i'm going to leave on this note right here:
Jesus Christ is Lord, and the only way to Heaven is through Him. If you try any other way you will come up terribly short. My faith will get me into Heaven, and I will pray for the rest of you.
i'm going to leave on this note right here:
Jesus Christ is Lord, and the only way to Heaven is through Him. If you try any other way you will come up terribly short. My faith will get me into Heaven, and I will pray for the rest of you.
I don't need your prayer, dude. Later, QD.Originally Posted by 1zach4
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i'm new to IA and have been reading through these forums...i gotta comment on this one...
now i grew up as a christian and i still accept the Bible as a valuable spiritual guide. but the idea that the bible is the ONLY way to 'salvation', when you honestly look at it with a critical mind, is a pretty ridiculous notion. how can one honestly believe something as boundless and infinite as God would have to be can be described in ONLY one way?
look at how many languages and cultures the world has. i'm black...so looking at it from an african perspective, for example, there are some things that some african tribes experience in their cosmology/spirituality that can't even be described correctly with English words. stuff that we can't even understand or relate to about what they believe, simply because we grew up in a Western society built upon western philosophical ideas (this is another topic by itself). and vice versa. the idea of Jesus seems as ludicrous to them as voodoo and ancestor worship might seem to us. but talk to a christian about prayer to God or these ppl about prayer to an ancestor, and they'll believe in it same way, and have experiences to back up their belief. honestly speaking...it's mad close-minded and ignorant to feel like your view is right and they are wrong.
that's like being in your house and thinking you can describe all of outside by just looking out of one window. You might see trees, someone looking elsewhere might see mountains, someone else with a different view might see a lake. But each of these 'views' are just pieces of the entire picture...we'll never get to see or understand it entirely from our frame of reference (being inside the house).
the thing to do is use the tools that work best for you in your context...and not to be afraid to use new ones if the need arises...all while keeping true to yourself.
The fact that there are many other gods is no surprise. The reasoning that because a religion exists therefore it is valid is also flawed. The fact that jungle natives pray to frogs, their ancestors, a tree stump or some god named dagon, baal, or billybob is proof of only one thing...idolatry and false gods exist. This is evidence of the Bible being correct in that the devil has been working hard eveywhere to decieve humans. Those gods have no saving power. Although the names differ with cultures there are commonalities shared by most all those gods. Make no mistake, although many of those names are just varieties of the same false god, virtually none are of the Creator. The foundation of Christianity is that there is but one real living Creator who made the universe and its inhabitants. He does have many different names but dagon, baal, billybob and all the others are not Him. His creatures either acknowledge him or not. Worship of creation instead of the Creator is itself idolotry.
In fact if you study carefully there are really only two paths a human being can be on, regardless of their original religion or lack of it. They (we all) are either on the path to eternal life or the highway to eternal death.
good answer, i actually agree with you partially on this. i never said and i certainly do not believe that every single religion on the planet is valid. the key is to look at them objectively and critically (the Bible actually instructs to do this) to see if they make sense. and when i say objectively, it means that you set aside your biases and notions and look at ALL the FACTS before judging.
the idea of one creator creating the universe, or even the general concept of salvation of the soul, is neither unique or even original to christianity. some of those very same 'jungle natives' believe the same thing, and have been believing it long before hebrews walked the earth or moses decided to write anything down. even the idea/word 'worship' as we understand it is a very loose and probably inaccurate way of describing their respect/reverence for their 'tree stumps' or 'frogs'. it's a LOT more complicated than that...this is the same ignorant attitude that drove the Crusades, the Dark Ages, and even the institution of slavery.
I agree 100% on this. but remember, the goal of trodding the path of righteousness is not the destination, but making the journey itself
It is true that peoples have existed and been "discovered" that indeed had some understanding of the Creator and worshipped Him. This is not common however and in fact is extremely rare. Some people for example, think that american indians worshiped the "great spirit"...in fact they like the people in the time of Noahs flood worshiped the creature much more then the Creator.
As for the Dark Ages & Crusades, the ignorance that fueled those times was in fact the papacy/catholcism. It was the church that kept people from even reading the Bible (punishable by death in fact) and kept people ignorant and in the dark. The church efforts to wipe out heritics and "unbelievers" led to much death....tens of millions. Some historians say as many as 300 million.
Oh for goodness sake... this isn't the least bit true.
On the contrary, it is fact.
Only the exact numbers are not known.
PC "Revisionist" history books that change facts or ignore them have lead to many people being ignorant of the facts of the middle ages.
The roman church has long flourished on ignorance...and still does.
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