Evidence for God from Science

1-Thou shall have no other god's before me.
2-Yeshua stated that he did not come to change the law but fulfill it.
3-Yeshua at no time declared that he was the messiah.
4-His mission was to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Period.
5-Any time we pray to any one other than the one true God, El Shaddai, or look to anyone else for forgiveness or whatever is idolatry. It doesn't make any difference if you mean well. When they made the golden calf they meant well, but they were corrected for their error.
6-When we think that God is too far away from us, that we need a surrogate, lesser, emanated god to intercede for us, then we are following the same path as is indicated in the zohar and the false kabbalah.
7-Christianity, as a whole, is idolatry, albeit a necessary one.
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Who did Abraham and Isaac and Jacob have to declare them righteous before God? (In fact all the notable people in the OT) They were "just" men who lived by their faith and did the deeds which that faith moved them to do. Their righteousness was not imputed to them by anothers actions.
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Christianity is a lazy people's religion as it puts your responsibilities upon the shoulders of another. He does the work and you get the credit!?
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Now I am not an atheist and spent several decades as a practicing protestant christian.
I don't consider that the da vinci code type of arguments are relevant other than they reveal that the truth can be distorted so much for devious purposes, that it becomes untruth and convoluted misinformation.
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You've got to stop placidly chewing your cud and blindly following man-made traditions. Use your heads and ask questions. Seek God and stop worshipping idols.
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I know that these comments will provoke some hostility, but I write this with the kindest of intentions as we are all one flesh, and you whoever you may be are an important person in God's kingdom. I am just seeking to assist in ending the confusion.

Oh dear.

Donkey - you have come here and made some very tenuous statements with absolutely no backup up whatsoever. What is your point - that you have an opinion? - Fine. Unless you want to have a serious discussion - then keep it to yourself. (I apologise to the moderators of this board - but this type of post makes me so angry)

you stated:

You've got to stop placidly chewing your cud and blindly following man-made traditions. Use your heads and ask questions. Seek God and stop worshipping idols.

Well you dont know any of us - or how we came to our conclusions. The only reason i believed is because I used my head and asked questions, i did my investigations. If I was being blind I certainly would not be a Christian today - in fact i have opened my eyes quite considerably to the truth. I suggest you yourself look a bit deeper.

Silvertusk.

Yeah. Start here and look right -- to 'For Students of Judaism'. Or try Common Objections to Christianity.

"you have come here and made some very tenuous statements with absolutely no backup up whatsoever"
-Expressing one's opinion is the primary function of all forums.
-I think that the 10 commandments are a considerable back-up, considering Jesus did not come to change the law.
-I was raised as a protestant and went through the whole christian experience , born-again, baptised(water and holy spirit), went to bible college, worked in outreach ministries and have been involved to varying degrees for about 20 years.
I made this post to help with correcting the errors of christianity, which are many. I don't presume to be a know-it-all, but I have learned some in the course of my life and I am sharing what I know. That is fellowship.
I realize that many people get very emotionally attached to their idols and objects of worship. Pride and intellectual arrogance are constant traps. A quick survey of history, even christian, reveals how violent people can get defending their religion.
I don't mean to offend you, I am putting forward necessary criticisms.[quote][/quote]

Donkey wrote:"you have come here and made some very tenuous statements with absolutely no backup up whatsoever"
-Expressing one's opinion is the primary function of all forums.
-I think that the 10 commandments are a considerable back-up, considering Jesus did not come to change the law.
-I was raised as a protestant and went through the whole christian experience , born-again, baptised(water and holy spirit), went to bible college, worked in outreach ministries and have been involved to varying degrees for about 20 years.
I made this post to help with correcting the errors of christianity, which are many. I don't presume to be a know-it-all, but I have learned some in the course of my life and I am sharing what I know. That is fellowship.
I realize that many people get very emotionally attached to their idols and objects of worship. Pride and intellectual arrogance are constant traps. A quick survey of history, even christian, reveals how violent people can get defending their religion.
I don't mean to offend you, I am putting forward necessary criticisms.

Who do you think jesus is?

Jesus was a Jewish man, not divine in the sense of virgin birth/immaculate conception. At the time of his life the people in Israel were far from God. The Essenes were a response to this, an effort to get back to a proper spiritual equilibrium. But people found more comfort in the zealots methods of recompense against the Romans. The Sadducees were happy with their elite status and were content to be puppets for the Romans as long as their aristocracy was preserved. The Pharisees spent more time worshipping the torah and the traditions (legalistic intellectualism) than they spent pursuing God and so the only light to be found in Israel in that time was with the Essenes.
Jesus was an important person in God's plan for humanity as He is the second man of the redemption. (The first was Moses and the third and final man of the redemption is the Goel Haim, who was the head of the 36 hidden tzaddik).
Jesus undertook the mission to get the people back on track so that they would not be punished by God (a bad thing involving smiting which usually ended up with death, destruction and captivity), But his mission failed.
The people would not change their ways and God did indeed punish them with the destruction of the temple and the diaspora. But as bad as the lot of the Jews has been for the past several millennia, it could have been much worse had not Jesus taken upon himself decrees intended for the people. Therein is where the savior concept had its seed. He was not a universal savior as the decrees for destruction were not for the whole world, only Israel, God's chosen people. And so his role as scapegoat for the sins of the people.
Over the millennia the story has changed. The catholic church has publicly admitted to 14 changes which they have made in scripture (but they won't reveal what they changed).
The dead sea scrolls is another issue. Why do the Israelis keep them locked up, unpublished. You cannot view them, nor even copys of the originals except for a few fragments which they have culled from the rest.
The only plausible reason is that there is information contained in them which would create huge problems for somebody. We can only speculate as to whether it is the church or Israel. Only full disclosure will end the controversy.
As to christianity, the error lies in the doctrine of the trinity. People need to worship God and the 2nd commandment makes it quite clear that our jealous God will share that place with no one.
The "just" shall live by their faith, is the formula for "salvation".
As messed up as humanity is God loves us all and wants us all to be children who grow up whom He can be proud of. The alleged separation we all are told about is all in our heads and reaffirmed in our myths.

Donkey wrote:Jesus undertook the mission to get the people back on track so that they would not be punished by God (a bad thing involving smiting which usually ended up with death, destruction and captivity), But his mission failed.

So why did he claim to be God?
Various people saw Him as God (the Jews, Thomas) and He did not correct them.
Apparently He wasn't in a hurry to correct idolatry, although God always severely punished it.

Donkey wrote:As to christianity, the error lies in the doctrine of the trinity. People need to worship God and the 2nd commandment makes it quite clear that our jealous God will share that place with no one.

The Trinity isn't polytheism. We affirm one Being, three Persons. See The Trinity (intro) by Glenn Miller or The Orthodox Doctrine of the Trinity by Puritan Lad. Quote from Glenn Miller:

Glenn Miller wrote:Religious presuppositions may be illustrated from modern non-Christian Jewry and from Islam. Both of these groups ASSUME that a God CANNOT have multiple centers of consciousness in Himself. In other words, God MUST BE LIKE a HUMAN! The seasoned OT reader will notice that this is plain and simple DIRECT VIOLATION of the Decalogue (among other passages):

Deut 5:8-9 (Exodus 20:4): You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God.

What could be plainer than Isaiah 40:18:

To whom, then, will you compare God? What image will you compare him to?

and Isaiah 46.5:

"To whom will you compare me or count me equal? To whom will you liken me that we may be compared?

To worship a God reduced to the structure of a human person is idolatry--the very thing the Muslim and non-Christian Jew accuses the Judeo-Christian of! Let us not mince words about this. If the OT scriptures confront us with some kind of plural-personality within the name YHWH, and if the Jew/Muslim explains away those scriptures and substitutes "a God made in the image of man" for the REAL God, then idolatry and blasphemy are the only appropriate descriptions for that. It is not faithfulness or covenant loyalty to YHWH to take an arbitrary and unfounded definition of oneness and let that man-made definition be the ultimate authority over Holy Writ! That is not faithfulness--it is presumption.

Donkey wrote:As messed up as humanity is God loves us all and wants us all to be children who grow up whom He can be proud of. The alleged separation we all are told about is all in our heads and reaffirmed in our myths.

Are you saying we are divine?
Could you give us a good reason why all attempts to build utopia have failed? Our 'heads and myths'? Or something darker, something which orthodox Christianity calls sin?
Read this, from Orthodoxy:

GK Chesterton wrote:If it be true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat.

And also how on earth do the think a man can put us right with God? How will we be saved? Works will certainly not do it as we very rarely meet our own standards let alone a Gods?

we are definitely lacking in absolute perfection and only rarely do we ever touch upon it, But God knows our hearts, don't you agree? Also since Jesus was not in the world and had not set up his all-purpose salvation formula during the time of the entire old testament, how do you explain those persons being found righteous before God and pleasing to God and even God boasting about Job. Obviously there is another way!
How do you know that Jesus did not correct them? You place a lot of faith in a tampered with document.

The document wasn't 'tampered with'. The Catholic Church never admitted to changing the Bible; where did you get THAT information? The Bible has been preserved and is our authoritative source for knowledge about God. Without an authoritative source, all we have is speculation and ideas that we believe in because we like them.

The word for 'righteous' used here is tam. It means they followed the commandments of the Old Testament, which should have been translated Old Covenant. Jesus made a new covenant (Jer. 31), in which the Law would be written on believers' hearts.
In Rom. 3:10, Paul quotes a Psalm, 'There is none righteous, no, not one.' He explains: 'Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.'

JP Holding wrote:Thus, we see that a person could be "righteous" in terms of the law, yet not counted "righteous in his sight" - the more important of the two, seemingly.

Donkey wrote:I don't consider that the da vinci code type of arguments are relevant other than they reveal that the truth can be distorted so much for devious purposes, that it becomes untruth and convoluted misinformation.

* cough * You believe that the Da Vinci Code really exposes that the Church has hidden and distorted information, do you? See here for a nice long review, with the main idea of: 'Whatever you do, DON'T keep to the Code.'

I believe you mentioned the Dead Sea Scrolls somewhere. They get mentioned in the article, too:

JP Holding wrote:[T]hey did not contain any “gospels” or anything mentioning Jesus. They overwhelmingly predate the New Testament and are mostly copies of Old Testament books, and internal documents for the Qumran community. [15] Brown also has his character allege that the Vatican “tried very hard to suppress the release of these Scrolls” because they contained damaging information. This is merely an obnoxious conspiracy theory found in popular writers, with no basis in fact. [16] Again, the evidence concerning the Dead Sea Scrolls has been written about in so many books, journals, and articles, many on a lay level, that Brown can only make his erroneous statements with a complete disregard for the facts. There is nothing in the Dead Sea Scrolls that promotes either traditional or deviant Christianity. The community at Qumran responsible for the Scrolls was not Christian, but Jewish. While the Dead Sea Scrolls say nothing directly about Christianity, they do provide two important substantiations of traditional Christianity. First, the texts of the Old Testament preserved among the Dead Sea Scrolls provide us with verification that the Old Testament preserved by Jews and Christians throughout the centuries after Christ was an accurate rendition of what was known to Jews of Jesus' day. Second, the community at Qumran reflects a first century Judaism much more like that depicted by the New Testament writers than it does the Judaism that developed after the destruction of the Second Temple in A. D. 70. Those who speculated in times past that the Judaism presented in the New Testament was a later invention by Christian opposers to Judaism were refuted by what we have learned from the Dead Sea Scrolls.


[15] There are a handful of scholars who think there might have been fragments of New Testament documents among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Without disputing their theories, for the purposes of this article they are irrelevant even if genuine because they would be merely reproducing fragmentary portions of New Testament texts, not establishing or promoting any particular Christian or pseudo-Christian ideas or teachings. An introduction to this thesis is available at http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/7547/ntmss.html.

[16] A good start for on-line information on the Dead Sea Scrolls is at http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/back_dss.html. For a sober account of the controversies surrounding the Dead Sea Scrolls, see Mahlon Smith's compiliation at http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~religion/iho/dss.html.

I believe that the da vinci code is a work of fiction.
The mentioning of the dead sea scrolls was to illustrate a point. The only information available about them is info we must take the Israelis word on as they will not let scholars verify what they reveal for themselves, some documents they let people view, others are completely forbidden/classified. I am not saying this has anything in particular to do with the church from a historical christian standpoint.

Donkey, please read the Board Purpose and note in particular the following:

This message board is publicly open to anyone who wishes to register, and participate in discussions, however it is only intended for a specific audience. It is intended to serve as a place for:

1. Sincere seekers to inquire and ask questions;
2. Christians to give and receive encouragement and instruction; and
3. Non-Christians who are willing to "walk a thin line" and dialogue sensitively and respectfully.

This board is not for those who have strongly made up their mind that Christ is "not" for them; who merely wish to put down, debate, and argue against essential Christian beliefs. As such, those who are Christian, have not made up their minds, or desire civil discussions about Christianity are encouraged to join, while others who merely wish to attack and try to discredit Christianity are discouraged and will be heavily moderated.

So... if you have made up your mind that Jesus Christ is not who He claims to be, then unless you are a sincere seeker, you might be better debating on some other forum instead. As Silvertusk has pointed out, opinions without any well reasoned or substantiated evidence to support them - and which are contrary to the Christian message - are not appropriate on this forum. If you are a genuine seeker, then you are very welcome to stay and ask questions which will usually be willingly answered - as Turgy has shown.

Please consider these comments carefully before continuing your dialogue here.
Thank you.

Judah (Moderator)

PS. I am leaving this thread in situ as Turgy has provided some good relevant apologia.

I am just seeking to assist in ending the confusion.

To what point?

“1-Thou shall have no other god's before me.”

You are correct, we believe in the Trinity; that God is Three in one whole; three “persons” in one Godhead.


“2-Yeshua stated that he did not come to change the law but fulfill it.”

Take a good look at the New Testament and what Jesus did, then the prophecies made in the Old Testament. Which did He change? Which did He not fulfill? The Book of Matthew is a good list of what He did to fulfill the duty of the Messiah. Here is a good link: http://www.jewsforjesus.org/answers/jesus.

“3-Yeshua at no time declared that he was the messiah. “

Well then, how are we to receive salvation? God Almighty created us, loves us, and will suffer for us. God is a personal God, and what is more personally than willingly to die for us, literally? It is written that He WILL be our Savior and Messiah:

“I, even I, am the LORD; and beside me there is no saviour.” - Isaiah 43:11,

“Tell ye, and bring them near; yea, let them take counsel together: who hath declared this from ancient time? who hath told it from that time? have not I the LORD? and there is no God else beside me; a just God and a Saviour; there is none beside me.” - Isaiah 45:21

“Yet I am the LORD thy God from the land of Egypt, and thou shalt know no god but me: for there is no saviour beside me.” - Hosea 13:4.

From these verses you can see that God is speaking through His prophets, and tells His people He is their only deliverance.

“4-His mission was to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Period.”

Are you saying that Jesus only came for the Jews? What kind of people are we if we follow a man like that? He came for all of humankind; I do not think that God or any being following Him can forsake all of His creation except Jews. Jesus often preached and told many to repent, and there were plenty of Gentiles that came to Jesus. His disciples reached out to the Jews and Gentiles. His death on the cross was an atonement for all. Once again, please search through this site, it contains valuable evidence: http://www.jewsforjesus.org/answers/jesus.

“5-Any time we pray to any one other than the one true God, El Shaddai, or look to anyone else for forgiveness or whatever is idolatry. It doesn't make any difference if you mean well. When they made the golden calf they meant well, but they were corrected for their error.”

Yes, of course. Read the above what I wrote; Jesus IS El Shaddai; His name, Emmanuel, literally meant, “God with us”. Did you want to say/ask something regarding the Trinity?

“6-When we think that God is too far away from us, that we need a surrogate, lesser, emanated god to intercede for us, then we are following the same path as is indicated in the zohar and the false kabbalah. “

Sin is disobedience, and we all have it. God is infinitely Holy and Pure, correct? Than to Him, we are almost nothing but dirt and scum, and that our wickedness creates a rift so great that He had to fix it Himself, personally.

“7-Christianity, as a whole, is idolatry, albeit a necessary one.”

I hope this is not a biased viewpoint? Well, people of all religions call the other ones idolatry and whatnot, so hey, we should respect each other and what we all individually believe; the Bible teaches respect, and to treat others, including their beliefs, the way you would want yours to be treated. Hey Donkey, what do you mean it is a necessary idolatry? What then, to you, is the true worship of our Lord?

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“Who did Abraham and Isaac and Jacob have to declare them righteous before God? (In fact all the notable people in the OT) They were "just" men who lived by their faith and did the deeds which that faith moved them to do. Their righteousness was not imputed to them by anothers actions. “

Good point, but keep in mind they had a covenant established with God. Throughout the Old Testament, I think that the sayings of the Messiah is concealed a bit, so it was kind of implied, such as a few mentions of the Savior in Psalms and Proverbs. For example, they did animal offerings and sacrifices and all that to symbolize that blood will wash away sin. Take a look at the New Testament, in Hebrews 9:11 to the end of chapter 9. I suggest studying what is being said here; blood is atonement, especially the blood of the Savior, and Jesus shed it all, for all past, present, and future sins: He is not bound by time, and His atonement is infinite. So I guess you can say that the Jews even believed in the coming of a Messiah, even if He was not there yet.
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“Christianity is a lazy people's religion as it puts your responsibilities upon the shoulders of another. He does the work and you get the credit!?”

No, Donkey. It is because God loves every one of His children, and His atonement must be made known. By that we mean to tell everyone about the simple payment of Jesus. Christians have been prosecuted for this throughout history, and reaching the unsaved have never been an easy task. Hypocritical Christians nowadays make it seem like a lazy man's faith, but that is not what we were taught. If you meant the shoulders of Christ, then that is easy to clarify; finite sinful beings do not get to earn salvation if that is what you mean, but their deliverance must be from an infinite being, hence the Christ.

P.S.- Donkey, may I ask what are your religious beliefs?