Originally posted by dakota1s2



The Council of Trent is where Catholic church leaders got together and put together some of the writings of Hebrews and Greeks and decided which writings would be put together in a group of books called the Bible.

TRUE! Constantine's first ecumenical council in 325 ad had no say regarding which books would be accepted into the Christian Canon. The issue was not even discussed. The council was convened to determine doctrinal issues, not to canonize books.

[edit on 21-3-2010 by lapi7]

As a Christian who has experienced the life-transforming power of the Holy Spirit, I'm glad you've posted your denunciation of Christianity and, specifically John 3:16. It shows that you are angry about the deceivers and liars who have prostituted the Gospel of Jesus Christ for power, money and sex.

I was pretty much of the same opinion as you up until recently. However, by what I consider a miracle, my wife and I began attending a church where the pastor teaches the Bible and the sacrifice and suffering required to be disciples of Christ - not a shadow form of Christianity.

We immediately experienced a complete renewal in our lives, just as II Corinthians 5:17 says, "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."

The transformation continues today. My prayer is that you will have a supernatural meeting with the Holy Spirit. The intellect is extremely deceptive because it assumes that all we know is all there IS to know.

But, "... the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God” (1 Corinthians 3:19).

You are denouncing the Word of God, yet seeking truth. Watch out. God knows your heart and knows you are sincere. You are going to meet the Truth, the Way and the Life in a way you could never imagine. God always does things exactly the way we wouldn't. In fact, you are right now being led toward Christ.

Good for you for demanding the truth. Whether you know it or not, the Truth is not "out there" but right next to you. I wish I could be there when God touches you and transforms you from within. It's the most hilarious miracle in God's repertoire. I am not kidding.

ok, if 3 people attempt to teach you that your definition is a corruption providing sources in fact, at what point do you begin to rethink your OPINION?

Unless you are telling me the Hebrew word is serpent and not Nachash??????????????????

undo has provided you a great service to account for your error in believing someone elses opinion you accepted that was based on faulty use of the words you seek to identify as facts.

Serpent and apple aren't used in the context you want to apply. This is a myth.

And zeitgeist is a bunch of half truths on history that really messes with alot of people trying to figure out history.
Nimrod is recognized by jewish scribes as satan, because he was a false messiah type serving his father the devil as seen in his actions.
Why? Because Nimrod claimed to fulfill prophecy as messiah.
What prophecy? The prophecies that came from Adam Seth and Enoch that all the false religions that followed corrupted seeking to counterfeit prophecy for the enemies purpose.

So the pagan religions that corrupted truths for those later only do so if they accept the counterfeit as being the original to judge the present by.
Zeitgeist is a horrible blueprint to use as most of the christ scenario claims are fabrications and hopeful assumptions.

No, Jesus is then only complete fulfillment of the relevant prophecies declaring who the Anointed One truly is and none of the counterfeits before or after can claim the identity as the fulfillment of the promise.

So, if you go to the pagan religions seeking truth in prophecy, don't stop there but go further to see what it was THEY were drawing from to create their "religion" and hero. Jesus was what the pagan religions sought to step in front of claiming the title but they certainly were not the fulfillment. Just copies. Go to the siource to identify the original.
If this was about identifying 1 $100 bill among 100 counterfeits you would at least examine them based on looking at a true example and not choosing a counterfeit by which to compare them by.

Originally posted by manna2
ok, if 3 people attempt to teach you that your definition is a corruption providing sources in fact, at what point do you begin to rethink your OPINION?

Unless you are telling me the Hebrew word is serpent and not Nachash??????????????????

undo has provided you a great service to account for your error in believing someone elses opinion you accepted that was based on faulty use of the words you seek to identify as facts.

Serpent and apple aren't used in the context you want to apply. This is a myth.

I honestly have no clue what you are on about. I know it is just a myth and in the context of that myth, the serpent is just a serpent. There is nothing to indicate it is anything other than a serpent within that myth. 3 people have shown me a completely different book of the bible referring to a completely different beast altogether. That is like saying that a snake on a Clive Barker book is explained by the symbolism attributed to a snake in a James Patterson novel. It does not work that way.

The creation myth is a myth in and of itself. In the text of that myth, there is a serpent that tempts Eve. It is called a serpent. It is not referred to as anything other than a serpent.

Originally posted by undo

to understand a word, you have to seek out its roots, and the hebrew references are from an even older language, we know today as sumerian cuneiform. so what you have essentially, is a highly condensed story, providing information about the past, in the form of metaphor, using a language that was based on an even older language, and provided in the framework of both civilizations (egypt and mesopotamia).

I really appreciate your effort and all but it seems like perhaps you are not even understanding me. I never once claimed to believe that the story of Adam and Eve was at all historical. I fully accept it is a story and nothing else. I am simply stating that in that story, the serpent is called a serpent and is just a serpent. That is it. If you want to play the metaphor game, then Adam and Eve are also metaphors which makes the creation story false as it continues the lineage from those two into the rest of its narrative. This would also then mean that any other metaphor found in the collection of books that make up the bible are simply, other metaphors. Unless there is a line stating that the metaphor for Satan used in Genesis is the same metaphor for Satan used elsewhere, it is just speculation for no reason.

The whole story is all made up and all that, blah blah. I do not get why anyone is trying to convince me of that part. All I am saying is that in the story you are all talking about, there is a serpent. It is called a serpent. It is described as a serpent. It is never once referred to as Satan in any way.

I know the kind of person I would have become had I not come to know Jesus Christ. He has given me a prosperous life as well as everything required to be successful in these hard times. The benefits of knowing God are endless =D

"23for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood..."
Romans 23-25

The major problem with anything that is written about Jesus in the bible is the fact that the story was written at least one, more likely two or three generations after he was crucified before any of the books of the new testament were written

Add that to the fact that the Roman church, which later evolved into the catholic church was the only keeper of the bible, and what is more determined what the contents of the new testament would contain.

The Roman church BTW used to take undesirables coat them with pitch (tar) and tie them to poles and light them on fire to burn as writhing human torches. So any one who believes that this church only had Gods best interest at heart, truly has a screw loose IMHO.

The fact is Jesus did not incarnate to save us from our sins. It is up to each of us to overcome our ego, and purify our selves of our carnal mind so to speak till we are worthy of citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.

What is meant by the bibles interpretation of "saved" is that you will be given another chance if you fail, when you are judged wether or not you are worthy for admittance into heaven. That is what the judgement story is all about. You are not judged to either eternal life or death, but wether you are worthy to be admitted to the Kingdom or not, upon the death of your flesh body.

Now there is a judgement called the second death, but for that sentence to be carried out, you must be of an evil war mongering type of personality who has been given many many chances to change your ways, only to reincarnate and be even worse than you were before, time after time, after time. For these types of souls there is no hope that they will ever change, and so they receive what the bible calls "the second death"

Jesus' real mission was not to become another idol as he is thru out the world today. He did not want to be worshiped as the "only son of God" The concept that he is God's "only begotten son" is PURE BULL#. We are all sons and daughters of the most high. Every single one of us. Christ is the only begotten Son of God, and Christ is not a person but rather a state of consciousness.

You can thank the people that authored the new testament, for the distortions in the story of Jesus. Just like today, the men who wrote the book under the guidance of the church that controlled the task, omitted/changed certain details to further their earthly agendas, mainly which were job security, and wealth and power seeking.

The mission of Jesus was to DEMONSTRATE the path to enlightenment. His mission was to show the path and to prove that what he achieved you and I can achieve also and do even "greater things" than he did.

Nothing gets the Christians up more than an attack on the Bible or Jesus, and nothing brings in the atheists more than someone who attacks the Christians; hence, we call this trolling.

Notwithstanding the trolling, the OP lacks references, making it an opinion.

Some posts state that the scriptures are twisted by Constantine. Consider the problem. Let's say you were writing the history of America of twenty years ago. Some manuscripts are from newspapers, some from diaries, some are from unreliable social tabloids, and some are from factions that would reinterpret history (like those who say the holocaust never happened). You lay these out on a table, and try to determine the true from the false. You have criteria to judge from: (1) a reliable source, such as an apostle who was an eyewitness, (2) the manuscript has been held in secure settings so it could not be easily changed (3) the manuscript material agrees with all of your other manuscripts but disagrees with a few.

After you assemble the best of the manuscripts, and write your history, someone a thousand years later will question your motives because you did not include the tabloids, the factions that would twist history for their own reasons, etc. You, however, no longer know that these manuscripts are misrepresenting the truth of the gospel. You gather together these bad manuscripts, and make a new and heretical concept, feeling justified but being ignorant.

We have manuscripts (pieces) from before Constantine, which could have been penned by the original authors. Since an original scroll could have lasted 300 years, there are not that many recopies between then and now.

As far as the difference between John 3:16 and the second reference, Jesus will decide who goes to heaven, and He paid the price for everyone. He loves His creation, and came to save it. We are all condemned, even for one sin, so it is up to Him to save us by His sacrifice. You may recall that Hew saved the thief on the cross. There is no reason to believe that the thief was kind to the poor, only that he believed in Jesus.

[edit on 3/22/2010 by Jim Scott]