I want an explanation from God regarding my dad’s motor neuron disease, my friend’s father raping her, and the chap in Belfast who was hacked to death in front of his wife I read about on Google today. All of which is not my fault and God had the power to stop it. God also has the power to heal my dad, resurrect that murdered guy, though I’m not sure how God would solve the rape thing.
In one story of NDE (near death expierience) a woman who committed suicide said, when she put the gun on her head she heard a voice telling her to aim her heart instead. She did but missed the target. When she left her body she encountered Jesus who was furious. He strongly rebuked her and told her that life is not supposed to be easy. He told her that she has to go back and live her life and try to choose joy in the midst of suffering.
Why we do that? Why even bother to come to this world of pains? Heaven is quite a comfortable place. Why any sane person would want to leave such a place of bliss and come down to this world just to suffer? Obviously, it is by coming to this world and by overcoming its difficulties that we can grow spiritually. We don’t come here to have fun. Life is not supposed to be easy. We come here to face hardships
Once we die, this world, all its glamor and all its problems become insignificant. We suddenly realize this was a world of make belief. Nothing is real here. It is all a game. Imagine you buy the game of monopoly for your children to learn decision making, problem solving, strategizing, risk taking, and dealing with difficult situations. They become excited and get immersed in the game. You then deliberately make things harder on them. They lose and they get frustrated. Your goal is not to make them suffer. You want to make them learn how to face difficulties and think their way out of problems. Sometimes you make them lose. They have to start from scratch. While they may get angry at you, you do this out of love for them, for you know that winning and losing this game is totally irrelevant. The only thing that matters are the skills that they can acquire by playing the game. And while you make it difficult to play, you insist that they should have fun. The game will be over in no time and whether they amassed millions of paper money or lost it all is all irrelevant. It’s only a game. Its money is worthless. But its lessons are precious. This world is also a game. Its losses and its victories are meaningless. The only thing that matters is how much spiritual qualities you acquire while here. The experiences are what you carry to the other world not the material wealth or worldly successes.
Because understanding this is important to understand the purpose of life let me make another example. Let us say you want to hire a group of pilots. But they need training. So you set up a training school equipped with a simulation cockpit. The students enter the cockpit and practice how to take off, how to steer, how to land and how to deal with various incidents. The lessons are at first easy, but gradually you increase the level of difficulty. You wait until they master one situation and as soon as they get hold of it, you introduce a bigger one, unexpectedly. During the course of their training they face nothing but difficulty and apparently life threatening situations. Would it be fair that they get angry at you for not letting them enjoy the simulation? The goal of the training is not to enjoy the simulation. The goal is that they become skillful pilots. You know that they are safe. Even if they crash and the simulation is over, nothing bad happens to them. If they have mastered the skills, you will hire them and if not they can apply again to come back and take the course one more time, or as many times as they want.
The chief purpose of life is not happiness, but the knowledge of God. One reason that the problem of evil seems so puzzling is that we tend to think that if God exists, then His goal for human life is happiness in this world. God’s role is to provide comfortable environment for His human pets. But on the Christian view this is false. We are not God’s pets, and man’s end is not happiness in this world, but the knowledge of God, which will ultimately bring true and everlasting human fulfillment.
If you want an explanation from God, you need to read Genesis 3 and Romans 5. We are in a sin-cursed world because Adam sinned and we all sin, too. But we are in this mess due to sin, not because God made the world this way. God originally made everything perfect (Genesis 1:31; Deuteronomy 32:4) and it is our fault the world is like this. But take heart, this is why Jesus stepped into history — to save us from sin and death. Only Christians have something to look forward to (see Revelation 21 and 22). But to your important question: You think that God should somehow prevent evil. He should actually stop the murderer and the rapist. This is because you (understandably) consider those two acts to be evil. How about the liar and the thief, the fornicator, pornographer, blasphemer, and the adulterer? Do you think that they are evil and should be stopped? God considers them to be extremely evil. But that’s where conversion comes in. Honest question to you, who spread the Evil? Isn’t the Humans? Ther’s always a cause. And again after death, does the evil on earth matters?
The knowledge of God spills over into eternal life. In the Christian view, this life is not all there is. Jesus promised eternal life to all who place their trust in him as their Savior and Lord. In the afterlife God will reward those who have borne their suffering in courage and trust with an eternal life of unspeakable joy. The apostle Paul, who wrote much of the New Testament, lived a life of incredible suffering. Yet he wrote, “We do not lose heart. For this slight, momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen, for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (II Cor. 4:16-18). Paul imagines a scale, as it were, in which all the sufferings of this life are placed on one side, while on the other side is placed the glory that God will bestow on his children in heaven. The weight of glory is so great that it is literally beyond comparison with the suffering. Moreover, the longer we spend in eternity the more the sufferings of this life shrink toward an infinitesimal moment. That’s why Paul could call them “a slight and momentary affliction”
This is my answer or refutation of an Atheist youtuber, under nickname CosmicSkeptic. In his debate with Jonathan McLatchie on ressurection of Jesus Christ, he rejected and down played Testimonium Flavianum. He argued that: “Josephus was a Jew, therefore it’s a forgery.” But he forgets to mention that Josephus accounts of the Jewish War have proved to be very accurate; for example, they’ve been corroborated through archaeological excavations at Masada as well as by historians like Tacitus. And that he’s considered to be a pretty reliable historian. Also Tacitus recorded, In A.D. 115 Nero persecuted the Christians as scapegoats to divert suspicion away from himself for the great fire that had devastated Rome in A.D. 64.
Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstitution, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome. . . . Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty: then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind.
And it does provide us with a very remarkable fact, which is this: crucifixion was the most abhorrent fate that anyone could undergo, and the fact that there was a movement based on a crucified man has to be explained. Question how can you explain the spread of a religion based on the worship of a man who had suffered the most ignominious death possible if Jesus didn’t rose from the death? It’s a rhetorical question, even today people who have had near death expierence testify, that they have seen Jesus Christ.
Bible and Archaeology
Every year hundreds of discoveries are made in archaeological digs in the lands of the Bible. Many of these finds relate directly to the Bible; others shed light on different periods in biblical history.
A fact, even secular archaeologists use the Bible as a tool in their excavation work. Why? Because Biblical Archaeology is at work digging up the lands and locations that the Bible talks about. And often the Bible is the ONLY ancient text that gives the historical record about the people who lived in those lands and describes the events that took place there. Without the Bible, Archaeology would be digging blind, guessing the story behind the artifacts, without any way to correctly reconstruct the history it unearths.
So if, as many secular minds would say today, the Bible is not a strong and lasting witness of the past, then why is there a specific field within archaeology distinguished as Biblical Archaeology? The answer is simple. The Bible IS historical and accurate.
I’ll mention few findings, Assyrian Limmu Lists, Annals of Assyrian Kings, Cyrus Cylinder, Merneptah Stele, Moabite Stone, The Babylonian chronicles, Hezekiah’s Tunnel, Lachish Reliefs, Silver Ketef Hinnom Scrolls, Tel Dan Stele, Dead Sea Scrolls.
Over the past century, scientists have discovered that if certain properties of the universe were changed very slightly from what they are, we would not be here. They have to be within a very narrow range for our universe to make life possible and be habitable.
Fine-Tuning of Universe
The universe is fine-tuned for the existence of intelligent life with a complexity and delicacy that literally defy human comprehension. The sensitivity of the ‘habitability’ of the universe to small changes is called ‘fine-tuning.’
This was recognized about 60 years ago by Fred Hoyle who was not a religious person at the time he made the discovery. Scientists like Paul Davies, Martin Rees, Max Tegmark, Bernard Carr, Frank Tipler, John Barrow, and Stephen Hawking, to name a few, believe in fine-tuning. These are prominent names in cosmology as they are heard in the media whenever a news headline is made.
Roger Penrose of Oxford University, and one of Britain’s leading theoretical physicists and cosmologists, has calculated that the odds of a low-entropy state to exist by chance alone are one out of 10 in 10^123 – the Penrose number.
Imagine a universe-creating machine, like a giant safe with two types of dials. There are dials that fix the settings for laws of physics like gravity, electromagnetism, and the nuclear forces. It also has dials for Planck’s constant, one for the ratio of the neutron mass to the proton mass, one for the strength of the electromagnetic attraction, and so on. Initially, all dials have been set and fixed at particular numbers. These numbers are the constants of nature and they produce the universe we live in.
Let us say that you can change the dials of this universe generating machine. There is also a screen which shows you what would happen if you were to change the dials even by a little bit.
You change the dials and hit the preview button to see what might happen. You weaken the force of electromagnetism and the force of gravity just a little. Then you touch the preview button and see the results on a screen. Suddenly, stars, galaxies, and planets start falling apart! Then you increase the dial of the electromagnetic force and suddenly, the planets are not the right size. They are too big for life. Also, stars burn up quickly.
Most people find it hard to believe that a fine-tuned universe is just a fact that neither has nor requires an explanation. The universe just sprang into existence sounds about as scientific as answering the question why apples fall to the ground, by saying that they just do.
Will anyone accept that a photograph of a face is simply the result of an ink spill? No one would ever accept an accident as an explanation. If they won’t accept ink spill as an explanation for a photograph, how could anyone accept the universe to be fine-tuned without an explanation?
The prophecies
The fulfilled predictions of the Bible give the clearest and most conclusive evidence that the Bible is the revelation of God, which i have disscused till ad nauseam, so i will provide a link to a Website http://www.100prophecies.org/page11.htm putting cherry on the cake
So i am looking for Forum Moderators and you can also post for our Webpage, article ideas, in the Forum. I will review them and they will get on the Websites front page.
For many people around the world, online forums and discussion groups are one of the few ways to connect with others who share their views. My forum provides a lively place for debate, support and conversation. I encourage discussion about any and all topics. You can ask questions, request input, present a challenging topic for debate or share an idea. I hope you will join our existing and growing community. Forum is also a great place to chat, make new friends and even share ideas and grow in Faith.
The Bible is word of God and the evidence strongly supports the accuracy of the Bible in relation to history, archeology and culture. No other faith has any sort of historical basis on which their belief system rests—none of them! Contrary to all other religions, the events recorded in the Bible happened in real time history. The truth of the Bible is based upon the actual occurrence of these events that are recorded.
Example given, In Ezekiel 26:7-9, the prophet said in 590 BC that Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar would destroy the mainland of Tyre. Four years later, the Babylonians began a 13-year siege of Tyre. It lasted from 586 BC to 573 BC. (Alexander the Great later destroyed the island portion of Tyre, in 332 BC).
A rock discovered in 1993 containing an inscription about the “House of David” was one of the few tangible extrabiblical evidences for David.
Historian Josephus wrote about Jesus Christ, in the Testimonium Flavianum we can read:
About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing among us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day he appeared to them restored to life, for the prophets of God had prophesied these and countless other marvelous things about him. And the tribe of Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.
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