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I hear what your saying Swampmonster to move on. As you said...this is a forum and I just thought I would ask some simple questions. My questions are not to trap or trick you I was just wondering . It appears like the gifts. No side will win. Fact I have read more Mormon doctrine than ever by reading the replys.LOL
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It"s quite fine, Chuck7. You asked and I told you. I am not interested in "winning" anything. As I said, I only wished to leave a repository of Mormon duplicity so that the one reader in a thousand who wishes to read it, to see the typical pattern of dishonesty in the responses to it, will be more able to do so. Though the thread has been locked, I have accomplished precisely what I set out to do.
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Hey....partner.that is not altogether true or false.If the Samaritan Cult was that bad why did He use them as an example in the parable of the Good Samaritan. He said"Go and do thou likewise."
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Of course He did this because it had nothing to do with the beliefs of the Samaritans. He used the Samaritans to teach a lesson against racism " the same sort of racism that I have railed against here on these forums.
I think it was in 722 B.C. that Samaria was invaded by Assyrians who, to quell rebellion had the practice of intermarrying with those they conquered and having children by them. The result was the mixed-raced people known as Samaritans. Jews hated the Samaritans because they were of a mixed race.
A dishonest pharisaical Jew tried to trick Jesus, asking him publicly to explain how one might find eternal life (Luke 10:25). In answer, Jesus asked the man to state what the Law says about it. The man accurately claimed that to find eternal life, humans must Love God with all their hearts and love their neighbors like themselves. (10:27)
Now here is a very clever thing, a thing that strongly suggests to me that these texts are inspired of God or at least some intellect much higher than that of the apostles. The Pharisee likely believed he truly loved God with all his heart. After all, he was a teacher of the Law (Luke 10:25), likely having memorized the entire Law and perhaps even the entire Old Testament. But the one thing he knew stood against the Law was his hatred of the mixed-race Samaritans. He knew he did not love them as he loved himself and he wanted to justify his hatred.
29But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour?
I marvel at this text. It is as if the Pharisee senses Jesus somehow probing his hatred. The Pharisee is trying to squirm out of his position by duplicity, and Jesus goes after it. Jesus describes a man (likely a fellow Jew) being beaten and left for dead, naked on the street (30). He then shows how several men respond to the victim. He begins with men who the Pharisee would ordinarily think are holy. A Jewish priest came by and the priest ignored the guy. A Levite came by and did the same thing. Then a despised half-breed came by and cared for the man, even paying for his care out of his own pocket (33-35). Jesus asked the Pharisee to choose which of these men was a neighbor. Was it the fellow Jews, or was it the despised half-breed? The Pharisee was forced to acknowledge that the real neighbor here was the half-breed (37). So he now knows the answer to the question "Who is my neighbor?"
Consider the implication. Remember that Jesus was actually answering the question "How do we receive eternal life?" We receive it by loving God with all our hearts and also by loving our neighbors as we love ourselves. We see that even the despised half-breeds are our neighbors and that to have eternal life we must love them as we love ourselves.
To answer your question, Chuck7, Jesus did not rail against Samaritan religion because He wished to use the worst people available at the time to show Jews that they needed to love even the despised around them to have eternal life. We ought not abandon logic to claim by Jesus" example that we must love the false religion and flawed beliefs of the despised people. As I have shown, Jesus, while loving the people, still rejected their beliefs. In another place we see Him brutally rejecting the beliefs of others. I think we too often wrongly employ Jesus" example to excuse tolerance of historically false doctrines"which is a thing Jesus never has done.
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Anyway.....my point was in the multitude of many words I have seen no gains on either side. No hard feelings I hope.
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That is because you are looking for gains in a way I had never intended to acquire them. You seem to think I am interested in changing someone"s mind when I have pointedly declared, many times, that I am not interested in such things. Mormons are so obviously gripped by deception that I think only a miracle can cause them to see beyond it " and I do not do miracles. My goal is simply to put the facts on the forum and let the chips fall as they may. I care about nothing else. Surely there is one person in a thousand of my hits who was helped by the effort. It is for that one person that I have posted.
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I have also noticed the kinder spirit in the Mormons. I am not a Mormon but if I was going to try to convince one I beleive acts of kindness would go farther.
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Of course I am not trying to convince anyone of anything. Were I interested in this I would have engaged the Mormons directly. I have purposefully ignored them because I am not interested in discussing beliefs I already know are patently false.
If you are persuaded by superficial appearances of kindness, then you should damn yourself and become a Mormon. As for me, I am moved on the facts. Appearances can be and very often are deceiving. To test this, look and listen closely to the next pair of Mormon missionaries to come to your home. They will look nice, and act very kind. Whereas Christians will almost immediately volunteer information about the nature of their God, you will find Mormons never doing so. Wait for them to volunteer their belief that God is an exalted man, that they have a heavenly mother who is his wife or any of the other damnable doctrines that separate Mormonism from Christianity. They never will reveal these things, despite how kind they appear. Many people have entered Mormonism assuming that when Mormons mention Jesus, they mention the same Jesus of historic Christianity. And Mormons are very pleased to allow the confusion to persist.
I"ll take the closing of my thread as my cue to leave for the year. But I think some of you who claim to know God ought to seriously take inventory of yourselves because to some of us on the outside, you appear hypocritical.
Paul did not suffer so that Christians can today accept all manner of hogwash from people calling themselves "Christians." He suffered to leave behind a definite faith, a definite set of beliefs that he thought were sufficient to prepare humans for the next world. Surely we might validly disagree on the precise nature of some of these beliefs. Paul himself accounted for this sort of disagreement. But he pointedly rejected the notion that Christians can validly be so loose-minded that they can allow their beliefs to be twisted beyond all historic recognition. I think this is quite precisely what vast numbers of Christians are doing today.
Too many Christians talk about "love" but have little idea of the basis of love. You are being so overrun by non-denominational" correctness that you are no longer willing to hold firmly to and defend the historic faith contained in the scriptures you claim to cherish. What I see resulting of this milquetoast spinelessness is the creation of hordes upon hordes of Christians who outwardly claim a close relationship with Almighty God, but whose personal lives are so racked by dishonor and hyper-consumerism they appear to be unbelievers. I do not see why I need their god when I now live better than they without him.
Perhaps I am wrong in my approach. I sincerely do not know and so cannot be bothered with it. I know this: when I read how elevated God is above all realities, including material reality, and when I read that this immaterial God sent a material Son into this earth, this message is confirmed to my mind and to some part of me I have not yet been able to explain. Now that I have come to see that this God exists, I am interested in finding whether He has people on this earth with whom I can form community. I have not found them. I do not believe that all of the millions of people who claim to know Him in fact do know Him because they accept too much crap about God from themselves and from others.
Here is what I mean:
I am not really a believer, at least not in the sense so many Christians claim to be believers. Yet despite this I sense the Almighty looming large over everything. I cannot conceive anything being outside of Him, certainly not any other blasted gods. Now when cultists tell me I can become like this God, and when I read them dishonorably claiming the historic Christian faith once taught that I can become like Him, then I, even I, a new seeker, think it vitally important to thoroughly underscore the deceit in case someone else in search of God"s community should fall into the cultist"s deception.
But when I see so many alleged Christians failing to defend what they claim is their faith, and even defending cultist nonsense, I grow suspect of their claims of genuine Christian faith. Indeed Ithink all of their talk of "love" and other gibberish is mainly for show. Yes, I am convinced it is plainly impossible for anyone totruly encounter the Endless Almighty, soaring majestically above, within and all around them, and then sit idle when some spiritual tramp comes along to preach that this Beautiful and Holy and Wonderful and Awesome and Sovereign Majesty is just an exalted man with a body who lives near ghastly Kolob! Such a thing would be an horrific insult to the Wonder that the real Christian experiences in his everyday life.
No one who knows the Christian God can so casually accept such rubbish about Him. Though God obviously needs no one"s defense, His Beauty alone would compel the genuine believer to declare Him and His Majesty to everyone, this, especially when the cultisttrots out of hell to claim God is not what He truly is.
Question for the Mormons & Anti-Mormons
