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re freemasonry and the southern baptist convention in article qv l oj usenet ins cwru edu ch cleveland freenet edu tony alicea writes with the southern baptist convention convening this june to consider the charges that freemasonry is incompatible with christianity i thought the following quotes by mr james holly the anti masonic flag carrier would amuse you all the following passages are exact quotes from the southern baptist convention and freemasonry by james l holly m d president of mission and ministry to men inc n th st beaumont tx the inside cover of the book states mission ministry to men inc hereby grants permission for the reproduction of part or all of this booklet with two provisions one the material is not changed and two the source is identified i have followed these provisions freemasonry is one of the allies of the devil page iv the issue here is not moderate or conservative the issue is god and the devil page vi it is worthwhile to remember that the formulators of public school education in america were freemasons page jesus christ never commanded toleration as a motive for his disciples and toleration is the antithesis of the christian message page the central dynamic of the freemason drive for world unity through fraternity liberty and equality is toleration this is seen in the writings of the great writers of freemasonry page he jesus christ established the most sectarian of all possible faiths page for narrowness and sectarianism there is no equal to the lord jesus christ page what seems so right in the interest of toleration and its cousins liberty equality and fraternity is actually one of the subtlest lies of the father of lies page the southern baptist convention has many churches which were founded in the lodge and which have corner stones dedicated by the lodge each of these churches should hold public ceremonies of repentance and of praying the blood and the name of the lord jesus christ over the church and renouncing the oaths taken at the dedication of the church and or building page i hope you all had a good laugh i know i did g tony i appreciate the narrow mindedness of the view expressed in the text you quoted i also appreciate your being amused by such determined ignorance without taking anything away from your mirth i want to say that these views sadden me i can only hope that that sort of narrow mindedness will die with the generations that have promoted it teach your children well wet blanket mode off pax john john w luther anybody who mistakes my jluther cs umr edu best for email opinions for umr s just compuserve com doesn t know umr

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re who s next mormons and jews ken arromdee writes did they not know that these men were federal officers do you know what a no knock search is yes but tell me how you think your question answers my question if the bds didn t know immediately that they were dealing with feds uniform apparel insignia they must have figured it out in pretty short order why did they keep fighting they seemed awfully ready for having been attacked without warning peter m yadlowsky wake the sky is light academic computing center let us to the net again university of virginia companion keyboard pmy virginia edu after basho

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re merlin mithras and magick in article joshua apr bailey cpac washington edu joshua cpac washington edu joshua geller wrote in article pegasus fp dialin uoregon edu pegasus aaa uoregon edu laurieewbrandt writes lewb lets add to those percentages for the orphaic docterians brought lewb to the group by paul saul who was a high ranking initiate on the lewb development of orphaic mysteries see jane harrisons prolegomena to the lewb study of greek religion cambridge u press and you can easly draw lewb your own conclusions josh perhaps you can quote just a bit of her argument love to but i must do it a bit later my copy of harrison in packed but the last chapter as best as i can rember deals with orphic mysteries and their views of women though she does not come out and say it it is strongly implyed that the christian view was drawn heavly from the orphic and other major cults of the time pegasus

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identity crisis god satan ii samuel and again the anger of the lord was kindled against israel and he moved david against them to say go number isreal and judah i chronicles and satan stood up against isreal and provoked david to number israel

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re question for those with popular morality in article david terminus ericsson se david bold writes in article freenet carleton ca ad freenet carleton ca james owens writes you seem to be saying that god being unknowable his morality is unknowable yep that s pretty much it as i understand it the sadducees believed that the torah was all that was required whereas the pharisees the ancestors of modern judaism believed that the torah was available for interpretation to lead to an understanding of the required morality in all its nuances talmud the essence of all of this is that biblical morality is an interface between man and yhwh for a jew or christian and does not necessarily indicate anything about yhwh outside of that relationship although one can speculate the point i m trying to make is that we only really have the bible to interpret and that interpretation is by humanity i guess this is where faith or relevation comes in with all its inherent subjectiveness god being unknowable i can t comment on his motives but it would be distressing if he allowed us to misunderstand him through no fault of our own for sanity s sake we must assume if we believe in him at all that his message comes through somehow the question is whether it comes through immediately to every individual or is contained in a complex canon that must be interpreted by experts in consultation with one another or is transmitted directly through appointed representatives who are free to interpret extend and modify the canon if god s message is indeed mediated the further problem arises as to whether the individual under stands the mediated message fully and clearly since the responsibility for understanding lies ultimately with the individual we must assume that god in his benevolence guides each individual to the appropriate source for that individual whereof the person may or may not drink metaphysically if there are multiple moral codes then there is no absolute moral code and i think this is theologically questionable no there may be an absolute moral code there are undoubtably multiple moral codes the multiple moral codes may be founded in the absolute moral code as an example a parent may tell a child never to swear and the child may assume that the parent never swears simply because the parent has told the child that it is wrong now the parent may swear like a trooper in the pub or bar where there are no children the wrongness here is if the child disobeys the parent the parent may feel that it is inappropriate to swear in front of children but may be quite happy to swear in front of animals the analogy does not quite hold water because the child knows that he is of the same type as the parent and may be a parent later in life but you get the gist of it incidentally the young child considers the directive as absolute until he gets older see piaget and learns a morality of his own your example is complicated in our age by the thin line between morality and politeness you might have said burp for burping and swearing carry about the same stigma today if you are talking about taking the lord s name in vain as a serious transgression then this example is more a case of hypocrisy than of varying moral codes if there is an absolute moral code propositions or laws in that code apply absolutely and universally by definition conceivably some moral codes could be subsets of the universal code as you say at the outset so for example god s code could include thou shalt not create beings without a hospitable planet to live on but this law would be inapplicable to us nevertheless we would be entitled to suppose that all laws applicable to us are also applicable to god but when you begin to ask what laws might appear in god s moral code you have a sense of the absurdity of the question does god make laws for himself to follow perhaps god is not the sort of being to which the category morality can be sensibly applied james owens ad freenet carleton ca ottawa ontario canada

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cults who keeps them going mr clinton said today that the horrible tragedy of the waco fiasco should remind those who join cults of the dangers of doing so now i began scratching my head thinking a bad sign don t the mainstream religions in this case christianity or the th day adventist in particular just keep these guys going isn t mr clinton condemning his own religion after all isn t it a cult too bad thoughts these

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re freemasonry and the southern baptist convention in article qv l oj usenet ins cwru edu ch cleveland freenet edu tony alicea writes with the southern baptist convention convening this june to consider the charges that freemasonry is incompatible with christianity i thought the following quotes by mr james holly the anti masonic flag carrier would amuse you all munch i hope you all had a good laugh i know i did g it would be funny if it wasn t so damn nasty and as non xian as i am it s hard to believe that someone is pushing black is white and freedom is slavery so blatantly mark

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re o t o clarification do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law the word of sin is restriction kent sandvik newton apple com writes sorry the san jose based rosicrucian order is called a m o r c i don t remember for the time being what the a m stand for but o r c is ordo rosae crucis in other words latin for order of the rose cross response yes very true the entire title is the ancient and mystical order rosae crucis they are located at naglee avenue san jose california usa they are considered different and largely unrelated by a number of sources i ve seen documentation which links them through the figure of h spencer lewis lewis was apparently involved with reuss who was the o h o of ordo templi orientis for many years apparently it is also true that lewis had a charter to form an o t o body and then created a m o r c as a subsidiary an interesting question kent otherwise their headquarters in san jose has a pretty decent metaphysical bookstore if any of you are interested in such books and my son loves to run around in their egyptian museum response indeed and diagonally across the street is another metaphysical book store called ram metaphysical wherein i ve purchased some wonderful works by crowley and others ram metaphysical books park ave san jose ca invoke me under my stars love is the law love under will i am i frater i nigris dclxvi cccxxxiii

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re cults who keeps them going muttiah thistle ecn purdue edu ranjan s muttiah writes mr clinton said today that the horrible tragedy of the waco fiasco should remind those who join cults of the dangers of doing so now i began scratching my head thinking a bad sign don t the mainstream religions in this case christianity or the th day adventist in particular just keep these guys going isn t mr clinton condemning his own religion after all isn t it a cult too a good point what helps to keep such things going is the public attitude that one should have faith that some authority from on high should not be subjected to mere reason couple this with a variety of personality quirks mojor and minor mental illnesses and ego of would be leaders and you get all the variety of cults and religions that people subscribe to

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re lds are the mormons the true church in article c rr m lj acsu buffalo edu psyrobtw ubvmsb cc buffalo edu robert weiss writes from psyrobtw ubvmsb cc buffalo edu robert weiss subject lds are the mormons the true church date apr gmt is the mormon church christ s true church lots of stuff about intellectual errors deleted this is cute but i see no statement telling me why your church is the true church i do presume that you know or at least believe that yours is true attempting to ream my faith without replacing it with something better is a real good way to loose a person completely from christ this is the greatest reason i see that these attacks are not motivated by love they only seek to destroy there is no building or replacing of belief this is not something christ did he guided and instructed he didn t seek to destroy the faith he found he redirected it this is what i see when people say they love insert favorite group here and i have to laugh at the irony please excuse the scarcasm but it was nice to say it oh btw robert don t take this personally your post was merely convinent

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see was re apology to jim meritt was silence is concurance in article blue cis pitt edu joslin pogo isp pitt edu david joslin writes m mwunix mitre org james meritt writes so stop dodging the question what is hypocritical about my criticizing bad arguments given that i do this both when i agree with the conclusion and when i disagree with the conclusion you are the one who has claimed to possess the fruits of precognition telepathy and telempathy divine it yourself another dodge oh well i m no match for your amazing repertoire of red herrings and smoke screens you asked for an apology i m not going to apologize for pointing out that your straw man argument was a straw man argument nor for saying that your list of bible contradictions shows such low standards of scholarship that it should be an embarrassment to anti inerrantists just as josh mcdowell should be an embarrassment to the fundies nor for objecting various times to your taking quotes out of context nor for pointing out that they do it too is not an excuse nor for calling your red herrings and smoke screens what they are how about the following inaccurate unsubstantiated accusations in blue cis pitt edu jim has been threatening but no threat produced once he realized that display of telepathy threatening to quote me in spite of no threat produced nor forecast ever happening precognition responding jim s threat to quote me in spite of claimed threat never being given jim preparing to in spite of it never happening telepathy or precognition jim again still mystified unsubstantiated and untrue more telepathy or maybe telempathy jim still scandalized unsubstantiated again seems to be a habit having more trouble with reality it appears why get bothered with the facts when you appear to have the products of paranatural divination methods yawn

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re apr god s promise in john i had said merlyn you missed the point too christianity is a relationship i have a relationship with my god i know him consider your mother merlyn you know your mother what would you think of me if i asserted that your mother is feet tall murdered your father and sexually abused you when you were a kid would you who knows your mother well think was a blind arrogant idiot to proclaim such things merlyn leroy says this analogy is not good for example there are plenty of people who know god as well as you do but don t agree on things like how many children he she has whether he she approves of polygamy whether mohammed was one of his her prophets now if you and all these other people who absolutely know what god is like can t agree on basic attributes like these at least one of you who knows what this god thing is like must be wrong therefore subjective certainty is worthless regarding knowledge of this god on the other hand i don t know any large groups of people who claim absolute knowledge of my mother and who disagree about her basic attributes this is the difference between real people and imaginary friends meryln therefore by your logic since your people disagree about the characteristics of your mother you mother must be imaginary

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re who s next mormons and jews in article c sl z b murdoch acc virginia edu pmy vivaldi acc virginia edu pete yadlowsky writes anyway i ve often wondered what business followers of christ would have with weapons peter m yadlowsky wake the sky is light academic computing center let us to the net again university of virginia companion keyboard pmy virginia edu after basho imo a christian has no need of weapons i know it is very contrary to the american nra ethos of the right to bear arms but christians should rely on the strength of god to protect them note that i say should we are inherently insecure but i feel that that is not proper justification to be armed to the teeth a christian should not have to rely on physical weapons to defend himself a christian should rely on his faith and intelligence for instance i have the faith that god will protect me but god also gave me the intelligence to know not to go walking down that dark alley at night to jump off a cliff and say that god will save me would be putting god to the test and who are we to test god god be with you malcolm lee

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re biblical backing of koresh s tape cites enclosed seems to me koresh is yet another messenger that got killed for the message he carried which says nothing about the character of the messenger i reckon we ll have to find out the rest the hard way koresh was killed because he wanted lots of illegal guns

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re biblical backing of koresh s tape cites enclosed in article apr utarlg uta edu b zaw utarlg uta edu stephen writes seems to me koresh is yet another messenger that got killed for the message he carried which says nothing about the seems to be barring evidence to the contrary that koresh was simply another deranged fanatic who thought it neccessary to take a whole bunch of folks with him children and all to satisfy his delusional mania jim jones circa in the mean time we sure learned a lot about evil and corruption are you surprised things have gotten that rotten nope fruitcakes like koresh have been demonstrating such evil corruption for centuries the old frog s almanac a salute to that old frog hisse f ryugen fisher v x sco xenix gt ladysmith british columbia canada serving central vancouver island with public access usenet and internet mail home to the holocaust almanac

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re is it good that jesus died in article bskendigc rbvn aai netcom com bskendig netcom com brian kendig writes and i maintain some people do not want to enter into the light and the knowledge that they alone are their own masters because they fear it they are too afraid of having to face the world on their own terms and so by their own choice they will remain in darkness sort of like bugs under a rock however some people but not many will not like the darkness sometimes it gets too cold and too dark to be comfortable these people will crawl out from under the rock and although blinded at first will get accustomed to the light and enjoy its warmth and after a while now that they can see things for what they really are they will also see the heights which they can reach and the places they can go and they will learn to choose their own paths through the world and they will learn from their mistakes and revel in their successes are you your own master do you have any habits that you cannot break for one you seem unable to master your lack of desire to understand even the slightest concept of the bible seems that ignorance has you mastered how about sexual sins gotta any of those secret desires in your head that you harbor but can get control of do you dehumanize women when they walk past you do you degrade them to a sex object in your head are you the master of that kind of thinking do you insult people unknowingly then regret it later yet do it again the next time opportunity presents itself are you truly the master of yourself i have admitted that i am not the master of my thought life at all times that i sometimes say things i do want to say and then repeat my mistake unwantingly i have admitted to myself that i cannot control every aspect of my being there are times i know i shouldn t say something but then say it anyway there are times i simply forget a lesson i in fact am not my own master i need help jesus promised me this help and i took him up on his offer i have willfully let jesus be my master because jesus knows what is better for me than i myself do and why not does not the creator know his creation better than the creation does toyota know what s better for the corolla than the corolla do you see my point i think you re the one under the rock and i m getting a great tan out here in the sunlight my life has improved immesurably since i abandoned theism come and join me it will be a difficult trip at first until you build up your muscles for the long hike but it s well worth it then i guess ignorance is bliss for you because brian you enjoy not having a clue about the bible don t you see i m not going to accept anything that i can t witness with my own eyes or experience with my own senses especially not something as mega powerful as what you re trying to get me to accept surely if you believe in it this strongly you must have a good reason to don t you can you witness motherly love with your senses how does caring and concern for you register with your senses if nothing registers to you other than what you can see taste smell hear and touch then you better become a vulcan and fast you better get rid of your emotions and i do have a good reason to believe what i do when did i say that i say that i would rather cease existing instead of being subject to the whims of a deity but that if the deity decided to toss me into the fiery pits because of who i am then so be it the topic was about my god and your lack of knowledge about what my god says my god says that you will not cease existing you have life forever you can choose to either live it in hell in eternal torment where there is no communication whatsoever or can choose to live it in paradise with god that is what my god says and that was the issue your made up theism is what it is made up it s wishful thinking nope most people are christian most people are fond of feeling that they are imperfect of believing that the world is an undesirable place of reciting magical mystical prayers to make the world nice and holy again of doing just as their priests tell them like good little sheep you enjoy darkness and you re proud of it is this the religion of kendigianism most people are not christian most people including christians are not fond of feeling that they are imperfect is the world an undesireable place a doctrine of kendigianism it has nothing to do with my god does kendigism have magical mystical prayers as a part of its worship mine doesn t does kendigianism believe that the world will be holy again mine doesn t does kendigianism also dictate that one must obey what the priest tells them like good little sheep mine doesn t is this a bunch of lies you tell yourself so that you can justify being ignorant of the bible brian following christ has nothing to do with the doctrines of kendigianism you would find any of your doctrines in the bible i don t follow kendigianism i follow christ also to try to again show you your ignorance of christ and the bible in regards to priests have you not read about the sole melchizedek priest in hebrews and have you not read what the purpose is of the old testament levitical priesthood and why there should not be priests today yes guess what the catholics messed up i do not follow catholicism or any ism i follow christ nope you make decisions enjoy your successes and accept your failures then you die if you are content with the life you ve led as you reflect back on it in your final moments then you ve led a good life why would you want to live a good life to you you die and that s it don t contradict yourself you have no reason to live a good life it doesn t do you any good in the end your life doesn t do anybody else any good either because everyone dies anyway so you have no reason to lead a good life leading a good life is meaningless why do you do such a meaningless thing i m sorry i don t feel that sacrificing jesus was something any god i d worship would do unless the sacrifice was only temporary in which case it s not really all that important has the resurrection sunk in jesus is alive jesus is not dead jesus was sacrified to fufill the old testament sacrificial system in its every detail jesus s death was like a seed he needed to fall to the ground so that many new lives would take root did you miss the entire john passage as well forget the bible for a minute forget quoting verses forget about who said what about this or that show me picture just you and me and a wide open hilltop and convince me that you re right forget that i am a person forget that i know how to type forget that i know how to put a sentence together forget that i know how to send e mail forget my existence proove to me that i exist be honest

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re biblical backing of koresh s tape cites enclosed in article apr utarlg uta edu b zaw utarlg uta edu stephen writes for those who think david koresh didn t have a solid structure or sound biblical backing for his hour long tape broadcast i ve enclosed a partial list of the sources he cites or quotes he exactly used as a christian sermon it s pretty good if not inspired david koresh was born in bethlehem ehh

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keep firm the foundations job he stretcheth out the north over the empty place and hangeth the earth upon nothing job where wast thou when i laid the foundations of the earth declare if thou hast understanding

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re disillusioned protestant finds christ john w redelfs cj cleveland freenet edu wrote i am a mormon i believe in christ that he is alive he raised himself text deleted i learned that the concept of the holy trinity was never taught by jesus christ that it was agreed to by a council of clergymen long after christ was ascended men who had no authority to speak for him if jesus never taught the concept of the trinity how do you deal with the following mat then jesus came to them and said all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me mat therefore go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit mat and teaching them to obey everything i have commanded you and surely i am with you always to the very end of the age also jesus speaking act for john baptized with water but in a few days you will be baptized with the holy spirit i believe that you may have overlooked some key verses that are crucial to the christian faith jim burrill jburrill boi hp com

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silence is concurance is it not the case that in the eyes of the law when someone is aware of something and has the capability of taking action and does not that individual may be held responsible for that action example the driver of a getaway car may be held as an accomplice to murder the i didn t know defense spawned the ignorance of the law is no excuse when an individual is held as a material witness to a crime is there a criminal charge against the individual if not on what grounds is the person imprisoned james w meritt m mwunix mitre org or jmeritt mitre org the opinions above are mine if anyone else wants to share them fine they may say so if they wish the facts belong to noone and simply are

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question about islamic view a question regarding the islamic view towards homosexuality came up in a discussion group that i participate in and i d like to ask the question here what is the islamic view towards homosexuality jim burrill jburrill boi hp com

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re disillusioned protestant finds christ in a previous article tom tredysvr tredydev unisys com tom albrecht says in article qb j d usenet ins cwru edu cj cleveland freenet edu john w redelfs writes i learned that god loves his children who have never heard of him and has a plan for redeeming them too even those who have died without a knowledge of christ i learned that a man cannot frustrate justice by repenting on his death bed because repentance is more than a feeling of remorse it requires faith in christ proven by following him by keeping his commandments such cannot be accomplished on ones deathbed so jesus must have lied to the thief on the cross paradise and salvation are not the same thing salvation is better refer to john tom albrecht john w redelfs cj cleveland freenet edu all my opinions are tentative pending further data

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re lds rick s reply in article c kdzk acsu buffalo edu psyrobtw ubvmsd cc buffalo edu robert weiss says just briefly on something that you mentioned in passing you refer to differing interpretations of create and say that many christians may not agree so what that is really irrelevant we do not base our faith on how many people think one way or another do we the bottom line is truth regardless of popularity of opinions i m sorry i thought we were discussing heresy i assumed that heresy meant a departure from orthodoxy in which case generally accepted belief is indeed an important issue in this case the definition of the word create is of great importance since creation is the issue being discussed also i find it rather strange that in trying to persuade that created and eternally existent are equivalent you say granted the mormon belief you can t grant your conclusion and then expect the point to have been addressed in order to reply to the issue you have to address and answer the point that was raised and not just jump to the conclusion that you grant i should have said given the mormon belief if you disagree with the mormon belief that creation is more a function of organization of eternally existent substance than one of ex nihilo creation then that is the important point the bible states that lucifer was created the bible states that jesus is the creator of all the contradiction that we have is that the lds belief is that jesus and lucifer were the same correction you interpret the bible to mean something very specific by such terms the mormon belief is that all are children of god literally there is nothing symbolic about it this however contradicts what the bible says the bible teaches that not everyone is a child of god it always cracks me up when anti mormons presume to tell mormons what they believe mormons do in fact believe that all people including christ and lucifer are children of god in the sense that we were all created or organized or whatever by him we also believe that being offspring of god has a symbolic sense when applied to being spiritually born again of him thus the same word can be used to convey different meanings this is how language works robert and it s why making someone an offender for a word is dangerous this is really a red herring it doesn t address any issue raised but rather it seeks to obfuscate the fact that some groups try to read something into the bible doesn t change what the bible teaches for we first look to the bible to see what it teaches to discount or not even address what the bible teaches because there are some groups that have differing views is self defeating to see what the bible teaches you have to look at the bible on the contrary robert it is not a red herring at all to show that those who rely wholly on the bible cannot seem to agree on what it says you say that one must simply look at the bible to see what it teaches but centuries of people doing just that have sho wn that no one is really sure what it says are we to believe that you are the only one who really understands the scriptures i find this rather curious when i mentioned that the mormon belief is that jesus needed to be saved i put forward some quotes from the late apostle bruce mcconkie the curious part is that no one addressed the issue of jesus needing to be saved rick comes the closest with his i have my own conclusions to addressing the point let me clarify this one more time you did not refer to the mormon belief that jesus needed to be saved but rather to mcconkie s belief in same we keep trying to point out to you that bruce mcconkie is not the source of mormon doctrine and you keep ignoring it see below most of the other replies have instead hop scotched to the issue of bruce mcconkie and whether his views were official doctrine i don t think that it matters if mcconkie s views were canon that is not the issue were mcconkie s writings indicative of mormon belief on this subject is the real issue the indication from rick is that they may certainly be on the contrary robert if you are quoting mcconkie s words as mormon canon then the question of whether they are canon or not is of great importance the fact is that they are not whether or not they indicate general mormon belief would only be ascertainable by interviewing a large number of mormons robert weiss psyrobtw ubvms cc buffalo edu rick anderson librba byuvm bitnet

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re part and part re homosexuality in article m njxcg vec juts ccc amdahl com rich bellacera amail amdahl com writes perhaps you don t get it and maybe you never will many didn t get it in the middle ages and the proclaimed god s will be done as they massacred thousands in witch hunts and inquisitions there were many injustices in the middle ages and this is truely sad i would hate to see a day when churches put people to death or torchured them for practicing homosexuality or any other crime the church is not called to take over the governments of the world it may be that homosexuals treated cruelly today but that does not mean that we should teach christians to practice homosexual immorality do you think that we should also teach christians to practice divination and channelling because the witches in the middle ages were persecuted the major flaw in all this posturing is that in the end the final effect of posts like that of yours and mr hudson is that you have a conditional love for gays condition change and we ll love you this is sure strange coming from a group who claim that god has an unconditional love one that calls people just as they are and you accuse me of judging when did you look into my heart and see if i have love i have been writing that we should not teach christians to practice homosexual immorality and you pretend to have divine knowledge to look into my heart i can t say that i love homosexuals as i should i can t say that i love my neighbor as i should either i don t know very many homosexuals as it is but jesus loves homosexuals just as he loves everyone else if his love were conditional i not know him at all yes we should show love to homosexuals but it is not love to encourage brothers in the church to stumble and continue in their sin that is a very damaging and dangerous thing the results of the passing amendment in colorado has created an organization who s posters are appearing all over colorado called s t r a i g h t i forget the whole definition off hand but the last part was against immoral gross homosexual trash and their motto is working for a fag free america with an implicit advocation for violence this is sick and it seems to be what you and mr hudson and others are embracing that is slander i could just as easily say that nambla has been able to implement legislation to make child molesting easier because of the tearing down of societies morality due to people accepting homosexuality as normal and that this is what you are embracing i do believe that homosexual sex is immoral that does not mean i endorse using violence against them there is a problem of hatred in the church but there is also the problem of what has been called unsanctified mercy many in the conservative churches have seen the moral breakdown in this country and the storm on the horizon and have gotten militant in the flesh this is truely sad yet others in other churches have embraced immorality in society and have pointed to the carnality in the conservative churches to justify their actions why don t we just stick to the positive and find ways to bring people to jesus istead of taking bullwhips and driving them away certainly we should not use a bullwhip to drive people from jesus but we shouldn t water down the gospel to draw people in jesus didn t go out of his way to show only what might be considered positive aspects to draw people in he told one man to sell all he had he told another not to say good bye to his family his words were hard at times we should present people with the cost of the tower before we allow them to begin construction many people have already been innoculated to the gospel link hudson whatever rich

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re federal hearing on fri apr gmt dmcgee uluhe soest hawaii edu don mcgee said dm fact or rumor madalyn murray o hare an atheist who eliminated the dm use of the bible reading and prayer in public schools years ago is now dm going to appear before the fcc with a petition to stop the reading of the dm gospel on the airways of america and she is also campaigning to remove dm christmas programs songs etc from the public schools if it is true dm then mail to federal communications commission h street washington dc dm expressing your opposition to her request reference petition number dm false this story has been going around for years there s not a drop of truth note that i don t care for o hare o hair myself but this is one thing she s not guilty of ed mccreary o edm twisto compaq com if it were not for laughter there would be no tao

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re mark of the beast need info u uicvm uic edu wrote marian catholic high school outside of chicago south ashland avenue actually satanism is technically inverted catholicism andrew bulhak plonk n the sound of richard depew acb yoyo cc monash edu au hitting the ground after being monash uni clayton defenestrated by a posse of angry usenet victoria australia posters

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re silence is concurance for those missing the context of this thrilling discussion between jim and i jim wrote the following to me in e mail after i pointed out that he jim had taken a quote out of context in t r m robert weiss writes a promise from psalm gee since you wouldn t be at all hypocritical you must be really busy arguing against these out of context extracted translations he directed a similar accusation of hypocrisy again based on a lack of response to an article by robert weiss toward stephen i pointed out that i did in fact agree that both robert weiss and jim meritt took quotes out of context hence i find it difficult to understand why jim thinks i am a hypocrite needless to say i don t have time to reply to every article on t r m that takes a quote out of context i asked jim the following so according to you jim the only way to criticize one person for taking a quote out of context without being a hypocrite is to post a response to every person on t r m who takes a quote out of context jim replied by saying did i either ask or assert that but today we find four articles from jim one of which has the subject silence is concurrence m mwunix mitre org james meritt writes is it not the case that in the eyes of the law when someone is aware of something and has the capability of taking action and does not that individual may be held responsible for that action which is of course a complete red herring taking quotes out of context isn t a crime i don t have time to read every article on t r m and i m certainly under no obligation to reply to them all does silence is concurrence imply that jim thinks that because i didn t respond to weiss articles i must condone weiss taking quotes out of context jim doesn t want to give a direct answer to this question read what he has written and decide for yourself but back to the context of my conversation with jim jim s next gambit was to claim that he was using inductive logic when he concluded that i was being a hypocrite i challenged him to provide the details of that logic that led him to an incorrect conclusion today we find another obscure article posting it twice didn t help make it more clear jim titled inductive logic scenario a white goose waddles past the door a white goose waddles past the door a white goose waddles past the door repeat an uncountably large number of times a black goose waddles past the door an individual hits it with an axe given that the population of geese is uncountably large and the size of the confidence interval for the decision is undetermined under what conditions could a decision upon the behavior of the individual towards white geese be made if only black geese are observed to be axed is it not a valid question to be concerned with the different behavior between black and white geese more red herrings could jim mean that he has read an uncountably large number of my articles could jim mean that because i axed his articles but not weiss articles he wants to conclude inductively well i can t see where he is going with this but i can help him with his induction i ve written roughly articles since january the vast majority of them are discussions with frank decenso and other inerrantists where i take the position that they are making bad arguments some are discussions with jim meritt where i take the position that he is making bad arguments a straw man argument earlier and taking quotes out of context more recently think hard about this jim see the pattern think harder run it through your induction engine and see what pops out dj

talk.religion.misc

re spreading christianity re christian extremist kills doctor i addressed most of the key issues in this very long lines post by dean kaflowitz in two posts yesterday the first was made into the title post of a new thread is dean kaflowitz terminally irony impaired and the second more serious one appeared along the thread a chaney post and a challenge reissued and revised both only in talk abortion but i am posting its contents into talk religion misc as soon as i exit here this should be enough for us to thrash out for the next week or so the second post really grapples with the main bones of contention between us the first is more lighthearted and tells about such things as kaflowitzdebatingpoints tm which he continues to rack up on both talk abortion and talk religion misc while setting follow ups to talk abortion alone his lame excuse for the latter policy is that he gets a prompt as to where to set follow ups and does not follow talk religion misc much this suggests that he is being hypocritical in not also setting his newsgroups line to talk abortion alone peter nyikos

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re spreading christianity re christian extremist kills doctor most of the key issues in the line post to which i am following up are dealt with in the following post i made on talk abortion yesterday modified to correct the next to last paragraph message id nyikos milo math scarolina edu references nyikos milo math scarolina edu nyikos milo math scarolina edu apr cbnewsj cb att com in apr cbnewsj cb att com decay cbnewsj cb att com dean kaflowitz writes in article nyikos milo math scarolina edu nyikos math scarolina edu peter nyikos writes in cs apr cslab g cs brown edu cs cs brown edu john bates writes in article nyikos milo math scarolina edu nyikos math scarolina edu peter nyikos writes perhaps out of dedication to your convictions i never never thought that you would be consciously intellectually dishonest though i am not can you show me anything that would lead you to think otherwise see the spreading christianity thread in which he says i ignore certain statements that i specifically acknowledged and dean did not he called them the great commission but this is not descriptive of jesus s words in matt matt jerusalem bible translation and if anyone does not welcome you or listen to what you have to say as you walk out of the house or town shake the dust from your feet matt i tell you solemnly on the day of judgment it will not go as hard with the land of sodom and gomorrah as with that town in the post to which dean is referring above i said the above is a good description of kaflowitz who keeps harping on shaking the dust off the feet but ignoring what christ said next the highlighted words refer to matt and respectively and dean countered actually this comment of your s is a perfect example of what an intellectually dishonest little sparrowfart you are since i specifically acknowledged the great commission and the entreaty to spread the word in fact it is the combination of the two statements i was addressing and not just the one and for you to characterize that as ignoring the instruction to spread the word is a good example of what a dishonest little fellow you are of course matt quoted above makes no mention of instruction to spread the word all these quotes btw are from message id apr cbnewsj cb att com in which at the end he claims i did not answer a question which i answered and which he deleted to get the chronology right he deleted the answer and then said i didn t answer and i claim it correctly because my question went do you too measure the goodness of a post by its entertainment value and care not a whit for such mundane things as truth and falsehood and the closest dean came to an answer was peter peter peter you re just so stupid pretentious dull and generally unworthy of the value you place on yourself that the sport is all there is of course this does not answer my question which has to do with posts in general and not my posts in particular surely even dean knows this yet he brazenly asserts otherwise reinforcing his claim with an insult so i now restore the answer to your question that you deleted if you re still unable to figure it out ask a nice kid at the local junior high to help you it really doesn t take much sophistication to understand on top of which i doubt that the answer is at all representative of dean s true frame of mind the insults you have seen quoted thus far are but a small sample of the stream that oozes out of dean s mind throughout the line post from which these quotes were taken one wonders whether dean s mind is so warped as to find sport in all this he even dredges up a falsified account of events that transpired earlier on another thread you made an ass of yourself by claiming that it was in the tradition of lent to make public announcements of the sins of other individuals false i said it was the tradition to recall and atone for one s sins that i made public announcements of the sins of others sins btw that were a matter of public record documented in the posts of others is a different matter many of the individuals involved are so nearly amoral that they do not see as sins what morally upright people see as sins so i pointed some of them out and i expressly set up a whole thread your turn to let people point out my sins to me dean again you made an ass of yourself by saying that my statement of the tradition of tzedukkah was somehow an attempt to paint jews as plaster saints thereby revealing your inability to understand the discussion as well as showing your dislike for people saying positive things about jews and now you show your intellectual dishonesty by repeatedly ignoring the simple argument being made and then claiming i am ignoring the very argument i acknowledge actually what happened was that dean made it seem like any jew who gave alms or did other acts of charity in public was a hypocrite according to jewish customs in doing so he was caricaturing jewish customs as being almost impossibly demanding as well as implicitly slandering all jews who make public their acts of charity i went very easily on dean for this giving him the benefit of the doubt in a post following my initial crack about plaster saints suggesting that he had been merely careless in his wording in an astonishing act of ingratitude dean now serves up an incredibly distorted picture of what took place between us and using it as the basis of one insult after another peter nyikos

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re part and part re homosexuality hudson athena cs uga edu paul hudson jr writes in article m njxcg vec juts ccc amdahl com rich bellacera amail amdahl com writes why don t we just stick to the positive and find ways to bring people to jesus istead of taking bullwhips and driving them away certainly we should not use a bullwhip to drive people from jesus but we shouldn t water down the gospel to draw people in very well put and in the case of someone who calls himself a christian brother yet continues in his sin and claims that his sin is not a sin at all but perfectly acceptable what should be done should christians just ignore a sinful lifestyle in order to not offend the person by reaffirming that the lifestyle is sinful according to the bible are they using a bullwhip to drive people from jesus frankly i find the occurance of a homosexual christian attempting to pass himself off as a straight christian in order to have other christians accept his chastisement better a lot more serious than people reaffirming that the bible teaches homosexuality is a sin walter

talk.religion.misc

the divine masters the divine masters most christians would agree and correctly so that jesus christ was a divine master and a projection of god into the physical world god incarnate but there are some very important related facts that christians are completely ignorant of as are followers of most other world religions first jesus christ was not unique john notwith standing there is always at least one such divine master god incarnate physically alive in this world at all times a continuous succession throughout history both before and after the life of jesus the followers of some of these masters founded the world s major religions usually perverting the teachings of their master in the process christians for example added threats of eternal damnation in hell and deleted the teaching of reincarnation secondly and more importantly after a particular master physically dies and leaves this world there is nothing that he can do for anybody except for the relatively few people that he initiated while he was still physically alive that is simply the way god set things up in the universes therefore all those christians who worship jesus and pray to jesus and expect jesus to return and save them from their sins are only kidding themselves and have allowed themselves to be duped by a religion that was mostly manufactured by the romans and emotional feelings are a totally deceiving indicator for religious validity these things are similarly true for followers of most other major world religions including islam thirdly the primary function of each master is to tune his initiates into the audible life stream or sound current referred to as the word in john and as the river of life in revelation and to personally guide each of them thru the upper levels of heaven while they are still connected to their living physical bodies by a silver cord true salvation which completes a soul s cycles of reincarnation in the physical and psychic planes is achieved only by reaching at least the soul plane which is five levels or universes above the physical universe and this cannot be done without the help of a physically living divine master one such divine master alive today is an american sri harold klemp the living eck master or mahanta for the eckankar organization now headquartered in minneapolis p o box zip another divine master is maharaj gurinder singh ji now living in punjab india and is associated with the sant mat organization one of the classic books on this subject is the path of the masters radha soami books p o box gardena ca written in by dr julian johnson a theologian and surgeon who spent the last years of his life in india studying under and closely observing the sant mat master of that time maharaj sawan singh ji several of the eckankar books including some authored by sri paul twitchell or sri harold klemp can be found in most public and university libraries and some book stores or obtained thru inter library loan the book eckankar the key to secret worlds by sri paul twitchell is another classic many christians are likely to confuse the masters with the anti christ which is or was to be a temporary world dictator during the so called last days but the masters don t ever rule even when asked or expected to do so as jesus was people who continue following christianity islam or other orthodox religions with a physically dead master will continue on their cycles of reincarnation between the psychic planes and this miserable physical world until they finally accept initiation from a physically living divine master re incarnation the book here and hereafter by ruth montgomery describes several kinds of evidence supporting reincarnation as a fact of life including hypnotic regressions to past lives about accurate the subconscious mind sometimes makes things up especially with a bad hypnotist spontaneous recall especially by young children some of whom can identify their most recent previous relatives homes possessions etc dream recall of past life experi ences deja vu familiarity with a far off land while travel ing there for the first time on vacation the psychic read ings of the late edgar cayce and even supporting statements from the christian bible including matthew john the baptist was the reincarnation of elias and john how can a person possibly sin before he is born unless he lived before always use the king james version later versions are per versions strong interests innate talents strong phobias etc typically originate from a person s past lives for example a strong fear of swimming in or traveling over water usually results from having drowned at the end of a previous life and sometimes a person will take an immediate dislike to another person being met for the first time in this life because of a bad encounter with him during a previous incarnation the teaching of reincarnation also includes the law of karma galatians revelation etc people would behave much better toward each other if they knew that their actions in the present will surely be reaped by them in the future or in a future incarnation nd comings if a divine master physically dies translates before a particular initiate of his does then when that initiate physically dies translates the master will meet him on the astral level and take him directly to the soul plane this is the one and only correct meaning of a nd coming it is an individual experience not something that happens for everyone all at once people who are still waiting for jesus nd coming are waiting in vain planes of existence the physical universe is the lowest of at least a dozen major levels of existence above the physical plane is the astral plane the causal plane the mental plane the etheric plane often counted as the upper part of the mental plane the soul plane and several higher spiritual planes the soul plane is the first true heaven counting upward from the physical the planes between but not including the physical and soul planes are called the psychic planes it is likely that esp telepathy astrological influences radionic effects biological transmutations see the book with that title and other phenomena without an apparent physical origin result from interactions between the psychic planes and the physical plane the major planes are also sub divided for example a sub plane of the astral plane is called hades and the christian hell occupies a small part of it created there less than years ago by the early catholic church by some kind of black magic or by simply teaching its existence in a threatening manner the christian heaven is located elsewhere on the astral plane good christians will go there for a short while and then reincarnate back to earth sound current vs blind faith the christian religion demands of its followers an extraordinary amount of blind faith backed up by little more than good feeling which is totally deceiving if a person is not hearing some form of the sound current the word the bani the audible life stream then his cycles of reincarnation in this miserable world will continue the sound current manifests differently for different initiates and can sound like a rushing wind ocean waves on the sea shore buzzing bees higher pitched buzzing sound a flute various heavenly music or other sounds in eckankar members start hearing it near the end of their first year as a member this and other experiences such as soul travel replace blind faith for more information answers to your questions etc please consult my cited sources books addresses un altered reproduction and dissemination of this important information is encouraged robert e mcelwaine nd initiate in eckankar but not an agent thereof

talk.religion.misc

re rosicrucian order s in article qppef i b usenet ins cwru edu ch cleveland freenet edu tony alicea writes kent you say that there are about competing rosicrucian orders existing today most of them are spin offs from oto and other competing organizations from the th century france germany maybe i should write an article please don t huh it might be interesting he is relating the story as i have heard it btw about all this i spent some time investigating these organizations and their conceptual world view systems name just three really competing rosicrucian orders i have probably spent more time than you doing the same none of them are spin offs from o t o the opposite may be the case huh care to back that up josh

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re merlin mithras and magick in article pegasus fp dialin uoregon edu pegasus aaa uoregon edu pegasus writes in article joshua apr bailey cpac washington edu joshua cpac washington edu joshua geller wrote in article pegasus fp dialin uoregon edu pegasus aaa uoregon edu laurieewbrandt writes lewb lets add to those percentages for the orphaic docterians brought lewb to the group by paul saul who was a high ranking initiate on the lewb development of orphaic mysteries see jane harrisons prolegomena to the lewb study of greek religion cambridge u press and you can easly draw lewb your own conclusions josh perhaps you can quote just a bit of her argument love to but i must do it a bit later my copy of harrison in packed but the last chapter as best as i can rember deals with orphic mysteries and their views of women though she does not come out and say it it is strongly implyed that the christian view was drawn heavly from the orphic and other major cults of the time i would really appreciate if when someone brought something like this up they didn t back out when someone asked for details have a day josh

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re davidians and compassion in article c slas b blaze cs jhu edu arromdee jyusenkyou cs jhu edu ken arromdee writes in article sandvik sandvik kent apple com sandvik newton apple com kent sandvik writes so we have this highly christian religious order that put fire on their house killing most of the people inside we have no way to know that the cultists burned the house it could have been the batf and fbi we only have the government s word for it after all and people who started it by a no knock search with concussion grenades are hardly disinterested observers nor to point out the obvious are the deluded siege mentality followers of a religious nut case who thought he was jesus christ or possibly the big guy personally much as i regard the batf and fbi as condupes i ll take their word over a bunch of silly pinks who were stoopid enough to lock themselves up with a goofball like david koresh in a makeshift arsenal the doge of south st louis dobbs approved media conspirator tm one step beyond sundays to pm fm st louis community radio you ll pay to know what you really think j r bob dobbs

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re freemasonry and the southern baptist convention there were some recent developments in the dispute about masonry among southern baptists i posted a summary over in bit listserv christia and i suppose that it might be useful here note that i do not necessarily agree or disagree with any of what follows i present it as information for a short summary a southern baptist named larry holly wrote a book claiming that freemasonry is a religion incompatible with christianity mr holly s father rejects christianity and mr holly blames that on the masons the sbc s home missions board includes an interfaith witness department which studies other religions and how to teach them about christ a few years ago they were ordered to produce a report on masonry they concluded that it was not a religion and therefore was outside their speciality however mr holly led a movement of people who oppose masonry and last year the convention again ordered the hmb to study masonry i got the feeling that they were saying you got the wrong answer last time try to do better and get the answer we want anyway there s been a bit of infighting and some inappropriate actions but the dust has settled and the report is in nobody is entirely happy with it but everybody seems willing to live with it both sides are saying things such as this was the best we were going to get in the current environment the report commends the masons for the charity work they do such as the hospitals and burn centers they operate as well as efforts to help the elderly and prevent drug abuse the report acknowledges that many well known christians are and have been masons and notes that many teachings of masonry are supportive of christian faith and practice examples of the latter include belief in god emphases on honesty and integrity and that some masonic lodges incorporate explicit christian beliefs on the other hand they note that some aspects of masonry are incompatible with southern baptist principles these included the use of titles which some people consider sacrilegious the taking of certain oaths even though they are not meant seriously the undeniably pagan and or occultic writings of some masonic leaders the implication in some masonic writings that salvation can be achieved by good works and the racial discrimination practiced by many masonic lodges i note with some chagrin that baptist churches as a whole aren t really in a place to speak on this last point the report concludes that masonry is not a religion and says that membership should not be endorsed or censured but left to the discretion of individuals this was in part because there is variation among different masonic lodges and while one may include elements strongly against christianity another may not many southern baptists have strong convictions about the priesthood of the believer and the autonomy of the local church and this history probably influenced how the report came out the information above was gleaned from the religious herald a publication of the baptist general association of virginia and baptists today which does not have any direct links to a religious organisation autonomy is a big issue among some baptists because i have neither the report itself nor whatever masonic documents are relevant to these issues none of the above comes with a guarantee your mileage may vary void where prohibited darren f provine kilroy gboro rowan edu milton we use only the finest baby frogs dew picked and flown from iraq cleansed in finest quality spring water lightly killed and then sealed in a succulent swiss quintuple smooth treble cream milk chocolate envelope and lovingly frosted with glucose praline that s as may be it s still a frog

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odds and ends just a few cheap shots a christianity riddle what is the shortest street in jerusalem answer the street of the righteous poles limrick there was an archeologist thostle who found an amazing fossil by the way it was bent and the knot it the end twas the penis of paul the apostle jingle christianity hits the spot twelve apostles thats a lot jesus christ and a virgin too christianity s the faith for you with apologies to pepsi cola and its famous jingle riddle how many christians does it take to save a light bulb answer none only jesus can save aphorism jesus saves moses invests proof that jesus was jewish he lived at home till he was he went into his fathers business he thought he mother was a virgin his mother thought he was god qed so long you all bob kolker i would rather spend eternity in hell with interesting people than eternity in heaven with christians if you can t love the constitution then at least hate the government

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re ignorance is bliss was is it good that jesus died in article sandvik sandvik kent apple com sandvik newton apple com kent sandvik writes in article f ap quack kfu com pharvey quack kfu com paul harvey wrote in article sandvik sandvik kent apple com sandvik newton apple com kent sandvik writes ignorance is not bliss ignorance is strength help spread the truth of ignorance huh if ignorance is strength then i won t distribute this piece of information if i want to follow your advice contradiction above cheers kent sandvik newton apple com alink ksand private activities on the net he was quoting big brother from orwell s

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the magi of matthew was the jewish discomfort with jesus in article bd a paranet fidonet org bill carlson p f n z fidonet org bill carlson writes since everywhere i look zoroaster is suggested as being a probable descendant of daniel suppose you prove he wasn t ref encyclopedia of religion mircea eliade magi sneak preview later still eschatology and apocalyptics were a fertile meeting ground for iranian and judeo christian religions as can be seen in the famous oracles of hystaspes a work whose iranian roots are undeniable and which most likely dates from the beginning of the christian era probably the second century ce widengren the zoroastrian doctrine of the savior of the future saoshyant was the basis for the story of the coming of the magi to bethlehem in the gospel of matthew the old persian word magu rendered in greek by magos is of uncertain etymology it may originally have meant member of the tribe as in the avestan compound mogu tbish hostile to a member of the tribe this meaning would have been further resticted among the medes to member of the priestly tribe and perhaps to priest benveniste boyce the term is probably of median origin given that herodotus mentions the magoi as one of the six tribes of the medes for a variety of reasons we can consider the magi to have been members of a priestly tribe of median origin in western iran among the persians they were responsible for liturgical functions as well as for maintaining their knowledge of the holy and the occult most likely the supremacy of the median priesthood in western iran became established during the time of the median monarchy that dominated the persians from the end of the eighth century through the first half of the sixth century bce until the revolt of cyrus the great bce the persians were indebted to the medes for their political and civil institutions as well even if hypotheses have been advanced concerning the existence of magi of persian origin in the achaemenid period boyce we must still maintain that they were of median origin this is demonstrated by the eposide of the revolt of gaumata the magian mentioned by darius i bce in the inscription at bisutun iran as well as by greek sources indeed herodotus insists on the idea of the usurpatory power of the medes against the persians through the conspiracy of the magi the fact that the magi may have been members of a tribe that handed down the sacerdotal arts in a hereditary fashion naturally did not exclude the possibility that some of them undertook secular prefessions this seems to be attested by the elamite tablets at persepolis there is a theses put forth by giuseppe messina that denies that the magi are members of an ethnic group by suggesting that they are simply members of the priesthood a priesthood of purely zoroastrian origin this thesis is untenable on the other hand the hypothesis that their name is related to the avestan term magavan derived from the gathic maga vedic magha gift is not without foundation mole the meaning of maga can probably be found in conformity with the pahlavi tradition within the context of the concept of purity or separation of the mixture of the two opposed principles of spirit and matter the maga which has been erroneously interpreted as chorus from the root mangh which is said to mean sing the magic song nyberg and has been rendered simply by an expression like unio mystica seems to be an ecstatic condition that opens the mind to spiritual vision in any case though there may be a relation between the old persian term magu and the avestan terms magavan and maga we must maintain a clear distinction between the magi and the avestan priesthood the avesta ignores the median or old persian term despite a recent hypothesis proposed by h w bailey old persian inscriptions ignore the avestan term for priest athravan vedic athravan even if this is perhaps present in an achaeminid setting in the elamite tablets of persepolis gershevitch the term magu has been present in zoroastrianism throughout its history the pahlavi terms mogh mard and mobad represent its continuation the latter in particular derives from an older form magupati head of the magi during the sasanid period third to seventh centuries ce which saw the formation of a hierarchically organized church the title mobadan mobad the high priest of high priests came to be used to designate the summit of the ecclesiastical hierarchy the magi practiced consanguineous marriage or khvaetvadatha av pahl khwedodah they also performed a characteristic funeral rite the exposure of the corpse to animals and vultures to remove the flesh and thereby cleanse it the corpse was not supposed to decompose lest it be contaminated by the demons of putrefaction this practice later became typical of the entire zoroastrian community and led to the rise of a complex funeral ritual in iran and among the parsis in india stone towers known as dakhmas were built especially for this rite during the time of herodotus the practice of exposure of the corpse was in vogue only among the magi the persians generally sprinkled the corpse with wax then buried it the practice was widespread however among the peoples of central asia the magi were the technicians of and experts on worship it was impossible to offer sacrifices without the presence of a magus during the performance of a ritual sacrifice the magus sang of the theogony the magi were possibly the custodians of a tradition of sacred poetry but we know nothing about the relationship of this tradition to the various parts of the avesta and was called upon to interpret dreams and to divine the future the magi were also known for the practice of killing harmful or ahrimanical animals khrafstra such as snakes and ants they dressed in the median style wearing pants tunics and coats with sleeves they wore a characteristic head covering of felt gr tiara with strips on the sides that could be used to cover the nose and mouth during rituals to avoid contaminating consecrated objects with their breath boyce the color of these caps in conformity with a tradition that is probably of indo european origin according to georges dumezil was that of the priesthood white in all likelihood during the achaemenid period the magi were not in possession of a well defined body of doctrine and it is probable that they gradually adopted zoroastrianism they were most likely a clergy consisting of professional priests who were not tied to a rigid orthodoxy but were naturally inclined to eclecticism and syncretism nonetheless they must have been jealous guardians of the patrimony of zorastrian traditions by virtue of this they were the educators of the royal princes the wisest of them was responsible for teaching the prince the magic of zarathushtra son of horomazes and thus the cult of the gods magi who excelled in other virtues were entrusted with the education of the prince so that he would learn to be just courageous and master of himself during the achaemenid period the magi maintained a position of great influence although they were certainly subordinate to the emperor despite several dramatic events such as the massacre they suffered after the death of gaumata the magian in which according to herodotus who calls himself smerdis the persians killed a large number of magi to avenge the usurpation the magi nevertheless managed to maintain their influence at court in media in persia and in the various regions of the empire where they were stationed as a consequence of the persian civilian and military administration no priesthood of antiquity was more famous than that of the magi they were renowned as followers of zarathushtra zoroaster as the teachers of some of the greatest greek thinkers pythagoras democritus plato as the wise men who arrived guided by a star at the manger of the newborn savior in bethlehem and as the propagators of a cult of the sun in india but they were also known as the chaldeans the priesthood of babylon known for its occultism this was perhaps the reason that the term magos had a pejorative sense in greek like goes expert in the magic arts bidez and cumont indeed the chaldeans were experts in all types of magical arts especially astrology and had a reputation for wisdom as well as knowledge to understand the reasons for such various and sometimes discordant views it is necessary to distinguish between the magi of iran proper and the so called western magi who were later hellenized in the achaemenid period both must have been at least in part zoroastrian but the western magi those of the iranian diaspora in asia minor syria mesopotamia and armenia who came in contact with diverse religious traditions must have sooner or later and in varying degrees been influenced by syncretic concepts the greeks were familiar with both kinds of magi and depending on their varying concerns would emphasize one or the other aspect of them classical historians and geographers including herodotus and strabo document their customs while the philosophers dwell above all on their doctrines dualism belief in the hereafter magian cosmology and cosmogony and their theology and eschatology those sources most interested in the doctrines of the magi even speak of zarathushtra as a magus in doing so they are repeating what the magi themselves said from the median and achaemenid periods when they adopted zoroastrianism at that time they embraced zarathushtra as one of their own and placed themselves under his venerable name zoroastrianism had already undergone several profound transformations in the eastern community by the time of the acheamenids and was already adapting those elements of the archaic religion that refused to die it has been said quite often in an attempt to characterize the precise role of the magi in the zoroastrian tradition that the vendidad from vi daevo data the law abjuring daivas part of the avesta should be attributed to them this collection of texts from various periods is primarily concerned with purificatory rules and practices nonetheless the hypothesis is hardly plausible since the first chapter of the vendidad a list of sixteen lands created by ahura mazda the supreme god of zoroastrianism but contaminated by an attack by ahriman pahl gathic avestan angra mainyu the other supreme god and the ultimate source of all evil and suffering does not mention western iran persia or media the land of ragha mentioned in the text cannot be median raghiana furthermore it has been noted gershevitch that if the authors had been magi the absence of any reference to western iranian institutions including their own priesthood would be very strange the magi were above all the means by which the zoroastrian tradition and the corpus of the avesta have been transmitted to us from the second half of the first millennium bce on this has been their principal merit we can attribute directly to the magi the new formulation that iranian dualism assumed known to us especially from greek sources and in part from the pahlavi literature of the ninth and tenth centuries ce according to this formulation the two poles of the dualism are no longer as in the gathas spenta mainyu beneficent spirit and angra mainyu hostile spirit but ahura mazda himself and angra mainyu gershevitch see ahura mazda and angra mainyu this trans formation was of immense consequence for the historical development of zoro astrianism and was most likely determined by the contact of the magi with the mesopotamian religious world in this new dualism which was that later known to the greeks aristotle eudemus of rhodes theopompus and others we can see the affirmation of a new current of thought within zoroastrianism to which we give the name zurvanism see zurvanism thanks to their adherence to zoroastrianism the magi played an enormously important role in the transmission of zarathushtra s treachings as well as in the definition of the new forms that these would assume historically their natural propensity to eclecticism and syncretism also helped the diffusion of zoroastrian ideas in the communities of the iranian diaspora the greeks began to study their doctrines and to take an interest in them xanthus of lydia hermodorus aristotle theopompus hermippus dinon even writing treatises on the persian religion of which only the titles and a few fragments have survived in the hellenistic period the magi were seen as a secular school of wisdom and writings on magic astrology and alchemy were lent the authority of such prestigious names as zarathushtra ostanes and hystaspes forming an abundant apocryphal literature bidez and cumont later still eschatology and apocalyptics were a fertile meeting ground for iranian and judeo christian religions as can be seen in the famous oracles of hystaspes a work whose iranian roots are undeniable and which most likely dates from the beginning of the christian era probably the second century ce widengren the zoroastrian doctrine of the savior of the future saoshyant was the basis for the story of the coming of the magi to bethlehem in the gospel of matthew see saoshyant the sasanid period saw the magi once again play a determining role in the religious history of iran concerned to win back the western magi de menasce and eager to consolidate zoroastrianism as the national religion of iran the priests of iranian sanctuaries in media and persia were able to establish a true state church strongly hierarchical and endowed with an orthodoxy based on the formation of a canon of scriptures the leading figures in the development of a state religion and of zoroastrian orthodoxy were tosar and kerder the persecutors of mani in the third century saoshyant the avestan term saoshyant future benefactor mpers soshans designates the savior of the world who will arrive at a future time to redeem humankind the concept of the future savior is one of the fundamental notions of zoro astrianism together with that of dualism it appears as early as in the gathas zarathushtra zoroaster as the prophet of the religion is himself a sao shyant one who performs his works for the frashokereti the end of the present state of the world when existence will be rehabilitated and made splendid see frashokereti later zoroastrian doctrine developed this notion into a true eschatological myth and expanded the number of saoshyants from one to three all the saviors are born from the seed of zarathushtra which is preserved through the ages in lake kansaoya identified with present day lake helmand in seistan iran protected by fravashis or guardian spirits the greatest of the awaited saoshyants the victorious astvatereta he who embodies truth the son of the vispataurvairi she who conquers all is the third who will make existence splendid he appears in yashts upon his arrival humankind will no longer be subject to old age death or corruption and will be granted unlimited power at that time the dead will be resurrected and the living will be immortal and indestructable brandishing the weapon with which he kills the powerful enemies of the world of truth that is the world of the spirit and of asha astvatereta will look upon the whole of corporeal existence and render it imperishable he and his comrades will engage in a great battle with the forces of evil which will be destroyed the name astvatereta is clearly the result of theological speculation kellens as are those of his two brothers ukhshyatereta he who makes truth grow and ukhshyatnemah he who makes reverence grow the names of the three virgins yashts who are impregnated with the seed of zarathushtra when they bathe in lake kansaoya and give birth to the saoshyants are equally speculative each of these saoshyants will arrive at the beginning of a millennium initiating a new age and a new cycle of existence astvatereta will appear in the third and final millennium to save mankind the doctrine of the future savior had already taken shape in the archaemenid period sixth to fourth century bce it was not perhaps the principal element in the formation of the messianic idea but it was certainly a determining factor one that enjoyed great success in the hellenistic period beyond the confines of the iranian world a similar concept that of the future buddha maitreya was most likely indebted to it and christian messianism can trace its roots to the same source

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re clarification of personal position in article c rbht fw athena cs uga edu hudson athena cs uga edu paul hudson jr writes in article c muiw aqc mailer cc fsu edu dlecoint garnet acns fsu edu darius lecointe writes if it were a sin to violate sunday no one could ever be forgiven for that for jesus never kept sunday holy he only recognized one day of the seven as holy jesus also recognized other holy days like the passover acts says that no more should be layed on the gentiles than that which is necessary the sabbath is not in the list nor do any of the epistles instruct people to keep the th day while christians were living among people who did not keep the th day it looks like that would have been a problem instead we have scriptures telling us that all days can be esteemed alike romans and that no man should judge us in regard to what kind of food we eat jewish holy days we keep or in regard to the sabbath col the question is on what authority do we proclaim that the requirements of the fourth commandment are no longer relevant to modern christians i don t think that the sabbath or any other command of the law is totally irrelevant to modern christians but what about collosions where it says that we are not to be judged in regard to the keeping of the sabbath why are you running away from the word of jesus has somebody superseded the word of jesus if you don t follow the morality of the ten commandments and the law and the prophets and the word of jesus whose morality do you follow

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re that kill by sword must be killed by sword in article apr utarlg uta edu b zaw utarlg uta edu stephen writes in article sandvik sandvik kent apple com sandvik newton apple com kent sandvik writes so are you happy now when people including innocent kids died today it s amazing how everyone automatically blames one side or the other one thing for sure koresh will have no chance to defend himself against the statements lacking in fact or court sponsored verification made by agents who participated in the situation that killed him i don t know they murdered him i also don t know that the branch davidians set a fire and suicidede it is sick of batf or fbi spokepeople to make such comments in advance of forensic pathology stephen thank you god speed no kinda numb i thought something like this was going to happen over a week ago one of the things that s been obvious from the yah start is that when there are two armed camps neither of which yields it s usually get slaughtered when any little spark sets it off which is why koresh and company shouldn t have stockpiled weapons and why the batf shouldn t have come primed for a raid bingo am i the only one to notice a no peaceful attempt to serve a warrant b six months to develop a scene and six days to end it c ah god children at least adults plus at the beginning and more batf agents all dead painful point if the davidians fired first why were the batf on the roof rather than taking cover has anyone asked themselves these questions have you seen the entire video sequences taken during the opening rounds i seem to recall missing several key parts a the first five minutes of day one only the shooting part comes out b what happened to the feds video units you mean they do not carry helmet cams wonder why not how is it you can have camera crews with live transmission video present and not have an uninterrupted record a you realize the units carry ittle bitty mm backups that hold minutes per unit and there are twounits on the professional handhelds so no tape turnover gaps b until all views are seen it is premature to point fingers in either direction as you well point out stephen anyone batf bd x bd other could have touched it off by mistake or maliciously more on this below once koresh was shot disregarding his being a religious leader and apocalyptically obsessed most likely the people inside just went on drill just like the batf outside is the lesson that automatic responses are very hazardous last resort measures yes but it is so hard toremain human under the full pressure of hazard game playing and life painful point either side could have backed off to help defuse the situation we see the problem constantly here on the net with flaming ego problems nuff said more to the point when someone dies almost like it was intended that way both sides will kill to maintain their innocence a contradiction in terms painful point it doesn t help to take sides in such a situation just adds fuel to the fire better is to let it burn out on it s own true usually i pick the unpopular side and point out from the evidence seen what might have alternatively happened best example i can think of is christ with the tax coin he didn t have one and so didn t sanction the roman authority unduly when they showed it to him he noted that it was caesar s minting and so said give it to him no waste of time and then he got back to more worthwhile concerns god s will this requires someone interested in god s will please note that the outstanding overt problem in this country today is one where the government wants caesar s coin to pay off the debt the anti tax movement of today and the anti ssan as i d groups would do well to note who the issuing authority is ditto for those yes the american people not the federal government and if it is not spent towards that end no one deserves the coin made in the image of god yah fewpeople hear the contradiction money made in the image of god no need to stir things up in ever larger revo revo revolution as governments turn over and over and over i wish you were wrong many pundits are saying years the onyl good thing to come out of my divorce and my exposure to the damned pardon me american divorce attorney is i have no money left to lose to taxes or inflation painful point for many this was just entertainment thumbs up thumbs down just another thriller like terminator or a good old ball game is the lesson that we ve become jaded to media reality children dead if anyone thinks blaming koresh or the batf helps this any at all is sick and wrong the reason you can tell that the batf may not be entirely straight on this is that the leaders at press conferences havew made any comments about even the possibility that koresh or his followers caused this the batf agentss are more concerned with their repuations and morals not my fault koresh did it than they are with dead children same goes for koresh his followers who are all mostly dead painful point la burned the davidians burned in one case society has abandoned the people which has returned to a frontier in the other the outskirts were bumping against the suburbs is the lesson that what s lawful in different areas of society depends more on conditions than laws more on power and favoritism my personal opinion look to history whenever privilege has replaced whatever token of objective law and justice a society has had hitlerrs have followed if we don t learn the lessons or at least make an honest effort the next conflagration will no doubt be closer to home rather than putting out fires aren t there much more important concerns for us to work on you do your name sake proud stephen its hard but please keep on keeping on each voice in the wilderness now will save a generation unborn from horror kent who can t cheers today exactly what keeps me from being a bomb thrower is my loving god as irra tional as that is for so many one direct benefit is being able to keep things in perspective ks the day i need a gun or abomb to protect myself in this society is the day that society is already beyond redemption and that aint redundant if you have any christian belief aytall and the day that i cannot peacefully enjoin others in the act that thoreau called civil disobedience to rectify the wrongs that my society practises without undue harm or punishment befalling me is the day that society has ceased to be a human society and become a society of animals we are very cclose to that such as who hurts more the ones who died or the loved ones who are left besides the lessons it s also time for many to grieve including those who ve lost their faith in others or in god i m learning to be patient and let things heal god willing six years fighting an unjust court issue still struggling to be patient for those who like contrary questions nb i was not there i am not a branch davidian nor a law official hater i do hate liars or the six letter variety of same the official side has its advocates already lets balance the equation and asj a few questions on the other side for the sake of an old saw the batf abd fbi seem to want to bypass innocent until proven guilty not innocent until presumed guilty where are the video tapes from the tanks all of them don t tell me they do not exist they are standard equipment so you think koresh fired the place because of the explosion a tear gas comes with an aerosol to spread it this aerosol is deliberately made to be as non flammable as possible it is as non flammable as possible gotcha when in isolation from other substances why was a pipe deliveryu system used rather than remote launchers why did the fbi not announce this window blown in plus tear gas five minutes then the wall come down and maintain a left to right sequence b most aerosols also have a secondary compound that when mixed in becomes a very flammable and difficult to trace suspension with a very special property exposure to brief eruptions of high heat muzzle blasts or long exposure to low heat matches a stove will not tend to ignite what other chemicals come up in the forensics who else will be allowed to test the site c after a few minutes to hours ifdesired the combnation rate can be controlled as desired the mixture can be made to become veryignitable onb exposure to a temperature above a certain point a tracer round for a certain heat quantity a small explosive charge or for a length of time start a wall fire and wait check your military records look at the tapes why were tanks large capacity delivey systems tear gas why not somnorifics and now why the hurry was there still a comm channel open to the outside do you see any trace of fire coming back to the compound in the videos all the videos which ones are missing do i sound paranoid maybe am i probably not you trust the fbi and batf to render judgement in advance of a court god help us for we are surely not helping ourselves you trut the federal gevernment to give us a clean slate you are trillion admitted down and counting look again did it happen that way i do not know i was not there and it should wait for a court to decide but will that happen people will not have the chance to tell their side as the batf leader was on camera no one wins except more force next time listen to your hearts people thanx again stephen j stephen roy andrew crabtree roy red haired king andrew the virtuous one crabtree iron workers

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re question on sabbath question correction there are a few groups that continue to believe christians have to worship on the sabbath saturday the best known are the seventh day adventists and jehovah s witnesses they argue that act is not a regular worship service but a special meeting to see paul off and that i cor doesn t explicitly say it s a regular worship service jehovah s witnesses do not believe that christians are required to observe the sabbath whether it is on saturday or sunday the sabbath was part of a covenent between god and the israelites and is not required for christians steve peterson

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re christian owned organization list in article apr organpipe uug arizona edu ece bigdog engr arizona edu wrote sorry but mormons aren t generally considered to be christians kcochran nyx cs du edu b c d e f g k m r s t tsakc my thoughts my posts my ideas my responsibility my beer my pizza ok do you have some pumps and a purse in this shade a perfume that whispers please come back to me i m looking for something in green laurie morgan sorry but it doesn t matter what you think i am a christian who happens to belong to the lds church the church of jesus christ of latter day saints i don t usually read t r m it is truly informative to stop by and see that there are still people in the world like those that forced my ancestors into the deserts of utah and then out of the country entirely my grandmother was born in mexico where her family had moved to escape religious persecution in the us i m willing to admit that members of other churches are christians if they believe in christ and try to follow his teachings even though they have different interpretations of the bible and yet these other churches often go out of their way to define whether or not i am considered to be christian could someone mail me a set of rules beliefs that must be followed to be a christian does this set of rules exclude other large bodies of believers i know this is a waste of everyone s time this has probably been discussed n times etc i guess i m more sensitive to this demonization after what went on in texas don corbitt donc microsoft com mail flames post apologies support short sigs three lines max i consider this a rebuttal not a flame

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re is it good that jesus died brian lpl arizona edu brian ceccarelli writes bskendig netcom com brian kendig writes and i maintain some people do not want to enter into the light and the knowledge that they alone are their own masters because they fear it they are too afraid of having to face the world on their own terms are you your own master do you have any habits that you cannot break if i have a habit that i really want to break and i am willing to make whatever sacrifice i need to make to break it then i do so there have been bad habits of mine that i ve decided to put forth the effort to break and i ve done so there have been other bad habits that i ve decided are not worth the effort to break it s my choice either way i am my own master i choose what i want to do i weigh the benefits of my actions against their consequences and i use my experience to help me deal with the unexpected which in turn make me more experienced i don t always succeed but i never fail either i learn do you have any habits you can t break why not for one you seem unable to master your lack of desire to understand even the slightest concept of the bible i have arrived at my own understanding of christianity just as you ve probably arrived at your own understanding of islam that is most likely very different from the way a moslem thinks of his religion are you unable to master your lack of desire to understand even the slightest concept of the quran if that s different then how is it different from what you accuse me of can i accuse you of having no desire to understand even the slightest concept of atheism how about sexual sins gotta any of those secret desires in your head that you harbor but can get control of do you dehumanize women when they walk past you do you degrade them to a sex object in your head of course not that s disgusting for centuries religions have been discriminating on sex and treating women as second class humans that s one of the reasons i renounced my christianity do you insult people unknowingly then regret it later yet do it again the next time opportunity presents itself no i don t insult people period it s not in my nature and it s not something that i want to do either are you truly the master of yourself not yet but my life is the ground i use to practice on the fun is in the getting there i have admitted that i am not the master of my thought life at all times that i sometimes say things i do want to say and then repeat my mistake unwantingly i have admitted to myself that i cannot control every aspect of my being there are times i know i shouldn t say something but then say it anyway there are times i simply forget a lesson i in fact am not my own master we don t start out perfect we ve got to strive to be something better i know my shortcomings and i know my strengths and i live my life according to the decisions i make and i am content to abide with the consequences of my decisions as easily as i ll accept the praise for them there have been times in my life when i ve made mistakes yes i try to never make the same mistake twice i need help jesus promised me this help and i took him up on his offer i have willfully let jesus be my master because jesus knows what is better for me than i myself do i regard christ as a myth i feel that there are far too many people offering far too many interpretations of what he supposedly said and did the only person who can really judge me is me i choose the roads i travel and i decide whether or not i want to reach the end of any given road or turn back and as long as i don t always turn back there s no shame in it when i need help i seek out my friends do you see my point i think you re the one under the rock and i m getting a great tan out here in the sunlight my life has improved immesurably since i abandoned theism come and join me it will be a difficult trip at first until you build up your muscles for the long hike but it s well worth it then i guess ignorance is bliss for you because brian you enjoy not having a clue about the bible and you don t have a clue about what i m saying either open your eyes and see open your ears and listen i m not just spouting off empty words this is my life this is what gives me meaning don t you see i m not going to accept anything that i can t witness with my own eyes or experience with my own senses especially not something as mega powerful as what you re trying to get me to accept surely if you believe in it this strongly you must have a good reason to don t you can you witness motherly love with your senses how does caring and concern for you register with your senses if nothing registers to you other than what you can see taste smell hear and touch then you better become a vulcan and fast you better get rid of your emotions huh you re going way off the track here i say my mother loves me how do i know you ask i can point to definite things she s done for me and i can even just bring her to you so you can ask her face to face you say your deity loves you how do you know i ask you can t even convince me that it exists my god says that you will not cease existing you have life forever you can choose to either live it in hell in eternal torment where there is no communication whatsoever or can choose to live it in paradise with god that is what my god says and that was the issue your made up theism is what it is made up it s wishful thinking if any god dangles heaven before me like a carrot promising untold pleasures to me if i ll only suspend my disbelief and ignore my rationality for just this once then i would choose hell i can not lie to myself to placate another being no matter how powerful it is note also that there are several gods trying to lure me this way yahweh allah zeus odin ra please give me a solid reason to choose one of them over the others description of kendigism deleted hee hee why would you want to live a good life to you you die and that s it don t contradict yourself you have no reason to live a good life it doesn t do you any good in the end your life doesn t do anybody else any good either because everyone dies anyway so you have no reason to lead a good life leading a good life is meaningless why do you do such a meaningless thing that paragraph demonstrates that you haven t listened to a single word i ve said have you ever gone to an amusement park why i mean after a few hours it closes and nothing s different except that you re a few dollars lighter going to the amusement park doesn t do you any good at all why do you do such a meaningless thing the answer is that you think it s fun you play the skee ball over and over because you d like to get better at it even though you re not going to win anything better than a stuffed animal even if you blow ten dollars on it you ride the roller coaster because it s an thrilling experience even though because it scares the dickens out of you in the same way i think life is fun and i don t intend to leave the amusement park of life until they close down for the night d i m sorry i don t feel that sacrificing jesus was something any god i d worship would do unless the sacrifice was only temporary in which case it s not really all that important has the resurrection sunk in jesus is alive jesus is not dead so you and your holy book say by the same token therefore santa claus delivers toys every xmas don t you see i have no reason to believe that what you say is true please give me some reason that i can t similarly apply to santa claus forget the bible for a minute forget quoting verses forget about who said what about this or that show me picture just you and me and a wide open hilltop and convince me that you re right forget that i am a person forget that i know how to type forget that i know how to put a sentence together forget that i know how to send e mail forget my existence proove to me that i exist i can t do it because your existence means nothing more to me than just your communications over the net you have no more bearing on nor importance in my life than that remove it and you will cease to be significant to me are you thereby inferring that your deity is nothing more than a collection of verses in a book and cannot be supported without invoking them or do you mean that the existence of your deity and in fact any other deity that can be written about is as real as your own existence why do you believe what you believe brian kendig je ne suis fait comme aucun bskendig netcom com de ceux que j ai vus j ose croire n etre fait comme aucun de ceux qui existent the meaning of life si je ne vaux pas mieux au moins je suis autre is that it ends rousseau

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hating the sin but not the sinner what are the consequences of the homophobic ranting of the self righteous well i just noted this on another group and thought i d pass it along the context is talk origins and a report of yet another debate that was nothing but an attempt at mindless bullying and factless assertion by a standard issue creationist the writer reflects that the behavior reported reminds him of some christian groups he has known i believe that the writer is a non homosexual christian there is a very effective technique used to promote unit cohesion among the soldiers of the lord it is called witnessing i ve seen this process used well and poorly the near devil worship i mention was a group that was using the witnessing to get people lathered up to go kill homosexuals or at least terrorize them off campus as it was clearly god s will that they do so i have deleted the specifics of the location as i do not believe it characteristic of the place a state in which i spent my formative first years though it does have unfortunately a subpopulation that this remark fits to a tee michael l siemon i say you are gods sons of the mls panix com most high all of you nevertheless or you shall die like men and fall mls ulysses att com like any prince psalm

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apr god s promise in chronicles and he went out to meet asa and said unto him hear ye me asa and all judah and benjamin the lord is with you while ye be with him and if ye seek him he will be found of you but if ye forsake him he will forsake you chronicles

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lds thief goes to paradise kermit goes off tangent kermit tensmeyer quoted from a few sources and then wrote something i will attempt to construct a facsimile of what was previously said and then address kermit s offering john redelfs originally wrote jr i learned that a man cannot frustrate justice by repenting on his jr death bed because repentance is more than a feeling of remorse it jr requires faith in christ proven by following him by keeping his jr commandments such cannot be accomplished on ones deathbed tom albrecht responded ta so jesus must have lied to the thief on the cross john redelfs wrote back that jr paradise and salvation are not the same thing salvation is better jr refer to john i responded to john that rw i don t see the effort to equate salvation with paradise rw rw rather i see implied the fact that only those who are saved rw may enter paradise to which kermit wrote kt incomplete reference kt kt see also the discussion did jesus go into hell in the biblestudy group kt for the arguments that paradise and hell sheol are places after death kt the discussion no lds were involved as far as i could see argued using kt standard christian argument from the bible that pretty much support the kt lds position kt kt christ went to paridise after his death and burial kt kt he taught the prisoners and freed them from darkness kt kt when he was resurrected he had not yet ascended to his father kt kt the arguement centered around what was or wasn t the proper biblical kt terms for those places i respond the question that was raised was not if jesus went to infernal paradise before entering into heaven no one has made a point for or against that issue nor have they compared the lds position against orthodox belief the infernal paradise is held to be abraham s bosom luke the place of the righteous dead in sheol equivalent to hades the point that was raised by john was that someone could not repent on their death bed tom albrecht pointed to a biblical example that was contradictory to what john s position put forward the thief on the cross was promised by christ to be with him in paradise the abode of the righteous dead john s position possibly needs to be reworked kermit needs to address the topic at hand robert weiss psyrobtw ubvms cc buffalo edu

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re davidians and compassion in article apr ra royalroads ca mlee post royalroads ca malcolm lee wrote do you judge all christians by the acts of those who would call themselves christian and yet are not the bd s contradicted scripture in their actions they were not christian simple as that perhaps you have read too much into what the media has portrayed ask any true believing christian and you will find that they will deny any association with the bd s even the th day adventists have denied any further ties with this cult which was what they were well if they were satanists or followers of an obscure religion then i would be sure that christians would in unison condemn and make this to a show case but when we are dealing with a fanatical revelation preacher that kills ultimately everyone including the innocent children then it seems that we are dealing with christians and christians note the spelling do you judge all muslims by the acts committed by saddam hussein a supposedly devout muslim i don t saddam is just a dictator using the religious beliefs of his people to further his own ends and does not this show the dangers with religion in order word a mind virus that will make mothers capable of letting their small children burn to ashes while they scream cheers kent sandvik newton apple com alink ksand private activities on the net

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re davidians and compassion in article c slas b blaze cs jhu edu arromdee jyusenkyou cs jhu edu ken arromdee wrote in article sandvik sandvik kent apple com sandvik newton apple com kent sandvik writes so we have this highly christian religious order that put fire on their house killing most of the people inside we have no way to know that the cultists burned the house it could have been the batf and fbi we only have the government s word for it after all and people who started it by a no knock search with concussion grenades are hardly disinterested observers well looking at the videos it seems that this fire started in various places at the same time which would indicate that this was a planned action i m sure fbi and batf didn t deliberately start a possible fire having a sniper kill korresh would have been a far easier method looking at the careful operation and use of tear gas that as i know don t start fires it is less likely that this was the case sorry but my bets are on fanatical people keen to start armageddon theirs cheers kent sandvik newton apple com alink ksand private activities on the net

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re davidians and compassion in article c slas b blaze cs jhu edu arromdee jyusenkyou cs jhu edu ken arromdee wrote in article sandvik sandvik kent apple com sandvik newton apple com kent sandvik writes so we have this highly christian religious order that put fire on their house killing most of the people inside we have no way to know that the cultists burned the house it could have been the batf and fbi we only have the government s word for it after all and people who started it by a no knock search with concussion grenades are hardly disinterested observers there s another point to be made those who have been inside burning houses know that if they want to stay alive it s better to run out from the building we had one case where an fbi agent had to drag out a women from the burning house she run back in when she saw the forces arriving it is a good indication of the fanatical mind that the followers had including having they children burned instead of saving these innocent victims of the instance cheers kent sandvik newton apple com alink ksand private activities on the net

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re a kind and loving god in article apr ra royalroads ca mlee post royalroads ca malcolm lee wrote i understand and sympathize with your pain what happened in waco was a very sad tradgedy don t take it out on us christians though the branch davidians were not an organized religion they were a cult led by a ego maniac cult leader the christian faith stands only on the shoulders of one man the lord of lords and king of kings jesus christ btw david koresh was not jesus christ as he claimed the interesting notion is that i watched tv tonight koresh never claimed officially to be jesus christ his believers hoped that he would be but he never took this standpoint himself he was more interested in breaking the seven seals of revelation and make sure that armageddon would start well it did and children died and no god saved them kent sandvik newton apple com alink ksand private activities on the net

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re that kill by sword must be killed by sword in article apr utarlg uta edu b zaw utarlg uta edu stephen wrote tional as that is for so many one direct benefit is being able to keep things in perspective ks such as who hurts more the ones who died or the loved ones who are left besides the lessons it s also time for many to grieve including those who ve lost their faith in others or in god i m learning to be patient and let things heal god willing christians through ages have had to learn to be patient i do think it s time to face the reality the events during the last two days showed what the world is really like kent sandvik newton apple com alink ksand private activities on the net

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re o t o clarification in article cup portal com thyagi cup portal com thyagi morgoth nagasiva wrote they are considered different and largely unrelated by a number of sources i ve seen documentation which links them through the figure of h spencer lewis lewis was apparently involved with reuss who was the o h o of ordo templi orientis for many years apparently it is also true that lewis had a charter to form an o t o body and then created a m o r c as a subsidiary an interesting question if anyone is interested in the history of amorc i do think spencer lewis published books about the beginning and his mission the alexandria bookstore that s the name of the book store operated by amorc should have a selection that should provide the interested reader more insight cheers kent sandvik newton apple com alink ksand private activities on the net

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a treatise on the miracles of muhammad part droplet vol no part d r o p l e t from the vast ocean of the miraculous qur an translations from the arabic and turkish writings of bediuzzaman said nursi the risale i noor vol no part nineteenth letter mu jizat i ahmediye risalesi a treatise on the miracles of muhammed saw part continued from droplet vol no part third sign the miracles of muhammad saw are extremely varied because his messengership is universal he has been distinguished by miracles that relate to almost all species of creation just as the supreme aide of a renowned ruler arriving with many gifts in a city where various people live will be welcomed by a representative of each people who acclaims him and bids him welcome in his own language so too when the supreme messenger of the monarch of pre and post eternity ezel and ebed sultani honored the universe by coming as an envoy to the inhabitants of the earth and brought with him the light of truth and spiritual gifts sent by the creator of the universe and derived from the realities of the whole universe each species of creation from water rocks trees animals and human beings to the moon sun and stars welcomed him and acclaimed his prophethood each in its own language and each bearing one of his miracles now it would require a voluminous work to mention all his miracles as the punctilious scholars have written many volumes concerning the proofs of his prophethood here we will briefly point out only the general category into which fall fhe miracles that are definite and accepted as accurate reports the evidences of the prophethood of muhammad saw fall into two main categories the first is called irhasat and includes the paranormal events that happened at the time of his birth or before his declaration of prophethood the second group pertains to all the remaining evidences of the prophethood and contains two subdivisions those wonders that were manifested after his departure from this world in order to confirm his prophethood and those that he exhibited during the era of his prophethood the latter has also two parts the evidences of his prophethood that became manifest in his own personality his inner and outer being his moral conduct and perfection and the miracles that related to substantial matters the last part again has two branches those concerning the qur an and spirituality and those relating to matter and creation this last branch is again divided into two categories the first involves the paranormal happenings that occured during his mission either to break the stubbornness of the unbelievers or to augment the faith of the belivers this category has twenty different sorts such as the splitting of the moon the flowing of water from the fingers the satisfying of large numbers with a little food and the speaking of trees rocks and animals each of these sons has also many instances and thus has in meaning the strength of confirmation by consensus as for the second category this includes events lying in the future that occured as he had predicted upon allah swt s instructions now starting from the last category we will summarize a list of them unfonunately i could not write as i had intended without choice i wrote as my head dictated and i could not completely conform to the order of this classification to be continued allah willing irfan alan a servant of islam

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re christians above the law was clarification of personal position in article apr rchland ibm com xzz rchland vnet ibm com r j traff writes in article c muiw aqc mailer cc fsu edu dlecoint garnet acns fsu edu darius lecointe writes question is on what authority do we proclaim that the requirements of the fourth commandment are no longer relevant to modern christians please i don t believe most christians believe they are above the law however we are not saved by adherence to the law the law exists to tell us what is sinful we all sin hence we are all above the law where all in this case refers to christians jews believe that their sins are atoned for with blood sacrifice of animals as described in the old testament when was the last time you heard about a jewish animal sacrifice christians believe that their sins are atoned for by the blood sacrifice of jesus the blood sacrifice of an innocent man this does not make the law irrelevant then why don t christians follow it why don t they even follow their own ten commandments breaking the law is sinful and we are to avoid sinful ways but sinning by itself does not jeopardize salvation so in short hitler is in heaven and gandhi is in hell note that i m not a theologian but this is the gist of several sermons i ve heard lately and some bible studies i ve been through did you ever wonder if someone perhaps a great deceiver was pulling your leg

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re merlin mithras and magick kosinski us oracle com kevin osinski writes i recall reading in michael rutherford s novel sarum a scene in which the son of a roman nobleman living in britain takes part in a secret ceremony involving a bull he stands naked in a pit covered with some sort of scaffolding while assistants coax a bull to stand on the scaffolding they then fatally stab the bull which douses the worshipper in the pit with blood this is supposedly some sort of rite of passage for members of the bull cult i wonder if this is related to the mithras cult i don t know where rutherford got his information for this chapter the book is historical fiction and most of the general events which take place are largely based on historical accounts there is a rite like this described in joseph campbell s occidental mythology he also described levels of initiation i think i don t know where campbell got his info but i remember thinking he was being a little eclectic i also wonder what if any connection there is between the ancient bull cults and the current practice of bullfighting popular in some mediterranean cultures quite a bit if you haven t read campbell give him a try larry caldwell caldwell ohsu edu compuserve oregon health sciences university

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davidians and compassion so we have this highly christian religious order that put fire on their house killing most of the people inside i m not that annoyed about the adults they knew supposedly what they were doing and it s their own actions what i mostly are angry about is the fact that the people inside including mothers let the children suffer and die during awful conditions if this is considered religious following to the end i m proud that i don t follow such fanatical and non compassionate religions you might want to die for whatever purpose but please spare the innocent young ones that has nothing to do with this all i have a hard time just now understanding that christianity knows about the word compassion christians do you think the actions today would produce a good picture of your religion kent sandvik newton apple com alink ksand private activities on the net

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re a kind and loving god in article apr ra royalroads ca mlee post royalroads ca malcolm lee wrote it is true what you stated above jesus saving grace is available to everyone not just jews in other words everyone can have salvation but not everyone will this option is now open to people other than just jews of course if the jews don t accept the deity of christ i would hardly expect them to accept anything that christ said but i don t feel any animosity towards them even though they persecuted jesus and his disciples and eventually crucified him i bear them no ill will if anything i feel pity for them jesus had to die to pay the price for our sins and so the jews were merely fulfilling prophesy jesus knew he had to die even before he began his ministry that demonstrates the great depth of his love for us jesus certainly demonstrated the great depth of his love for the children who died today at the davidian complex sorry but the events today made me even more negative concering organized religion cheers kent sandvik newton apple com alink ksand private activities on the net

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re rfd misc taoism sunlight shining off of the ocean aleph null bottles of beer on the wall aleph null bottles of beer take one down pass it around aleph null bottles of beer on the wall

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to rob lanphier dear rob when i read brian k s postings i find someone who is honestly seeking the truth when i read your response here i see condescension when you reply to a post reply to the post you quote this statement undermines any good points you might have had it was enough to make me stop reading sometimes i do come across condesending and i am sorry i come across that way at times thank you for the reproach i really do appreciate it i ll try to get better rob at the same time i have also learned that some people respond to the gentle approach while others respond only at a harsh rebuke brian k so far only responds to the latter and i am glad he responds at all in both cases of approach my intention is to be loving i am making no excuse for myself if i am coming across condesending i apologize for that rob sometimes brian k comes across as honest i know this but brian k vasillates back and forth one post looks honest the next is an excuse now he wants me to explain the universe in words or less i think brian kendig is really trying but he is too comfortable with his set of excuses i just want brian k to be honest with himself if he really wants to know he will ask questions and stop asserting irrelevant excuses which have nothing to do with my god i wish brian would read the bible for himself and come to his own decisions without being sidetracked with the temptation to mock god from my perspective rob when i look at brian kendig i see a man standing out in the middle of a highway off into the distance i see a mack truck heading right for him but brian k is faced away from the oncoming truck he doesn t see it here s is how i see the dialog me brian k please step aside before you get run over bk there is no truck me turn around at look bk no me look you will be healthier if you do take a look at the oncoming truck bk no explain to me why trucks exist me turn around or you will run over bk no i won t because i like hiking and tomorrow is tuesday me you blind fool why do you choose ignorance you have nothing to lose if you look but if do not look you will certainly lose your life i do not want to see you squashed all over the road bk it is my life to lose i rather not look besides a truck running over me will not harm me and by the way i really have an open mind so is my motivation to belittle brian or to love brian the best i know how i do not wish to single brian kendig out because millions if not billions of people fall into the same category perhaps all people fall have fallen into this category at one time in their lives i have i can now see the truck behind brian my hope is that brian will look and will see the ramifications of the truck coming towards him my hope is that brian will want to step out of the way my fear though is that brian will instead choose to glue himself to the middle of the highway where he will certainly get run over but if he so chooses he so chooses and there is nothing i can do beyond that to change his mind for it is his choice but at this very moment brian hasn t gotten even that far he is still at the point where he does not want to look sure he moves his eyeball to appease me but his head will not turn around to see the entire picture so far he is satisfied with his glimpse of the mountains off in the distance thank you again rob for your reproach i really do appreciate it my wife tells me the same thing at times i will try to do better

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re is it good that jesus died jim burhill writes would you consider the word of an eye witness peter to testify to the events surrounding jesus life no there are two problems here brian kendig writes peter died two millenia ago the original letters he wrote have long since decayed into dust if he were alive today and i could do you question the existence of alexander the great tilgrath pilisar iii nero caligula josephus cyrus the great artexerxes their documents have decayed to dust too brian why another excuse even if peter did witness the miracles of jesus two millenia ago that doesn t mean that your deity is what the bible says it is god might just be satan trying to convince everyone that he s a nice guy or even that your deity is still alive and active in the world today peter wrote a bit of the bible what peter says about god is what the bible says consider the bible a court recording over the period of thousands of years various people come up and testify of their experience with the living god up comes abraham the wealthy rancher up comes moses once the high official of egypt up comes elijah a priest up comes david a mere shepherd who became king up comes the pagan king nebuchanezzar up comes the pagan king of persia cyrus up comes nehemiah cupbearer to the king of persia then matthew an irs agent takes the stand up comes luke an m d then paul a jew who use to kill christians for fun up comes john a year old boy up comes peter a fishermen up comes james the brother of jesus himself up comes hundreds of others you hear testimony from fishermen irs agents priests kings the court hearing lasts thousands of years with people coming up and testifying about the god who calls himself i am while you are listening to all this stuff you realize that king david could have never known john solomon could have never known matthew nehemiah could have never known peter you realize that all these people are independent witnesses and so you rule out collaboration yet all of the witnesses tell of the same god each testifier tells of his own experiences with the living god each experience is different but each experience has enough cross over to unmistakenly reveal that each one of these people is talking about the very same god what daniel did not know about god the rd highest official of babylon god revealed to john years later but with a different perspective no two testimonies are identical each testimony dares to venture off what is already known yet each witness s testimony even though different from those prior consistently describes harmoniously fitting facets of the character of the same god now as we stare gazing at the computer you got this seeming fanatic on the other end of the net saying i know this god i am he has revealed himself to me too he also calls himself jesus john please believe me i am telling the truth it is wonderful to know him are you going to just pass off all this testimony as fictiousness are you going to call three thousand years worth of testimony from shepherds to irs agents to royal officials to kings to computer programmers fiction with a scoff of your keyboard with near complete ignorance of the testimonies are you going to say that that is all complete hooey would that not be the most audacious display of arrogance do you actually think you know better than king solomon king david or even abraham lincolnr

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re disillusioned protestant finds christ in article qmhp t usenet ins cwru edu cj cleveland freenet edu john w redelfs writes in a previous article tom tredysvr tredydev unisys com tom albrecht says in article qb j d usenet ins cwru edu cj cleveland freenet edu john w redelfs writes i learned that god loves his children who have never heard of him and has a plan for redeeming them too even those who have died without a knowledge of christ i learned that a man cannot frustrate justice by repenting on his death bed because repentance is more than a feeling of remorse it requires faith in christ proven by following him by keeping his commandments such cannot be accomplished on ones deathbed so jesus must have lied to the thief on the cross paradise and salvation are not the same thing salvation is better refer to john i don t see the effort to equate salvation with paradise rather i see implied the fact that only those who are saved may enter paradise robert weiss psyrobtw ubvms cc buffalo edu

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re abortion and private health insurance in qid s ik agate berkeley edu dzkriz ocf berkeley edu dennis kriz writes i recently have become aware that my health insurance includes coverage for abortion i strongly oppose abortion for reasons of conscience it disturbs me deeply to know that my premiums may be being used to pay for that which i sincerely believe is murder i would like to request that i be exempted from abortion coverage with my health premiums reduced accordingly i share dennis s outrage over a similar manner i have recently become aware that my health insurance includes coverage for illness and injuries suffered by christians it disturbs me deeply to know that my premiums may be used to pay for that which i sincerely believe is divine punishment for their sinful conduct in addition these folks are able to avail themselves of such alternative therapies as lourdes fatima morris cerullo benny hinn etc in any case as jesus saves i feel that there is no reason for them to be covering their bets at my expense i would like to request that i be exempted from christian coverage with my health premiums reduced accordingly jack carroll

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is it good that jesus died brian lpl arizona edu brian ceccarelli writes brian kendig writes if you can explain to me why the death of jesus was a good thing then i would be very glad to hear it and you might even convert me be warned however that i ve heard all the most common arguments before and they just don t convince me ask jesus himself he himself said why in john it isn t a mystery to anyone and there certainly is no need for a persuasive argument read jesus s own reply to your question john most assuredly i say to you unless a grain of wheat falls onto the ground and dies it remains alone but if it dies it produces much grain he who loves his life will lose it and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life if anyone serves me let him follow me and where i am there my servant will be also if anyone serves me him my father will honor why would i want an eternal life if i hate this one if we were created by a deity why would that deity not wish us to enjoy what he has given us why would i want to live forever the challenge in my life is that i will die and that i must give my life the meaning i wish it to have before that happens my time is here and will someday pass i will be content to live on in the memories of my friends and once they too are dead then i will no longer have any reason to exist in short even if your deity does exist that doesn t automatically mean that i would worship it i am content to live my own life and fend for myself so when i die i can be proud of the fact that no matter where i end up it will be because of my actions and my choices if your god decides to toss me into a flaming pit for this then so be it i would much rather just cease to exist but if your god wants my respect and my obedience then it had better earn these and if it does then they will be very strong and true jesus gives more reasons in john but one obvious reason why jesus died and as with everything else it has nothing do with his punishment was that he could rise to life again so that we would stop doubting and believe john the fact that jesus rose from the dead is my hope that i too will rise from the dead it is an obvious point do not overlook it without this obvious point i would have no hope and my faith would be vanity jesus wasn t the only one who rose from the dead i think it was osiris who did the same as well as a few characters from greek or norse legend if memory serves but still why would i want to rise from the dead why do you want to why did jesus suffer in his death again ask jesus jesus says why in john that s no mystery either the world hates him without reason it is a direct proclamation of how far we humans botch things up and thus how much we need a saviour if your god wants to win my devotion then it knows what it can do provide some way for me to believe without having to resort to blind faith that could be applied equally well to any religion and why can t you brian k accept this how can you the world cannot accept him because it neither sees him nor knows him john that s precisely it i neither see nor know zeus either nor odin shall i offer them the same devotion i offer jesus the animosity and the lack of knowledge that comes out in your twistings of robert s daily verses is very convincing testimony of the truth of john and you ve got to understand my point of view i see christians spouting bible verse all the time as if it were some sort of magic spell that will level all opposition truth is it s not robert has never demonstrated that he actually understands what the verses imply he just rattles them off day by day some brazenly fly in the face of common sense and reality and i point these out where i can but even more than that even when christians do try to explain the verses in their own words they do so from a christian point of view which is that every human being would want to be a christian if only he or she understood the christian message properly and then all strife and suffering on the earth would end here s the problem with that substitute moslem or buddhist or satanist instead of christian and it means the same thing christanity is a very nice belief set around a very nice book but if you want to make me believe that it has any bearing on the real world you ve got some convincing to do i pray and hope that i do blurt out such animosity and lack of knowledge i am not perfect either but regardless of that i thank god that jesus revealed himself to me without whom i d also be bumbling about blindly though arrogantly slandering the very person who created me and who loves me and in my opinion you re bumbling about blindly making up entities where there aren t any and depriving yourself of a true understanding and enjoyment of your life as long as you keep your beliefs to yourself i ll keep my beliefs to myself but as soon as you start waving them around expect me to toss in my opinions too brian kendig je ne suis fait comme aucun bskendig netcom com de ceux que j ai vus j ose croire n etre fait comme aucun de ceux qui existent the meaning of life si je ne vaux pas mieux au moins je suis autre is that it ends rousseau

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re language and agreement i responded to jim s other articles today but i see that i neglected to respond to this one i wouldn t want him to think me a hypocrite for not responding to every stupid article on t r m m mwunix mitre org james meritt writes from my handy dictionary dictionary definitions of not disagree and agree deleted please operationally differentiate between not disagree and agree oh but i m weary of trying to wade through jim s repertoire of red herrings and smoke screens let s see what we get when we run all four articles posted by jim today through the discord filter a markov chain program that steve lamont was kind enough to send me taking action a white geese be held as an accomplice to be held as a decision upon the door a black and white goose waddles past the eyes of the door hits it with the confidence interval for that individual is held responsible for that that individual may be held as a getaway car may be held as an uncountably large number of the driver of something and agree a black goose waddles past the person imprisoned white goose waddles past the confidence interval for the population of geese be axed fine and white goose waddles past the door does running jim s articles through discord make them more coherent less coherent or has discord turned jim s articles into an angst ridden poem about making choices in a world filled with uncertainty yet being held responsible for the choices we make do the geese symbolize an inner frustration with ambiguity a desire that everything be black and white with no shades of gray does the getaway car tell us that to try to renounce the existential nature of our being is not to get away from responsibility for our actions but rather to take the role of the passive accomplice the driver of the getaway car as it were does the juxtaposition of man and machine car and driver reveal a subtext an internal conflict between determinism and moral responsibility or am i reading too much into a collaboration between jim and a random number generator dj

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re catholic lit crit of a s s in apr mtechca maintech com foster mtechca maintech com writes i am surprised and saddened i would expect this kind of behavior from the evangelical born again gospel thumping in your face we re the only true christian protestants but i have always thought that catholics behaved better than this please do not stoop to the level of the e b a g t i y f w t o t c protestants who think that the best way to witness is to be strident intrusive loud insulting and overbearingly self righteous pleading mode on please i m begging you quit confusing religious groups and stop making generalizations i m a protestant i m an evangelical i don t believe that my way is the only way i m not a creation scientist i don t think that homosexuals should be hung by their toenails if you want to discuss bible thumpers you would be better off singling out and making obtuse generalizations about fundamentalists if you compared the actions of presbyterians or methodists with those of southern baptists you would think that they were different religions please prejudice is about thinking that all people of a group are the same so please don t write off all protestants or all evangelicals pleading mode off god i wish i could get ahold of all the thomas stories fbzr enval jvagre fhaqnlf jura gurer f n yvggyr oberqbz lbh fubhyq nyjnlf pneel n tha abg gb fubbg lbhefrys ohg gb xabj rknpgyl gung lbh er nyjnlf znxvat n pubvpr yvan jregzhyyre jemaleddin sasha david cole iv chief of knobbery research dlphknob camelot bradley edu

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lds gordon s question on the nicene creed gordon banks quoted and added gb in article c m p eoz acsu buffalo edu gb psyrobtw ubvmsb cc buffalo edu robert weiss writes gb gb gb christians have professed for more than years the nicene gb creed a statement of beliefs drawn from the truths of scripture gb that was officially accepted by a council of church bishops gb and leaders at nicea in a d christians still recite gb this creed regularly in public worship gb gb gb so prior to ad there were no christians or all of them really gb believed the nicean creed even before it was formulated do you gb really believe such an absurdity i m afraid you do no i really don t honest the nicene creed as i mentioned above is a brief statement of beliefs that are derived from scripture that this certain list did not exist earlier does not indicate that the beliefs summarized in in did not exist before the formula was derived robert weiss psyrobtw ubvms cc buffalo edu

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re alt sex stories under literary critical analysis in article qevbh h v agate berkeley edu dzkriz ocf berkeley edu dennis kriz writes hi all i m going to try to do something here that perhaps many would not have thought even possible i want to begin the process of initiating a literary critical study of the pornography posted on alt sex stories to identify the major themes and motifs present in the stories posted there opening up then the possibility of an objective moral evaluation of the material present there first off let me congratulate you for not posting a flame about you sick perverts you are immoral you are all going to hell which seems to be the usual religious post found on the alt sex hierarchy hopefully you won t get flamed either you will however be argued with i personally think that your project is built on unsteady ground first i do not believe that there is any way to find an objective morality morality and value are inherently subjective they represent the beliefs of a person or a group of people they can be widely held perhaps even overwhelmingly held but they are never and can never be objective assumptions a christian bedrock assumption that all that is true comes truly from god regarding alt sex stories while perhaps even from an objective standpoint the majority of its material is indeed repugnant you come to this conclusion quite quickly when you start thinking about analyzing its material like this some of it reflects some fairly profound needs in people as well as some truths and deserve to be pointed out second i do not accept the assumptions that you make here if as you say you are trying to be objective then why accept a morality to begin with by using the christian bible you re defeating your own purpose by doing so in the long run the advantage of making such a literary moral analysis is that it will save band width between christians and non mutually flaming each other about the moral acceptability of the stuff on these pornographic groups third call me a pessimist but you won t stop the flamage there will always be people who pop upin alt sex to tell us how sick and twisted and evil we all are just out of curiosity do alt sex readers show up unprovoked in the religion groups to tell you all that you are narrow minded censoring overbearing totalitarianists basically there should not be a dissonance between a christian morality and a non christian one either there is value in a particular work or there is not whether one is a christian or not hm let me provide an example four people get together over dinner to discuss morality you me a rather conservative moslem and a sociopath i start off by saying that i think it s immoral to force people to have sex with you you agree but also say that it is immoral to have sex with someone of your own gender just a note i really don t know your views on homosexuality i am just using this as a common view of morality for the purposes of this example the moslem says that it is immoral for women to have their faces uncovered the sociopath who has become bored kills all three of us and eats us but feels no guilt because he has done nothing wrong morally in his own mind in support for the first assumption the christian scriptures say this evidence deleted i m not going to accept your evidence for this you ask us to accept the word of god that everything good comes from god this is only a valid argument for a person who shares your beliefs still i must say that cataloging the major themes and motifs in erotica could be interesting for other reasons than yours so good luck with this next part now then what are some of the major themes motifs in the pornographic literature on places like alt sex stories these are some that i ve been able to identify please add comment on them motif the male cinderella in so many of the stories there is expressed a feeling of alienation and worthlessness on the part of the writer or otherwise protagonist of the story with regard to the object the other person of his her desire often a story involves a protagonist who on the surface is quite average but underneath usually has an enormous dick who desires to in some way to gain access in a definitely sexual way to the other person who he she confesses is far more desireable than he she is and who indeed seems to walk between the rain drops hmmm do i detect just a wee bit of condescence here motif a celebration of indeed preoccupation with beauty not very objective the vast majority of pornographic literature deals with beauty be it innocence somehow about to be lost grace or simply physical beauty and generally most people christian or non will say that beauty is good one could construe this to mean that beautiful people are better or more good than non beautiful people i would hope that people relize that this is not necessarily true motif one s dick is one s instrument of redemption might i suggest the word penis it seems more in line with the tone of your post blessed are those who are well hung for they shall get laid from what would thus be a revised matthew bravo i respect you and your sense of humor sir motif sex as an expression of sincere giving there is often enough a clear desire on the part of the protagonist to give definitely sexual pleasure to the object person of his her desires yes and this theme is usually what the better stories are about however they are not always selfish i could point to examples in the work of elf sternberg for example motif alt sex stories describes a sex which is completely removed from the realm of transmitting life so removed is sex from its procreative dimension on alt sex stories that one begins to wonder why sex even involves ejaculation as in the context described in pornography it serves then no real purpose it serves the same purpose as it does in pornographic movies it affirms the virility of the male involved as well as assuring the reader that he the character has orgasmed the whole picture tm is probably very well described by the catholic teaching on this of the husband and wife in an act of total mutual self giving in the sexual union cooperating with god in opening themselves up for the transmission of new life cf humane vitae your whole picture tm unfortunately only applies to people who accept your church in addition if sex is for procreation then why did god make it pleasurable so that people would want to do it rather than building it in as instinct why did god make it fallible not every sexual encounter results in pregnancy even among catholics does this mean that they have sinned in any case alt sex stories and the catholic teaching will probably not see eye to eye on this for a long time granted motif sex used as an instrument violence power and humiliation why pornography seems to tend in that direction i really do not know probably volumes could be written on the relationships between sex and power humiliation but this probably gives good reason why traditionally judeo christianity has been so negative with regard to sexuality it seems to tend to a great moral morass pornography would not tend in those directions if there were not a demand for it many people have violent fantasies that they would never act out in real life but will think about and read about and mull over later jeff jeffj yang earlham edu official generic sig under lines under columns no amiga checks no witty quotes no maps of australia no asterisks no ascii art no disclaimers or anti flame requests and one spelling errer

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re a kind and loving god in article sandvik sandvik kent apple com sandvik newton apple com kent sandvik writes in article apr ra royalroads ca mlee post royalroads ca malcolm lee wrote these laws written for the israelites remember these laws were written for a different time and applied only to god s chosen people but jesus has changed all of that we are living in the age of grace sin is no longer immediately punishable by death there is repentance and there is salvation through our lord jesus christ and not just for a few chosen people salvation is available to everyone jew and gentile alike jews won t agree with you malcolm which jews ks ex as a people as a language religiously politically or do you mean those jews who are god s chosen and malcolm please if you will set your word wrap at or less to avoid clutter j stephen

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re a kind and loving god in article sandvik sandvik kent apple com sandvik newton apple com kent sandvik writes in article apr ra royalroads ca mlee post royalroads ca malcolm lee wrote these laws written for the israelites god s chosen people whom god had expressly set apart from the rest of the world the israelites were a direct witness to god s existence to disobey god after knowing that god is real would be an outright denial of god and therefore immediately punishable remember these laws were written for a different time and applied only to god s chosen people but jesus has changed all of that we are living in the age of grace sin is no longer immediately punishable by death there is repentance and there is salvation through our lord jesus christ and not just for a few chosen people salvation is available to everyone jew and gentile alike jews won t agree with you malcolm cheers kent sandvik newton apple com alink ksand private activities on the net a lot of people won t agree with me that s their right and i respect that however to the point jews are also covered by the saving grace of jesus christ there are jews who have become christians this brings up another question i still have to ponder why is there so much anti semitism why do people hate jews i don t hate jews i consider them to be like anyone else sinners we all are

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re silence is concurance in article blue cis pitt edu joslin pogo isp pitt edu david joslin writes for those missing the context of this thrilling discussion between jim and i jim wrote the following to me in e mail after i pointed out hate to shatter your self image of perfection that you appear to hold but your language is wrong jim and me i pointed out that i did in fact agree that both robert weiss and jim meritt took quotes out of context hence i find it difficult to understand why jim thinks i am a hypocrite needless to say i don t have time to reply to every article on t r m that takes a quote out of context of course not just the ones you disagree with q e d so according to you jim the only way to criticize one person for taking a quote out of context without being a hypocrite is to post a response to every person on t r m who takes a quote out of context jim replied by saying did i either ask or assert that but today we find four articles from jim one of which has the subject so as of then and pointing out a specific instance wrongo again is it not the case that in the eyes of the law when someone is aware of something and has the capability of taking action and does not that individual may be held responsible for that action which is of course a complete red herring taking quotes out of context isn t a crime i don t have time to read every article on t r m and i m certainly under no obligation to reply to them all so check the newsgroups does silence is concurrence imply that jim thinks that because i didn t respond to weiss articles i must condone weiss taking quotes out of context jim doesn t want to give a direct answer to this question read what he has written and decide for yourself telepathy again you claim to know what i want but back to the context of my conversation with jim jim s next gambit was to claim that he was using inductive logic when he concluded that i was being a hypocrite i challenged him to provide the details of that logic that led him to an incorrect conclusion no you asked specifically what was wrong with yours today we find another obscure article posting it twice didn t help maybe to the ignorant i accept your classification more red herrings could jim mean that he has read an uncountably large number of my articles do you know what uncountably large means it does not appear so could jim mean that because i axed his articles but not weiss articles he wants to conclude inductively well i can t see where he is going with this i am not suprised but i can help him with his induction i ve written roughly that does not appear to be the case the appearance of your argument is more like that captain kirk would have gotten from mr spock written by a stagehand at paramount think hard about this jim see the pattern think harder run it through your induction engine and see what pops out of course you appear arrogant so i already had figured that out

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re lds gordon s question on the nicene creed the nicene creed we believe in one god the father almighty maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible and in one lord jesus christ the only begotten son of god begotten of the father before all worlds god of god light of light very god of very god begotten not made being of one substance with the father by whom all things were made who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the holy spirit of the virgin mary and was made man and was crucified also for us under pontius pilate he suffered and was buried and the third day rose again according to the scriptur es and ascended into heaven and sitteth on the right hand of the father and he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead whose kingdom shall have no end and we believe in the holy spirit the lord and giver of life who proceedeth from the father and the son who with the father and the son together is worshipped and glorified who spoke by the prophets and we believe in one holy and apostolic church we acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins and we look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come amen

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re christian meta ethics in article c jzz g panix com mls panix com michael siemon writes well the whole point of making these the base commandments is that they aren t reducible to rules a set of rules is a moral code or a law code or an algorithm for acting such things can be very helpful to individuals or societies but not if they are used instead of a personal involvement in and responsibility for one s actions the two commandments are rules they are merely rules that are so vague that they are practically devoid of meaning michael siemon acknowledges this every time he writes that the resolution of an argument over them turns on secular and cultural assumptions that are independent of these rules the great commandment is more than anything else a call to act as if you were god and accepting ultimate responsibility in your every action the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself can be viewed in part as reminding man that he is not god and cannot act as if he has ultimate responsibility indeed many traditions present an interpretation where believers are supposed to interpret loving one s neighbor as following various other rules and relying on their god to make things come out right precisely because it would be wrong for man to assume such ultimate responsibility once again we are confronted with good sounding goo that means whatever the reader wants it to mean conservatives may twist this act as if you were god to mean lay down rules for other people and be as nasty to them as possible if they don t keep your rules they are so insistent and obvious about this that they have convinced a lot of people who rightly reject the whole concept that such idiocy is how god acts and who is to say that this interpretation is twisted there are many passages in the bible that in their most straightforward reading show the christian god behaving in just this way michael cannot refer to base claims or base commandments to show that such readings are twisted because this divergence in understanding occurs even in trying to interpret the base claims and commandments in addressing conservative christians michael will necessarily draw upon secular and cultural notions that these conservative christians will reject but why should anyone be looking for an ethical system since our society is eager to hand us one or more no matter what we do it may be that we need a principle for the critique of ethical systems in which case i will profer the agapate allelou once again but these base commandments are too vague to serve as a principle for the critique of ethical systems the meaning of these base commandments for any believer derives from the secular and cultural notions that the believer brings to them from how the believer mixes their demands with straightforward readings of other biblical passages from a particular sectarian tradition or from some combination of these things these commandments lack sufficient substance in themself to serve as a basis for criticizing ethical systems what meaning they have comes from the ethical system the believer brings to these commandments and different bodies of christians have from the beginning urged different ethical systems or in some cases none as a result it is bizarre to identify any one of these systems however popular or infamous with christianity christianity does not have a torah it does not have a qu ran specifically christian scripture has very little if anything in the way of commandments so little that the christians who desperately want commandments go mining for them with almost no support the one single thing in the gospels which jesus specifically gives as a commandment to us is love one another jesus explicitly states that this summarizes jewish law which would seem to bring in all of it if we properly understand what it means to love god and love our neighbors there are many parables and teachings the gospels attribute to jesus that are straightforwardly read as ethical commandments the pauline epistles are similarly full if it is not clear that these all come together in a sensible understanding of ethical behavior the problem is not a lack of raw material i am a radical christian only in that i take the gospel seriously no michael the conservative christians also take the gospel seriously what differentiates you is the way you interpret the gospel why don t i and the myriads of other christians like me tell you something about christianity in a sense the wide variety of interpretations does tell us something about christianity it tells us that the new testament authors left a sufficiently vague hodge podge that it can serve as the source text for many vastly different beliefs about the nature of the christian god and about what men should and shouldn t do the irony here is that there is nothing in christianity per se that michael can use to support the cause of lesbians and gays every christian principle he turns to this cause is effective only through the extra christian principles through which michael interprets his religion and the homophobes apply the same christian principles with equal justification to their cause in short it is the extra christian principles that make michael s christianity beneficial and i suspect they would be as beneficial perhaps moreso without being filtered by christian interpretation michael paints a picture of standard american atheism as the rejection of the evil in many conservative christian interpretations of the bible but i think it is even more damaging to christianity to note that the new testament presents such a vague hodge podge of notions about the nature of god and the nature of the good except of course when it is ordered by an interpretation that relies on extraneous principles here i think we should apply a christian parable where a cold drink can have its value and a hot drink can have its value but the lukewarm we should spit out russell

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re that kill by sword must be killed by sword in article apr utarlg uta edu b zaw utarlg uta edu stephen writes now that chemical warfare and the use of juggernauts have been used against innocents so likewise are those involved subject to their own judgments the same goes for those who lead others into captivity whether behind strands of barbed wire or webs of deceit yeah innocents people who hoard k worth of high caliber automatic weapons and kill law enforcement agents really fit the bill here the only innocents were the children who were prevented from leaving a burning building by their self appointed messiah following parents a burning started by the davidians such is the patience and faith of the saints so let them continue for the one who rewards them according to what their works shall be comes quickly the evidence continues to mount which all seems to follow step by step quite logically to me j stephen is this subject line a veiled threat against u s government agents or possibly executive office leadership i e clinton i ve considered you a bit of a loon before stephen i guess this pretty much confirms it nice religion you have there the only ones who should be killed are those who don t agree with us sheesh tom hyatt i m a diehard saints fan so i ve thyat sdf lonestar org suffered quite enough thank you arlington tx help i m being repressed m python

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re the list of biblical contradictions jim brown wrote deleted i feel that those who use the kjv as a basis for arguing biblical contradictions are either being intellectually dishonest purposefully wanting to show the bible in the worst light possible or they are being mentally lazy and are taking the easy way out either way they leave the theist the option of countering with well that s just the kjv that s not what my xxx version says deleted unfortunately it s not that simple the kjv is preferred by the majority of fundamentalists at least here the second part of your argument fails as well since that statement can be used against any version not just the kjv deleted i ve based my argument on one of the best modern translations available which is based on the work of the leading biblical scholars deleted i would not find this statement to be very useful since it is an appeal to authority and the opposition will just claim that their authorities are better a second tact that local creationists have used is to reply but those scholars are atheists and cannot be believed they will also use this phrase to describe any theologians that they don t agree with deleted gen and the flocks conceived before the rods and brought forth cattle ringstraked speckled and spotted deleted the verse being discussed clearly claims that sympathetic magic works i e placing stripped sticks in the cattle breeding grounds causes stripped and spotted calves to be born and should be attacked on that basis no biologist has ever observed this claimed correlation

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re apr god s promise in john in article qknu innbhv shelley u washington edu sieferme stein u washington edu eric sieferman writes in article f vmpxk quack kfu com pharvey quack kfu com paul harvey writes in article bskendigc h o d p netcom com human blood sacrifice martyrdom of an innocent virgin nailed to a wooden pole what is this obsession with male menstruation christian washed in the blood of the lamb mithraist washed in the blood of the bull if anyone in netland is in the process of devising a new religion do not use the lamb or the bull because they have already been reserved please choose another animal preferably one not on the endangered species list how about cockroaches porta wam umd edu what for you say you monkey when you have little fluffy tail like rabbit rabbit tazmanian devil

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re oto the ancient order of oriental templars in article cup portal com thyagi cup portal com thyagi morgoth nagasiva writes to all whom it may concern constitution sacrificed to the bandwidth gods im glad i finally have heard exactly what the oto is all about i finally know that i can stop looking content i the knowlege that im not interested it s tough enough listening to all the religions who refer to themselves as the one truth how can i possibly accept it from a magical order we have all the answers and will give them to those who join us and pay dues scary besides answers are easy questions now that s another story rintaw rob napier virginia tech there is no gravity the earth sucks rnapier csugrad cs vt edu all in all i m just another schitz in the hall

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rw is robert weiss the only orthodox christian robert you keep making references to orthodox belief and saying things like it is held that cf kermit thread on what exact body of theology are you drawing for what you call orthodox who is that holds that luke meant what you said he meant whenever your personal interpretation of biblical passages is challenged your only response seems to be that one needs merely to look at the bible in order to see the truth but what of those who see biblical things differently from you are we to simply assume that you are the only one who really understands it just curious rick anderson librba byuvm bitnet

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re biblical backing of koresh s tape cites enclosed in article r j ie sbctri sbc com netd susie sbc com writes in article apr utarlg uta edu b zaw utarlg uta edu stephen writes for those who think david koresh didn t have a solid structure or sound biblical backing for his hour long tape broadcast i don t think anyone really cares about the solid structure of his sermon it s the deaths he s responsible for that concern most people i assume you have evidence that he was responsible for the deaths koresh was a nut okay again i d like to see some evidence i ll type this very slowly so that you can understand he either set the fire himself or told his followers to do so don t make him out to be a martyr he did not get killed he killed himself once again where s your proof suicide is considered a sin by branch davidians also koresh said over and over again that he was not going to commit suicide furthermore all the cult experts said that he was not suicidal david thibedeau sp one of the cult members said that the fire was started when one of the tanks spraying the tear gas into the facilities knocked over a lantern the evil was inside the compound evidence please all that thou shalt not kill stuff i d like to point out that the bible says do not commit murder the nkj translation mistranslates self defense was never considered murder the reason why they were stockpiling weapons is because they were afraid the government would try something their fears were obviously well founded ray cote there s no government like no government

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re biblical backing of koresh s tape cites enclosed in article r u t lm oryx com xcpslf oryx com stephen l favor writes seems to me koresh is yet another messenger that got killed for the message he carried which says nothing about the character of the messenger i reckon we ll have to find out the rest the hard way koresh was killed because he wanted lots of illegal guns i suppose these illegal guns have been found i suppose he was going to kill a bunch of people with them ray cote there s no government like no government

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re lds gordon s objections in article c rp k kw acsu buffalo edu psyrobtw ubvmsb cc buffalo edu robert weiss writes gordon banks quoted and added gb in article c l s d acsu buffalo edu gb psyrobtw ubvmsd cc buffalo edu robert weiss writes gb gb the mormon jesus is the spirit brother of lucifer that jesus is god gb the father s first born spirit child that jesus was begotten on earth gb through natural means not by the holy ghost that he sweat his blood gb for our sins in the garden of gethsemane that his blood cannot gb cleanse from all sin that he is now among many millions of other gb gods that jesus is jehovah and the father is elohim in the ot gb jehovah and elohim are the same that he needed to be saved gb it is true that mormons believe that all spirits including jesus lucifer robert weiss are in the same family it does not mean that jesus was created but rather that lucifer and robert weiss were not i agree that this is a heresy so what the sweating of blood in gethsemene is not a basic mormon doctrine jesus did not perform the atonement in getheseme alone as some anti mormons are trying to teach as far as the unpardonable sin whatever that is it is biblical and not specifically mormon it is also called the sin against the holy ghost most bible scholars other than conservative ones do not believe jehovah and elohim were always the same i m sure you ve heard of the j and the e texts i don t know what you mean by that he needed to be saved jesus jehovah elohim in mormon doctrine jesus was sinless and thus did not need to be saved gordon banks n jxp skepticism is the chastity of the intellect and geb cadre dsl pitt edu it is shameful to surrender it too soon

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re biblical backing of koresh s tape cites enclosed cotera woods ulowell edu writes david thibedeau sp one of the cult members said that the fire was started when one of the tanks spraying the tear gas into the facilities knocked over a lantern sort of a mrs o leary s tank theory moooo joe knapp jmk cbvox att com

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re a kind and loving god in article r hicinnjfj owl csrv uidaho edu lanph crow csrv uidaho edu rob lanphier writes malcolm lee mlee post royalroads ca wrote in reference to leviticus and deuteronomy these laws written for the israelites god s chosen people whom god had expressly set apart from the rest of the world the israelites were a direct witness to god s existence to disobey god after knowing that god is real would be an outright denial of god and therefore immediately punishable remember these laws were written for a different time and applied only to god s chosen people but jesus has changed all of that we are living in the age of grace sin is no longer immediately punishable by death there is repentance and there is salvation through our lord jesus christ and not just for a few chosen people salvation is available to everyone jew and gentile alike hmm for a book that only applied to the israelites deuteronomy jesus sure quoted it a lot mt in addition he alludes to it in several other places mt mk jn and just in case it isn t clear jesus thought the old testament isn t obsolete i ll repeat the verse in matthew which gets quoted on this group a lot do not think that i have come to abolish the law or the prophets i have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them i tell you the truth until heaven and earth disappear not the smallest letter not the least stroke of a pen will by any means disappear from the law until everything is accomplished anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven for i tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the pharisees and the teachers of the law you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven mt niv in pretty red letters so that you know it s jesus talking this causes a serious dilemma for christians who think the old testament doesn t apply to them i think that s why paul harvey likes quoting it so much rob lanphier lanph uidaho edu i will clarify my earlier quote god s laws were originally written for the israelites jesus changed that fact by now making the law applicable to all people not just the jews gentiles could be part of the kingdom of heaven through the saving grace of god i never said that the law was made obsolete by jesus if anything he clarified the law such as in that quote you made in the following verses jesus takes several portions of the law and expounds upon the law giving clearer meaning to what god intended if you ll notice he also reams into the pharisees for mucking up the law with their own contrived interpretations they knew every letter of the law and followed it with their heads but not their hearts that is why he points out that our righteousness must surpass that of the pharisees in order to be accepted into the kingdom of heaven people such as the pharisees are those who really go out of their way to debate about the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin they had become legalistic rule makers religious lawyers who practiced the letter of the law but never really believed in it i think you will agree with me that there are in today s world a lot of modern day pharisees who know the bible from end to end but do not believe in it what good is head knowledge if there is nothing in the heart christianity is not just a set of rules it s a lifestyle that changes one s perspectives and personal conduct and it demands obedience to god s will some people can live by it but many others cannot or will not that is their choice and i have to respect it because god respects it too god be with you malcolm lee

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re biblical backing of koresh s tape cites enclosed cotera woods ulowell edu writes once again where s your proof suicide is considered a sin by branch davidians also koresh said over and over again that he was not going to commit suicide furthermore all the cult experts said that he was not suicidal david thibedeau sp one of the cult members said that the fire was started when one of the tanks spraying the tear gas into the facilities knocked over a lantern in two places at once bit of a coincidence that whatever the faults the fbi had the fact is that responsibility for those deaths lies with koresh p moorcockpratchettdenislearydelasoulu iainmbanksneworderheathersbatmanpjorourke clive p a u l m o l o n e y come let us retract the foreskin of misconception james trinity college dublin and apply the wire brush of enlightenment geoffm brownbladerunnersugarcubeselectronicblaylockpowersspikeleekatebushhamcornpizza

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re a kind and loving god in article sandvik sandvik kent apple com sandvik newton apple com kent sandvik writes in article apr ra royalroads ca mlee post royalroads ca malcolm lee wrote i understand and sympathize with your pain what happened in waco was a very sad tradgedy don t take it out on us christians though the branch davidians were not an organized religion they were a cult led by a ego maniac cult leader the christian faith stands only on the shoulders of one man the lord of lords and king of kings jesus christ btw david koresh was not jesus christ as he claimed the interesting notion is that i watched tv tonight koresh never claimed officially to be jesus christ his believers hoped that he would be but he never took this standpoint himself he was more interested in breaking the seven seals of revelation and make sure that armageddon would start well it did and children died and no god saved them kent sandvik newton apple com alink ksand private activities on the net and does it not say in scripture that no man knows the hour of his coming not even the angels in heaven but only the father himself dk was trying to play god by breaking the seals himself dk killed himself and as many of his followers as he could btw god did save the children they are in heaven a far better place how do i know by faith god be with you malcolm lee

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re he has risen just to remark that i have heard that david koresh has risen from the dead i dont know if it is true or not but this is what i have been told what do you guys think ben l

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re merlin mithras and magick caldwell facman ohsu edu larry caldwell writes there evidently was a feast of bread and wine associated with mithras i have often wondered if yeshua intentionally introduced this ritual to expand the appeal of his religion or if it was appropriated by later worshipers you could argue that if you wanted but i think a more reasonable argument would point out the fact that the remembrance feast was very similar to the pesach passover meal during seder a very jewish ritual the fact that there appears to be an abuse in the early church of people eating too much a very real concern with some passover meals and not treating the meal with respect shows the simplifying of the ritual to just bread and wine to be a way of dealing with the inherent problems of people s human nature and trying to keep the essentials of the remembrance aspects david whitten fwva saic com us i don t speak as a company rep

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by the sword deuteronmy and when the lord thy god hath delivered it into thine hands thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword joshua and they utterly destroyed all that was in the city bith man and women young and old and ox and sheep and ass with the edge of the sword joshua and the lord delivered lachish into the hand of israel which took it on the second day and smote it with the edge of the sword and all the souls that were therein according to all that he had done to libnah

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re who s next mormons and jews john berryhill ph d writes i don t know who s next but i hope it s people who pick their noses while driving umm please don t lump us all together it s those blatant fundamentalist pickers that give the rest of us a bad name some of us try very hard to be discreet and stay alert peter m yadlowsky wake the sky is light academic computing center let us to the net again university of virginia companion keyboard pmy virginia edu after basho

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re religion and history the real discuss matthew huntbach writes sm a real christian unless you re born again is a very fundamental biblical sm conversion and regeneration are probably part of some small usa based cult the born again tag often use it to mean very specifically having undergone some sort of ecstatic experience which can in fact be very easily manufactured with a little psychological manipulation and are often insultingly dismissive of those whose christianity is a little more intellectual is not the result some of these cults which seems like a rather dismissive term to me are pretty big here in the usa most of them are quite respectable neiborly do not resemble branch davidians in the least confusing them is a mistake what about live let live folks i m sure we can uncover a few extremist loonies who are catholic the anti abortion movement in the usa seems to have a few hard cases in it for example i ve often heard such people use the line catholics aren t real christians indeed anyone sending missionaries to ireland must certainly be taking this line for otherwise why would they not be content for christianity to be maintained in ireland in its traditional catholic form i have to agree matthew with this i have certainly encountered a lot of anti catholic religion propaganda emotion some bigotry from members of certain religious groups here they also practice their missionary work with zeal among catholics in the united states but to someone who is or was raised catholic such rhetoric is pretty off putting it may work better in an environment where there s a lot of popular anti clericalism follow ups set elsewhere this no longer seems very relevant to celtic issues to me

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what we learned from the waco wackos there are actually a few important things we can glean from this mess when they start getting desperate for an answer to the question what s it all about mr natural pinkboys will buy darn near anything which means there s still plenty of to be made in the false jesus business by enterprising subgenii just remember that once you ve separated the pinks from their green don t blow it all on automatic weapons from mexico put it in a swiss bank account smile a lot have your flunkies hand out flowers in airports the con will just shrug you off as long as you never never never start to believe your own bulldada if david koresh hand t started swallowing his own apocalypso now crap he d be working crossword puzzles in the bahamas today instead of contributing to the mulch layer in waco this is because when you start shooting at cops they re likely to shoot back and most of em are better shots than you are in short p t barnum was right and stupidity is self correcting thus endeth the lesson the doge of south st louis dobbs approved media conspirator tm one step beyond sundays to pm fm st louis community radio you ll pay to know what you really think j r bob dobbs

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re biblical backing of koresh s tape cites enclosed in article apr woods ulowell edu cotera woods ulowell edu writes in article r j ie sbctri sbc com netd susie sbc com writes in article apr utarlg uta edu b zaw utarlg uta edu stephen writes for those who think david koresh didn t have a solid structure or sound biblical backing for his hour long tape broadcast i don t think anyone really cares about the solid structure of his sermon it s the deaths he s responsible for that concern most people i assume you have evidence that he was responsible for the deaths koresh was a nut okay again i d like to see some evidence nut or not he was clearly a liar he said he would surrender after local radio stations broadcast his message but he didn t then he said he would surrender after passover but he didn t none of which excuses the gross incompetence and disregard for the safety of the children displayed by the feds as someone else pointed out if it had been chelsea clinton in there you would probably have seen more restraint peter

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re rosicrucian order s in a previous article sandvik newton apple com kent sandvik says well it depends how you look at it if you are interested i might find out what the latest status is in this legal battle kent please do and if you don t want to post it here email to me i don t know how this discussion is appreciated here i hate invading newsgroups with themes of limited interest tony

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re who s next mormons and jews in article r et innh p ctron news ctron com king ctron com john e king writes pmy vivaldi acc virginia edu pete yadlowsky writes didn t christ tell his disciples to arm them selves shortly before his crusifiction i believe the exact quote was along the lines of if you have something sell it and buy a sword this from a guy who preached love deference of power to god and renunciation of worldly life in exchange for a life of the spirit if jesus did in fact command his disciples to arm themselves i would take that as yet another reason to reject christian doctrine for whatever it s worth like most religions the doctrine has good and bad in it i would certainly reject the current implementations of the doctrine no the above is a classic example of taking a scripture out of context it s taken from luke but note vs for i tell you that this which is written must be accomplished in me namely and he will be reckoned with lawless ones he then stated that two swords were enough for the group to carry to be counted as lawless so having more than the politically correct number of weapons was cause to be arresed and killed even then huh jesus overiding message was one of peace turn other cheek live by sword die by sword etc yes of course as in matthew do not suppose that i have come to bring peace to the earth it is not peace i have come to bring but a sword rjl rich loether snail mail university of pittsburgh the ideas email rjl pitt edu computing and info services mine voice epsilon drive all fax pittsburgh pa mine

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re jewish history question in article apr csi uottawa ca misrael csi uottawa ca mark israel writes in article cocoac e y netcom com cocoa netcom com little e writes deleted here tis someone just told me that the old testament books were translated into greek a long time ago yes that s a famous version called the septuagint it was a translation made by greek jews and that the originals were destroyed in a fire soon afterward i don t know what you re referring to here when the jersusalem temple was destroyed some manuscripts may have been lost but i think our extant hebrew manuscripts are as good as our greek ones i don t know about any originals the person who was telling me about the septuagint version said that the greeks had a wonderful library in alexandria that was full of manuscripts scrolls and that it was burned soon after the septuagint version was translated perhaps to conceal some changes in the different versions or perhaps just as part of the typical burning of valuable things that occurs during changes in power groups he i dunno so i was just wondering since i imagine some jewish people somewhere must have had copies of the earlier hebrew versions is the hebrew version of the old testament very different from the greek derived version no there are a few famous discrepancies isaiah s prophecy about a young woman was changed into a virgin which was how the new testament writers read it but not many well perhaps this is the answer then deleted if you go to a jewish bookstore you ll get a bible translated by jews so there will be some differences in interpretation but the text they re translating from is basically the same if you want to read the original you can buy an interlinear bible that contains the hebrew old testament and the greek new testament with an english translation written underneath each word if you want a bible with a possibly more original basic text you can try to find a samaritan bible good luck i ve never seen one the samaritans no not the good samaritans have their own version of the books of moses they claim the jewish bible was altered by ezra thanks for the tips now i just have to find someone to teach me samaritan just me little e so is a good samaritan hard to find or is a hard oh finish this yourself chocolatier at arms and castle wetware liason e mail cocoa netcom com voicemail

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re info about new age suggestion try exposing the new age by douglas groothuis

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re abortion and private health coverage letters regarding in article nyikos milo math scarolina edu nyikos math scarolina edu peter nyikos says in syt br rpi edu rocker acm rpi edu rocker writes in qk q fj agate berkeley edu dzkriz ocf berkeley edu dennis kriz writes if one is paying for a private health insurance plan and does not want abortion coverage there is no reason for that person to be complelled to pay for it just as one should not be compelled to pay for lipposuction coverage if one doesn t want that kind of coverage you appear to be stunningly ignorant of the underlying concept of health insurance are you any less stunningly ignorant have you ever heard of life insurance premiums some companies give in which nonsmokers are charged much smaller premiums than smokers not to mention auto insurance being much cheaper for women under than for men under because women on the average drive more carefully than most men in fact almost as carefully as i did before i was as many people have mentioned there is no reason why insurers could not offer a contract without abortion services for a different premium the problem is that there is no guarantee that this premium would be lower for those who chose this type of contract although you are removing one service that may have feedbacks into other types of covered care which results in a net increase in actuarial costs for an illustrative example in the opposite direction it may be possible to add services to an insurance contract and reduce the premium if you add preventative services and this reduces acute care use then the total premium may fall these words and thoughts are my own i am not bound to swear allegiance to the word of any master where the storm carries me i put into port and make d shea psu myself at home

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re a kind and loving god in article r ma innno owl csrv uidaho edu lanph crow csrv uidaho edu rob lanphier writes malcolm lee mlee post royalroads ca wrote do you consider neo nazis and white supremists to be christian i d hardly classify them as christian do they follow the teachings of christ love one another love your neighbour as yourself love your enemies is jesus christ their lord and saviour by the persecution of jews they are violating all the precepts of what christ died for they are in direct violation of the teachings of christ even jesus who was crucified by the jewish leaders of that time loved his enemies by asking the father for forgiveness of their sins i am a christian and i bear no animosity towards jews or any one else the enemy is satan not our fellow man in mark jesus is quoted as saying whoever believes and is baptized will be saved but whoever does not believe will be condemned i consider most neo nazis and white supremisists to be christians because a they say they are b they feel it necessary to justify their actions with the bible where does it say in the bible that christians are supposed to persecute jews isn t it love your enemies instead they may say they are christian but do their actions speak differently do you believe what everyone tells you i don t i came to believe in god by my own investigation and conclusions and ultimately by my own choice salvation however was granted only through the grace of god the bible provides us with no clear definition of what a christian is it tells us what a christian should do but then it goes on to say that as long as you believe your sins will be forgiven to be a christian is to model oneself after jesus christ as implied by the very name christian if you say you believe in your head but do not feel in your heart what does that say of your belief white supremisists and neo nazis may not be your brand of christian but by believing in christ they are christian white supremists and neo nazis are not any brand of christian if you hate your whom you can see then how can you love god whom you cannot see what does this belief entail believing in christ and having your sins forgiven in his name does not give a christian a free licence to sin to repent of a sin is to ask forgiveness of that sin and try not to do it again i am a christian but if you lump me in with racists and accuse me of being such then are you not pre judging me btw i am of chinese racial background and i know what it is to be part of a visible minority in this country i don t think that i would be favourably looked upon by these white supremist christians as you call them anyone can say what they believe but if they don t practice what they preach then their belief is false do you concur now for your original statement what bothers me most is why people who have no religious affiliation continue to persecute jews why this hatred of jews the majority of people who persecute jews are not christians i can t speak for all christians and there are bound to be a few who are on the anti semitism bandwagon you imply here that it is predominately atheists and agnostics who persecute jews i am hard pressed to think of even an example of jewish persecution in the hands of atheists agnostics nazis and racists in general are the ones that come to my immediate attention what i believe is that such people may be using the bible to mask their racial intolerance and bigotry they can do as they do and hide behind christianity but i tell you that jesus would have nothing to do with them about the only one that comes to mind would be in the former soviet union where many religious people suffered some sort of persecution not to mention many atheist agnostics who suffered persecution for believing the government sucked no arguement there rob lanphier lanph uidaho edu the only point i m trying to make is that those who call themselves christian may not be christian i ask that you draw your own conclusions by what they do and what they say if they are not modelled after the example of jesus christ then they are not christian if they have not repented of their sins and accepted jesus christ as their personal lord and saviour then they are not christian these are the only criteria to being a christian may god be with you malcolm lee

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re who s next mormons and jews in article r i t transfer stratus com cdt sw stratus com c d tavares writes just maybe you won t be home then you can come home to something like this well it s been a rough month begins johnnie lawmaster i just get laid off and my divorce became final but i just wasn t ready for what happened this particular monday horror story about fbi ruining a guy s life for the hell of it omitted so if you don t want your tea party to be held in awkward silence make sure your lawyer isn t there there s a good chap so is this a real story or a work of fiction how about some sources when where and in what newspaper did you get all this from or is it all hypothetical david charlap apple ii forever steve wozniac dic hertz njit edu i drank what socrates

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re albert sabin in article apr rambo atlanta dg com wpr atlanta dg com bill rawlins writes since you have referred to the messiah i assume you are referring to the new testament please detail your complaints or e mail if you don t want to post first century greek is well known and well understood have you considered josephus the jewish historian who also wrote of jesus in addition the four gospel accounts are very much in harmony bill i find it rather remarkable that you managed to zero in on what is probably the weakest evidence what is probably the most convincing is the anti christian literature put out by the jewish councils in the second century there are enormous quantities of detailed arguments against christianity many of the arguments still being used today despite volumes of tracts attacking christianity not one denies the existance of jesus only of his activities i find this considerably more compelling than josephus or the harmony of the gospels especially considering that matthew and luke probably used mark as a source l warren kurt vonroeschlaub o kv iastate edu iowa state university math department carver hall ames ia j

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re christian owned organization list in article apr mnemosyne cs du edu kcochran nyx cs du edu keith justified and ancient cochran writes in article sdcc ucsd edu shopper ucsd edu writes does anyone have or know where i can find a list of christian owned corporations and companies one that i know of is wordperfect i believe that wordperfect is actually owned by the mormons sorry but mormons aren t generally considered to be christians kcochran nyx cs du edu b c d e f g k m r s t tsakc my thoughts my posts my ideas my responsibility my beer my pizza ok do you have some pumps and a purse in this shade a perfume that whispers please come back to me i m looking for something in green laurie morgan