Posted on 06/18/2012 10:21:11 PM PDT by jongaltsr
A lot of people report the same feeling and the same lights.
There must be something to it.
Since I have a STRONG belief in God (mine is a cosmic God which even the bible references), I see things others don’t and experience things that others can’t always accept.
Some people can’t accept anything unless they can actually reach out and touch it.
Lighten up my F****g A$$
I’m serious as hell.
Maybe you need to lighten up and start paying attention to things other than that which is right in front of you.
Go out and experience life. Experience thought. Experience other possibilities other than what is right under your nose.
FYI - Viking is a Verb not a Noun.
Norsemen is the proper term you are looking for.
Norsemen went a Viking - which means Norsemen when “Raiding and Plundering”.
On that point, I am 100% in agreement with you.
--H.L. Mencken, The Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920
I am not sure what you mean by a "cosmic God". I, myself, believe that God is primarily way above and separate from His creation (the cosmos), but chose to interact with us, and even become one of us, because He loves us. His ways, though, are way beyond our understanding. It is enough that we know Jesus, and grow in understanding of Him, primarily through reading The Bible, prayer and by experiencing His loving interaction in our lives. We know that He is just and sin must be punished, but He made a way for us to be saved. We are saved by accepting His Son Jesus who died in our place on the cross, thereby paying the sin debt we owed. God is all about love, loving Him, and loving each other. Love and life are beautiful! Praise The LORD!!!
John 3:16 For God so loved the world (cosmos), that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
You’ve been around here long enough to know that throwing insults and name calling don’t really work to advance your point of view. Then again, maybe you don’t care.
And expansive open minds know that what may be unexplained in ones own sphere of experience may have a logical explanation to more learned scientists.
Boy are your correct. I run into such people almost on a daily basis......
I have been around long enough to know that some people fight anything but "conventional" thought and rely on accepted norms of thought processes. To those I throw a slap in the face to try and stimulate their thought processes.
Sometimes it works and sometimes it fails. People are afraid to think new and creative thoughts without being pushed to do so. They prefer to remain ignorant.
Since I have a STRONG belief in God (mine is a cosmic God which even the bible references)
I am not sure what you mean by a "cosmic God". I, myself, believe that God is primarily way above and separate from His creation (the cosmos), but chose to interact with us, and even become one of us, because He loves us. His ways, though, are way beyond our understanding.
The rest is conjecture and affords no absolute proof (But) it does provide people comfort and that is important to them.
To me, I accept that Jesus probably existed and that he was a good man (maybe even a GREAT man but there were also a number of others who competed for Messiah during that period.
If Jesus was such a great man he would have written down his doctrine and not relied on people who write 20 or more years AFTER THE FACT to get around to actually putting pen to paper.
I would love to go back in time to meet Jesus as well as the other contenders and make a decision as to their authenticity.
So said the man to the tree, but the tree never answered, but the man didn't know the difference and was only aware of his own existence and nothing of others and their thoughts and experiences.
Poor fool. --- and he will always remain a fool until he opens his mind and his eyes.
Keep the faith. Thought I do not have proof positive, logic and some documentation (verbal, video and such) are proving that there IS something out there that can not be absolutely proven true or false.
In my humble opinion, much of it is more true than otherwise illusions of delusional minds.
I NEVER say for certain that little green men exist. I do say that they may exist but until I get definitive proof one way or the other, I will keep wondering and keeping my mind open to all possibilities.
Can you say the same thing?
Will MOST people be willing to say the same thing or will they just accept standard conventions and ridicule those who are open to alternative possibilities?
Yes I have been stuck in swamp muck. I explore therefore I occasionally get stuck or lost but I learn from my experiences.
I actively seek out the odd and unusual and try and make sense of it all.
You sound like one who sits around and watches "Vanity Celebrity programs" and think they are bright, educated and have great views on life.
Shallow is as shallow does.
Jesus is The Son of God, and also absolutely amazing. I will pray for your salvation. God bless!
So you met him. What was he like?
Does he look like the pictures we have had passed down to us through the centuries?
Did he ever learn to write? He obviously never wrote any of the Chapters in the Bible. Paul wrote most of them.
Mathew, Luke and John were the disciples that did write about his life but that wasn't until almost 20 years after Jesus death.
Why did they wait so long to get around to providing his followers, "First Hand" information from those that knew him best.
Paul did but to my knowledge Paul NEVER even met Jesus.
How come none of Jesus family ever wrote even the most minute information about him. I'm sure they could write somewhat and if not they could always find a scribe to write what they wanted to pass on to future believers.
I know you take everything on belief and faith but reasons and facts are the stuff that a real son of God would have undertaken so that his life could properly be documented and that there could be no dispute as to his very existence.
Like I said earlier - I do believe in the existence of God. I base that not only on human longing and desires to try to understand "why" and "how" they came to being, but also because there is something deep down deep inside us which keeps asking the question - Who is God, Where is God, How did God come into existence in the first place and why is man so occupied from our first cognitive thought to our dying breath if god exists and what form does he take?
I know God MUST exist because I have studied the structure of our brain and though I don't know all that is possible to know, I realize that if one looks at a 3 dimensional replica of the Universe, there is no difference in structure that is perceivable. Kind of like the fact that each human brain is a slight variability from all others.
The structure of the universe is so perfect (as far as we can tell at this point in our evolution) that we know or suppose that the rules of physics the regulate our lives here on earth must be exactly like those throughout the entire universe.
Only a True God could accomplish such a feat. Since the universe did apparently evolve from a tiny speck to what it is today, that indicates that God must have evolved with the growth of the universe - and that would have given him Many Millennium to develop as a superior entity where as "We" have only had only a few thousand years (hundreds, thousands, even a million years - which is nothing as compared to the development of the universe) and we have not had even a speck in the perspective of time to even get to the point where we are today.
As far as all of your other questions don't worry about them. If The LORD had thought it best to write Himself, He would have. God's business is to allow many things to be clouded so as to cause people who find Him, to find Him first with their hearts, rather than through their intellect. This by no means that believing in God through His Son Jesus Christ is not perfectly intellectual, it just means that it is His desire that you approach Him with your heart first, rather then first with your intellect. That doesn't mean that your intellect isn't involved, it just means that many people, including and such as the pharisees of Jesus' day on earth were unfit to meet God, as they were self righteous and not interested in a deep and loving relationship with God, so God has ways of keeping people like this in darkness, not making things too easy for them.
The LORD actually could have written a rule book and an easy A - Z step by step instruction as to how to find Him, but He didn't. He wants you to seek Him with your heart. The Bible declares that if you seek Him with ALL of your heart, that you will find Him.
As an atheist, I decided to put this saying in The Bible to the literal test, and set out one December night, around midnight, with only some change in my pocket, which I later threw out, and my sister's dog, because he was barking and was going to wake up my family, who would have stopped me from going out alone into the night, in search of God. I did not think that He even existed, but just in case, what did I have to lose. If there was no God, which I thought, I could have an answer to those pesky, naive Christians that were bothering me with The Gospel, and likely their prayers. I would declare to them, "I did it. I searched for your supposed God with all of my heart, literally going out in search of Him, and viola, NOTHING!!!!" Also, I understood that in the slight case that God existed, which I highly doubted, I certainly felt it would be worth my life to find Him. Would I die, or got raped, or would something horrible happens to me, being a little, good looking 19 year old young woman wandering about the Country? I realized I was at risk going about the Country alone without money, not even knowing where I was going, or what kind of trouble I might get into. I felt that even if I did die, what did it really matter? It would just be sooner than later that I vanished, and simply returned to the dust, and the risk, even if their was just the slightest chance of there being a God, was worth it.
Long story short. God found me way on the other side of the Country. He communed with me. When He told me what He wanted me to know, it was not with a voice, but rather with His Spirit, to my spirit. I understood exactly what He was saying. That night I received things from Him that I would not understand until years of reading The Bible. Later that same night and in the days soon after, I was given visions of things that are in The Bible that I didn't know were in it, as I wasn't a reader of it, but a little. I had read some of it the night I went out, to see if there was anything to this silly God thing, which I found out was as far from silly as anything possibly could ever be. I could write a book about my journey finding God and what happened when I found Him. But, of course, this is only my testimony, subjective to others, but absolutely real.
I have only written to you a small amount about what happened, and what, and how God revealed to me many things. The most important thing that God The Father revealed to me, by communicating to me by His Spirit, was that Jesus Christ is His Son, who did die for me on the cross, and rise from the dead. I had to admit to Him that I was a sinner. I let Him know that I believed that Jesus did die for my sins, which while being personally communicated to by God Himself, at this point, I totally believed. I put my trust in Jesus and His death for my sins. Different things happened at this point that would take maybe a small book to explain, but suffice to say, I accepted Jesus as my personal Saviour and LORD, and was saved.
As an atheist, there was always a feeling that the only connection I had with the universe was my being a material thing and the universe being material. It was actual a lonely feeling. After I was saved, to this day, that feeling is only a memory. My entire life was transformed and I am always, without trying to at all or imagining it, aware of an entirely different universe, one that is full of The Spirit of God. It is a totally different reality, one I am very thankful for, it is the constant and abiding presence of The LORD's Spirit in my life.
In the hours to come, directly after I was saved, The LORD God showed me that believing in The Trinity was right, good and paramount. He showed me that I was now clothed in Jesus Christ. He showed me a vision of Moses who brought the law, which was us trying to reach up to God, and a vision of Jesus Christ, who was God reaching out in love to us. He showed me the river of life, and New Jerusalem. He showed me all kinds of things, which I had little to no understanding of at that time, until I began to study and learn from The Bible.
I know that you cannot go by my word and my life experience with The LORD, and would not expect you to. You must find out for yourself who God really is, and what it is that He requires of you. Do this by seeking Him and truth with ALL of your heart. He will meet you. He will reveal to you the truth about Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son. Don't take my word for it, though, but please find out for yourself, from Him. He is there right now, where you are. Ask Him to help you to know the truth. He knows who you are, and what it will take for you to find the truth. He will help you if you are really serious about finding the truth, and about wanting Him in your life in a real living way, that you will not be able to deny. But don't expect Him to respond to you if you don't seek Him passionately. He wants your love, life and your passionate heart. That is why he didn't give you easy answers in The Bible. He designed The Bible to reveal your heart and meet your heart's need, which is a loving, passionate relationship with Him, The God of the whole universe.
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