AUselessServant

If I insulted you, then I apologize, because your post makes it appear as if I somehow insulted you. Anyways, may God bless you. Regarding freedom, people often do not understand true freedom. We can get philisophical about this... When you where born, your dna/genes gave you a set of charactaristics and you are the 'slave' of these charactaristics. The fact that someone likes salty food more then sweet food is not his choice made in freedom, its determinded by his genes. In fact, every desire we have has such roots. The desire to sin comes from our ancestor Adam. For example: - A hetero male cannot not desire females, if he would CHOOSE not to look at girls when walking on the streets, he would not be able to do so (I invite all hetero males here to try to do that, for 1 week CHOOSE not to desire or think about girls...see if you are truely free). But through Jesus Christ one can get true freedom and really choose to desire or not. Jesus can set us free from any desire, but leaves us the choice to desire or not, so one who knows Jesus is no longer a slave of his desires, but can choose his desires. - Can a person choose not to have bad/evil thoughts? Can a person choose to love his enemy? Every time a person sees or hears about his enemy, in him wrath and hatred will work...is this person free? True freedom is through Jesus Christ, He sets us free from any desire and we can then choose what we would like, anyone who does not know Jesus cannot choose his desires, he inherets them and is a slave of them. Humans cannot: not hate, lie, steal, insult, desire, kill etc. While some will not do it externally, they will perform these things in there hearts. Dante, since you and Eras seem to have some issues, I would like to know the following: Can you, in your freedom, choose to love Eras as you would love a dear friend? Meaning, have nothing against him in your thoughts/heart and simply have a feeling of love that one has for a close friend? If you cannot, then you are not free, because you cannot do what you want. But in Jesus Christ this is possible. By the way, any Christian who cannot do any of the above things, needs to get to know Jesus and His truth, if you are not truelly free, then you do not know the truth, but you can learn and become free.

Its not tyranny, you have the choice, to live with God or without Him. The thing is...your spirit will be miserable (=hell) without God, as He is the source of life. But the choice is yours. God could easily force every human being, including you, to worship Him, but He has given us free choice and allows us to choose to worship Him or not. Because He only wants followers who follow Him out of a pure heart, that is why He gave His son, so that we would see and understand His love and love Him back. Think about it...would you give your son to safe someone who hates you? Keep in mind that for a parent its easier to sacrifice oneself than to sacrifice his child. Anyways, afterlife is quite simple...to live with God or without Him. Without Him its hell, you will live forever there, or you can live with Him who didn't spare His son for you. Its a choice we make. Regardless of what we would like to believe, this is the truth. I say this, not because someone convinced me, but because I have met Christ and live with Him. Many people would like life to end after death, thats the easy way out...no judgement, you can sin as much as you like and then it all ends and thats it. This desire will result in a search for arguments that we somehow cease to exists after death. But the truth is simple, we see creation and thus there is a creator (a table didn't evolve from a tree, someone made it, no one would argue that it evolved from a tree naturally). Since there is a creator, we have to answer to Him and He decides how we spend eternity...and remember, thats a long time.

I would like to comment on eternity and boredom. God is a living God, or else He wouldn't be God...logical right? If God is living them we can have live contact with Him on earth, those who have this contact know that boredom will never be a problem. When during a prayer God starts to fill you up with His heavinly happiness, your spirit only longs for more and more and does not want to stop the prayer. Now this happiness that God gives here, it only a tiny part of what we will receive in heaven. God has no beginning and no end, thus to we need eternity to enjoy Him and get to know Him. He can fill us with happiness and Godly joy for ever, without losing anything or running out of 'happiness'. Hwi, life is not about having Godly powers and rule around, life is Jesus, its being in His presence, its tasting His love, laying our heads on His chest, enjoying Him, being filled with Him. The desire of Christians should not be to go to heaven so we can enjoy that beautifull place, but to be with Jesus no matter where He is. He happens to be in that beautifull place, so thats a bonus, but assume He would be in a bad place and we would receive no other gits then to be with Him...I would still desire to go there then to go to a heavnly place where there is no Jesus. Paul says 'For me to live is Christ and to die is gain' (Phil 1:21). To live is Christ....think about what that means. God does not expect us to experience His presence and His happiness only in heaven, but His children who know Him, experience it here on this planet, that is why Jesus says that the kingdom of God is inside of us, we can live heavenly life on earth, to taste it, so that we know what we are getting...I encourage everyone to long for this expierence and taste that God is good. Since we are talking about eternity, I would like to share some thoughts. Eternity is really long...a billion years is very short compared to eternity, so is a billion times a billion years. Our life (70-80 years) is almost nothing compared to eternity...yet depening on how we live here on earth for this extremely short time, we get our spot in eternity. I think its a huge gamble not to believe in God...atleast try to seek for Him, ash Him to reveal Himself to you. If you are sincere, if you don't know and want to find out, God will reveal Himself to you and you will experience His love...remember, its about eternity...thats a very long time...

Only God is good and holy by nature and only He knows what is right and wrong. So morality is defined by God. Any human is evil by nature, we can't help it, but God can change us. I hope we can all argee that hitting and lying are bad. Now when a child grows up and learns to talk he will lie, even if he never has heard a lie in his life...its in his nature. And when another child takes his toys, he will hit, even if he has never seen this happen. Its in his nature. When we look at the teaching of Jesus, we see that He put His finger on the heart of humans. Many sins we do not commit outwardly but inwardly (because we are either afraid or not capable of commiting them outwardly). A few examples: - You hear or see some person doing or saying something bad and in your heart you feel like hitting/killing him. - You desire someone in your heart - In your heart, you consider yourself a better person then others (sin of pride) - In your heart you imagin yourself stealing something valueble. - In your heart you insult someone (but you smile when facing him) - In your heart you hate someone (= sin of killing, you dont kill because you are afraid, incapable). etc. Now these things happen in your heart, they dont bother me, because I cannot see them. I only see a smiling person who is generally nice and helpful, but God sees your heart and will judge you by your heart. If we would look into our heart and thoughts we would see that we are indeed evil and thus we cannot make some moral law having such a nature. Thank God for giving His law to us. Acriku, regarding your reply, the problem is that you do not look at eternity (because you do not believe in eternity). Good looks at eternity and His works are eternal, thus any action He does, He takes into account everything, we only take into account the current moment and judge accordingly, but God takes into account eternity and He judges fairly. Moreover, God knows the future and can act based on that knowledge. I am sure that your morality will not tell you to love and take care of your enemy (=someone who wants to kill you and/or your family). I am sure your morality will not tell you to give your life for such a person, but Gods morality does. I am sure your morality says its okey to insult/kill/deceive/rob someone in your heart, as long as you don't do it outwardly, but Gods morality tells me that my heart has to be clean and that I have to love every human being in my heart, and any thought of insulting/killing/deceiving is bad and should not enter my heart. I am sure your morality puts you above some people, whether that be based on knowlegde, skills, income etc. But God tells me to consider every person better then myself and thus act in humbleness towards every person. I noticed earlier in the discussions that people where talking about each others jobs and incomes and where trying to judge the other based on this, well this is how human morality works, but Gods is different, it holy, its perfect. If you would only consider the commandment that we are to love our enemies, you would see that it is a divine commandment. A human being cannot say such a thing, because the best a human being can say is: love those that love you and ignore your enemies or something along those lines. I am sure you cannot even imagin loving, as you love your friends and relatives, your enemy. This is beyond our nature, but it is possible to imagin and do with the love of God spread out in our hearts throgh His Holy Spirit. Now regarding afterlife, this discussion is relevant for the afterlife. The only reason why you think that killing is bad, is because God wrote His law in your hart. That is also the reason that all people, everywhere, even before people from one country could go to another one, knew that killing, lying, cheating etc. is bad. You cannot say that this is caused by reasoning, because this would mean that some people who are less inteligent should think killing is fine. Of course, knowing that it is bad, it has not resulted in not killing. Many people have chosen to disregard the law written in their hearts, of which their conciousness witnesses and have thus killed, stolen, lied etc. Thank about it, when an animals kills another animal, why doesn't it feel guilt? Because the law of God is not written in their hearts. If we would be evolved animals, then we shouldn't be different from them in this perspective, because conciousness is not an organ that can evolve, its infact something spiritual. So the fact that we know right from wrong and we generally agree that 6 of Gods 10 commandments are right (the other 4 are man-God contact, the 6 I talk about are for man-man contact) no matter where, when and how we are born, we can see that God has written His law in our hearts and that His law is the basis of morality for us. Now this means that when we die, we have to face the God that put His law in our hearts. When we face Him, we cannot say: 'I did not know', or, 'I did not believe'. His law is written in your heart, you have the choose to obey or not to obey, so when you face Him you are without excuse. I appologise if my english wasn't fully correct, english is not my mother tongue, so I hope you will bare with me.

James 1:20 For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. About confession: James 5:16 Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. John 20: 22 And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: 23 Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained. Acts 19:18 And many that believed came, and confessed, and shewed their deeds. Joshua 7: 19 And Joshua said unto Achan, My son, give, I pray thee, glory to the LORD God of Israel, and make confession unto him; and tell me now what thou hast done; hide it not from me. (So we confess to God, but tell it to a man and we hide not)

After reading some recent discussions on this forum I decided to sign up and share a few things. First, to all the Christains on this board...read the Bible correctly, there is a reason Revelation is placed last. Like one of our brothers once told a person who kept talking about Revelation: 'you have been reading the Bible backwards'. Revelation is a complicated book and we see clearly in the book itself that the only one capable of opening the seals is Jesus Himself, so it requires personal contact with Jesus to understand Revelation. But I would advice us all to seek personal contact with Jesus to taste His love and sweetness and to learn how to live a holy life...Revelation will come later. This applies first to me and then to the rest of you. A few more words on the Word of God before moving to the topic of this thread. The Word of God is life and spirit, as Christ said. The Word of God has a Spirit, the Holy Spirit. The word of God has to be used with God's Spirit and not another spirit! When the devil approached Jesus to test Him, he used the Word of God, but he used it with a demonic spirit. In short, he used it to kill, to destroy and not to build up. The true Spirit of the Word of God builds up, it does not insult. Now, on afterlife...this discussion is already quite deep, better to focus on the cross of Christ and His eternal love, but I think it might be useful to look at this issue, as many people have difficulties understanding God's reasons for doing the things He does. One question that has always been raised is...if God is love, why does He allow people to go to hell? First, what is hell? Some say its some place where demons burn you day and night...or something like that. There is nothing in the Bible depicting such a punishment. Hell is simply a place to wait untill the judgement day comes, then those who did not love God will be thrown into the lake of fire. Now, the lake of fire was not prepared for man, but for the devil and his angels (Mat 25:41). God gave people free choice and humans did not choose God. God does not force people to choose Him, but He does put a great effort in convincing people to choose for Him, which we see in the sacrifice of His Son on the cross. The reason why we have wars/deaths and all kinds of other bad stuff is because we did not choose God and God allows us, to do what we want, since that is what we choose for and we choose for wars etc., so don't blaim God. When God created humans, the purpose of man was to live eternally with God and to be filled with His heavenly life. Only when a human has contact with God, he will live according to his purpose and experience true happiness. If this purpose is not met, humans will experience extreme unhappiness. In this world, you can keep yourself bussy, or make yourself think that the emptiness that you feel will be filled by all kinds of things (money, desires, glory etc.). But once you die, you have don't have Jesus nor anything to keep you bussy and you will then feel eternal death, that is hell/lake of fire. There will be no demons that throw you into acid or something like that in the lake of fire...they will be suffering too. So why does God allow people to feel such unhappiness/torture if He loves us? A lot of people have difficulty with this question, but the answer is quite simple, lets look at John 3:16-21: 16For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. 18He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. 21But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God. Note verse 19 and 20, it explains what condemnation is...it is not accepting Jesus, because you love sin over Jesus. Verse 20 goes further by saying that you hate light (=Jesus=God). Now here is the whole problem, people HATE God, thus God puts them into a place where they are not in His presence. However, since humans were made to be with God, they will feel extreme unhappiness/torture/pain or whatever you want to call it. You cannot expect God to take you to heaven if you hate Him. God is not going to force you to be in His presence if you hate His presence. So the reason why God allows people to go to hell is because people HATE God and thus hate the other place called heaven, where there is the presence of God. God is love and wants to save all man, He loves all man, but man has free choice. He loves those who hate Him and gives them many chances to repent...look at your lives, how many times has God sent His word to you? How many times have you rejected it? How many times have you hated light and have you not come to the light? Anyone who rejects Jesus goes to hell, because he/she hates God. If a child hates his parents, the parents can beat him up and lock him up so he stays with them...but is that right? God will not tie you up and keep you in heaven if you hate His presence, if you don't want Him, He will let you go and that is hell...a place where there is no God, no Life, no Jesus and no stuff to keep you bussy so you don't experience the absence of God, that is eternal pain. To all atheists, I would like to share something with you...think with me for a little bit please. If there is a God, He must be alive right? If He is alive, then it must be possible to have contact with Him...right? If He is alive, He can talk, walk, touch, hear etc...right? So that would mean that if we believe in Him and seek Him, we will find Him (He will reveal Himself) and we will experience His presence and His love. I am talking about a real experience...not something that happens in your head, real contact with God, something that takes place in your spirit and heart. God offers this to all who seek Him. Seek God, ask Him to reveal Himself to you, if you are not sure about His existence, that is okey, He can reveal Himself to you, but only if you are truelly sincere in the search for God. Some people say, I prayed and nothing happened, but these people 'prayed' while they were already convinced in their hearts that God does not exist. However, if you are only unsure and would really like to find out, then pray with a sincere heart, ask Him to reveal Himself to you and He will, for He has said: Seek and thy shall find!. And when you find Him, you will not fear hell, but you will find true happiness in your life through Jesus Christ. God is a living God and it is possible to have communion with Him, to experience His presence everyday and to talk with Him and hear Him talk to you. Don't take anything less then real contact with God...many people worship God as if He is dead. Their prayers are like talking in the air, words go out of their mouth, but nothing comes back from heaven, thats not the right way. A real prayer is two way contact, we talk to God and His presence covers us and our heart is filled with joy. I am not telling atheists to kneel down and talk to the air, I am telling you, God is alive, you can experience His presence, have two way contact, seek this and be convinced yourself. I am not telling you to believe because I say He exists, but seek Him, experience Him and believe based on your meeting with Jesus. Just like in John 4 a women goes and tells her towns people about Jesus and when they meet Him, they say the following: 42And said unto the woman, Now we believe, not because of thy saying: for we have heard Him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world. I wish all people could say this :). May God bless you all and shine His light on all of you.