True Spiritual stories...

Originally posted by GregM
When you get to the underworld you won't be able to tell Zeus, "I had no idea you were there! Why didn't you come down and tell us who you were?" I mean, Zeus has had plenty of interaction with us mortals. It's up to you now to accept him or reject him.

[b]To reject God is to reject happiness - unconsciously or otherwise- happiness is not a parcel that God ...[text shortened]... d exists and it really would be much better to accept him. Can't I repent after death?

When you get to the underworld you won't be able to tell Zeus, "I had no idea you were there! Why didn't you come down and tell us who you were?" I mean, Zeus has had plenty of interaction with us mortals. It's up to you now to accept him or reject him. GREG

....and if there really was an underworld I would not be able to say that I had no idea about it. I would be be needing to re-think things and ask myself what it was that I missed along the way. This is unlikely to happen because there is no historical basis for Zeus's interactions since they are widely accepted as mythology. Jesus exists in a far more solid historical form.

Originally posted by GregM
[b]...He gave us His book, it is so simple a child can receive it...

A child can also "receive" ghost stories. Do you believe those? After all, people have actual photographic evidence for ghosts.[/b]

God is a Ghost....just a Holy one.....😉

Originally posted by knightmeister
Warnings of hell are precisely that - warnings- If God is the fulfillment of your hearts desire , the essence of everything good and worthy in life then if one chooses to reject this what is left? You think God creates hell to bludgeon us into loving him?? I'm sure God wishes that hell did not exist and no-one went there. But he created us real being ...[text shortened]... n't. Hell is what happens when one removes himself from the stream of happiness for eternity.

If that were the case, then a person should be able to choose to step into the stream at any point; there should be no moment at which the choice becomes irrevocable. The only thing that changes at death is that, at that point, a soul becomes aware of the truth of heaven and hell, and can understand what he's choosing in a way he did not in life. In life, we can choose to go to hell without knowing we're choosing that, which makes it not a choice at all. So what can be the reason for insisting that we must make our choices when we're alive, except that in life, we don't know the truth of God?

Originally posted by knightmeister
...but it's not as if you are completely ignorant of what God is about and what he has done. The very fact that Christ has entered the world and witnessed to it is a starting point. No man will be able to say " I had no idea you were there lord , why did you not come down and tell us who you were!?"

Or I could say: "God, why did you not find some way to clearly differentiate the true path from the hundreds of paths presented to me? How was I to know that the way of Christ was more correct than the way of the Buddha, or the way of Muhammad, or the way of the Hindu? Each of those faiths claimed that their faith alone was the true faith, just as your followers did; each presented their own very different texts and claimed they were divine truths, as your word claimed to be."

The simple fact is that if God exists, and if the words of the Bible are divinely true, then I'm ignorant of that truth. I've read the Bible, and I'm very familiar with the message of Christianity. But I'm equally familiar with many other religions and many other messages, and among those Christianity does not distinguish itself in any particular way. The honest conclusion I've come to is that many religions exist, all have their ardent followers, and the followers of each honestly believe their faith is perfect and true, and that their vision represents actual truth of the universe. Many claim there are dire consequences for failing to follow their faith. Christianity makes no more objective sense than any of them, so how can God hold any person person accountable for failing to recognize it as true?

Given all that, and everything I've observed about the world, it is intuitively obvious to me that religion consists of a series of stories that men invented, at various times, to suit their needs. I am constantly reminded of this as I look at how religion works.

A person who's heard of Christ can't be blamed for not accepting him, just as you can't be blamed for not accepting Hindu just because you've heard of it.

This minister took his church members out to the lake for a baptism. An old gent walked by and saw what they were doing and he asked the minister if he could have himself baptized. The minister said, of course. So he dunked the old boy, In the name of the Father, and dunked him again, in the name of the Son, and dunked him again, in the name of the Holy Spirit. He looked at the old man and said, "Do you Believe?" The old guy said, "I believe." The minister said, "What do you believe?" The old man said, "That you sons of bitches are trying to drown me."