…and you know whether a person would’ve accepted Jesus (what he is about, his name) or not if they show mercy to others. …emphasis on show. …and not for recognition.
What’s going on then?
Is this cognitive dissonance?
So often predicts and prededes a change from religion.
That’s just ancient racism.
WHo spoke for the Jews, and was God so crass as to blme them all and hit them with collective punishment?
Where have we heard that term recently in accusations of modern genocide against Palestinian civilians?
Seems Jews are following by example
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It’s all a bit incoherent.
Oh - and Jerusalem was not destroyed
Based on a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible you have concluded that the savior who taught you to pray “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors”, will send the vast majority of human beings that have ever lived on this planet to a place of eternal torture.
Doesn’t your cognitive dissonance tell you something is wrong with that picture?
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What did Jesus mean when He said “As in the days of Noah” (only 8 people survived the Flood), and
if the world continues like it is then it becomes more and more apparent that we are heading towards a literal number, 144,000 people saved on the second coming, some ask is this literal or spiritual, but let’s not be dogmatic about it, I don’t think one should go beyond what is written.
you wrote “to a place of eternal torture” that is Catholic view of Hell, not biblical
The smoke of their torment shall ascend up forever in the sight of the blessed before their eyes this display of divine character and glory will be in favor of the redeemed, and most entertaining and give the highest pleasure to those who love God. Should the eternal torment and fires be extinguished, it would in a great measure put an end to the happiness and glory of the blessed. Works of Samuel Hopkins. pp 457, 458
This does an injustice to God
The fire does not burn eternal, the consequences are eternal.
but the wicked shall perish, and the enemies of the Lord shall be as the fat of lambs, they shall consume, into smoke shall they consume away Psalm 37
clear text they shall consume until everything is gone.
and you shall trample the wicked, for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day which I am preparing, says the Lord
Only you can tell us the answer to that question.
If you’re allowed to read Wikipedia where you are:
Just the chief priests:
It’s always the established leaders who resist positive change the worst.
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The ‘Old Testament’ merely serves as a historical precursor -and simply lays the comprehension-groundwork for the ‘New Testament’ and its pivotal place in the Christian religions- and nothing more.
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Mary, and subsequently Jesus, may well have been ostracised from Judaean society because they were of European/part-European descent, respectively.
Um. I wonder what that question might be.
Pity you cannot learn to use the “quote” fucntion to reference your responses
Wot- so not the word or god; not to be taken seriously??
You might want to tell that to our Jewish friends.
Oh and is that is the case then why did JC follow its advice all the time and quote from it?
But its “nothing more” than history. Where does it say that in the scripture and shouldn’t you tell your Jewish friends?
Blush. Such cherry picking.
And yet you add the word “literal” to the biblical text. So you have contradicted yourself. You’ve already gone beyond what is written.
Jesus spoke in parables in the synoptic gospels. Do you suppose those are meant literally? Paul interpreted the Hebrew Bible allegorically. Again not literal. So why must John of Patmos be speaking literally? The book of Revelation uses archetypal imagery to convey a symbolic vision that can’t be expressed in ordinary language. It has always been controversial even among the so-called church fathers who didn’t agree about whether or not it should be included in the New Testament canon.
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Christianity is mysterious. It contains tremendous healing power but also remains alien in a sense, not of the Earth. The fact that it focusses so much on heave and, frankly, on death, is ‘unheimisch’, un-homely, and even though I think it is necessary for Western culture to survive against the tide of other Abrahamic religion (Rudolph Steiner called life without Christianity a calamity), I feel it can not truly fulfill the soul of mankind. It is certainly not true that it is the one and only way to salvation… I dont know, it seems to possess a coldness in its love…though when I was in Jerusalem and touched, in the church of the Sepulchre, the stone on which Jesus is supposed to have been laid after he was taken down from the cross, something in me erupted and I went singing through the old city, dragging my confused and elated girlfriend along with me… she is a Catholic and to be born within Catholicism seems to me to bring a warmth that is unattainable for Protestants… but then again I am wrong again as I was once witness to a mass in the first black baptist church in Savannah and that was electrifying,… I dont know. It remains a mystery.
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Traditional Christianity conflicts with a typical modern point of view. However, the mystical core of the world religions, including Judaism and Christianity are compatible and through metaphysical idealism, they are compatible with modern science.
Much of religion is about vitality, a way to animate and ground people in the human experience.
In The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Gibbon writes that in the first 200 years after Christs death, the saints were able to perform miracles, and that after that point the capacity ebbed away. I tend to hold to a more paganistic version of religions, as I believe they are foremost great animators, not bringers of truth, unless you consider vitality to be a living truth. The Holy Spirit, if you will.
I once stepped into a Synagogue I thought, - it was that same trip - and it turned out to be the front entrance to a Yeshiva and I was facing a whole battalion of rabbinical students going berserk over their Torahs. Ive also seen Sufi Whirling Dervishes at work and I think they are tapping into the same thing.
As for science, we’ve not even mastered gravity, I don’t think we know a great deal about God yet.
On the other hand, the Hindu religion much like Taoism contains a lot of things that seem pretty scientific and advanced. What Christ adds to the mix of religion still remains a mystery to me. Perhaps that is one of the great things about him, the mystery. Christianity certainly isn’t as evidently empirically valid as Taoism, in my opinion, but when it works it is pretty spectacular.
According to John’s gospel, Jesus identified with the light of conscious itself which is the ground of being. “I am the light of the world.” he said. In the gospel of Matthew he tells his followers “You are the light of the world.” So we are the same as him. The only difference is our ignorance of who we really are.
That is, apparently, a pretty big difference. Though I agree that we are fundamentally, light-beings. I remember a good thread by Farsight, in the previous, more auspicious Aeon of ILP, where he described how electrons are self-entangled photons. He didn’t didn’t go into quarks, but with their gluons it could be imagined that they too are fundamentally built of some form of light. Suggesting that matter, at heart, is light. That is, given how it converts to radiation, not too far fetched. So all parts of us would at bottom be light, and it is just a matter of how much we are able to convert matter into consciousness.
Do you take any stock in the idea that Jesus, in his lost years, wandered the world and was taught by the great guru Babaji? Probably not, as you likely see Jesus as the first begotten Son of God, but I do. I see Christianity as offspring of Hinduism. Not that Jesus himself was not a great miraculous master, but I think he learned a lot of his stuff in the East.