Anonymouse - humor me for a moment.  Why are you so difficult to talk to?  We can't have a conversation because all you do is rage and laugh.  What reason have I given you to mock and call me names? 

jcgadfly wrote:

Fonzie wrote:

Anonymouse - humor me for a moment.  Why are you so difficult to talk to?  We can't have a conversation because all you do is rage and laugh.  What reason have I given you to mock and call me names? 

Persecution complex much?

 

No, just no substance from your side to reply to. 

I have just been sharing the fact that though faith and fellowship with Christ has been given up on by several on this forum it gets brighter and brighter each day for me - and this is another day. 

You haven't given me anything to respond to concerning this - only mocking and name calling.  You are producing a vacuum in this discussion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fonzie wrote:

jcgadfly wrote:

Fonzie wrote:

Anonymouse - humor me for a moment.  Why are you so difficult to talk to?  We can't have a conversation because all you do is rage and laugh.  What reason have I given you to mock and call me names? 

Persecution complex much?

 

No, just no substance from your side to reply to. 

I have just been sharing the fact that though faith and fellowship with Christ has been given up on by several on this forum it gets brighter and brighter each day for me - and this is another day. 

You haven't given me anything to respond to concerning this - only mocking and name calling.  You are producing a vacuum in this discussion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You've had plenty to respond to - you've elected to preach instead.

No one is mocking you - your ignorance and willful disregard of what people post, that's a valid target.

It works for you, cool. Many have tried it and it hasn't worked for them. Your response is that they weren't doing it right because they weren't doing it like you.

If you know Jesus as well as you claim, you'd be able to introduce him to us. Instead, you come off as "I'm better than you because my belief in Jesus makes me feel good."

Sometimes I wonder if you and God have ever met. You're not acting as he would (according to your own Scripture).

Anonymouse,

It's not my job to untie the knots of skeptics - they just tie more.

I am just delivering the message of the gospel not disputing about it.

Believe in Jesus or die - that's an eternal fact.

You want to know if my imitating Jesus goes so far as to imitate his trade - I suppose everybody thinks they know something about carpentry.  They will pretty much leave you alone with the electrical however.  I don't have people wanting to stick their nose in my electrical work.

I could take your posts line by line and easily make up a smart aleck remark.

I hope you don't think that's an accomplishment on your part. 

1. This is Mephistopheles? The posts seemed a little more coherent than before.

2. Well at least I know I'm not just a legend in my own mind.

Fonzie/Meph, I actually kind of like you. I just wish you'd look at what people have to say instead of dismissing it out of hand.

 

NigelTheBold,

 

What gets you kicked off the atheist website?  Knowing what you believe?  Saying something works if you persevere and encouraging violent seriousness in a direction other than swirling in nothingness?  Is it challenge to insecure blindness? 

I invite the reader into the now of Christ Jesus.  Past paid for - future not feared, and present shared with Holy Spirit lighted communion with God and Christ and those in Christ.  

I'm saying it's great and it's going somewhere you would want to go if the god of this world hadn't blinded your eyes and put a triple guard defense to keep you from the gospel.  Christ is the image of God but Satan is the ape of God - he imitates and mocks God.  You are his victim - kept from the salvation of Christ, the abundant life, peace with God, eternal life starting now because knowing Christ IS eternal life.  For one thing, Christ is ONE you wouldn't be bored with for all eternity. 

 

Name me after a meth lab or whatever you want for inviting you to the Feast of Feasts.  It's still there - you just have to downsize your attitude and make Christ Lord of your life instead of yourself.

 

Fonzie

 

 

 

 

 

What gets you booted from the site? Not answering questions put to you and lying about the lack of substance put to you is a good start.

Saying that you're superior to others because you've stuck with your God longer than others without telling people why your God works for you except for the release of endorphins that I can get from chocolate is another good way.

You say it's great but when we ask why you don't tell us anything more than "it's great". Who are you trying to convince - us or you?

If you aren't the user who went by the name of mephibosheth and claim to know nothing about that biblical character - I have to question how much of this Bible you claim is so great you actually know.

jcgadfly wrote:

What gets you booted from the site? Not answering questions put to you and lying about the lack of substance put to you is a good start.

Saying that you're superior to others because you've stuck with your God longer than others without telling people why your God works for you except for the release of endorphins that I can get from chocolate is another good way.

You say it's great but when we ask why you don't tell us anything more than "it's great". Who are you trying to convince - us or you?

If you aren't the user who went by the name of mephibosheth and claim to know nothing about that biblical character - I have to question how much of this Bible you claim is so great you actually know.

 

 

This is all a mischaracterization of my answers, colored by your perception.  I have answered the questions with respect to my original statement.  My answers are like a picture with a road that goes where you won't enter.  I have told you about that road and talked about how you enter through Christ and how great it is.  You reject the road you know nothing about (though you judge that you do though you don't travel it).  You reject the LORD who is the door to that road.  I am telling you the truth that it is great having fellowship with Christ on that road. 

With you I have fellowship with Christ in the way He was rejected and mischaracterize by those He came to save while on this earth physically.

The situation is actually that you have not presented your road.  You have just followed the procedure of mocking and mischaracterizing my road. 

You have not presented any argument for me to answer.  I didn't come on to argue, I came on the site to present to you honestly the road of the grace of God in Christ and how that works for me and will work for you.  You have not presented a road that works for you.  You have just displayed your disdain and distrust of me and the way of salvation I have tried to present to you. 

It isn't just eternal life that starts now in Christ if you follow Christ.  Destruction starts now as well.  One evidence of that is the fact that your eyes are blind to the fact that Jesus is the Son of God and died for your sins and rose from the dead.  If this is veiled to you I didn't make the veil.  Your god has blinded your eyes to it.  It's not because it's complicated or because I'm making it complicated.  It is the result of you rejecting Christ. 

As far as Mephibosheth, I have read some of his posts and can't see why your site kicked him off except for your insecurity or the lie that you want to discuss but don't.  Instead you want to sit around and reassure each other that you are right in this vacuum you have produced.

 

 

 

 

 

jcgadfly wrote:

If preaching answered questions, I'd still be a believer.

I haven't mischaracterized your answer because you've given me nothing to mischaracterize. All you've really talked about is how great your God is. It is not surprising that your God is great for you - you made him that way. If I made a God by cobbling together the parts of the Bible I enjoyed, I'd probably dig him also.

While it is true I've never traveled your road, you have never traveled mine, either. You assume that I have never been down the Christian way because I haven't done it in the exact same way you have. Please lose the martyr complex - if it came to theists like you going through what Jesus had to go through, the line to become Judases would stretch for miles.

You want to know my road? It starts in reality and ends in my death. While I'm on the path I try to help as many of my fellow travelers as I can. This road works for me because this is the only one any of us really have.

Do you do that? Or do you just pray that Jesus will help the people you see that need help and believe you've done something? I'd put money on the latter as your posts have shown that you have never cracked open the Bible you claim to love.

As for meph, I don't know if he was kicked off or just left and came back under a new name because he thought he was kicked off. If the latter, creating sock-puppet accounts will get you booted.

What god has blinded me to your view? It could well be the God of the Bible (that book you've probably never read).

 

JcGadfly,

The OP I am defending is that I am a working model in the sense that the "new creation" and "walking by faith" in Christ is working for me.  I read others like you indicate you have "tried" following Christ and then turned back.  How Great my God is - that is my contention and I aim to defend it to death, though I can't boast about it putting my armor on as if taking it off.

 

It's not at all something I've done for myself as you say create my own God.  My God isn't me and my God's thoughts are far above my thoughts.  I would never have chosen me to allow to live or give the Holy Spirit to if I had been God.  The reasoning all came from His side not mine.  I never made the first creation and definitely never made the "new creation".  But I have not only read about it I have experienced it and I am currently experiencing it.  

 

Your road "starts in reality and ends in death".  I want to answer that line of reasoning with the teaching of Paul that our bodies aren't really us.  We are just living in our bodies like tents, camping out.  We are spirits in tents.  I don't know how the spirit connects up with matter, but we are animated dirt.  I suppose our bones would be like the tent posts and pegs.  We're pretty waterproof but subject to disease and damage.  The eternal things are the unseen things - such as the spirit in the tent.  You are hanging on to the temporary on shore hesitating to hoist sail and venture into the unseen eternal (i.e. permanent eternal world).  Maybe you don't long for the eternal world.  Maybe you are content to eat and sleep like the ox I don't know.  But while I am content in the world in my temporary tent-home, I am not "content with" it.  I can't be satisfied with what this world has to offer.   I long to be with Christ and God, and I have a piece of heaven - the gift of the Holy Spirit - in me.  It's an earnest of my inheritance - which means it's a piece of heaven and I don't have to give it back.  I'll just get more later.  It's great, as I said in my first post.  It's active.  Walking by faith is an active living thing.  You can pose a dead body sitting but it would be hard to make it walk.  (I heard about "Weekend with Bernie).  So you are thus content with the tent huh?  You think your body is the real you?  Nobody else home huh?  Call me picky but I'm not that crazy about this tent forever.  It gets inconvenient after about 80 years I notice - if not before.

 

 

 

GypsyWytch,

I've been thinking about what you said here.

I'm doing nothing more than you telling me about your atheism.

Am I wrong that this site invites "me and my ilk" here to discuss?

... and disdain those who believe in Jesus. 

I wouldn't try to legislate any of those things even if I could.

But I would say to you that I believe you have the wrong impression of Jesus and God and the Holy Spirit.

And I would also say that understanding is good.

Honestly looking at things is good.

Simply driving by and making an obscene gesture, not stopping to understand or consider doesn't make progress either on the individual or corporate level.

I can't deny how walking by faith in Jesus works for me.  I'm trying to share that fact in a reasonable way.

From your viewpoint maybe my experience with God and Christ can't exist but I am saying it does,

and also I can honestly say I don't have any resentment or bad feelings or superior attitude of myself toward you.

I'm at peace with the difference,

but I can't deny that God and Christ and the Holy Spirit and the Living Word of God are all more real to me than anything I can see or touch.

Nothing wrong with discussing ideas - in fact I rather wish you'd start.

The discussions to this point have gone something like this:

You: Jesus is cool!

One of us: Ok - why does Jesus work for you?

You: Jesus is cool!

One of us: Yeah - but why? You're not telling us anything.

You: I've answered you clearly - It's just that the answer leads you to a place where you don't want to go. Jesus is cool!

One of us: Some of us have been Christians before...

You: Oh, you just didn't stick with it - If you'd stuck with it for as long as I have, you'd have no problems. Jesus is cool!

One of us: But it says in the Bible that.<fill in reference here>..and you said this <fill in quote here>.

You: You just mischaracterized what I said and have a flawed understanding of his word. Jesus is cool!

<usw.>

I don't want you to deny your Jesus if he works for you. If you are one of those who needs Jesus to keep him from doing all kinds of bad things, then please Keep the Jesus!

As for Jesus being more real than the visible and tangible - I'd love to see some justification for that (other than "Jesus is cool!" of course).

jcgadfly,

 

Why does Jesus work for me ---

Have you ever anticipated doing something, going somewhere, buying something and it was fulfilling in every way?  I haven't - except for this:  putting my faith and trust in Jesus, what He says, fellowship with Him in
The Spirit.

My wife believes in Jesus too, which makes the marriage like heaven on earth.

I have personally experienced great changes in my life, great security, life is more and more fulfilling, great and greater happiness, more and more longing for Him, more and more anxious to see Him face to face.

I am also able to help some fellow travelers on the way. 

I can't think of anything in my life that Jesus doesn't help and give instruction in, correction of, and make better.

I get guidance in work skills and safety, self discipline, warning about traps of life, light to understand what's going on and what to expect.  I am being helped in this life

and also prepared for death and heaven - the next.  I have a piece of heaven in me that is a guarantee and certified seal of my inheritance.  I am having experiences that match up with some Jesus had, also some vexations He had, also some very close relationships with other disciples like He had, closer and closer fellowship with Him in the Spirit.

  I have no anxieties.  I have no fears.  I look forward to tomorrow with great incentive.  I look back to no regrets.

The Scriptures are a continual spiritual feast and a spiritual GPS to my way.

I'm having success in my business, marriage, relationships with Christians and non Christians.  I have the security of discipline

from God when I need it.

Like you said I am one of those who can't live without Jesus.  I would be the most miserable man ever without Him.  I couldn't imagine it.

As far as Jesus and everything that happened in the Bible being as real to me as if I had been there and more real than things I can see and touch - I'm not sure I can get that across to you, but I'm telling you the truth.

I don't have to work at it - that's the way it is.

The Bible is a miraculous book, unlike any other.  "....living and active, able to divide bone from marrow".  I know that won't do it for you, but seeing the unseen eternal world is a by-product of eating, digesting (meditating on) and applying the Scriptures.

  I'm having the problem here of talking colors to a man born blind.

The LORD opens your eyes to see the unseen.  The wicked walk in darkness, they don't know what they are stumbling over.

Sorry JCGadfly, I'm just hitting a wall as far as describing it.

How would you describe color to a man born blind?