Test Your Knowledge of the Gospels

I'm getting more serious with each post.
Let me get specific. (My time is limited, but you can be sure I can expand on any detail.
I'm Pentecostal.
I believe that Pentecostalism is-in theology and practice-the closest you can get to the way God wants us all to be right now.
I believe any statistical study would reveal we get the most undisputed miracles. Many of us rarely pass a week without some event that confirms a direct interest by God in our activities. (Often I would prefer less.)
Baptists are closes behind us. The big difference in general is belief in divine healing.
I believe-though I won't fight about it-that the continued survival of Baptist Billy Graham eight years after he expected to die is an attempt both to endorse his ministry and to persuade more Baptists to accept divine healing as normative.
Next come the mainline Protestant denominations. God has been stirring up pockets of enthusiasm within most of them to come closer to his will, however one of the things they do right is to not make their ministers celebrities, so the pockets are small and isolated.
Then come the Orthodox Catholics. However they are weak as a movement and dull due to the rituals and nationalities involved.
It's easier for God to convert lively people to Protestantism than to enliven those groups.
God has done everything you can do for the Catholic Church at some point in history.
He made it the state religion of the Roman Empire. (That only helped by letting Christians die of natural causes.)
He let Popes outrank Emperors throughout Europe. (That made more Popes corrupt than kings religious).
When they were unresponsive he broke off the Eastern Churches, then the Reformation another half.
Finally he got them out of politics so the Pope is just a nice old man in a funny hat making feel-good speeches.
As mentioned above, he still protects the Jews, so only genocides trim their ranks periodically.
If India really is improving (by reducing the number of people who die of malnutrition by 1% a year) without converting from Hindu it is because Hindus are more devout with their false gods than Christians are with the real God, and he honors faith.
I do believe in demons, and there are certain talentless celebrities and others whose success suggests demonic assistance.
It's not my job to post a partial list.

 

Uhhh....yeah....but don't you think what happened to Jews in 1939 to 1945 might greatly disprove your hypothesis?

AboveAlpha

 

Yes, cuz the meek inheriting the earth as the bible says is all about prosperity. Power and wealth are god's rewards.

 

HA! LOL!!!

The MEEK....end up being buried in a long channel shallow grave.

Those who are the Victors inherit the Earth and write History.

AboveAlpha

 

As I once posted on this forum, the mistreatment of Jews by Germany did not reach record-breaking levels until 1942 when the policy went from concentration (a punishment other countries had imposed on Jews and others for a long time) to mass executions in death camps.
The reason for this was that the US had entered the war, guaranteeing not only the defeat of Germany but-with FDR's insistence on unconditional surrender-the death of Hitler within five years.
That changed Hitler's goal from world domination to killing every Jew in occupied Europe-an attainable end.
I think if Britain had signed a treaty in 1940 one condition might have been taking every Jew out of Germany (with its extended borders) and most of them would have died of natural causes.

 

You said you knew jews had the right god because their god helps and protects them. Above Alpha called attention to the Holocaust, and you talked you way around it without once mentioning God's abject failure to protect his darlings.

 

If all gods are silent (and they are), no one can know if some are authentic and others are false, much less which is which. your whole premise here presupposes that at least one of the thousands of gods invented over the years is real. You go considerably further, and presume yo know the mind of one the 'authentic' gods. Why?

 

Millions of people survived the concentration camps and some are still living. Some of them became prominent like Simon Wiesenthal and Isaac Asimov. There are countless inspirational stories about survivors like Walter and Hanna. There are many inspirational stories about heroic deaths, brave protectors and other worthy stories.
Everyone dies. It's better to die for a cause, to be remembered even in a group than to die individually of any number of causes.
Some of them were already old and sick in 1938 and would have died by 1945 regardless.
If there had been no Holocaust but World War II had been fought,many of those Jews would have died from allied bombs.
If Jews were given some rights in Germany, thousands of young Jewish men-many of the people who survived the Holocaust-would have died in the war.
If smart talented Jews like Einstein had remained in Germany helping them fight the war, many thousands of additional allied soldiers and civilians, probably including someone you know, would have been killed as well.
My theology is structurally sound on all fronts, and one fundamental belief is that God chooses the exact moment of death for each person regardless of their belief system, having calculated the long-term implications more skillfully than a master chess player.

 

HA!

That's a bunch of Bull!

The Natural World is based upon Chaos.

So is the Universe.

AboveAlpha

 

No reason for anyone ever seeing a doctor ever. Have you ever seen a doctor? Did you play in the streets? Do you let your kids play in the streets? Wouldn't matter if you or they did based on your belief.

But I thinks you are offering BS.

 

I sawa doctor back in 1982. He misdiagnosed my illness, so I got sicker. Then he messed up again.

 

No kids? Did you play in the street?
If you have kids, do you let them play in the street?

 

I've shed some blood due to evil people and concrete, with no lasting consequences.
My son has taken two walks unattended, but nice people responded before any harm was done.
I had a cousin who was about to jump into St. Mere Iglese on D-Day. The gun of the man next to him went off accidentally, so he was wounded and didn't jump. The others were massacred in the streets as they landed.

 

2 walks unintended. That isn't playing in the streets. Do you or will you let your kids play in the street, a busy one. Yes or No.

If you answer is NO, then you don't trust God will take you son when it is his choice and you need to offer protection.

If it is YES, then you have a leg to stand on with your statement that God takes everyone at the time God wants. I assume that also means people who never heard of your God?


PS - I don't really want you to let your kid(s)/son play in a busy street. Because I don't believe he'd survive a day in the busy street.

 

My son is autistic and developmentally disabled.
My wife blames me for that because I tried to make him a genius by giving him daily lectures on math and history starting when I drove him home from the hospital.
I blame her because she had her uncle tear down all our wallpaper and the lead paint underneath to put in new wallpaper when he was one, filling the house with lead powder and elevating his lead levels.
The best diagnosis however is that God gave him that illness as an act of love for all of us.
He receives Social Security now, so we're only two months behind on our bills instead of homeless.
Everyone feels sorry for him and gives him things, while also forgiving things like groping and assault that would get some 12-year-olds in big trouble.
Obviously my marrying his mother was in defiance of God's will and represents a punishment for past behaviors on the subject as well as a prevention from worse things I might have done had I remained single a few years longer.
In other words it was one of those ironic cases where God gives you what you want in such a way as to show you you shouldn't have wanted it.
In her case being married to me is also a punishment because of various quirks about my personality. However I am indisputably better than her first husband and her last fiance.
God has a perfect will for all of us: become Pentecostal as young as possible,live a pure life with one carefully-chosen spouse, live at a comfortable level with minimal extravagance and mild vices no matter how rich you get, have a few children, raise them according to Biblical principles, adopt a few more if finances permit, be charitable pacifists with no addictions, no foul language and not endorsing any form of evil, remain married until death no matter what, never compromise your faith, ethics or values, be thankful for all benefits and pleasures, and accept and learn from all corrections.
I used to wear a bullet-proof t-shirt in tough neighborhoods, but my last pastor convinced me to stop because everyone would renounce Christianity if a newspaper headline in Boston read: Christian survives shooting with bullet-proof t-shirt.
It's gone now. Shoot me and see what happens.

 

Sorry about your son.
And I don't believe God is punishing anyone. Especially for marrying your wife.

 

I managed to go oh for twenty.

 

Nothing to do with convictions, other than the conviction that most historians and New Testamentr scholars who teach in Oxford, Cambridge, Yale, Princeton, Harvard, the humble university I once studied at … know their stuff. Yah see, I’m convinced that a historical Jesus existed as much as I’m convinced that evolution is the way in which we were brought into being. Well, I probably know more about history than I know about biology. So my conviction that a historical Jesus existed is probably more founded on actual knowledge on the subject matter than my conviction in evolution.

Yes, it’s a typical for a conspiracy theorist to think everybody who isn’t in said conspiracy theory must be brainwashed. Conspiracy theories can be utterly secular. But it seems the power of their religious convictions certainly make a hell of a lot of atheists eat yours.

Of course Mark was written after Paul’s letters, and yes, its longer ending has probably been written even later. But that’s totally beside the point.
Historians of Antiquity work with biased texts on a daily basis. I’m not saying historians claim that Mark or any other evangelist gives us accurate descriptions of the historical Jesus, I’m saying that pretty much every noteworthy historian on this planet agrees that a historical Jesus existed. That would be the very Jesus whose brother James was obviously known to Paul and the recipients of his letters, to allude to just one of the overwhelming evidences.

Face it: From an utterly secular viewpoint to believe that Jesus never existed is just as mad as believing that the Turin shroud is real. It’s just that these two kinds of madness sit on different poles.

 

Oh you poor oppressed pets! Of course you chose to overlook that in our beautiful Western world you’ve been allowed to say “no thanks” for centuries rather than decades.

But this brings me back to a former point of mine that you chose to ignore (the 9/11 closet-islamophobe one):

I'm not saying you happen to be one of those closet Islamophobes, but how come you don’t direct your fight against oppression against areas in which open atheism still isn’t an option? Those would be mainly Muslim areas, wouldn’t they? Yet, I saw – with my utmost approval - that you are capable of finding respectful words for Muslim cultures. Your beef seems to be mostly with Christianity. Why is that? The Archbishop of Canterbury is hardly going to order your beheading any time soon, is he?

 

If you ask for my humble opinion: the same God inspired different people in different areas and times in different ways.
And IMHO in the OT you can see divinely inspired people developing their ideas on the divine: from a tribal God next to other tribal Gods to a monotheist God: one God for all. And this one God surely loves you just as much as he loves me and the next best Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist ... He made us all.

 

But what I asked you was on what basis do you rest your conclusions? Since the closest thing we have to a historical Jesus is the writings of Paul, and Paul only "knew" Jesus in visions, why do you suppose your appeal to authority is dispositive? I pointed out that most of your precious authorities are theologians with a specialty in history who are starting with their conclusions and seeking facts to support them. Historians who start with the evidence can find no Jesus. Why not? The evidence hasn't changed, only the foregone conclusions.

The fact is, seen directly rather than through religion-colored glasses, in the light of day, the ONLY thing supporting the conviction that Jesus existed, is the conviction that Jesus existed. Now, maybe he DID exist. But to make that case, you'll have to do a LOT better than to point to a bunch of theologians and say "they believe it, they're the experts, so it must be so."

And when I point to historians who specialize in this but who are not theologians, the response I always get is "those people don't count, they don't know what they're talking about because they refute my faith." I can only laugh at you.

 

And the Hindus, as you may know, regard your god as one of many perfectly good gods. The Hindus believe in gods beyond counting. They are an "open arms" religion who regard Christianity as one of many valid paths to Nirvana. Contrast this with Christians, whose conviction is "the ONLY way to god is through ME ME ME!"

 

No disagreement from me, if there is a single creator.

 

You may be interested in this book: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2861952-concepts-of-god

Its author specialized in comparative theology and he is not just a Regius Professor of (Christian) Divinity at Oxford but also a member of the Board of Governors of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies:
Most Hindus are monotheists or believe the various Hindu Gods to be different manifestations of one divine being. It appears Ward sees very many commonalities between the Hindu concept of Brahman and the Abrahamic concept of God.

For more:

[video=youtube;NMvf68nkDyM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMvf68nkDyM[/video]

 

The people you named don’t count, not because they refute my faith (they don’t), but because they allow their faith (or the fervent lack thereof) to influence their view on history. The blatantly biased views they hold are laughable not from a Christian but from an utterly secular scholarly perspective, yah know the kind that doesn’t study the writings compiled in the New Testament as holy scripture but just as you would study any other document from Antiquity.

From the secular point of view that serious historians and New Testament scholars working with the historical-critical method tend to employ, the importance of Paul mentioning James is not about visions Paul said he had. It’s an off-cast remark about a real-life acquaintance. Paul did not know Jesus, but his contemporaries, such as Jesus’ brother James, would have known him. And both Paul and many in his audience knew these contemporaries who had known the man who had just died about 10 years ago at the time Paul wrote his first letters.

I can no more be asked to discuss the manifold evidence for the existence of Jesus with atheist conspiracy theorists who keep warming up up long dead 19th century Christ myth theories, than I can be asked to discuss my non-belief in Prince Philip being a shapeshifting lizard with David Icke.

But somebody else bothered. So maybe this link can help you:

http://ravingatheists.com/forum/showthread.php?t=16537

Alas, I somehow doubt you are still within the reach of such rational discussion.