do you need this money or not?, I change my mind really fast, other atheists are waiting.

Pr0ton:
Deluded Christians like this can hardly succeed in making sense out of their made-feeble lives.

Ok sir, How do you live better than my "unsuccessful, made-feeble" life? Cos we arent living life atall, So sir, How do you live better than me?

johnydon22:
Hehehehehe no be small offend, i get tons of the angry rants on my PM all the time, i actually do enjoy it when you guys leave the topic and start referring to the person, tells me it sunk in

So i am only telling you cus i love to see them



Abeg NL pm stays so long that Jesus might even come and go and it'll still be hanging.

Fast lane... direct mail ... Abeg!!!

The topic is worth the time of those it sunk into. I havent used an insultive word on this thread. For you to see my harmless care as an insult makes me wonder what actually sunk in.

NL Pm sef dey try, send your details already, the money is yours.

johnydon22:
Hehehehe good of you my brother, God will reward you like he did to Jabez, can i hear you claim it and shout Amen brother!

.... so have you read my untold story of Job yet?

I could really use your insults and rants on that thread but take easy on me there ooo



Alright bros please NL pm service even takes longer than Jesus second coming. can you send me your email address to send the details directly.

But abeg i no want bulk sms alert oo

Insults kwa?? My replies must have offended you then. Accept my apologies, i was only harmlessly concerned with the situation of a brother.

Dont worry, send it through NL pm, and wait for your alert.

johnydon22:
Hahahaha bros i went to sleep while you were here, i woke up you are still here. I go still leave you here sleep again come back and find you here again ...Chai this one prick you shaaa

So i am very serious shaa, i am really ready to keep your money for you and property documents.

You've gat to wait sorely for bro J cus he's almost here... So should i send my AC number boss?

Thank you in advance i'll be anticipating a favourable reply this time ..

I fit dey here anytime oo, even midnight. And guess why: Cos I carry God matter put for head. I can only hope its not the same for you.

Well, send you AC number and wait for alert.

johnydon22:
I wonder exactly what you guys are defending, who exactly is fighting with you guys here. i am not on an attack na... Just asked to keep your money ..

Nawa oo are you sending your money or not?

I'm not defending anything actually. That reply was meant for Hcpaul.

And yes, mockery is a form of attack, but hey, have fun. So did you dream about God or the Bible? Cos you probably havent had breakfast and are still on this God issue.

Rilwayne001:
Lol, see finishing!

Lol, no be finishing oo. I only pictured myself staying up that late just to refute the existence of batman to my nephew, after i must have probably spoken about batman the whole day.
Well, I wouldnt rule that out completely if batman somehow hurt me
And trust me, These kids really get amused and alive just with the thought of their favourite superheroes.

HCpaul:
Reasoning about the precepts congested in the Bible?

To be honest, a single book cannot survive centuries.

And I read that the Bible is an emblem of truth while science reasonably and theoretically analyse the fall of truth and it's difference from certainty.

I recommend that aspect for you particularly under the philosophy of science, "Sceince and certainty."

The prediction that claim that no religion will get into the 23rd century is precise and accurate.

Look, reason will always win even if skeptics exclusively think or claim that they are the only humans that reason. Philosophers and skeptics of the 17th century said the same, too bad they are not alive to witness God's power today. You see, one of the firm beliefs i have in christianity is that, that book, the Bible, could not have been written by the human mind. Ive tried to refute that fact myself, but the truth keeps staring at me. Humans would have done a whole lot of cherrypicking to create a much more friendlier God that would bow to our created models and theories.
Even the style of the scriptures is not human. If by chance, humans wrote it, then im willing to know what sort of superhuman intelligence they possessed, and then of course im slapped with the fact that Jesus Christ existed and fulfilled prophecies written concerning hundreds of years before His birth. Then you further wonder why christianity has been so persistently attacked and duplicated. No religion now and in the past would survive these forms of attack launched at christianity over the past centuries.
Ive tried to suppress these truths myself so i could have my way in the past, but it simply didnt work out.

Religion, my friend, will not disappear by itself (Marx has been disproved on that). Left to itself, religion will always grow. One
must force people to give up their religion. And when i say force, the genocidal acts committed by Hitler, Mao, Stalin e.t.c must pale in comparison to this "Force".

If religion is allowed continuos freedom of expression, the vast majority of people will be religious. Unbelief will always lose out in the end. The religious nature of man cannot be suppressed as long as man is man.

I suggest you get a good grounding in the REAL Christian faith and know exactly what you are into because your reply shows otherwise. Bless you.

KingEbukasBlog:
The time most people use to fight against the non existent God though , one can only sit and wonder . It looks like they fight against it to reassure themselves that they made the right choice

It gets funny. They want God not to exist and still hate him for not existing and also mock those who believe in God. Hurt is clearly evident here.

HCpaul:
But to be factual, religion abolish the mental power for reasoning.
Ignorance is the best expression of the Christian faith.

Am still a beliver but I realize that it only takes ignorance to remain a Christian. Am ready to do that.

Kinda skeptical.

Then I get dazed at this kind of ideas. Ignorance? like seriously

Well, i respect your opinion but the above hasn't the slightest biblical backing.

"Come now, and let us reason together, saith the
LORD"

I'd be far from the faith if not for reasoning.

johnydon22:
Of course na, no work tomorrow so sleep till the cock crows the 50th time... And by the way i am not asking you not to serve God oo..

I am only asking you send me your money to keep na cus we are in the end times my brother..

I prefer bank transfers and eheee bros do you happen to own a property in Lekki i'll be needing the documents to that too..

Happy trip to heaven sir... Thank you in advance

The "End times" started when Jesus ascended. Could be 1000 years from now for all i care. If the Bible was written over a period of 4500 years and merely 2000 years later, skeptics think it is taking forever, i can only laugh.

But really, a non-existent God takes a huge chunk of your life, time and energy. I believe that extra time spent on "myths and fairytales" can be used to help yourself or another.

johnydon22:
hahahahahaha i take cash or bank transfers bros even property documents... Thanks in advance

Your health is important to you man, we will continue to serve God.

johnydon22:


Yeah you heard right, now please send me all your money so i can keep them for you cus i don't know why you'd need money when we are already at the end game.

Nobody needs money in heaven neither will the horse ride with Jesus back to heaven be paid for and there is absolutely no reason why you should be stashing money when you'd have no need for it since the end is here and Christ is coming

it's like buying pop corn for a movie that is already finished and is just showing the post introduction (Names of actors and crew)

So please thank you all very much as you send me your money and remember the bible says you should forgo the riches of the world and follow Christ, stash your riches in heaven not here on earth....

I'm Very serious..

I'll keep them safe for you so you can go to heaven properly .....

LoL!!!! Staying awake till this time to mock christians ...says a lot about your burning passion, contempt and desperation, with the hope that we may somehow see some sense in this. it's quite funny a non existent God makes you restless and gives you sleepless nights.

Go get rest man, and channel your energy into more productive ventures.

If French atheists rarely become evangelical Christians, how much rarer it is for one to become an evangelical Christian theologian. So what happened? One might argue that with 66 million French people, I’m just a fluke, an anomaly. I am inclined to see it as the work of a God who says, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy” (Rom. 9:15). Hearing the facts may help you decide for yourself.

I grew up in a wonderfully loving family in France, near Paris. We were Catholic, a religious expression that seemed to arise more out of tradition and perhaps superstition than conviction. As soon as I was old enough to tell my parents I didn’t believe any of it, I stopped going to Mass. I pursued my own happiness on all fronts, benefiting from my parents’ loving dedication. It allowed me to do well at school, learn to play the piano, and get involved in many sports. I studied math, physics, and engineering in college, graduated from a respected engineering school, and landed a job as a computer scientist in finance. On the sports front, after I grew to be 6 feet 4 inches and discovered I could jump 3 feet high, I ended up playing volleyball in a national league, traveling the country every weekend for the games.

An important part of young male French atheist ideals consisted of female conquests. Here, I was starting to have enough success to satisfy the raunchy standards of the volleyball locker room. All in all, I was pretty happy with my life. And in a thoroughly secular culture, the chances of ever hearing the gospel—let alone believing it—were incredibly slim.



New Life Goal

When I was in my mid-20s, my brother and I vacationed in the Caribbean. One day, returning from the beach, we decided to hitchhike home. A car pulled over. Two young women visiting from America were lost and needed directions to their hotel. Incidentally, it was right next to our house, so they gave us a ride.

They were attractive enough that my radar went off immediately, and we started flirting. The one I was interested in happened to mention she believed in God—by my standards an intellectual suicide. She also said she believed that sex belongs in marriage—an even more problematic belief than theism, if that were possible. Nevertheless, once the vacation ended, I returned to Paris, she to New York, and we started dating.

My new goal in life was to disabuse my girlfriend of her beliefs so that we could be together without antiquated notions of God—or sex—standing in the way. I started thinking: What good reason was there to think God exists, and what good reason was there to think atheism was true? This step was important, because my own unbelief rested comfortably on the fact that the smart people around me didn’t believe in God either. It was more a reasonable life assumption than the conclusion of a solid argument. But of course, if I was going to refute Christianity, I first needed to know what it claimed. So I picked up a Bible.

At the same time, I figured there was at least one experiment I could carry out. I thought, If any of this is true, then the God who exists presumably cares greatly about this project of mine. So I started to pray into the air: “If there is a God, then here I am. I’m looking into this. Why don’t you go ahead and reveal yourself to me? I’m open.” I wasn’t, but I figured that if God existed, that wouldn’t stop him.

A week or two after my unbelieving prayer, one of my shoulders started to fail me—without any accident or evident injury. My shoulder would burn out ten minutes into every practice. I just couldn’t spike. The doctor couldn’t see anything wrong, the physical therapist didn’t help, but I was told that I needed to rest my shoulder and to stop playing volleyball for a couple of weeks. Against my will, I was now off the courts.

With my Sundays available, I decided I would go to a church to see what Christians do when they get together. I drove to an evangelical congregation in Paris, visiting it as I would a zoo: to see exotic animals that I had read about in books but had never seen in real life. I remember thinking that if any of my friends or family could see me in a church, I would die of shame.

I don’t remember a word from the sermon. As soon as the service ended, I jumped up and hurried to the exit door, avoiding eye contact so I wouldn’t have to introduce myself. I reached the back door, opened it, and literally had one foot out the door when a chilling blast went up from my stomach all the way to my throat. I heard myself saying: “This is ridiculous. I have to figure this out.” So I put my foot back in, closed the door, and went straight to the pastor.

“So, you believe in God?”

“Yes,” he said, smiling.

“So how does that work out?” I asked.

“We can talk about it,” he said. After most of the people left, we went to his office and spoke for hours. I bombarded him with questions, and we met again over several weeks. He patiently and intelligently explained his worldview. And I nervously started to consider that all of it could be true. My unbelieving prayers shifted to, “God, if you are real, you need to make it clear so I can jump in and not make a fool of myself.” I started to hope that he would open the sky and send down the light.



Why Jesus Had to Die

What followed was less theatrical and more brutal: God reactivated my conscience. This was not a pleasant experience.

At the same time I had started my investigations, I had also come to commit a particularly sinister misdeed, even by atheistic standards. Though I knew exactly what I had done, I had shoved it down inside. But God brought it back to mind in full force, and I finally saw it for what it was. I was struck with an intense guilt, crippled with chest pain, and disgusted at the thought of what I had done and the lies I had covered it with.

I was lying in pain in my apartment near Paris, when all of a sudden the quarter dropped. That is why Jesus had to die: me. He who knew no sin became sin on my behalf, so that in him I might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21).

He took upon himself the penalty that I deserved, so that in God’s justice, my sins would be forgiven—by grace as a gift, rather than by my righteous deeds or religious rituals. He died so that I may live. I placed my trust in Jesus, and asked him to forgive me in the way Scripture promised he would.

Now that everything was in the open, I assumed God wanted me to marry my Christian girlfriend, and I moved to New York. We quickly learned we were absolutely not meant for each other. But now, uprooted and alone, with time on my hands, I was passionate about studying my newfound faith in order to explain it to friends and family. I read book after book, watched lectures and debates, and loved every moment. Eventually it was all I did in my free time. I figured that if I was going to spend all my time and energy studying Christianity, I might as well get a degree out of it. So I applied for seminary, and eventually obtained a master’s in New Testament studies. In the process, I met a wonderful woman, got married, had two children, and pursued my studies with a PhD program in philosophical theology.

This, in short, is how God takes a French atheist and makes a Christian theologian out of him. I was not looking for God; I neither sought him nor wanted him. He reached out, loved me while I was still a sinner, broke my defenses, and decided to pour out his undeserved grace—that his Son might be glorified, and that I might be saved from my sin by grace through faith, and not by works. It is the gift of God, so that no one may boast (Eph. 2:8–9).

That’s the gospel, and it’s good news worth believing.




Guillaume Bignon lives in New York City with his family. Reach him on Twitter @theoloGUI.

"I had no untapped, unanswered yearnings. All was well in the state of Denmark. And then it wasn’t."


I became a Christian on July 7, 2015, after a very pleasant adult life of firm atheism. I’ve found myself telling “the story” when people ask me about it—slightly tweaked for my audience, of course. When talking to non-theists, I do a lot of shrugging and “Crazy, right? Nothing has changed, though!” When talking to other Christians, it’s more, “Obviously it’s been very beautiful, and I am utterly changed by it.” But the story has gotten a little away from me in the telling.

As an atheist since college, I had already mellowed a bit over the previous two or three years, in the course of running a popular feminist website that publishes thoughtful pieces about religion. Like many atheists (who are generally lovely moral people like my father, who would refuse to enter heaven and instead wait outside with his Miles Davis LPs), I started out snarky and defensive about religion, but eventually came to think it was probably nice for people of faith to have faith. I held to that, even though the idea of a benign deity who created and loved us was obviously nonsense, and all that awaited us beyond the grave was joyful oblivion.

I know that sounds depressing, but I found the idea of life ending after death mildly reassuring in its finality. I had started to meet more people of faith, having moved to Utah from Manhattan, and thought them frequently charming in their sweet delusion. I did not wish to believe. I had no untapped, unanswered yearnings. All was well in the state of Denmark. And then it wasn’t.


What I Already Knew

There are two different starting points to my conversion, and sometimes I omit the first one, because I think it gives people an answer I don’t want them to have. It is a simple story: I was going through a hard time. I was worried about my child. One time I said “Be with me” to an empty room. It was embarrassing. I didn’t know why I said it, or to whom. I brushed it off, I moved on, the situation resolved itself, I didn’t think about it again. I know how people hear that story: Oh, of course, Nicole was struggling and needed a larger framework for her life! That’s part of the truth, but it’s not the whole truth.

The second starting point is usually what I lead with. I was surfing the Internet and came across John Ortberg’s CT obituary for philosopher Dallas Willard. John’s daughters are dear friends, and I have always had a wonderful relationship with their parents, who struck me as sweetly deluded in their evangelical faith, so I clicked on the article.


Somebody once asked Dallas if he believed in total depravity.

“I believe in sufficient depravity,” he responded immediately.

What’s that?

“I believe that every human being is sufficiently depraved that when we get to heaven, no one will be able to say, ‘I merited this.’ ”

A few minutes into reading the piece, I burst into tears. Later that day, I burst into tears again. And the next day. While brushing my teeth, while falling asleep, while in the shower, while feeding my kids, I would burst into tears.

I should say here I am a happy, even-keeled soul. If this were the Middle Ages, I would be in a book under the heading “The Four Humors: Sanguine/Phlegmatic.”

Therefore, it was very unsettling to suddenly feel like a boat being tossed on the waves. I wasn’t sad, I wasn’t frightened—I just had too many feelings. I decided to buy a Dallas Willard book to read anthropologically, of course. I read his Hearing God. I cried. I bought Lewis Smedes’s My God and I. I cried. I bought Sara Miles’s Take This Bread. I cried. It was getting out of hand. You just can’t go around crying all the time.

At this point, I reached a crossroads. I sat myself down and said: Okay, Nicole, you have two choices. Option One: you can stop reading books about Jesus. Option Two: you could think with greater intention about why you are overwhelmed by your emotions. It occurred to me that if Option Two proved fruitless, I could always return to Option One. So I emailed a friend who is a Christian, and I asked if we could talk about Jesus.

I instantly regretted sending that email and if humanly possible would have clawed it back through the Internet. Technology having failed me, my message reached its recipient. She said she would be very happy to talk to me about Jesus. You probably already know this, but Christians love talking about Jesus.

I spent the few days before our call feeling like an idiot, wondering what on earth I planned to ask her. Do you … like Jesus? What was Jesus’ deal? Why did he ice that fig tree?

And now we reach the part of the story that gets a bit hand-wavy. About an hour before our call, I knew: I believed in God. Worse, I was a Christian. It was the opposite of being punk rock.

Now, if you’ve been following along, you know already. I was crying constantly while thinking about Jesus because I had begun to believe that Jesus really was who he said he was, but for some reason, that idea had honestly not occurred to me. But then it did, as though it always had been true. So when my friend called, I told her, awkwardly, that I wanted to have a relationship with God, and we prayed, and giggled a bit, and cried a bit, and then she sent me a stack of Henri Nouwen books, and here we are today.

Since then, I have been dunked by a pastor in the Pacific Ocean while shivering in a too-small wetsuit. I have sung “Be Thou My Vision” and celebrated Communion on a beach, while weirded-out Californians tiptoed around me. I go to church. I pray. My politics have not changed; the fervency with which I try to live them out has. My husband is bemused by me, but supportive and loving.


No More Chill

I am occasionally asked by other Christians, “What happened during that hour?” I answer that God did not speak to me. Rather, like the protagonist in Memento putting his past together with Polaroids, I figured out what I already knew. What happened during that hour was the natural culmination of my coming to faith: I had been cracked open to the divine, I read books that I would have laughed at before the cracking, and the stars lined up and there was God, and then I knew, and then I said it out loud to a third party, and then I giggled.

This is why apologetics, in my opinion, are hugely unconvincing. (Dallas Willard, for the record, never debated unbelievers.) No one could have in a billion years of their gripping testimony or by showing me a radiant life of good deeds or through song or even the most beautiful of books brought me to Christ. I had to be tapped on the shoulder. I had to be taken to a place where books about God were something I could experience without distance. It was alchemical.

I have been asked if deciding to become a Christian ended my exciting new crying-multiple-times-a-day hobby. The truth is that I continue to cry a lot more than I did before either Be-With-Me-Gate or the Dallas Willard Incident. I am more undone by love, or kindness, or friendship than I would have thought possible. Last night I tried to explain who Henri Nouwen was to some visiting cousins, and they had to bring me Kleenex, which they did sweetly and cautiously, as though I might melt in front of them. This morning I read a piece in Texas Monthly that literally sank me to my knees at how broken this world is, and yet how stubbornly resilient and joyful we can be in the face of that brokenness. I never possessed much chill, to be honest. Now I have none whatsoever.

There are times I feel a bit like a medieval peasant, in that I believe wholly in God now, but don’t always do what he wants, or, like Scarlett O’Hara, put hard conversations with him off until I’ve done the thing I wanted to do. It’s a thrumming backdrop to the rest of my life. My Christian conversion has granted me no simplicity. It has complicated all of my relationships, changed how I feel about money, messed up my public persona, and made me wonder if I should be on Twitter at all.

Obviously, it’s been very beautiful.



Nicole Cliffe is cofounder and coeditor of the website The Toast and lives in Utah.

You wanna make frontpage nowadays, just write something funny and derogatory about christianity, christ and pastors.

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2 plots of land are for sale at Owode, along abeokuta road, opposite amuludun hotel/old lister filling station, beside united voice of hope church, Owode, Apata, Ibadan.

Its goes for for #4.8m (negotiable).

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ifenes:
Another irrelevant topic to discuss. Can't Christians for once grow up and contribute to having a better world,rather than heaven.

most people who have made the world a better place through inventions and innovations are theists.
Stop being intolerant my friend.

joey150:
talk to christians with high intellect.. All these hungry Nigerian pastors have turned the whole thing to a joke.. I cant even blame your perception about it.. Me myself dey shame for some of em.. But dude.. God is not dead!

Did you mean the numerous threads about the misdeeds of pastors.

one pictures, many answers.

okay

The downside of the internet. Stup!d people can now reach a larger audience and share their woes.
Of all the educative christian topics on sunday, this could only make front page for one reason; Mockery and contempt for christianity.

Weekdays, we got topics defaming pastors and christianity. Sundays, we got topics mocking God and religion.

The reason/plot why this forum does not have a christian section gets more obvious, and no, not because it is pro-islam.

Good Job though, Giving atheists and anti-theists the freedom to prey on weak and innocent minds who choose to know more about God by visiting the religion section and leading them to destruction.

I only got one message for my brethren in the Lord. "Guard your heart with all diligence, for out of it flows life's issues"

Bless.

We already have one thread defaming pastors and christianity today, can we have more please.

We haven't had the usual pastor or christian defamation news today? why

We haven't had the usual pastor or christian defamation news/threads today, why

We haven't had the usual pastor or christian defamation news today, why