God has supreme authority, control and power over all that has happened, is happening and will happen in the future in all times across all history. God has the right, the authority and the power to govern all that happens in accordance to His divine will. He has the right and the power to achieve His purposes. He is in control of circumstances that dictate whatever He wills to come to pass. He has complete control of everything and there is nothing that happens that is not done by or allowed through His will.
Ali lives in Sydney, Australia.She loves nothing more than pondering the meaning of life over an unusual tea or a glass of wine. She's a true 'creative type' and loves speaking, writing and acting in her spare time.
It’s a “God Thing”
When they moved to meeting at the El Dorado High School Auditorium, that feeling was more present. Blackwood said, though, that there was a bit of work involved with setting up and taking down everything necessary to have a service and Sunday school every week.
"It just feels good to be able to know there's people out there that need stuff and to know that we're getting it to them," she says. "It's a God thing. Every once in a while, over the years, it's like, 'God, I don't want to be here. I don't want to do this anymore. I'm tired of it,' and he keeps saying 'Stay.' This is where he wants me now."
This Independence Day will release Christians from the many sins keeping them entangled. Imagine, no more sickness, no more addictions, no more gossip, no more unkindness, no more anything that does not reflect the positive attributes of the love of our Father God and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Many theologians have studied the return of Christ and have disagreed about the order of when things happen and exactly how they happen. These varied opinions on the return of Christ and the disappearance of believers from the earth have created divisions among believers who desperately want to cling to one decided order of the end times.
A few semesters ago I was trying to talk an SNU student into going on "Commission UntoMexico." The more I pushed and cajoled, the more he backed away. Finally, in exasperation, hesaid to me, "Missions is your thing; it's just not mine."
As new students arrive at SNU, I hope it quickly becomes clear to them that missionsinvolvement is not something expected only of the super-zealous or of the extraordinarilytalented. In early July, Jessica Bohn e-mailed me from her summer Youth in Mission assignmentin the Caribbean: "I don't have much to offer, but God is taking my willingness and movingmightily."
Don't be one of those who get an SNU diploma and move into a career, graduate school orfamily life without ever participating in one of our missions thrusts. Don't graduate from herewithout a photo album full of delightful pictures of little children whose language you do notknow all crowded around you making faces at the camera. Don't be content to graduate fromhere, having merely talked about the church's responsibility for the poor and alienated. Getinvolved in doing something. Craig Shepperd, who graduated from Southern NazareneUniversity and then gave a year of volunteer service to Croatia, recently wrote to universityleaders: "Don't lose the [missions] focus."
Plenty of believers have intelligent rational minds. Unfortunately they are over shadowed by the fundamentalists who believe YEC and all sorts of nonsense while at the same time denying science and trying to force their views into laws and schools. This is what atheists are fighting against, not simply the right to believe in god. Faith is faith, nothing wrong with it, but science is based on evidence and fundamentalism is a dangerous mentality in any religion or belief system. Atheists simply want to be heard. This society has been dominated by the religious for thousands of years where atheists were oppressed. Now they are speaking out. It's not as big a deal as most people think. For every atheist billboard there are tens of thousands of Christian ones.
But better by far, than Hell. In Hell, described as "unquenchable fire" by Jesus, and a "lake of burning fire" elsewhere in the NT, the burning doesn't stop. It goes on and on forever and ever and ever, for all eternity. And based on some passages in the NT, and also what Christians constantly claim, the sure ticket to Hell is to not believe. Anything else, even mass murder, is forgivable through Jesus.
When atheists redicule "personal experience" as proof for God's existence, I have to wonder how they manage to live their own lives. Another term for "personal experience" is "subjective experience". All human experience has a "subjective" component. Its hard wired into us. When the atheist dismisses "personal" or "subjective" experience, he assassinates a large part of his own humanity and remakes himself into nothing more than an instrument whose only use is making observations.
Affection between humans and animals is observable and tangible. I wouldn't pretend to know the motive of the animal, but I suspect it has something to do with the survival instinct, or in the case of dogs, pack mentality.
^Exactly. It's the self righteous att_itude that turns people off to religion. People keep stating it as fact when it's not. They try to find excuses to claim that their faith is not faith. Most theists don't have this att_itude, it's just the fundamentalists giving everyone else a bad name. Most people can admit their religion is faith based, but some people are just so emotionally invested the thought that there is no proof of god or anything in their religion frightens them. When you take an ancient myth as literal truth that's what is going to happen. I mean why don't people hold the same absolute truth mentality when referencing the Egyptian or Greek gods? Why don't they believe that Egyptian mythology is the absolute literal word of Horus? Basically they are stuck in a box and can't even consider thinking outside of it. Honestly, fundamentalism boils down to poor parenting and nothing more. Jesus taught to treat everyone equally and show empathy, even for your enemies, yet 90% of these so called literalists don't even follow that.
^Exactly. It's the self righteous mentality that turns people off to religion. People keep stating it as fact when it's not. They try to find excuses to justify their faith, but hard evidence does not exist. Most theists don't have this mentality, it's just the fundamentalists giving everyone else a bad name. Most people can admit their religion is faith based, but some people are just so emotionally invested the thought that there is no proof of god or anything in their religion frightens them. When you take an ancient myth as literal truth that's what is going to happen. I mean why don't people hold the same absolute truth mentality when referencing the Egyptian or Greek gods? Why don't they believe that Egyptian mythology is the absolute literal word of Horus? Basically they are stuck in a box and can't even consider thinking outside of it. Honestly, fundamentalism boils down to poor parenting and nothing more. Jesus taught people to treat everyone equally and show empathy, even for your enemies, yet most of these so called literalists don't even follow that.
Such experiences are dismissed becuase subjective divine, psychic experiences are as unquantifiable and undemonstrable as a schizophrenic hallucination, and yet some believers want to offer them as tangible proof of the truth of their beliefs.Religion is an ultimately unprovable hypothesis by its very belief-based nature. Religion is a belief, and belief is inside our heads. Subjectivity is special, but it is not separable from objectivity without creating a serious problem.The people with the need to prove their belief these are the ones who leave behind them warped school systems and thwarted arts and science funding.The world doesn't work how we want it to work. The world is. We can only describe it, and chronicle its workings. God is an explanation for the reason behind the Universe's existence, something which is unknowable and has no relation to what happens in the Universe.
Yep, Piccolo humans are things, subject to the laws of physics, made from flesh and blood from elements cooked in the stars. God has gifted us a soul in my belief, but that is in addition to the body.And God did not create himself, He is not a thing. How He came to be is a mystery. Not sure if "I am, that I am" is a biblical quote or just from the movie, but that is as much explanation as I've seen. But I don't see a problem with the possibility once you think outside of the limits of laws He created for His creation.
I understand that that is your belief, but it makes no sense. You said that the original intelligence did not have to be created. Why? Why did it not have to be created, yet all other intelligence requires creation? It's a self refuting argument. Anyways, technically humans are not things, they are biological intelligent beings. If you are suggesting a being outside of the natural universe exists, the burden of prove is on you to show the evidence for god OR even that god COULD exist. You are suggesting an eternal being, existing outside of the universe, who is all powerful, but no evidence at all suggests those qualities are even remotely possible. Yes, it's faith, but yes, there is no evidence at all and the argument that intelligence must come from intelligence is illogical.
Thank you for this amusing mash-up. By your reasoning, anything is "logical" if only we assign it to the category of supernatural (which is, as you appear to readily concede, conveniently beyond any actual validation). I think you're conflating "logical" with "what I desperately hope is true." Well, perhaps I should at least be thankful you didn't drop a Pascal's Wager in there too . . .
But atheists always ask: Then who created God. But read premise 1 closely. Whatever BEGINS TO EXIST, must have a cause. Since God is the Prime Mover, the thing from which everything else comes, He doesn't need a cause. He exists by the necessity of His own nature. The universe doesn't exist by the necessity of its own nature, so it requires a causal explanation. 2ff7e9595c
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