Jed
Junior Member
Ruff!
Posts: 54
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Post by Jed on Dec 29, 2009 18:34:18 GMT -5
What is a protestant and what do they stand for?
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sgloe7
Full Member
Check out my site at http://talkalot.netforums.us/
Posts: 125
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Post by sgloe7 on Jan 19, 2010 17:34:49 GMT -5
I'm not sure. hbu?
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Post by Sandy Pines on Jan 19, 2010 20:33:14 GMT -5
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Post by Krashings on Jan 25, 2010 14:33:39 GMT -5
Ok, I respect your beliefs and everything, and don't mean to intrude on the thread, but I some questions.
If god is real, then why are there so many differences in beliefs? Why would anyone have to split off from a church and make their own new church? How do you know which beliefs are real and which aren't? How do you know that Buddha isn't god rather than your Christian god?
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Post by Josh on Jan 25, 2010 15:47:16 GMT -5
All good questions. As a Catholic, here's my response:
God gave us the Church to guide us. When he set up the Church, he said the Holy Spirit would guide it. To this very day, the Holy Spirit guides the Church and her decisions. So, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, who is God, we can know what is real and what isn't. Teachings of the Pope and Bishops are all guided by God. There have been times of human err and heresy, and that is why people split off from the Church, but God has always guided us out of those rough times.
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Post by Sandy Pines on Jan 25, 2010 18:01:45 GMT -5
God gave us free will. We can choose to do what ever we want, what ever the consequences or what ever good will come out of it.
This is sad to say, but not everyone who goes to Church is a true Christian. I myself knew some false believers who tried to secretly wreak havoc in the church. The false believer at hand could feed lies to some people while others may know the real truth, hence the people who knew the real truth split from the rest of the lies. I'm pretty sure the book of revelation talks about this if you ever want to go into study about it.
For this we have the Bible. For some non believers this won't be good enough proof, so I often have to prove that the Bible is true (although this still doesn't work for some people). I apologize, but this response will be long.
Here are some of the reasons why I believe the Bible to be true.
So first, let’s test to see how historically and scientifically accurate the Bible really is. Despite what other people say, the Bible does not contradict scientific laws or history. So let’s start with the scientific facts of the Bible. The Bible has contradicted unproved theories, but properly understood it has never contradicted any proved scientific fact. Yet it has often stated scientific truths centuries before men knew them. While the Bible has been repeatedly proved accurate, those who criticize the Bible have been consistently unable to disprove it. This surely strengthens our faith in other Bible teachings. Isaiah 40:22 reads, “He sits enthroned above the Circle of the earth ….” Isaiah wrote this book between 740 and 680 B.C. when the known theory of that day was that the world was flat. ("circle" = "a circle, sphere" -- Gesenius). How would Isaiah know about the shape of the earth when the theory of the day tried to contradict it? Job 26:7 reads, “He spreads out the northern skies over empty space; he suspends the earth over nothing”. Obviously knowing that the technology in Isaiah’s time was limited to what we have today, how would he have known that the earth wasn’t spinning by being attached to something? This also points that the Bible was God inspired.
Ecclesiastes 1:7 reads, “All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again.” Although this is common sense to today’s generation, think back to the tenth century B.C. They had no clue as to how evaporation or the water Cycle worked, so how did Solomon know?
No one can deny the existence of the universe, right? The real question is: what is the origin of our universe. Well, let’s look at it this way. It is scientifically proven that life only comes from life. Humans will have babies, dogs will have puppies. However, evolution contradicts this scientific proof since it requires dead matter to spontaneously explode and create life.
Every year millions of living things reproduce, and the offspring is always the same kind as the parent. This is exactly what the Bible says. The offspring of dogs will be other dogs, not fish, birds, or people. Evolution, however, teaches that all the present kinds are the offspring of previous different kinds, all the way back to one original life-form. But there is no convincing evidence for this. Living things adapt to their environment, but where is the proof that they produce totally different kinds of living things (fish to reptile to bird, etc.). If evolution was true, there should be many fossils of intermediate "links" between present kinds of living things. However, the "links" are still missing!
Now, to the history of the Bible. The Bible talks a lot about the Hittite Nation. 2 Samuel 11:3 reads, “and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, ‘isn’t this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite?’” Genesis 15:19-21 reads, “The land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.” For years skeptics claimed this nation to be false until in 1906 when Hugo Winckler excavated Hattusa, the Hittite capital. We now know that, at its height, the Hittite civilization rivaled Egypt and Assyria in glory! The Bible says that Israelite slaves built these Egyptian cities using bricks of clay mixed with straw, then clay and stubble, then clay alone (Ex. 1:11; 5:10-21). In 1883, Naville examined the ruins of Pithom and found all three types of brick. Consider these quotations from prominent archeologists: "...it may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a Biblical reference. Scores of archaeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or in exact detail historical statements in the Bible. And, by the same token, proper evaluation of Biblical descriptions has often led to amazing discoveries." -- Dr. Nelson Glueck (Rivers in the Desert, p. 31) "...archaeology has confirmed countless passages which have been rejected by critics as unhistorical or contradictory to known facts ... Yet archaeological discoveries have shown that these critical charges ... are wrong and that the Bible is trustworthy in the very statements which have been set aside as untrustworthy ... We do not know of any cases where the Bible has been proved wrong." -- Dr. Joseph P. Free (Archaeology and Bible History, pp. 1,2,134)
Now, onto the unity of the Bible. The Bible contains 66 books written by 40 different men in over a 1,500 year + time span. But when the writings of these men were collected, there were no contradictions. Paul does not disagree with Moses, John doesn’t disagree with David, etc.
Here’s a good quote from a website. It makes a valid and excellent point. “Some skeptics claim contradictions exist in the Bible, but ask them to produce one! Most will not even try. Usually they have never really studied the Bible, but are taking someone else's word about it. Proper study can reconcile any supposed contradictions that are suggested.”
Now that I’ve gotten the history and scientific law’s of the Bible out of the way, now on to the common sense scientific facts of our own generation. 1.) The earth is sitting at a 23 degree angle and is at a perfect distance from the sun. If the earth were to tilt anywhere from 1 to 5 degrees north or south, or if the world were to move 50,000 miles closer or further away from the sun, the tides of the oceans would be so dramatic that it would flood the whole earth. Not long after the earth would be flooded, the water would freeze (or boil) so dramatically that nobody would be able to be survive. This is screaming 'creator' in my ear because an earth like ours would never have a chance of being created by a small compacted 'atom' or 'force' at such a precise angle in such a vast universe. 2.) There have been people that went on searches for 'Noah's Ark' (The Bible describes that the Ark landed on Mt. Ararat). People have gone searching on Mt. Ararat and have claimed to have found Noah's Ark. There is a petrified wood structure embedded in the mountain (because the wood is at least 2,000 + years old!). There were metal supports and structures found within this boat looking structure. This Boat looking structure also comes close to the measurements of what the Bible describes the Ark to be. 3.) This one is short, sweet, and to the point. If 'Evolution' did exist, there had to be a small 'atom' or 'force of energy' to create an explosion, right? At least that's how the scientists explain it to be. If there was an atom that helped create this explosion to create this whole universe, what created that atom? And what created the thing that created the atom? 4.) If evolution actually had a chance of happening (which I don't believe it did), there would be smaller than a .0000000000000000001 chance of everything happening the way it did. It takes approximately 120 proteins to sustain life. 120 random proteins would have had to randomly form on this random earth that just happens to be at the right angle and right distance from a star. These proteins would somehow have to all join together in one spot of the world. You have just about the same chance of winning the $1 Million lottery 120 times in a row without cheating.
I may have left some stuff out, but oh well.
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ali
New Member
Posts: 20
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Post by ali on Feb 2, 2010 18:17:51 GMT -5
the reason we have so many different "sects" within the church is because we are humans and we aren't perfect, so we disagree. even though the Bible tells us not to let questionable topics separate us, we still argue and separate ourselves from each other. whats important and what makes you a follower of Christ, no matter which denomination you are, is whether or not you believe in and accept Christ as the son of God who died for your sins.
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