So much argument about the rapture and so silly to question it.
For me, it's the most simple thing in the world and yet it seems so many, even scholars, are confused about when and how.
When you stand back and look at the basics, just plain simple logic, you will see the picture clearly.The Word says the comforter must be removed before the anti-christ can come into his power. Where is the comforter?The Lord Jesus told us, in plain language that the comforter was given to us (the believer) when Jesus ascended. Until that time, the comforter abided in Jesus.
The only reason the comforter has for being on this world, is to abide in the believer. So if the comforter leaves, so must we, as He is promised only to us.
IF the comforter must leave before the anti-christ can come into power then we must leave also. Otherwise, there is no way for the comforter to leave at all and still keep the Lord's promise.It would seem a logical deduction to believe in the rapture, as it's the only reference to our leaving here before the anti-christ is revealed.
judy
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12 comments:
I don't think you understand what logic is. It isn't logical to base an argument on a book and religion only 1/3 of the world believes in. It isn't logical to use as fact a book which was written and edited by man and has many known errors and contradictions.
What you are expressing is belief not logic. They are not the same. You can believe in something but that doesn't make it logically or demonstratively true.
1/3? That's a pretty huge number, don't you think? I'd say more like .02% Or maybe you were referring to everything on 2 legs that professes christianity. "Christian this, Christian that.."
That aside, you're exactly right in thinking I'm speaking through faith and not logic.
Logic doesn't let you know that somebody just laid you out on the pavement. That would be more like 'sensation'.
I use logic to figure math, memory to remind me when something is being repeated and understanding to know the times I'm living in.
Don't tell me how understanding and logic are the same. One can understand a woman in labor without having to use logic to figure out she's in pain.
Yes-belief! If you didn't believe something you've read, would you repeat it to others?
You see, the problem here is you're going to try to blow the world away with your logic but you're talking to somebody who has heard His Voice! No,I'm not delusional. If I were, it started when I was 8. :)
I know its hard for folks like you to 'get it' or better yet 'believe it' but I do have a relationship with the Lord. A real one. Not bible thumbing or spending countless hours in prayer, thinking I'm getting somewhere with it. Not the little goody choir girl who attends Sunday School each week dutifully.
Matter of fact I'm pretty much a rogue loner because I have a hard time relating to most folks who call themselves Christian. I run across a real one, now and then.
I'm God little brat. Outspoken, bull headed and constantly in trouble with 'Daddy' but He loves me and I know it and I love Him.
Hon, you may as well tell a child their parents don't exist. :)
judy
oops...God's little brat not God little brat
I've read that roughly 1/3 of the world population is Christian so that's why I choose that value. If you feel "true" Christians are much rarer (i.e. .02%) I'm not going to argue with you.
Personally, I'm an atheist. I was brought up in a non-religious household and the majority of my education and personal reading was scientific in nature. In my younger days (I am now 42) I considered my religion to be science and logic in that it explained how the world around me originated and operated. Which as far as I can figure is what religion is for anyway.
My interest in religion does not stem from trying to convert anyone to my point of view. People will believe what they want to believe and evidence can be found for all sides. My interest lies in trying to understand the issue because religion is a human trait and is intrinsic in our global society.
I've stated all of this because I hope we can have a discussion (to help me understand) and to do that fairly and effectively it is good to know each others point of view.
As a believer how do you consider everyone else (66% or 99.98%) in the world? Are they wrong or misguided? For example, if we contemplate someone born in India and raised as a Hindu. They have the same belief and convictions in their god as you do to yours. Is someone wrong in their beliefs here? If so who? I've never understood this.
Had I not experienced a true, one on one, (what shall I call it) contact(?) at the age of 8, I too would be against the whole concept of God and church.
I was brought up in the most stringent of bible thumpers (Baptist-oh worse Southern Baptist)
This was just months before my parents moved us from south Texas to Albuquerque,NM where we lost contact with the church altogether.
I can say it was a real event because I was just a bubble headed little girl with very little experience with the world (considering I lived in a tiny town in the midst of farm lands).
My church experience was agonizing boredom and obedience. Period.
I was called up out of my chair, during one of their famous boring revivals, by a voice so loud that had it been mortal, my eardrums would have erupted. I was suddenly and without intent, the disruptive and disobedient child in the group and without saying a single word.
I had stood up during the benediction prayer. A huge no-no. What's worse, after overcoming my confounded 'blank' state of mind and I sat down again, the voice came again, so loud and my body obeyed the voice without my participation. In other words, it all happened so fast and I hardly thought about standing up but I was standing instantly.
This was the night something happened to me that took many years to unfold and understand. Knowledge and understanding was suddenly in my brain. The first symptom came when I realized I was standing in the midst of dead people. In other words, I realized at the age of 8 and without having made any decisions, that this group of people had no idea how 'off track' they were. But I was the lowly child. It's just as well, I didn't say anything because in fact, although I suddenly had an understanding of something 'wrong' I didn't know what the 'right' was.
Had it not been for that experience, I would not be a believer today and I wonder how others CAN when they haven't been given something like this to hang onto. I ponder that, all the time.
It makes me sad and I wonder "If He could speak to me, why doesn't He speak to everyone?"
He gave me gifts that I didn't know were gifts until many years later, when I began to discover that my brain seemed to not work like those around me. A lie won't 'enter' me. When people lie, I know it.
Prophetic dreams. They tell me about things coming in the future and they explain odd things I've read in the Bible.
I was over 50 years old before I discovered there are others out there like me, with much the same experiences. It's ironic that it took the internet and then 9/11 for this discovery to come. We stick together like family, although we are scattered all over the world, thanks to the internet. Pretty amazing.
I know that God is real but it never would have come to me through the church, as the church has become glazed.
There are answers to your questions but for the most part, they would seem cruel and unfair. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to talk about it. It seems a touchy subject, to me.
I can tell you this. The one thing folks don't seem to spot in the bible, are the deliberate gaps in information. Deliberate because we are mortal and our knowledge comes from mortal things:eyes,ears,nose,touch.
Few realize that we are not mortals with a spirit but a spirit with a mortal body. Much of what you do every day, is by spiritual knowledge, not mortal, but it's so much a part of our lives from our first breath, that we take it for granted and hardly notice a difference between the two. This I can prove to you by scientific understanding.
There are many things I understand and many I don't. I have, however, finally come to understand why.
Existence, itself, is far bigger than we have the capacity to grasp. It's sort of like a small child being protected from facts of life that would overwhelm the child. Try explaining to the child, why you withhold information while at the same time not crossing that boundary and revealing everything you're trying to withhold. An example being, try to explain to a 3 year old why you don't want him to know anything about pedifiles.
That's our situation. We are the toddlers.
As for all the other religions. There ARE reasons. Should I go into it? I really don't know. Will I be crossing those boundaries with somebody else's child?
I think it best that we simply come to an understanding of God, realizing He alone is in control because He alone sees it all, while we sit back and wonder about these other things. I say that because I do understand much about these other things and I also understand the mind of man. The two don't mix.
This I can tell you. The Jesus they teach is not the reality of the person or God. Jesus truly DID do the things they talk about but they miss the point entirely.
That was explained to me last summer while I drove a Freighliner Century, loaded with a container headed for the port in Long Beach. As I crossed Utah, bored out of my skull, foot 'in it', the Lord again did something He has done before. A sudden explosion in my brain that left me babbling and saying things like 'well, that explains......Oh my God....that means that......'
It usually takes about a week to stop the brain explosions. (the only way I have of explaining it)
What He taught me was so immense..so straight forward...so...well it made everything fall into place. :) And it was so simple! That's where people go so wrong, they make it all so complicated and regulated but the fact is that's not what Jesus is all about. He twisted history and put things back in order and people just don't get that. He's all about freedom. Absolute, total freedom.
Sin is not what people think! Sin is ANYTHING that enslaves us and when you think about it, it comes out to those very things people CALL sin but without a knowledge of why it's sin. It's not because we do something wrong, it's because the wrong brings us down.
Anything that brings us down, enslaves us, captivates or restricts us in any way, is what Jesus is against!!
Jesus pulled off a huge sacrifice in ways people don't understand and He didn't do it to enslave us. He did it to set us free.
The church enslaves! I'd say, right off hand, that's not exactly agreement with Jesus. The church, through the years, has enslaved people and caused them to waste away the very thing they exist for. These are the very things that Jesus called vile, perverted and UNfaith!
This is not to say that these people are all going to hell just because they 'don't get it'. That again, is not what Jesus said.
For us to come into our own, to live this life to its fullest, to walk in power, to expand and inherit the earth, we must first come to a full understanding of what Jesus spent ALL His time trying to teach us.
Instead, people pick out a verse and beat it literally into the ground and what's worse, base a whole RELIGION around it.
I mean, doesn't anybody remember the story of Jesus turning over the tables in the temple? Does anybody GET that those tables were not made of plastic? They had to weigh 50 pounds at least! Doesn't anybody get the whole picture? He threw their money on the floor! He loosed their possessions and let them escape! He roared!!!!!!!
And why? Because it was His last day here and His last chance to bash it into peoples heads that they were all screwed up. And now....what are we doing today?Aaaaaaaaaarrrrrrgh!
It's kind of like "Is there no possible way to set these people free?"
If you set a pile of gold on one table and pornography on the other, how many people would greedily dive into the porn?
As the stomach churns......:)
Aw cheez......I've got a twitch and now I have to go calm down.
judy
There isn't even sufficient evidence that God is real, and you're believing this Rapture stuff? Sad.
I'll tell you what's sad. It's sad when you get in your car, fully expecting to go somewhere and the car won't start. And you had faith in it? Oh I see, because it hasn't failed you in the past 2 years. Makes sense. Then excuse us for acting the same way.
GOD is real. CHRIST is real. The creation is real. Lucifer is real and he arrives before the second coming to fool the whole world. The rapture is not real.
The Bible PLAINLY tells us that satan comes first, then Jesus. How anybody can hold on to the traditional teachings of man (rapture theory) over Gods teachings, i don't understand! Jesus even WARNS against falling fit this rapture tool of satan. Study the word, don't just believe what you've been taught all your life..... It's so simple even a child can understand
You will also find all sorts of reference explaining that a mystery will occur, in which some will disappear. There is also common sense such as the fact that the Holy Spirit abides in us (the church). The Holy Spirit cannot abide with the anti-christ. One or the other must go.
Judy, I'm curious, where does it say that the Holy Spirit must leave before the Anti-Christ arrives?
I don't think you'll find those exact words in the Bible. Here's the concept. The Holy Spirit never abided on this world until Jesus. He then abided within Jesus. Then Jesus, before He ascended, said that He must go, in order for the comforter to come to us. The reason being, at the time, the Holy Spirit was abiding in Jesus and had to separate from Him bodily, in order to then come and live within the believer.
The only thing on this world, holding ( should I say pushing back) the devil, is the Holy Spirit which lives in the believer.
The anti-christ is the devil incarnate. The Holy Spirit, cannot or will not abide on this world with the devil walking in a man's body. Oil and water do not mix. This is the reason the believer must be taken out of the picture, before the anti-christ can come to power. Because the Holy Spirit must go that means we must go because He is living in us. The Holy Spirit is the promised helper and will no desert us, He's not going to leave us behind without Him.
You see what's happening just in the U.S. and who is battling against evil. It's the believer.
In order for everything prophecied, to come about, there has to be an absence of love on this earth and right now, that love holds to this earth through us, the believer, with the Holy Spirit abiding.
Remove us, and this world will operate totally without love.
The wheat is being divided from the chaff as we speak. You can see it all around you. So many with what seems to be a total lack of love for anyone but themselves.
This presidential election is blatantly exposing this, as those supporting a fraud, are fraud's themselves, out for what they can get with no concern for who has to pay for it.
Imagine what's going to happen in this world, as soon as we are gone because with us goes the Holy Spirit and with Him goes Love.
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