The Bible, Man's book or God's Word?

reply to post by Titen-Sxull

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A global flood is very possible. As for the water, the Bible says God "broke up the waters of the deep" in addition to rain. One plausible scenario is that the earth originally had one continent, some cataclysmic event occurred (like a meteor strike - remember that crater off the Yucatan?), and that caused massive earthquakes, volcanoes, and plate shifts. The continent sank and was inundated with water. (There's your Atlantis legend). It took a few months for everything to settle down, and then there were new continents, deep ocean basins, and new mountains. And the earth was covered in layers of mud filled with dead things, even on tops of mountains and in the Arctic. Now, you don't have to believe that exact scenario. But it IS possible.

Feasibility studies have also shown that the ark certainly could have held the required species. It would have had the interior volume of over 500 cattle cars, each of which could hold 240 sheep-sized animals. If you consider that all of the aquatic species and most of the insect species could have survived the flood, and that not all types of animals, like various dogs, would have to be represented, then it is very feasible.

Yes, things have been omitted from "canon" over the centuries. But the church leaders had to have some way to determine whether or not to include a writing. Otherwise, they would have compromised their beliefs. They wanted to stay as close to the Apostolic teachings as possible, because there were a lot of counterfeit Christianities floating around, like Gnosticism and Arianism. So they made a few rules and stuck by them:

1) Was the author an Apostle or someone closely affiliated with such?
2) Did most churches accept the writing as scripture?
3) Did the writing hold to accepted teachings?
4) Was the writing spiritually and morally sound?

Some books are still contested, that's why you have a different canon for Catholics and Protestants. But if you believe the Bible is God's Word, then you believe He has supernaturally assembled and preserved it; if you don't believe that, then it doesn't matter.

There are a few extra-Biblical references to Jesus of Nazareth, his teachings, or his crucifixion: Josephus, Jewish historian; Tacitus, Roman historian; Thallus, Roman historian; Pliny the Younger, Roman governor; The Talmud, Jewish commentary; and Lucian, Greek writer. All these manuscripts were written within a century of Jesus' death, well within the accepted time allowed for other historical books such as Herodotus' "History" and Thucydides' "History". As for archeological evidence, there is none, but that is not surprising since Jesus was a poor vagabond executed as a criminal. Jewish artifacts are scarce from that era anyway.

Very Sincerely Yours

reply to post by YellowAlert

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Quite right. I like The book of Enoch, also.

reply to post by Titen-Sxull

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You are correct, T-S, the world is indeed a very wicked, wicked, wicked place. Those of us who believe the Bible long for the day when we will be released from it. But it sounds like you know enough Biblical theology to know that for God to allow us to be free agents, that is, able to choose Him or not, He had to allow evil to exist. He wanted people that chose Him willingly, not automatons. Even the angels had a choice, and you know what happened there.

As for why he doesn't punish the wicked as soon as they think their first evil thought, well, I think you can deduce that if He did that none of us would be here. He is long-suffering, and "is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to eternal life." You know I could quote you verse after verse where God promises to punish the wicked. Sometimes we see it, sometimes we don't. Sometimes it happens in this life, sometimes it doesn't. He keeps His promises, and its not for me or you to decide the right time for Him to intervene in mankind's history and remove evil. So in the meantime, yes, bad things happen to good people. These struggles hurt, but they make us stronger. Romans 5:4 says, "We know that suffering produces patience, patience produces character, character produces hope."

Suffering also glorifies God, because when we endure in the face of hardship and cling to Him, people see that and wonder. Look at Mother Theresa and what she did. She suffered a life of poverty and denial, working in the worst possible conditions you can imagine, surrounded by squalor. How was she able to do that, and why would she? There's only one answer: God.

God promised the Messiah in Genesis. He waited until the right time in history to send His redeemer. The OT is completely consistent with that plan. Until the Messiah came to be the perfect, complete sacrifice, believers had to sacrifice innocent animals to cover their sins. The Law (the eye-for-an-eye thing you mention) was given simply because you need rules to avoid anarchy. Jesus said He came to fulfill the law, not to destroy it. (As an aside, "eye for an eye" was meant as a LIMITATION, not a requirement. That is, if your neighbor was cutting wood and his axe head flew off, hit you in the eye and you lost it, well, you could only demand that he lose his eye in retribution, not demand his life. The issue would still go to court and most likely your neighbor would lose neither).

Jesus' statement to "love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself" is actually a quote from Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18. It was nothing new - just a summary of the Ten commandments. The first four deal with loving God, the last six with loving your "neighbor".

T-S, the absolute WORST thing about hell is separation from God. Can you imagine being separated from all that is good and right forever? May it not be so. God created hell for Satan and his angels. It was never meant for mankind. Eve, bless her heart, ruined all that. Can God condemn you to such a place for "simply" refusing to believe in Him? Yes, "simply" because He is infinitely righteous and cannot be in the presence of unrighteousness. That's why He turned his face away when Jesus was on the cross. Jesus became our sin. How, then, are "believers" supposedly brought into His presence? They are escorted on the arm of Jesus, the righteous One. He says, "Father, I know this person is sinful. They deserve punishment. But, Father, while they were alive, they trusted in me and my sacrifice to cover their sins. So I ask that you commute their sentence to me, which I have already served." The Father willingly does so.

Choose this day whom you will serve. It is the most important choice you will ever make.

Very Sincerely Yours

ummmmm....i do think the "church leaders" you describe in your post were motivated not just by their desire to find or " have some way to determine whether or not to include a writing".....many were motivated by selfish desire, pressure from others, misinterpretation, etc., etc........Further.....the Apostolic teachings you speak of originated "somewhere," and most definitely originated among an "elite" few who could read & write during the times these documents were first created. Elite not in the sense most think of elite, rather a very small amount especially when compared to a very large amount. Among the elite were common farmers, and even peasants, who happened to know how to write thus, they too were involved in many of the early translations of letters, documents, stories, etc..........inevitably leading to the "mark of man" on all translations thereafter.........

Scripture as we understand and read it today - in most cases - does not accurately represent the intentions, thoughts, hopes, purposes, etc., etc., of those who first wrote the words that we now claim as "our own,".........they are not are own, they were meant to address specific things that were going on during the time they were written and as those times passed, and things changed........so did the words that represented the authors original intent.

reply to post by Titen-Sxull

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Ah, T-S, the lovely Song of Solomon. What a beautiful book. It is explicit, I must agree, but what a perfect example of how married sex should be. God created sex, you know, and made it pleasurable when it could have been a chore, driven by instinct as the animals and nothing more. I'm thankful for that, aren't you? It was included in the canon because it is also a picture of God's love for us - He seeks us out as a lover seeks her loved.

Religion, T-S, is just a belief system. We all have one. If you aren't practicing Christianity, you are practicing something else, even if you don't know what it is. And, your beliefs are based upon something (someone's writings or teachings) even if you don't know what they are. So let's turn the thing around. If you can't believe the God of the Bible, then you must be believing something else - atheism, agnosticism, pantheism, naturalism, etc. What are those beliefs based upon? The Humanist Manifesto? The writings of Shirley McClain? Oprah? (I'm serious). Decide what your belief system is, and then research it's foundation. Well. Can you trust Shirley McClain or Marx? What do they have that makes them believable over anything else? Maybe your belief system is just, "Well, I'm T-S, and this is what T-S thinks, so that's what I believe". Then you need to look at yourself as the basis for your "religion". Do you have enough wisdom about the universe to define your own, personalized belief system? I certainly don't.

Also, if we all define our own "religion", then how do you define right and wrong? We would each be our own absolute authority. Some people's belief systems include bigamy, pedophilia, or racism. How can we say they are wrong? Upon what would we base that definition of "wrong"? We must be using an authority higher than ourselves to do so. What is that higher authority?

You say religion was invented to keep people's minds closed. I say that everyone has a religion (belief system), explicitly stated or not, and that if your mind is closed, it's part of your religion.

Very Sincerely Yours

reply to post by YellowAlert

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God desiring us the way a lover desires their beloved is extremely creepy (plus there's that whole feast of the bridegroom thing that comes up later, just seems like an odd metaphor)

Jesus is only mentioned outside the Bible by a few ancient historians and while its likely someone fitting Biblical Jesus' descriptions did exist there is no outside verification for his miracles or resurrection.

If God is not willing than any should perish, and he is all-powerful so that nothing can oppose his will than NO ONE will be going to Hell. To say that he loves us with an unfathomable love but is willing to throw us into Hell (and many people don't have the chance to accept Christ, don't even hear about him, or never give it a second thought before dying, so all of them go to hell?). It makes absolutely no sense, if God truly loved human beings he would design an afterlife of lenient punishment and only throw those truly deserving of damnation into the lake of fire, hence we have the Catholics inventing purgatory.

I don't trust the early Church because it was State Sponsored (at least when the Romans took it over) and once it became State Sponsored the State used it for its own wickedness, to hold up tyranny, oppress other belief systems, wars, crusades, genocide, etc... It is from this State Sponsored version of Christianity that modern Christianity sprouts... What got into the Bible, it seems, was open to the discretion of the State employed clergy and was not the work of God but of men.

It is no surprise then that the Bible is imperfect and cannot be the perfect word of a perfect God.

There is no justification for what the Bible says God is doing in the OT when he kills the first born of Egypt, all the people within Jericho, etc. The only answer that can logically be given is that God did not order/command/do those things but that the Bible is a story, a product of man's mind, and not the Word of God.

I don't have a true belief system per se, I'd consider myself an open-minded individual, one who is prepared to believe only the truth. This life I'm living is nothing more than a search for the ultimate truth, the big mystery, and each theory or belief system that is presented to me must examined carefully and if something seems off about it than it is set aside as fallacy. I used to be a Christian, but simple logic began to create a build-up of Cognitive Dissonance to the point where I could no longer buy into Christianity just because I was told to by parents, pastors and peers. The blinders came off and I realized that blind belief was what most people in any religion had and that the Ultimate truth is too big to just accept the first thing you're told is the truth or the "word of God" you must question everything and when something passes the tests of logic and truth only than an they be accepted.

So what religion am I practicing YellowAlert, I like to call it Open-Minded Skepticism, the right balance of an open mind and a mind that questions all the information presented to it.

[edit on 22-1-2009 by Titen-Sxull]

[edit on 22-1-2009 by Titen-Sxull]

WOW.....I still find it unbelievable that some people never seek the truth, and are satisfied with the "easy" answers. The Bible was written by a collection of men from all different walks of life, that were CARRIED by the HOLY SPIRIT. If you know anything at all, you would understand that the Holy Spirit is God. The words were penned by mortal human hands, but inspired by divine intervention. Do some actual bible research, maybe a bible college even, educate yourself before you speak on things that you apparently know nothing about.

God doesn't send us to Hell, we make the choices that sends us to Hell. I"m getting burned out trying to witness to people when the Bible itself says.......Mt 24:

22 And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those adays shall be shortened.
23 Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; abelieve it not.
24 For there shall arise afalse bChrists, and cfalse prophets, and shall shew great dsigns and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall edeceive the very felect.

reply to post by tgambill

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An All-Powerful All-Loving God would neither passively or actively damn a being to an eternal damnation, free will or not. A God who supports justice and fairness cannot damn a being to ETERNAL HELLFIRE simply for a few minor sins or for the simple act of not believing Christ is the way.

"An All-Powerful All-Loving God would neither passively or actively damn a being to an eternal damnation, free will or not."

*****Sorry, but you nor I can set standards for God. No disrespect intended but when you or I create our first universe, can we tell God how he will be. When you acquire 11 dimensions of time and space fromy your four dimensions, then you might be have some argument. This is the way God has set things up and rightly so. No eternal punishment, then you have a God that is not loving, unjust and a liar. We can't compare our lack of justice, our lack of integrity, and our sinful ways to the perfect all powerful and all loving God. You have it backwards. Do your real searching and stop relying on yourself to out think a creator of this universe. If your god is that small, I don't know what to say, better go for a trade in. The ONLY way to get a trade in is to go through Jesus Christ. Those are the facts and the only way.


"A God who supports justice and fairness cannot damn a being to ETERNAL HELLFIRE simply for a few minor sins or for the simple act of not believing Christ is the way. "

*****minor.....God is not like us hapless, inconsistent humans. A sin is a sin. That is why he sent Jesus, God incarnate, to take the punishment for all of mankind.

Jesus said "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." This is unchanging..and no matter what you or I want to believe, its going to remain the criteria and punishment, just one LITTLE TINY SIN is all it takes. He is not playing games. When you state these things about God, you have to ask yourself, "who am I to set the standards for God".......?? The Pope doesn't have any influence no more than that of a rapist if he is not saved by the blood of Jesus Christ and will be judged right along side that rapist as we all will be. The first ticket, is your name in the book of life....in other words, Romans 10:9, and repent of all sins. otherwise no matter what, hell bound.

Wow...

The answers I have come to, as I have shown throughout this thread in multiple posts, is based on my fair share of research. I have shown logically that the Bible cannot be the perfect word of a perfect God, it may very well be divinely inspired but it is still imperfect, flawed, and self-contradictory in numerous ways. I decided, after weighing Christianity with an open and logical mind that it was not the answer, my rejection of Modern Christianity is no "easy" answer, it took years to break the programming I was beaten over the head with as a kid and recognize the imperfections in a religion (and document) that CLAIMS to have the only answers...

Any book can CLAIM to be divinely written, perfect, or the Word of God, but these claims require a skeptical mind to approach them, ignorantly buying into the first answer/religion that comes along (or that you are indoctrinated into from birth) cannot be a good thing. You must weigh the choices presented to you. I tried to be a Christian but after crying out to God to save me and show Himself to me for years I came up with a big nothing. Slowly the logic, the doubt, the Cognitive Dissonance built up, and the "truth" I was led to believe became fallible and my search for the real truth began.

But if you still disagree with my views plus offer some argument against them, mine are based on research but perhaps you're own insight is greater, please enlighten me.

most of mans doctrines are rubbish...even in the science community. You will begin seeing it unravel at an accelerated rate probably very soon.

A PhD or degree simply means the program took better in you and you move to a higher tax base. So you get a little more cash to play with for joining the hive and can speak with large impressive words

I know people that have been crying out to God for a very long time, just because they do not hear directly from God in the way that they think that they should, they do not automatically believe that God does not exist or that he has abandoned them. So what you are saying is that you gave up crying out to God because he never answered you, is that right? So rather than take the hard road and continue to walk in faith, you chose to give up and just not believe in God, is that correct?

The first thing you have to do is have an open and willing heart, a TRUE open and willing heart, not just saying from your mouth that it is. You cannot have a hardened heart either, or the Holy Spirit will not come and give you any Revelation. Your statements, and attitude lead me to believe that you may have had the same attitude when you did not hear from God, which lead you right to where you are today.....no closer to him, and farther away from him than you have ever been. The "programming" that you speak of, that you had to "break" is just what you should have kept and held on to. There is no real point in arguing this anymore. I am sorry that things did not turn out the way that you had hoped, I only hope that when it is your time to account for all that you have done in your life, that you have found your way back out of the darkness that you now find yourself in.

[edit on 23-1-2009 by desertdreamer]

The Song of Solomon isn't 'creepy' even if you're a guy!
God is NOT going to touch you in a place or a way that is not right! >COME ON!

It SHOWS a man how to REALLY care for a woman (Not just sex!) it also shows a woman likewise!
Can you imagine how non-standard this portrayal of love was, in the middle-east? Where women were treated as cattle or 'flings'!
So, women weren't just OBJECTS, to be traded or cast away???

The symbolism of the woman in that book is overwhelming!
It's not suggesting that when we get to be with Jesus, we're going to have sex with Him!
I've been married almost 14 years and sex is not the most important thing, once you get older and have children, etc..... My husband is the same way.


I would also like you to specify the 'errors' you found in the Bible, one by one.
I'm not going to sift through 15 pages to find them. thnx!

reply to post by Titen-Sxull

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I'm sorry, Titen-Sxull, but I have to agree with desertdreamer in that I think we've exhausted the subject. You still have the same objections to the Bible being God's Word as when we started. Of course, I respect your right to come to that conclusion, and your willingness to even enter the discussion. Thank you for the "give and take".

God always answers prayer. Sometimes the answer is "No" or "wait". Don't give up on Him.

If you have any other specific questions about Christianity or the Bible, please don't hesitate to bring them up. We can try to hash through those, too.

Very Sincerely Yours

i'll top the above post off with the thought that perhaps what we are looking at is not so much a word for word description of the ancient past but the most correct version. the pre-christian era was rife with very odd goings on that seemed to have come to a screeching halt suddenly. there's really no clear indication of when the oddest events ceased, and many argue the particulars.

for example, there's a debate over when the "ancient gods" left the planet. sitchin believes this occured just prior to the flood referred to in many mesopotamian texts (including the bible). he believes it was an evacuation.

and here's where you have to put on your thinking cap - we have 2 different stories emerging from that area, about the SAME EVENTS. in the example provided by fans of enki, we have enki rescuing the king of sumer from the flood, in defiance of his "brother" enlil, who hates humans in their version of the story.
the king of sumer was a god man, a hybrid. he was not noah and he was not human. he was one of enki's titans, a nephilim.

in the biblical version, we have enlil saving noah, who was "perfect in his generations" (not to say he was perfect in this sense of no sin or no mistakes, but rather, he was a human being, no DNA modifications or tampering).

what emerges from that point are two distinct lines -- one of nephilim, and one of humans. this is more easily followed if you read the words of the old testament in their original language. an example is the difference between an enowsh and an adam. what is an iysh? why so many words for the simple concept of "man", even in the same sentence in several instances? clearly the old testament is telling us but the english language has hacked it up to the point of near obscurity!

had it not been for the hebrew version of those events, we would only have one side of the story. that's worth considering....carefully.

by the way, i believe i can prove, etymologically, that Enlil was the first and primary god, not Enki, meaning that the story of Enki and Ninmah, which is being passed off as the creation of humans by Enki, is talking about something different than the original creation event described in the biblical texts. I do not, for a moment, suggest that "Enki and Ninmah" is entirely fictional. I believe it is talking about real events couched in some odd metaphors (bet the translators had a hard time with that one!) but ultimately, it's missing some very important details.

This is why I believe "Enki and Ninmah" is heavily mistranslated, primarily because translators always approach the ancient past as if the people were all writing in metaphor that had no basis in reality. Although there is likely to be symbolism in those old texts, the symbols are only there (if my theories are correct) to mask and hide the information from the uninitiated, as it were.

So we have the double whammy of both deliberately placed symbols masking a deeper data set, and the assumption that nothing unusual could've actually occurred in that time frame and that all explanations are mundane (they might as well make it the 11th commandment --thou shalt always invoke the rule of the mundane! (et.al, the simplest answer is always the best! (even if it's wrong!)).



[edit on 23-1-2009 by undo]

reply to post by Titen-Sxull

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I have asked myself this question more than a thousand times, as there are so many people out there who believe 100% in the Bible, without any doubts, against all of the modern fashionable knowledge, and theories and alternative beliefs like evolution, dinosaurs & fossils, the real age of the universe, the hypocrisy of supposed "Christians", with their holier than thou attitudes, engaged in extermination campaigns of wiping out heresy (people), criticising other people who are labelled by them as "lost sinners" etc.

All of this led me to believe that Christianity, with its own widespread disagreements among itself with over 1000 different denominations, who spend all of their time arguing amongst themselves, and doing the opposite of what Jesus said they should be doing. I just lumped them all together in the same bag with all of the other religions all just groping around in the dark with no real truth or knowledge, just trying to get their hands in my pocket to try to get a generous donation out of me to "please God". For those of you in the UK, I just saw a program called around the world in 80 faiths, the guy who's an Anglican Vicar, went all over the place visiting Voodoo doctors, Tibetan Monks, Daoist's, Hindu's etc, just about everything that is main stream under the sun. The central theme of these religions seems to be punishment and suffering, they all have an incredible amount of unnatural & humanly impossible to adhere to rules, which would make, at least for me life a misery, with such an amount of procedures. Where do all of these things come from ? Who is making them all up ? Why ? Why do people dedicate their whole life being a monk or a nun ? They sacrifice their chance at worldly happiness, the chance to have a family, to enjoy being a parent, to enjoy the first smile of their new born baby etc. They give all of that up happily and with pleasure. WHY? How can they be so sure that they are not wasting their life, and at the end of it there will be no reward, or no reward better that someone who had all of this worldly happiness. Wouldn't you feel cheated if it was all a big fat lie, just made up by men to try and keep you under control so Kings & Queens can claim a God given right to turn everyone into landless peasants obliged to be a slave to the wage their whole life. I Also didn't like the zealots who were always quoting "annoying" little "clever-#" phrases out of the Bible to try and show me that I was a sinner - I always remembered from Sunday School - the story of don't go pointing out the small piece of wood in your brother's eye when you have a tree sticking out of your own eye, and the don't judge other's teaching , and the God didn't send his Son into the world to condemn but to save the sinner, so I used to think shut the f***-up you hypocrite in labelling me as a lost & evil sinner. I also was not in agreement with the Jews using the Bible, or their version of it, to justify all of those acts of killing that they do in sending bombs into housing blocks, I don't agree with the Palestinians either saying the Koran gives them a right to kill people. All of the above is what "turned me off" about the Bible - It was enough for me to listen and see what the people who claimed to be following it were doing to repel and repulse me away from it and I developed a kind of humanism, in that I would seek out my own way and relationship with God.

I always believed that there was a God, but that man was pretty clueless as to what God is and how he works. That all changed one day when I was trying to rent out my house, two missionaries came round and said that they wanted to rent the house. They gave me a book called "born & again and the secret of the forgiveness of sins. Normally, I have thrown the book of mormon and other things in the trash, but this book unlocked the bible.

reply to post by blj777

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blj777:

Hello to you

I am so happy that you were wanting to rent out your house that day. Isn't it wonderful the way the Lord works. Just when we think we have everything figured out, WHAM....there he is.

I wish you joy and much peace on your journey to understanding the mysteries of heaven and God. There is a spiritual awaking and sounds like that is what you have experienced. My friend, keep seeking and searching the heart of the Lord.


Peace to you,
Grandma