Once again with the guilt trips. Seems like god would be awfully pissed we killed his kid (Not that there is a word of truth to the bible). I didn't ask Chirst to go ahead and follow through with his demise (which is technically suicide), so how exactly is he paying for my "sins". SIDE NOTE: makisupa007, is that electric chair from ghostbusters...
Your point is totally invalid. Wouldn't you be glad if someone took a bullet for you and saved your life? Or would you just say "I didn't ask for it, I don't care." 1) Don't start making bias assumptions according to what I believe in now. I was an atheist before a Christian, you fool. 2) Just goes to prove my point you know so little about the Bible yet you continue to argue like you know it all. It was no "common death sentence." 3) There are no fear tactics. The Bible never says, "if you don't repent, you're on your way to hell!" It says, "if you do repent, you will have eternal life." 4) You have to remember the reason Jesus came, and not who he was, but what he did. When someone dies for someone else, say take a bullet for someone else, you are sorrowful for you remember that person and who he was. You don't remember him for taking the bullet, because that's not why you're sorrowful.
"I'm not saying that if you don't pay me, I will break your knees. I'm simply saying that if you pay me, you knees will remain completely intact."
lol prob "hey you remember that old lady you didnt walk across the street ??? ya she died and you going to burn" lol
Actually he kind of does. As much as I deplore the old testament, it never mentions hell. Jesus is the first to open heaven and hell to mortals. It is his fault if someone goes to hell.
I don't think you're quite hearing me. In the old testament you die. Elijah is the only person I know of that is in heaven from the old testament. You can debate it if you want but in the end its your scripture, not mine; you should know. Hell is only mentioned after Jesus and the New testament come about. Sorry but you're wrong and, frankly, its embarrassing. If we go to hell its only because Jesus ****ed it up. He did something or fulfilled something that made hell available to us. Now he also made heaven available and one could argue that they cancel each other out so its completely neutral what Jesus did but the point is and the premise is that Jesus made hell available to the individual and I would argue that he did. I covered this three months ago:
1) Hell originated when God needed a place to cast Lucifer when he became fallen and the angels that went with him. Oh, and its Enoch, not Elijah. Unless its both, but I'm pretty sure its just Enoch. 2) Hell is mentioned in the OT plenty of times, referred to as 'Sheol' meaning "grave", etc. Isaiah 14:15 (New King James Version) 15 Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol, To the lowest depths of the Pit. There's abraham's bosom - a sort of Heaven before Jesus resurrection: Luke 16:22-23 (King James Version) 22And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried; 23And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. Point being: Hell and Heaven were always there, since nobody really knows I'm going to guess a lesser interpretation of the two or possibly the later renaming of them occurred after the New Testament was finished.
numb 1. I'm not sure what the name calling accomplishes. What assumptions were made about you in that statement? What does the statement have to do with you being an atheist before you were "saved"? Original Statement: Like I said, they get you to believe whatever they tell you. In this case they are telling you that a man who lived two millennia ago was implanted into the womb of a virgin woman by the creator of the entire universe and that this man was sent to die in a common death sentence of the day, death by crucifixion, as a way to save all humanity from their evil sinning. Then they tell you that if you don't believe this story you will burn forever in hell. What a choice. Nope. No fear tactics involved in their marketing. 2. Crucifixion was widely used by the Romans. The Romans would routinely crucify entire captured armies. Jesus was not the first or last to be nailed to a cross. Thousands and thousands of other people endured the same torture. Crucifixion was a common death sentence period. 3. There have already been clever analogies made, but I think you must realize the way that sounds. Hell is undeniably a threat(fear tactic) aimed at non believers. I could see if there was only a heaven and your actions in this life determined if you would make it there or not. But, the fact that they tell you there is a horrible place called hell that you will go to if you do not accept Jesus is the very definition of fear tactics. Getting people to behave in certain ways through use of a terrifying threat is nothing short of strong arm brainwashing. 4. We are talking about the use of the cross, especially with a bleeding man on it, as an image in Christianity. In your scenario about taking the bullet, I agree that only the man and the good deeds should be remembered. Would you be okay with a statue depicting the hero getting shot? The gun frozen in the midst of firing, the bullet piercing the man's flesh, a look of anguish in the eyes of the statue. What if some versions of the statue didn't even include the hero, but was instead just the device used to kill the hero? Just a statue of the gun for instance. Is that the way you would like to remember the hero? That is what the crucifixion image is like. Just because you've grown numb to the horror and strangeness of seeing an image like this repeatedly, doesn't mean the rest of us have.
Elijah was the one who was whisked away in the fiery chariot right? Gettin' off subject. Heaven and hell's existence as places for the residence of the two gods of the Christian religion are not disputed. What is disputed is whether or not people went there before the NT. I suggest they didn't and provided my reasonings in the previous post. I know, read my quote. Sheol is still grave, not hell. There's a difference, trust me. Gehenna is the only reference to fire and damnation but even that has shown to be just a trash pit outside of a city where they burned the bodies of sinners. That's a reference to the OT but still the NT. It's not about mentioning, its about the chronology of the books being written. Anyone can go back after the concept of heaven has been invented and say, "yeah these people went to a temporary heaven blah blah blah." Heaven and hell as a concept weren't fully finished til' at least 500 C.E.
He isn't paying for your sins. He's forgiving you. It's rather confusing, as are the public teachings of Jesus. Here's something I found that should help you understand: So through the suffering on the cross, Jesus saves us from our sins. It's up to you to confess, and Jesus will then take the weight of sin off of you. This is why the act of sacrificing yourself for another is the best way to leave this life. However this doesn't mean that you can go off and commit suicide saying you're saving people from their sins because Jesus is the perfect sacrifice, the only sacrifice which can bear the sins of all. Sacrificing yourself for the sake of saving someone from their death is different because it really doesn't have to do with sins... ... It's not his fault at all. Its the people's fault for not believing in Christ. You're taking words and manipulating them to form some kind of altered sense.
It's not your fault for being ignorant. It's religion's fault for breeding ignorance. It's not "Confusing", it's convoluted and nonsensical.
If Jesus knew he was going too die if he said what he said, and he said it, that is considered suicide.
It's all about faith man. Blessed are those who believe and do not yet see. How do you know Julius Caesar existed? Did you read it somewhere? Did you see it on tv? Well that's just it. You don't know, yet you still believe historians and books when really they could be making it all up! This can be related to your views on Christianity and to whether Jesus existed on Earth or not. So in reality, all of history as we know it could be inacurate because pf the original source, which is humanity. IF ANYTHING humanity is breeding "ignorance". And to your second part: I said Jesus' PUBLIC teachings were confusing, but his teachings to his disciples were pretty straight forward and direct.
Humanity is responsible for the bible, unless you think it was zapped down by God; however, the only thing God is mentioned to have written himself are the 10 commandments. And as Pigglez said, the reason we know of a Julius Caesar is because of numerous historical documents with details of him; this goes for any historical figure. It's not like historians claim a divine power told them about Julius, it's just the information they've found.
1) I'm trying to tell you that you need to actually know the Bible before you can argue it. Its like walking into a Creation V Evolution debate and disagreeing with one side because you barely know much about it. 1.1) That I "believe everything I hear" 1.2) It goes to show that I don't believe what I always hear 2) The point isn't about the crucifixion, that's just one of the things He did. By dying on the cross he allowed us to be saved, and he was the ultimate SACRIFICE. He wasn't a criminal and he gave himself up for our sins, and went through multiple other tortures too (not just crucifixion). 3) Its not a fear tactic. The Bible itself doesn't say you'll go to Hell if you don't repent, its just the other side of the story that only the church mentions. 4) You misunderstood my previous post. To put it simply, let me say this. If a man takes a bullet for you (or a friend) you remember who he was, you don't remember him getting shot. When Jesus died for us, we remember what he actually did for us. Vain repetition it is, you remember a man for who he was, and Jesus for what he did.