Many Christians believe that Jesus is their savior and justify this by faith, not realizing that Jesus never once suggested that he was my savior; such believers should make better use of their reasoning faculties. I value good actions more than faith. Man is a creature of reason, so it is good to use reason when debating facts; it is too bad that so few are aware of the evidence of the afterlife or else we would have far more reasoned discussion about these topics; I feel that this evidence can be used to prove the existence of a supreme being, and help show the way to atheists. Some atheists have so much "faith" in their own worldview that they prejudicially dismiss all evidence of life-after-death and thus behave irrationally. Faith seems to be an irrational and dogmatic state of mind, so I will instead advise the seeker to read it ALL and then decide in wisdom of knowledge.
See:
http://www.near-death.com/evidence.htmlYou cannot defeat atheism with Reason. You need to defeat atheism with Faith: Faith is religion's tool atheism is Reason tool.
You cannot play with the weapons of your opponent unless you'll want to die.
I have faith that God will give me enough of the wisdom of Solomon (see Proverbs and Ecclesiastes) that I will be able to defeat atheism by reason, through faith.
I was once an atheist, so if I had been deserving of death then, and was killed, then I would never have been redeemed.
You were killed because you didn't follow some rules. First rule is knowledge leads to death (as the
Genesis episode states clearly). You probably faced knowledge and then didn't cared about the consequences. That is what most people do.
But you have been given (forced into) temporary life here on earth, through the Son of God, Jesus the Christ, so that you can come to faith in Him, so that you gain eternal life rather than eternal death. It is a gift of God. It is not good works or lack of bad works that does it.
Also, if you say "atheists should die", then there must be someone to do the killing.
You are changing the verb of my sentence: this is not agreeing.
If you don't agree state that clearly, although I do appreciate the
partial agreement: a partial agreement is better than nothing.
This is not God's will because God does not destroy. When you say "this is the will of the Father, this is the will of God, this is a theological conclusion", you have to realize that it is coming from within you, for that is where God resides.
Are you high? After the
Genesis episode the Bible is all G-d destroying and rebuilding.
It is since the
Original Sin that men are pushing G-d to the limits and G-d is destroying everything he built for the men and rebuilding again (Babel's tower episode as first).
Wow
, the pope has self-appointed himself authority over God who gets forgiven or not.
What are you talking about: the Pope is the vicary of Christ on earth?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primacy_of_Simon_PeterThis is really basic catechism: you'll learn that in 1st primary school from the Country were I came from.
At the resurrection of Jesus, Who were the first people to see Him after He was made alive again. Weren't they the women? The women were first to see Him after His resurrection.
Why were the women the first to see Him then? After all, the women do not hold a prominent place over the men in the New Testament, and very seldomly in the Old. Wasn't it because
they were there, at the tomb, after He arose? But the men weren't.
Similarly, the only reason Peter was held up above the rest of the apostles was
he was there. In life before he met Jesus, he was a butt of a forward person. He was among men what a "woman liber" is among women. He was pushy and boastful to some extent. And God simply used it, BECAUSE HE WAS THERE.
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Notice the fickleness of Peter in the following Bible verses. The Roman Catholic Church probably DOES follow the pattern of Peter. If you look at all the Papal Bulls, you can see the fickleness of the Church over the ages. But God never changes. So why follow the fickleness of Peter? Matthew 16:16-23:
Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Then he warned his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Christ.
From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.
Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!”
Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.”
When Jesus said "And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it," He wasn't enlisting or recruiting or installing Peter as His vicar here on earth. Rather, He was making the distinction between Peter and the church.
As long as anyone holds to the expression of faith that Peter expressed, that person is part of the church. It has nothing to do with promoting Peter as vicar, or setting up a head of the Church on earth. We can see below that, that Peter was even called Satan by Jesus. However, that is the way the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church in Rome often act... like Satan, basing salvation on good works or lack of bad ones, rather than basing salvation of the work of Jesus on the cross.
Peter denied Jesus before Pilate, when Jesus was being judged, just before He was crucified. Sure, it was a moment of weakness. But by his denial he was not included as one of the apostles until he was reinstated by the arisen Christ. See how it happened by reading from the Gospel of John, chapter 18 to the end.
