All Activity

Hebrews 11:6 NIV 6 And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. I underlined the words which I believe shows that God expects believers to have absolute certainty in him and in the "word" he has given them. It doesn't matter whether we agree on what this verse is saying. The point of my post was to show the dilemma that bible-believing Christians find themselves in when it comes to God. Unless there is a verse that proves differently, there is no room for uncertainty when it comes to him. Being between a rock and a hard place happens because even when a Christian is certain that God exists and therefore earnestly seeks this all-powerful and all-loving God in a time of need, it is never certain that he will show up and reward you for the trust you placed in him. (Apparently there are legal loopholes attached to his promises.) In other words, God expects certainty from believers when all the while, he is an uncertain God. It's one of the main reason why I think this concept of god as shown in the bible was thought up by men for whatever reason. Here's to peace (an alternative for beer in my case)

No replies yet.. well I need a little rain tonight. Did you know all of these people performing are believers?

My possessions are causing suspicions but there's no proof.

Then if you wish- here is Mrs. Paul Simon on a Thursday Night. Don't thank me all at once.. heh.

For your enjoyment.. the lyrics are ambiguous. Is it- don't dream. It is over or Don't dream it is over..

How do we even know that's actually what God intended to "demand" or commend, or even expect? Hebrews 11:6 NIV 6 And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. I don't see that demand in the verse above. James 1: 5-6 5 If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. 6 But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. Okay, I see it in the James 1 reference. I wonder, however, about that. Wisdom well... I doubt that people become wise that way.

sometimes.

I think people always feel guilty when a loved one or someone close to them commits suicide - but to have to carry the additional guilt because of spiritual lies you were taught at the AC shows in my opinion how harmful religion is.

Your statement is true in the sense that no one is all-knowing, so there are many uncertainties in life. But in Christianity, this is not allowed. God expects (actually demands) believers to have absolute certainty in him and in the "word" he has given them (Heb 11:6, James 1:5-6). IMO, this puts believers between a rock and a hard place - not a healthy place to be in. Now why would an all-loving God want to do this to his children?

San Antonio..... Robin Williams played him..... how about "TEDDY ROOSEVELT"???

This event took place about 6 months after I took the foundational class. (He was an "unbeliever" I had grown up with.) I took the AC about a year later and left for FellowLaborers about 3 years after that. The "what if?" feeling haunted me for a long time.

Damn, this rocks me every time. I know you've mentioned this before, but I can't remember if your roommate was in FL with you.

Are you sure about that?

While I am all about curiosity and continuous learning, sometimes we have to accept uncertainty.

Yes although yet another label there seems to certainly be some level of restraint that a Creator has in day to day intervention. Is it a big bang then see you approach? Is it a God talks to me every day cheering me up writing patterns in my cornflakes approach? I see that as the two extremes of possibility and reality likely lies between the two. I think the battle of Armageddon is supposed to be an arena where there is no restraint to the spiritual realm but an all out battle. Until then there is a restraint on both sides. So there is no justice in this world and bad things happen to good people. Whether you believe in a spiritual realm or a Creator or not it appears the same reality is faced regardless of belief. My thoughts for the .05 worth lol.

Yes. I agree with Raf in the sense that it's better to not believe in God at all then believe in a god that is absent and does not care. On the founders, I have a book called "In God We Trust: the Religious Beliefs and Ideals of the Founding Fathers: Cousins, Norman: 9780764709562: Amazon.com: Books" that gives many quotes and illustrates that some "deists" may not be the deists some think.

Deism from the Latin term deus, meaning "god") is the philosophical position and rationalistic theology that generally rejects revelation as a source of divine knowledge and asserts that empirical reason and observation of the natural world are exclusively logical, reliable, and sufficient to determine the existence of a Supreme Being as the creator of the universe. More simply stated, Deism is the belief in the existence of God (often, but not necessarily, a God who does not intervene in the universe after creating it), solely based on rational thought without any reliance on revealed religions or religious authority. Deism emphasizes the concept of natural theology—that is, God's existence is revealed through nature. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism Any thoughts on this?

OldSkool posted his website in his OP. Here is a more updated one as well as one for his videos of the prophesies. He's up to over 1300 views now. https://www.eyesupandopen.org/index.php/prophecies-from-jesus-christ https://www.youtube.com/@spiritofprophecy777 Sorry, you'll have to copy and paste to see them.

Thomas Jefferson (yeah, THAT one) did a cut and paste of the gospels that eliminated supernatural references, including the resurrection. This is not surprising, as he was a bit of what we might call a deist.

What a horrible thing to have experienced Waysider. It sounds like you were in twi when this happened because you wrote about feeling guilty over not trying to raise your roommate from the dead. You also mentioned about not having the believing to do so which sounds like twi's teaching of the law of believing. We believed in such spiritual abilities as taught by twi, but how many were actually performed by vpw or lcm? Did we even think to wonder about that, or were we too caught up in our own personal call to do them? As you know, I have come to accept that the bible, OT and NT, was written by men, possibly for political reasons (not completely sure of this). So I'm curious to know why the four gospel writers included the miracles that the person named Jesus did like walking on water (along with Peter doing so too), feeding over 5000 people with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish, raising the dead, etc. if the truth was they never happened. Was it to make the miracles of this son of a god greater than the works claimed to have been done by other gods believed in at the time? Perhaps John hints at this in chapter 9:32 Since the world began was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind. 33 If this man were not of God, he could do nothing. All the earlier gospels recorded Jesus healing the blind, but only in John, which was the last gospel written, was there this record of healing a man born blind.

I've never in my life experienced a more intense feeling of depression and hopelessness than I did those 2 weeks at the AC. Hearing about suicide supposedly being caused by a devil spirit certainly didn't help the situation. I had one of those confrontations with death, also, though it happened before I took the AC. My roommate had talked of committing suicide. When I found him he was already dead. I felt guilt and shame for years for not trying to muster the believing to raise him from the dead. I can't erase the pain it caused me then, but I can live my life now without feeling guilt about it.

A drop in the bucket compared to your number and all of the others . It's totally insignificant that the first time I've noticed my number in I don't know how long, it was at 666, or is it ? Have a great day Rocky!

Now it's 667. Has to do with the number of posts/comments you make, I think.

I just noticed I have "666" under my "C." Mmmph Good thing I've deconverted

For decades, I've only had this one disturbing memory of my entire time at the AC, and the posts above have finally put it into context. (Thank you both for writing them.) That context being the focus on the adversary and devil spirits. My memory is vague but I do know I was feeling very bad about myself and so I went into hiding. I don't remember for how long or where I went but I do know it was an intense feeling. I needed to get away from everyone. I no longer believe in devil spirits but at that time I obviously did, and I think now I may have believed I had one. I don't remember finishing the class but when I did and returned home, a lot of activity was going on in my life. I learned right away about a man I had signed up for the class had just died suddenly, and my first reaction was to go and raise him from the dead. Seriously! I was so sure I could do this, I had to be talked out of it by a believer who was with me at the time. She had been my WOW coordinator and was then in the way corps. I also told my fiance that I wanted to go wow - a decision I made during those 2 weeks - and he agreed (reluctantly he later told me). Soon afterward we got married and within a week left for the ROA and went into the wow program. Within the first month of being on the wow field, I had a total breakdown. That intense feeling of self-condemnation that I had at the AC returned, I think because I was finding my wow commitment to be so overwhelming. But quitting the assignment meant we'd be outside of god's protection and therefore open for terrible things to happen to us which included my innocent one-year-old son. My husband and I did leave both the wow program and twi and eventually things settled down in my mind. But all this manic-depressive-like behavior started with that AC - the need to hide from others, deciding to go wow, the conviction I could raise someone from the dead, the rush of the ROA and wow training and finally the crash on the wow field. What insanity! But it didn't stop me from returning to twi a couple of years later.