So Satan is evil and since evil is evident that means God is real according to the bible?
I can say something like; If God is real, and he has the power to avoid calamity in people's lives, why doesn't he just keep everyone safe instead of allowing these people to suffer? If that is the case, then God is the evil one since he is the one calling the shots. No?
Hello. I posed these questions in the other thread to you. I hold out hope because you claim the reason you are here is to see if your "faith" can be rekindled. It is starting to appear that is not your intent as you are becoming more and more combative. Can you please read your post and my response:
YOUR POST
Sir, with all due respect, you haven't got an idea of what my Christian life was like. Not only did I believe with all of my being that Jesus had conquered death and payed the ultimate price for my sins, but that I also was his child. I was the child of God, bought by the blood of his son. I knew I was saved, and I knew that I was a new creature in Christ. I took this knowledge of truth and I couldn't resist telling everyone of the good news. I felt as if I was different. I felt as if I had been made a new creature. The more I learned about Jesus and God, the more I fell in love with him. There was no doubt in my mind as to the validity of the bible or of the existence of the God of the bible.
As I grew older, I realized that life was not an easy journey. I saw births, deaths, birthdays, marriages, and divorces. I went to college, traveled a bit and realized that this world was not a small one by any means. Then it hit me, out of all the long term friends that I had collected, most of them were in one way or another "Christians". Of course you can say that no one really knows if they were born again but God himself, and while that is true, most of these people were good people. They cared about their faith and about their impact on society. They truly wanted to love their neighbor and share the love that the father had once shared with them.
As time went on, these people struggled in general. All of the pastors that had become friends of mine and my family's hit rocky patches. This was a sobering moment for me. These people that I once thought of as righteous before God's eyes demonstrated to just be normal human beings. I know that as a child a particular picture is painted in your head as to what it means to be a man of God, a Christian. Obviously these were all Child like thoughts and I was now leaving that behind, I realized that God must know their hearts and it is up to him to judge, not me.
I continued in the faith, growing physically, and also growing spiritually. I also had rough areas, but I overcame all obstacles, I knew that God was faithful to forgive my transgressions because I had accepted the gift of grace given to me in the form of Jesus Christ on the Cross. I knew that this is what being born again is. You are no longer a child of the world, but a Child of the Lord.
Not only did I talk the talk, but I walked the walked. I really shaped my lifestyle to line up with my faith and my new way of being. I let the "Holy Spirit" guide my every move. I knew that God was right there, next to me. I wanted and prayed for his will to be done in my life, for him to finish the work he started in me. Prayed for the fruits of the spirit, etc.
One day, I realized that Solomon was right. The evil doers receive good things, the righteous are kicked in the dirt. Everything was vain. All the work that I had ever done was vain. All the things I'd ever aspired to do were pointless. Nothing mattered in this world because at the end we all died and decomposed in the dirt. However, I knew that I would reign one day with Christ, so that's what i had to look forward to.
I then became OBSESSED with finding more truth. I wanted to know how the prophets and the Law aligned with the new testament. I wanted to know how this cosmic composition so wonderfully and amazingly perfectly aligned with itself. A book with 40 authors, spanning over 1500 years, written across many different lands and cultures ended up here, on my desk at home. I then realized that Christianity completely revolves around this book. It is almost as if its Bliblianity, rather than Christianity.
I began to notice that Doctrine and tradition are what made people act the way they acted. I realized that there were hundreds of different views, and assemblies in the forms of denominations. I realized that very few "Christians" agreed with each other. Why would God leave a book that is meant to unite and teach his people about him, cause so much division. Why is it that when I present something I learned from the word to a pastor, or fellow Christian friend, they tell me that I did not interpret that correctly? Why is it that I started to discover apparent contradictions that no one had ever mentioned to me before?
Something was up. Either I was in the wrong Church, or maybe this bible was not as crystal clear as I once thought. I kept praying, I kept asking God and the Holy Spirit for guidance. I fasted, and prayed. Fasted some more, and prayed some more. I sought advice from my closest Christian friends and relatives, we shared meals and lots of coffee, discussing these matters.
One day, about to finish a 5 day fast, I realized something......
There is no one Christianity. Yes, most agree in the basic concepts of Jesus' death and resurrection, being born again, faith, etc...
But when it came to the details, NO ONE AGREES. Even in minute details.
So this lead me to research more and more. Until I finally realized that there is no way that the most intelligent and magnificent being that created this whole reality would want to divide its people. On the contrary, he is a being of unity. Everything in nature points to unity. His finger print is unity. The human race has long drifted from that. There is a problem with the world and the influence on humanity.
Christians call that Satan. I call it something else now.
Modern Christianity was just another structured separation scheme. Nothing in it pointed to what actually made sense. All the wars, the disagreements, ETC... I could not take it anymore and I decided to look at material produced by secular scholars as well as Christian scholars.
I eventually stopped praying, and stopped seeking God. I realized that it did not made a difference on my well being. In fact, I feel liberated and happier now that I know that God probably isn't up there blotting out names...
If I am saved I am saved, If I am not then I guess I am not.
Click to expand...
I think it's always valuable to ascertain, rather than assign, the motives of people. I have too often done the latter. Understand that many, if not most atheists or former believers come here to stir up trouble, or worse, are led by an unclean spirit to attempt to cast doubt in the minds of baby Christians or the honest skeptics.
MY RESPONSE
I don't know what your motives for spending your time and your Saturday afternoon on a website dedicated to worshiping our Lord, and building each other up in Him is. I will take your word that you are here to see if there is any faith that can be rekindled.
Now, you say you are not an atheist, but no longer a Christian. So what exactly do you no longer believe? Is Jesus the Son of God, and do you believe He died for our sins and rose again from the dead?
You "knew" you were saved? Well this is what Scripture says about those who say they were saved but no longer believe:
1 John 2:19 New International Version (NIV)
19 They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.
It is tragic that Christians CAN'T live up to our expectations of who we thought they were, or should be, or act like. Part of your journey of failing faith seems to have occurred because of what HUMANS have done. HUMANS will always disappoint us. That's why our faith must be COMPLETELY Rooted In Jesus alone.
One day you realized Solomon was right, and this had a profound effect upon your faith? Of course Solomon is right! Here we have the Wisest human who ever lived, understand with massive human FLESHLY intellect, that ALL is vain. Solomon represents the pinnacle of HUMAN achievement. THE goal of our fleshly human mind. His life and story is vital for us to understand WITHOUT God, and WITHOUT a Hope in eternal life through His Son, all of our existence is nothing more than a puff of smoke. This realization should drive us CLOSER to God not further away.
Biblianity? No. We just understand what, or rather WHO the Word is:
John 1:14 King James Version (KJV)
14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
Hebrews 4:12 New King James Version (NKJV)
12 For the WORD of God
is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
The Bible was not written to unite humanity. But to give humanity a hope of redemption. More than 95% of It deals with redeeming fallen human beings. It is a love story. Written in Blood on a Cross.
I pray to The Heavenly Father in His Son's precious Name, that you ARE here to recapture the love you say you had for Him, and the joy in that knowledge gives you an deeper, more inexpressible love for Him and others.