@Holy__Bible1 "It is good to grasp the one and not let go of the other. Whoever fears God will avoid all extremes."
Ecclesiastes 7:18
Do not neglect personal devotions, and for the church, choose one that suits you. The Scriptures say, 'Do not stop gathering together.(
Hebrews 10:25)
I haven't forgotten about this reply, I just wanted to wait until I was in the proper headspace to address it, and address it as well as I could.
The truth is, I was a self-proclaimed agnostic for a long time. And when I first thought somewhat seriously about God again, I was a major skeptic who wanted actual proof of His existence. I was always a "facts matter most" type of person, and one of the biggest reasons I always had an issue with Christianity was because it all seemed like a big storybook to me. How could all these miracles actually have happened? And how am I supposed to blindly trust what people say happened in this old book when it all had allegedly happened so long ago?
But that's when I started really digging into it for myself, because I just felt a need to. Plus, I do love history, many of you know I went to school for that as well, so it was all of importance and genuine interest to me.
You will find many Christians that argue that you don't need to "prove" anything, you can just have faith and faith alone. And while that is true, I believe it is possible to prove it happened historically. And I am certainly not the only Christian who believes this. You should not shy away from asking questions, after all, how else do you seek the truth?
Firstly, it is not a disputable fact at all that Jesus of Nazareth was a real person, virtually all historians, including non-Christians, agree on this based on early sources (Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny the Younger, Lucian of Samosata, and more).
So the real question becomes: Did Jesus die and rise again? This is the central question to focus on. Because if you can prove this never happened, that is how you destroy the argument for Christianity.
There are documents, lots of them. There are over 5,800 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament that can be compared and verified, far more than for any other ancient text. Compare it to Homer's Iliad, which has about 1,800 manuscripts. If you stacked the documents of the average classical work you'd get around 4 feet, but if you did it with all the New Testament manuscripts you'd get over a mile high.
And I want to stress that there are real, tangible documents that exist to this day. This was only 2000 years ago. Don't get me wrong, that is a long time ago, but when I realized this, it made me see it a bit differently: 2,000 years sounds like forever, but it’s really only about 50 to 67 lifetimes, figuring people lived around 30 to 40 years on average, passing down accounts and beliefs to their children. That is fascinating to me. And the honest truth is, it really wasn't until the most recent years that the concept of any God at all was "silly" to this many people, like it is today. Historically, this was never the norm.
And on these very real, physical manuscripts, they wrote things down. They recorded things back then, paper and pen existed. Records existed. The sources get as close as 20-30 years (or even closer) to Jesus's life and resurrection. For example, Paul's letters (like 1 Thessalonians) were written around 50 AD, just about 20 years after Jesus's death around 30-33 AD, and the Gospels followed within the next few decades.
Jesus definitely died on the cross. He was brutally tortured in many ways, with whips made of leather strips embedded with bone/metal/stone fragments, designed to tear into the skin and muscle, ripping flesh and causing severe bleeding and trauma. This alone often left people near death from blood loss. Large iron nails were driven through his wrists and feet. A crown of thorns shoved on top of His head. And finally, a Roman soldier thrust a spear into Jesus’ side, as recorded in John 19:34, producing “blood and water,” a detail consistent with medical analysis suggesting fluid from a ruptured pericardial sac or pleural effusion, confirming he was already dead. Jesus undeniably died.
Over 500 eyewitnesses claimed they saw Jesus after He was crucified. Many of the eyewitnesses still alive during the time Paul wrote this. They also wrote that women found the empty tomb, but in those days women were not considered reliable witnesses in court or society, so if they were lying to try and make a believable story, why use women? It would make no sense.
You have to understand that Jesus' followers also died brutal deaths proclaiming all of this as true.
It was common to allow those being persecuted an opportunity to recant in order to avoid suffering. The enemies of Christianity had reason to offer an opportunity to recant, since recantations would be valuable to them. If any of the apostles had recanted, as modern skeptics sometimes suggest as a possibility, the non-Christians who received the recantation or heard about it would have had an incentive to make that recantation known.
But most of the apostles were martyred, and none recanted. Peter was crucified upside down, James was beheaded, Andrew was crucified on an X-shaped cross, and others faced similar gruesome deaths. Why would all of these people die brutal deaths for a lie? Even a skeptic like Paul, who hunted and murdered Christians, completely changed and became a leader in the church after seeing the risen Jesus.
Mass hypnosis isn't possible on this scale, it would be a miracle itself if that were to somehow happen.
People don't knowingly die brutal deaths for a lie.
The truth is there is a lot of evidence, but I am unsure if all the evidence in the world is enough for people who already have their mind made up and their heart hardened. You have to be willing to look at the evidence with an open mind and heart. And if you do, I truly believe God will present Himself to you amidst it all, and you will feel the truth as He changes your very heart inside you, and fills you with the Holy Spirit. You will become a different person.
Jesus is VERY REAL and ALIVE and He is coming back. He is GOD and you can choose to research for yourself and accept the truth, or you can wait and face His judgment. But this isn't a cult, and I am not misguided, quite the opposite.
@PixelBibleBytes Thanks for sharing. I believe in the journey of your change of heart.
May God bless you.
Let the wicked forsake their ways and the unrighteous their thoughts.
Let them turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them,
and to our God, for he will freely pardon.
(Isaiah 55:7)
When it comes to your specific question about why God allows animals to commit immoral acts, the TRDL answer is because they are animals and are not created in “His image”. Animals act solely by instinct. By contrast, humans are created in the image of God and thus are given the ability of moral and rational reasoning. If a bear kills a person, we wouldn’t consider it a “moral failing” of the bear because bears can’t morally reason but instead act on instinct. But if a human murders another, then we would consider it a moral failure becuase humans ought to know from right and wrong.
Now asking, “why did God create a world where animals “sin”as opposed to a world where animals don’t” is a question I don’t have an answer to. God allowed the world to become this way and we simply have to accept that. It goes into the same category as “if God real, why bad thing?”
@Gino99305922@PattieRose20@SmokeyTaylor99@RealJamesWoods There is no salvation outside Jesus.
Ephesians 5:24 "Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything."
Jesus is righteous; How about the church? What is worthy of Jesus relies not on titles but on holiness and righteousness.
@oliverburdick You sure?They are the Sons of Ishmael. The angel really talk with them and bless them.
The angel added, “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.”(Genesis 16)
I only know that God blesses whomever He chooses to bless. For Abraham.
@Vitus_oss Exodus 21
[22] And if men strive together, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart, and yet no harm follow; he shall be surely fined, according as the woman’s husband shall lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine.
Your parish Church is probably well built &your altars giant &well decorated.The pic shows a priest celebrating Mass in one of the less envied conditions.Yet in it a great &deep mystery of our salvation is being celebrated by the whole Church for the salvation of the whole world.
Do you support the 420,000 Polish Christian Nationalists on the streets declaring Poland a Catholic country?
YES or
NO?
If YES, We will follow you back!