Is there still a chance that our questions to Ray part 2 will be asked or is it a lost cause? Also, I think I read yesterday on another thread which I cannot locate now that something happened to Nard. I think Dandelion wished him a quick recovery or good luck. What's going on or what happened Nard? And I second what Dandelion said.

quote:

Originally posted by libRArY:
I came-out of what a number of outside observers referred to as a legalistic religious cult in California. I found a lot of learning there, but there came a time to move on.

What cult?

Speaking of abortion, here's a nice photo I found.

Doug Spaulding ~ Great photo of a foot.

_

Came across a 2007 June issue of Scientific American with an article entitled, "Should Science Speak to Faith?" In the article, Professor Lawrence M. Krauss of Case Western Reserve University, wrote, ' The need to believe in a divine intelligence without direct evidence is, for better or for worse, a fundamental component of many people's psyches. '

In the article, it explored or touched upon the idea of proving a God. When I read it I thought, course, there is really only one way to prove a God: and that is to 'yourself'. And that would be in the sudden, intuitive, emotionally surged and penetrating experience releasing absolutely new information that goes far beyond one's ability to explain or even describe in whole, and leaves one mostly in a state of pure awe and humbleness... based on scripture.

But it must be within the confines of scripture reading, so that where it says in God's word dwells God, we thus find Him thru that breaking of the our 'blindness' by the direct power of the Holy Spirit, God's very means of speaking to us. That individual person's experience leaves no doubt about the existence of God, if only to himself.

quote:

Originally posted by Nard Kordell:
Doug Spaulding ~ Great photo of a foot.

Thanks - I thought so. Hope you are well!

Yeah - filthy abortion "doctors": why don't you rip this baby out by its foot? Baby killers.

Nicely written. Indeed, God speaks to us in so many ways. Sometimes, something just changes in your life which can have such an effect on you, that you either learn from it, or it kills you. You get stronger or you die (sometimes you want to die).

For the last two months I've been riding the waves, and I don't mean at the beach.

Does this make any sense? Because I'm pretty intoxicated right now. Does listening to Sinatra and drinking vodka at midnight go together? It's sure working for me right now. How about John Coltrane? He's up next.

Just watched Ray introduce Citizen Kane as the greatest movie ever made on TCM. Ray, you are so right! Am I rambling?

God help us all.

Little feet: "The longest journey begins with a single step!"
That photo puts the ancient Chinese quote all the more into magnificent perspective!

To this:
http://kids-rock.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/babies-feet.jpg

Hey Nard, whatever is going down, I hope your doing okay. Greg

Ask the Bishop:

Q: I am an Anglican, but having accepted the concept of a non-theistic God, I feel uncomfortable attending church with all its outdated forms of worship. To leave the church, however, is to lose my "church family" and the human contact, as well as my part in the church's ministries, all essential to the expression of God's love. What shall I do?

A: I share your concern. I have in the course of my career attended churches with grand musicians and able choirs that use, without any obvious sense of being disconnected, a formal if slightly medieval liturgy. Frequently, its ordained leadership is all male and its leaders give no sense of being aware of the theological revolution raging in the Christian world, inaugurated early in the 19th century by such people as Hegel and Alfred North Whitehead. The liturgy followed on many Sundays reflects little more than a world that no longer exists. That liturgy still talks of God as "a being" who is external, presumably who lives above the sky, who desires to be flattered with our words of praise and who stands ready to judge.

These churches also seem unaware of the revolution in critical biblical studies that broke upon the Christian world almost 200 years ago. For example, their lay readers will frequently talk about the Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians or to Timothy, neither of which Paul wrote. In sermons many clergy make the unconscious assumption that the gospels are history, that the wise men really followed the star and that Jesus really said all of the things attributed to him in the gospel. Adult education is almost non-existent in so many churches and where it is present it is mostly ineffective because the necessary time is never allotted, since liturgy (which is always the clergy favorite) not education is the priority. The only time real change can come to such churches is when there is a change in clergy leadership. Even then, real educational engagement is resisted since church has become for most people anything but a place to be challenged and to grow.

Clergy tend to be kind, loving and caring people, but many of them have been trained to assume that Christianity is still at the center of the world. It is not, however, the 13th century, though one would never guess that from the medieval sounds that confront many worshippers each week.

I will never abandon this institution, as dismal and boring as some of its manifestations are, because I believe change can only come from within and I must be part of the church to be able to participate in its transformation. That is, however, a vocation that hardly inspires in today's generation.

It would be a step forward if churches could just sing a hymn once in a while that was written later than the 19th century.

- John Shelby Spong

Give thanks to the Lord for he is good, and His mercies endure forever.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

quote:

Originally posted by Salamander:
We were offended when someone questioned what we believed.

Respectfully suggest that it often seems the other way round!

quote:

God does it or it doesn't get done.

Respectfully suggest that this is tripe. I believe that God created us and put us here to run the joint and basically leaves us alone to do it. I think God rarely intervenes in our lives. If God was going to come down from the sky to intervene in something, I think the Holocaust might have been a good place to start.

No, the evil that humankind does is owing to free will, and until the humans want to start getting it right, it won't get better.

Give the humans some credit (for better or for worse).

Doug Spaulding, you obviously use another Bible. If Christ be in me, the Hope of Glory, and unless God draweth me I wouldn't be interested in Him, or that God has ordained all my days and not one is lost to His sight; and you surely remember the passage about the potter who makes claypots, some for honor and some for dishonor. God said he knows the hairs on my head, that he makes the sun rise and the sun set, he brings in the good and ushers in the bad for our learning. Surely you read Job and his being caught in the middle between God and Satan. Now you think God just drops us here and let's us do our thing, something liken to what the Jehovah Witnesses believe? Good grief, Jesus Christ Himself entwined his life here on Earth with people and sent His Spirit to be a guide everyday of our lives so as to know Him thru his presence in our lives.

So what is this nonsense you are speaking of? God rarely intervenes in our lives?

Well, maybe not yours.

Doug Spaulding, per your comment on God letting us be to work things out...

It takes prayer and confessing your sins every hour, keeping a clean slate before the Lord, in order for you to see what God is doing every hour. It takes a whole lot of practice and discipline to do all that. It takes time and patience to turn everything to the Lord thruout the day and seek his mind. And when temptation comes around it takes everything you know sometimes to bend every thought and emotion to the capturing hands of Christ.

If you think that God just dropped us here to do as we will as best as we can, you miss God entirely. He works within the tiniest fraction of a moment in our lives and in the nano- gestures of our thoughts and motives. To escape this fact is to be blind and an embodiment of what a sinner is: unable to know God. The very fact the one confesses his sin is in itself a God thing. You couldn't do it on your own. The fact that you worship God thru the life of Christ is God breathed and God motivated.

quote:

Originally posted by Salamander:
Doug Spaulding, you obviously use another Bible.

No, it's the same one.

Respectfully suggest you keep the Bible in perspective, and not allow it to rise to the level of the Christ, which is who you should be listening to.

Remember also the basic message of the Christ: love forever!

quote:

Originally posted by Doug Spaulding:

quote:

Originally posted by Salamander:
Doug Spaulding, you obviously use another Bible.

No, it's the same one.

Respectfully suggest you keep the Bible in perspective, and not allow it to rise to the level of the Christ, which is who you should be listening to.

Remember also the basic message of the Christ: love forever!

Keep your Bible in perspective? Oh no! You DO use another Bible. You use the one that isn't the Word of God. Christ said my words are life. Come on, Spaulding. You Do use another Bible.

quote:

Originally posted by Phil Knox:
You use the one that isn't the Word of God.

Ah, there's your trouble right there - you're confusing the Bible with the Word of God.

This is a common mistake.

Yeshua the Christ is the Word of God. The writings of the Jewish/Christian faith are not.