Love is patient,love is kind,. It does not envy,it does not boast,it is not proud. It is not rude,it is not self-seeking,it is not easily angered,it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects,always trusts,always hopes,always perseveres. Love never fails(Corinthians 13:4-7).
In a nut shell,"Love is willing the good of another."
The Peoples Almanac(1976) did a study of the predictions of twenty five top psychics. The results:"out of the total 72 preditions,66(or 92 percent) were dead wrong"(Kole,69).
The 8 percent could be explained by chance and general knowledge of circumstances.
These are occult practices which claim to conjure up powers from the spirit realm. In many cases they do just that,but it is demonic power. Some of these practices are directly linked to demonic power in the Bible,such as...
Witchcraft(Deuteronomy 18:10)
Fortune-telling(Deuteronomy 18:10)
Communicating with spirits(Deuteronomy 18:10)
Mediums(Deuteronomy 18:11)
Divination(Deuteronomy 18:10)
Astrology(Deuteronomy 4:19; Isaiah 47:13-15)
By comparison a true prophet of God was 100 percent accurate 100 percent of the time regarding prophecies in the Bible. A false prophet was stoned(put to death) if he was not (already stoned) for speaking presumptuosly.(Deuteronomy 18:20)Lol. If this were still in effect today,there would not be too many people today making such claims to give psychic predictions.Lol.
Judging by the character and nature of these practices,this is one road you don't want to travel down my friend.God bless you!
My thoughts and prayers go out to you Calliopesgirl. May God give you the comfort,peace,and perspective that you need during this difficult time,and may your son receive the help he needs,in overcoming his addition. God bless!
Thanks! The mention of the 500 eyewitnessess of the resurrected Christ is proof,that this was no private event,but one that was public for all to verify. God bless you,brother!
For it was fitting for Him,for whom all things and by whom all things,in bringing many sons to glory,to make the "captain" of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For He who santifies and those who are being santified are all one,for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren,saying:
I will declare Your name to My breathren; In the midst of the assembly I will sing praise to You."
And again: "I will put My trust in Him."
And again: "Here am I and the children whom God has given Me"(Hebrews 2:10-13).
"Jesus is the captain of our salvation!" Blessed are those who trust in Him, to steer them through the storms of life.
These are good questions my friend,for I will answer some of them in more detail regarding the authors(eyewitnesses) in my next blog.
The Bible claims to have come from God. The Apostle Paul wrote,"All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is useful for teaching,rebuking,correcting,and training in righteousness"(2 Timothy 3:16).
Not only does the Bible claim to be inspired(the written autographs)but it comes from Spirit moved writers. For prophecy never had it's origin in the will of man,but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit(2 Peter 1:21). David added,"The Spirit of the Lord spoke through me;his word was on my tongue"(2 Samuel 23:2).
So the Bible claims to have come from God through men of God.
The Bible was written by prophets of God. God is the ultimate source of the Bible,but men of God called prophets were instruments God used to record his words.
Prophets of God were confirmed by acts of God, called miracles.
As to where Jesus went after his resurrection the Bible says that he spent 40 days with his disciples giving "convincing proofs" that he was alive(Acts 1:1-3),then he physically went back up into heaven. In the same way he left,he will return(Acts 1:6-11).
Unlike pagan myths,the New Testament is loaded with eyewitness evidence and real historical figures,and it is corroborated by several outside sources.
Secondly, the pagan myth theory can't explain away the empty tomb of Christ,the martydom of the eyewitnessess,or the testimony of the non Christian writings. Thanks, for commenting though.God Bless!
In regards to believing in God, you are absolutely correct in your response! For the bases of faith,does not rest on evidence or reasons, but in who God is(Divine Authority).It's a personal commitment,that bears not on having good evidence or reasons,you just simply believe in God, for who He is. Thanks, for your input!
I admire your consistancy in applying the law of causality to the origin of the universe. For nothing cannot produce something. If the universe had a begininng then reason demands that we ask what caused the universe to begin.
A failure to ask,this question is to avoid the ultimate rational question. God bless!
Though I wish it had never happened, there were some good things that we know about that came out of those terrible events. For example,we came together as a country,we helped those in need and joined as one to stand against the evil of terrorism. We also reflected on those ultimate questions in life and some people gave their life to Christ as a result of 911.
May God's comfort and peace be with those families and friends that have lost love one's on that tragic day!
Yielding to the Holy Spirit gives us the freedom to choose to live out these virtues in and through our lives. For it is through his love, that we are motivated to love freely and unconditionally.
You,however are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit,if the Spirit of God lives in you(Romans 8:9).
Though we may have different perspectives,I appreciate your kindness and level of respect you have shown. For your comments are always welcomed in these discussions.
Inspite of our differences,I apprecite the fact that you humbly seek to try to understand someone, by giving them the benefit of the doubt. This certainly,makes you unique from everyone else,for I can't help but have respect you!
The first law of thermodynamics is sometimes stated:"Energy can be neither created nor destroyed."
In this form the law is often used by nontheists(Atheists)to show that the universe is eternal and therefore,there is no need for God.
However,a more accurate,way to state this law of conservation is that "The actual energy in the universe remains constant."
This says nothing about how energy came to be in the universe. It has no power to theorize about wheather God could bring new energy into the system if he so wished.
It is a statement of obeservation that energy does not disappear,and no more has been seen popping into existence from nonexistence.
The statement "Energy can neither be created or destroyed" Is a philosophical assertion,not a scientific observation. For this statement expresses a philosophical dogmatism,for it is not supported by observation.
As far as we can observe,no new energy is coming into existence,and no actual energy is going out of existence.
As such,the first law supports neither a theistic or nontheistic worldview. It does not claim that energy is eternal,so God is unnecssary. But neither does it claim that God endowed the system with energy at any point.
It simply affirms that right now the actual amount of energy,(however long it has been here) is not changing.
But the Second Law of thermodynamics is a whole other story. It can be stated:
"The amount of usable energy in the universe is decreasing."
It is being changed,the dynamics part of thermodynamics,into unusable heat energy,the thermo part. Notice that this law does not infringe on the First Law;it amplifies it.
If energy is constant,why do we keep needing more electricity?
The answer is that entropy happens. The second law states that "overall,things left to themselves tend to disorder." Overall,the disorder is increasing.
The entropy -that is,the disorder of an isolated system can never decrease. When an isolated system(such as the universe) achieves maximum entropy,it can no longer undergo change,for it has reached equilibrium. We would say it's run down.
So if the universe is running down, then it cannot be eternal. Therefore, the universe had a Cause.
The fact that the universe is running out of usable energy and heading toward disorder is not even up for debate.Lol.
This is a good question in regards to weather God is one or many?
There is an infinite God,and that every finite being needs a cause, and that the ultimate cause must be infinite, because if it were finite it too would need a cause.
So you ultimately have to get back to a infinite bases for the finite. And you can't have two infinite beings because...
If you had two beings who are absolutely perfect as the Christian theistic God is,then in order to differ,one would have to have some perfection the other one didn't have.
But if one lacked the perfection,it would not be absolutely perfect!
Therefore,He wouldn't be God.
One can only have one infinite being. One infinitely perfect being. You can only have one ultimate. That's why there can't be many!
If by "prove" you mean "give adequate evidence for" or provide good reasons for,"then it would seem to follow that one can prove the exixtence of God and the truth of Christianity.
In one of my next blogs I will provide the evidence to demonstrate that God exists.
I notice that you mentioned Kant,and if your beiefs are based in his teachings then I can see why you would be left in the dark in regards to what we can know in regards to both faith and reason. For if Kant's philosophy is right,then there is no way to know anything about the real world,even empirically verifable things!
For example,suppose you were looking out the window at a tree. Kant is saying that the tree you think you are looking at appears the way it does because your mind is forming the sense data you're getting from the tree. You really don't know the tree in itself;you only know the phenomena your mind categorizes about the tree. In short,you "Kant" know the real tree in itself,only the tree as it appears to you.
Whew! Why is it the average person on the street doesn't doubt what he sees with his own eyes,but supposedly brilliant philosophers do? Lol.
Kant's philosophy is bad philosophy,yet it has convinced many people that there is an unbridgeable gulf between them and the real world,and that there's no way you can get any reliable knowledge about what the world is really like,much less what God is like. According to Kant we are locked in complete agnosticism about the real world.
However ,he violates the law of non contradiction. He contradicts his own premise by saying that know one can know the real world while he claims to know something about it,namely that the real world is unknowable!
In effect,Kant says the truth about the real world is that there are no truths about the real world. It's self defeating!
"Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord(Isaiah 1:18).
My purpose in making this blog was to bring balance in helping to understand the relationship between faith and reason.For they are two sides of the same coin. When we try to separate the two,rather than distinqish them, there will always be an unbalance in what we believe,weather your an Atheist or a Christian.
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RE: friendship
A friend can also pick you up when you fall,provided that your fall is not from a high cliff.Lol.Weather we stand or fall, a friend will always be there for you.