Phix wrote:I am Phix and I am writing a book about God and man exploring the common ground of all relegion in an effort to unify mankind. Here are a few words.
The truth is the most important thing you will ever find in this life. In the Bible, John Chapter 8 vs 31 Jesus says " If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." Let me show you exactly what he meant.
[/list]Many christians refer to Jesus Christ as the Son of God and he was but so am I and so are you. Every living thing is a child of God and all things are a product of God. Make no mistake in recognizing that we are all God's children.
Some Christians believe also that Jesus was God. This is not true and Jesus never said that he was. According to the Bible Jesus did say that he and his father were one but these two statements don't mean the same thing as we shall soon see. Jesus was a human being just like you and me but what made him special was his level of conscious awareness..
Actually, ALL Christians believe that Jesus was God. If a person believes something different than that about Christ, then he isn't a Christian. You will find that there are different religious groups that use the same terminology as Christians but they don't mean the same thing. Oneness Pentecostals, Jehovah Witnesses and Mormons all speak of Christ but the Christ they speak of is NOT the Jesus Christ of the Holy Bible.
Are we all children of God? Certainly we all have life because of God. However, to be a child of God, that is, adopted into his family and made a joint heir with Jesus Christ to his kingdom a person MUST accept Christ as God Incarnate, the third person of the Trinity, born of a Virgin Mary, crucified and raised from the dead. To believe anything different is to be separated from God for eternity. Read Romans to understand what it means to be adopted and become the child of God.
As for trying to bring unity between religions, that's impossible. They may look similar on the surface, but when you get right down to the nitty gritty, you'll see that they contradict each other. You have spoken about the importance of the truth. Well, when you see that religions contradict each other, you know immediately that they cannot all be true.
Let's compare them. Religions such as Hinduism, Islam, etc., are all about man trying to reach an impersonal God who is somewhere out there.
Christianity is all about being in a relationship with God through the person of Jesus Christ by the infilling of the Holy Spirit. It is all about God reaching down to us, making himself known to us personally, and entering into an intimate relationship with us.
Non-Christian religions are all about man trying to follow rules and do the right things in order to earn salvation.
Christianity is all about God, knowing that we could never make ourselves sin-free (something we have to be if we are to enter heaven and spend eternity with God), coming in the person of Jesus Christ to die for our sins and give us HIS righteousness, thereby giving us the right to enter heaven.
Why MUST Christ be fully God and fully man for him to provide salvation? Man sinned. To atone for sin, a sacrifice must be made. Only a man can make the sacrifice for mankind. But that sacrifice must be perfect, that is, sin-free. No man is sin-free and no man can make himself sin-free. This is a problem eh? Only God is sin-free and only a sin-free man can atone for the sins of humankind. What to do?
The ONLY thing that could be done is exactly what God did. He came in the person of Jesus Christ, born of a woman and therefore human, but born of the Holy Spirit and therefore God! He is the only sin-free man because he was God incarnate.
Stating that Jesus didn't say "I am God Incarnate" is NOT a valid argument for your misbelief that he wasn't God. It is an argument from silence and is therefore fallacious. I could tell you all kinds of things about myself, but not mention others. Yet, those things I didn't state are just as true of me as the things I did. Do you see what I mean?
Jesus was called God in various places in the Bible, most significantly in Isaiah with the prophecy of Christ's birth. He has exactly the same attributes as does the Holy Spirit. They are identical in essence. People worshipped him and he let them! If he had not been God, he would have stopped them from worshipping him because worship of anything or anybody other than God was idolatry.
