Re: Atheists support evolution because evolution supports their


"chris thompson" <chris.linthompson@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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On Oct 21, 2:04 am, "Suzanne" <shil...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"chris thompson" <chris.linthomp...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

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On Oct 14, 9:37 am, "Suzanne" <shil...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"chris thompson" <chris.linthomp...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

(snip for brevity only)

Is there any reason to think that we need to trust another person on
the question of deities, and if so, is there a reason to think we
should trust you (or any theist) as opposed to Richard Dawkins, or
some other atheist?

Chris

I presume you are speaking of my belief in Christ to
be the Savior?...
I think there is a good reason why you should trust
what I've been telling you that I believe. . In the first
place, I've been telling you the truth. If you put your
trust in what I've placed my trust in, and then found
out later that it was not true (which you won't), you
would have lost nothing at all. But if you put your
trust in what people who oppose my beliefs say that
they believe, and find out later that they were wrong,
you would have lost much.

So in essence, I should trust you because you say so.

Not exactly. Something should take place
within you when someone speaks to you about salvation.
The Holy Spirit has a compelling way of working in a
person's innermost being and the person knows he is being
called by the Lord to himself, and that he wants you to trust
him. At least that was my experience.

And here I was hoping God had faxed you some explicit
instructions...You know, combine 'A' with 'B' and 'C', mix at high
temperatures for 2 hours then give it a cold break, and voila! A cure
for HIV. Now THAT would be deserving of worship, perhaps.

: ) Sometimes he does give explicit instructions as to
what to say to someone. Usually he will place the thoughts
in a person's heart to know what to say to a person about
him, when he wants me to do that.

But "trust me because I say so" doesn't quite carry the same weight,
does it?

I am not saying trust me because I say so. I am saying put
your trust in him. That's different. I'm making a distinction
between believing about something, and in trusting in it,
in other words. You can believe a chair will hold you up,
but you don't demonstrate that you believe it if you don't
sit in the chair. It's like that when a person puts their trust
in God. It's a decision to accept him for being your savior,
and deciding to rely upon him to lead you.

In essence, we're just back to Pascal's Wager, and that's a sucker's
bet. Know why? Because you're saying follow Jesus, the Muslims are
saying follow Allah, the Rastafarians are saying have a toke, the
Satanists are saying follow Satan, and the Santarians are telling me
to kill little animals while the Buddhists are telling me to never
kill little animals. Meanwhile, there's some Christians telling me
we're doing God's Work (tm) when we slaughter thousands of people but
other Christians are telling me life is sacred. Given the history of
Christianity a lot more people follow the first tenet than the second.

You are trying to figure this out intellectually, above...
But God is a spirit and he will reach you through your
spirit..your innermost self.
I can tell you my experience and this is how it happened
to me when I realized that he wanted me to accept him:
Something has to happen inside of you. The Lord will
give a feeling of conviction that you are lost without
accepting his son. That is the witness of the Holy Spirit.
He may cause you to have this tapping in your heart and
that is him kocking at the door of your heart (innermost being).
That's the Holy Spirit working within you to put your trust
in him.

And what if you're all wrong and when I die, there's (a) nothing at
all, or (b) some other god who's really pissed I didn't follow HIS/HER/
ITS improbable, internally-inconsistent, incomprehensible scripture?

My experience is that immediately the Holy Spirit was given
to me, and he gives joy, assurance, direction, and all kinds of
help. In the Bible, there are some that needed people to
place their hands on them and pray for them to receive the
Holy Spirit. Cornelius is an example of a man that immediately
received the Holy Spirit. From then on, the Holy Spirit is always
there, but sometimes you will not be so aware of it, if you are
not in his will. The more you are doing things he wants you to
do, the more you will experience this peace and joy that he gives.

Suppose I die and there's Coyote standing there in front of me,
smirking, and the last thing I hear before I get tossed into the
Volcano of Eternal Agony is, "April Fool, shithead"?

I'd say I've lost quite a lot.

Chris

I can explain this. It's a deep kind of theology. But
when Christ died on the cross to pay with his shed
blood for the sins of all, if a person receives him on
that basis, then God imputes Christ's righteousness
upon him. This is what the churchy expression means
that says "he's covered by the blood of Christ." That
means you no longer, in God's eyes, live in your own
faulty righteousness, but you live with Christ's sinless
righteousness covering you. If you break that idea down
further, this is what you get from the scriptures...

When Christ died on the cross for the sins of all people,
his sinless blood became their atonement. He becomes
"the Redeemer." To be redeemed, means that something
is "bought back." So, if a person puts their trust in Christ,
and trusts his death on the cross to be the payment, the
atonement for all of his sins (all - past, present, future),
then the blood of Christ has an efficacious quality for
that person that has received him. That means that even
though Christ had to do this only once, he is as a
freshly slain lamb each time you may sin. It is automatic
and perpetually an ongoing thing that your sins are
continually cleansed from you, if you have trusted
totally in Christ and his atonement for you. Jesus only
had to do that once for all. He, himself, becomes our
permanent Passover. He is the propitiation for our
sins. That means he took our place on the cross to
pay for us what we could not do for ourselves. See
note at bottom*. That's why he is called by John,
"The Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the
world." He didn't die just for believers, though. He
died for all, so that all will wake up again from death.
He undoes what Adam's sin did to the human race. The
wages of Adam's sin was death, and that means that
he became mortal. We are all born mortal, of course.
Because of this, all will be resurrected, but not all
will live with him in Heaven. This is what the New
Testament teaches. There is a Bible verse for each
of these ideas presented.

* about the propitiation. God decreed that Adam
would "double die" if he ate of the forbidden fruit.
In the Hebrew, the word for die is double. It says
"You shall surely die die." Meaning that you
would die permanently dead. But immediately in
Genesis 3:15, God promised the Savior when he
promised the seed of the woman would be born
in the future that would be the undoing of the
Serpent, who we find out later in the Bible is the
devil. So, Christ becomes the safety between us
and God's wrath against sin. The Ark of Noah is
a picture of this. The ones inside the ark were
spared the wrath of God, which was the flood,
itself. The word in the Hebrew for the pitch, which
is the tar that was slathered inside and outside of
the Ark, kept out the flood/God's wrath. The
very word used in the Hebrew for "pitch" is exactly
the same Hebrew word that is used elsewhere in
the Bible for "atonement." So Christ becomes the
Ark of Safety for the believer. (Heb. "Kaphar")

Suzanne

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