The Bible

[Not a Cook]

i don't believe in the christian idea of hell. the teaching of impermanence is a big part of Buddhism. there is no eternal punishment. we do have our own version of hell and it sucks, but like all things it is not permanent. you can find the correct path in hell and work your way out.

Christ believes in hell (the term in our English Bibles encompasses multiple ideas, but I assume you're referencing eternal destruction). He taught repeatedly about it, warning men to flee from the coming destruction. Destruction is, by nature, a permanent thing. When God destroys something, it stays destroyed. It doesn't come back into existence. Consider Christ's teaching in these two passages:

28 And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. Matthew 10:28 (NKJV)

. Luke 12:4-5 (NKJV)

Christ explicitly and repeatedly warned us about destruction; He calls us to escape that destruction by following Him and being born again. He claimed to be the ONLY way to be saved, THE way, THE truth, and THE life. His claims were very exclusionary.

Buddhism may not teach a literal, eternal destruction and may teach there are many ways of enlightenment, but Christ taught something totally at odds with Buddhism. He warned about destruction, and claimed to be the only way. Buddhism and Christ cannot be reconciled.

[mossy]

Buddhism may not teach a literal, eternal destruction and may teach there are many ways of enlightenment, but Christ taught something totally at odds with Buddhism. He warned about destruction, and claimed to be the only way. Buddhism and Christ cannot be reconciled.

And that's partly why i am a buddhist and not a Christian.

[WASR10]

How does one come to know God? Is it a feeling? I don't trust my feelings because they change too often. Is it opinion? I don't trust my opinions because they are driven by my feelings. Is it from other men? I don't trust man's opinion because we are all flawed. If one is to know God one must have a solid, unchanging source. People believe they find that source in many different forms. I have found the Bible. It is solid and unchanging. Quoting the Bible to present one's stance on Christianity is the only reliable and verifiable means to present any argument from a Christian position.

Yes, changes had been made from the Greek and Hebrew when it was translated to Latin, and again when the Latin was translated in to modern languages such as English. However, thanks to sciences such as archaeology, we have been able to piece together a rendition of the ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts to an almost 99% accuracy. And the problems of at 1% usually deal with forms of 'is' and 'to' and so on. If a person truly wishes to know the words written by the Scriptural authors, they can. Incidentally, I have found the New American Standard and the New King James to be the most accurate English representations.

So translation and change is not an issue. Also, you don't have to believe blindly to what a church or a teacher tells you. You can read the message for yourself. And to get to the point of the OP, the Bible does indeed include a choice; obedience or disobedience, and with each a consequence. It is up to us whether we shall believe.

[Just Dave]

has anyone ever thought about this stuff for other than what the Bible says? has anyone ever thought about the personal aspect of a relationship with a "creator". I can't stand it when people quote the bible for their every thought. you guys sound like little robots doing as commanded. it should be a personal experience, something not dictated by the words of questionable individuals that has been filtered by the Catholic church in order to get money in exchange for peoples salvation.

i'm all for a relationship with a "God" or "creator" but to quote the bible with every sentence or thought IMO shows a lack of personal experience. anything can be taught or read, but a true relationship will lead to experience which is worth more than 1000 Bibles.

Experienced based religion. "if it feels good just do it" is Nike's slogan, it's also the way the world does things.
Serial killers claim to have a thrilling experience when they perform their evil deeds but does that make them right?

People who know God and abide in Him, His word and will keep His word.

Like Cosby, Stills and Nash said "You who are on the road must have a code which you can live by".

Christian's have the word of God, everyone else uses man made garbage.

[Just Dave]

i don't believe in the christian idea of hell. the teaching of impermanence is a big part of Buddhism. there is no eternal punishment. we do have our own version of hell and it sucks, but like all things it is not permanent. you can find the correct path in hell and work your way out.

Mossy,what does Buddhism teach about Jesus Christ?

[colossians323]

has anyone ever thought about this stuff for other than what the Bible says?

Good question and I would answer for myself. Of course origins is important when you think of this "stuff". Either we have not purpose other than breeding and fulfilling our own desires, or there is something bigger than us. IF you believe that you were created by random chance, than what the heck, eat drink and be merry. If you believe that you were created by a creator, you understand that the one who created you knows the best way for you to live, and you would try to follow those instructions. Does a parent have more knowledge than their child, and make mature decisions for them, or is the child able to make those choices by themselves?

has anyone ever thought about the personal aspect of a relationship with a "creator". I can't stand it when people quote the bible for their every thought.

Isn't that part of the relationship? Isn't this God speaking to us and giving us examples to live by?

you guys sound like little robots doing as commanded. it should be a personal experience, something not dictated by the words of questionable individuals that has been filtered by the Catholic church in order to get money in exchange for peoples salvation.

This sounds like you have made up your own god, one that you want to believe in so you can live your life the way you want to, rather then how God intends???

i'm all for a relationship with a "God" or "creator" but to quote the bible with every sentence or thought IMO shows a lack of personal experience. anything can be taught or read, but a true relationship will lead to experience which is worth more than 1000 Bibles.

So the word leads no one to a relationship?

Acts 8:29-40

29303132 Now the passage of Scripture which he was reading was this:

33

3435 Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning from this Scripture he preached Jesus to him. 363738 And he ordered the chariot to stop; and they both went down into the water, Philip as well as the eunuch, and he baptized him. 39 When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; and the eunuch no longer saw him, but went on his way rejoicing. 40 But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he passed through he kept preaching the gospel to all the cities until he came to Caesarea.

[colossians323]

A few points:

1) The Bible is trustworthy. If you have sincere questions about its reliability, internal cohesiveness, historicity, or infallibility please let me know and I'll be happy to help you find the answers to your questions. I assure you it's reliable, true, and trustworthy, but I've studied it and its history for myself. Have you? If you really doubt the Bible, please consider that it is made up of 66 books written in multiple languages by over 40 authors over more than a millenium, and most of those authors never met and were from different walks of life. If the Bible isn't what it claims to be, it should be easy to find internal contradictions between those 66 books and their teachings. However, there are no such contradictions.

2) Regarding translation issues: what, exactly, are you concerned about? We have literally many thousands of ancient manuscripts that pre-date any influence of any denomination, including that of the Roman Catholic Church. It is relatively easy to verify whether any given passage from any modern translation is faithful and accurate to those ancient manuscripts by simply checking it for yourself. I check translations of specific passages fairly regularly. If this were really a concern of yours, why don't you check them for yourself.

3) Frankly, you misunderstand the gospel of Christ and God's purpose for the creation. God is holy and righteous. His standard is righteous perfection. Anything missing that perfect standard is sin. The rules include "the wages of sin is death". The laws include the ten commandments. I guarantee you that you've broken most (if not all) of the ten commandments, as have we all. As such, you and I deserve death and destruction because we've sinned against God. However, in addition to being holy and just, God is also patient, merciful, and gracious. Even though we deserve death and destruction, God has not cast us hopelessly or helplessly away, even though we deserve such casting away. Instead, He has CHOSEN to love us with an indescribable love whereby He sent His beloved Son to become the propitiation for our sins by bearing ours sins and suffering God's wrath which we deserved. God did not "stack the deck against us"; instead, He has given us the only possible chance for salvation and He paid the ultimate price to give us the chance. He calls us to repent and follow Christ, becoming His disciple, and dying to ourselves and living for Christ instead. He promises eternal life for those who follow Him. We've stacked the deck against ourselves; to claim God stacked the deck against us qualifies as the ultimate in victim mentality. God has graciously and lovingly sacrificed His Son - really think about what that means and what it cost Him to do so. He isn't an unfair judge; instead He is the perfect Judge (after all, "god" means "judge") who will not fail to mete out justice for sin. Thankfully, though, in His love, kindness, grace, and mercy He sent His beloved Son to pay our penalty in our place and promises to credit Christ's righteousness (instead of our sin) to us if we follow Christ - we just have to accept the terms of that payment so that it is applied to our account. The "end game" is that Christ is redeeming a special people to Himself who will truly love Him and with whom He will fellowship with in love for all eternity. Christ didn't teach men to just "pray some prayer asking for salvation"; instead, Christ called men to follow Him, become His disciples, and loose our lives for His sake and the sake of His gospel.

He isn't twisted; He is holy, just, righteous, merciful, gracious, loving, and kind. It is difficult to fathom why God has chosen "to stoop so low as to love" wretches like us. However, it is utter foolishness to reject God's call to follow Christ and receive the salvation He offers. We obviously can choose to reject Him, but anyone who chooses to reject Him does so in foolish pride and if they continue in that rejection of Christ will ultimately receive their just due via destruction in the lake of fire and brimstone.

spot on

[RAMCLAP]

When Alexander the Great conquered the Medo-Persian Empire he had a Common Greek to be written and spoken empire wide. The Septuagint is the Hebrew translation into that Common Greek. The New Testament is also written in that same Greek. All Translations into English come from the Common Greek. No rewritten translations. We have the Rylands papyri from about 130 AD. We have all the Dead Sea Scrolls. There is no variation. What we have now is what they had then. This has been pointed out and put to bed many times.

[waveslayer]

but see your using the possibly corrupted text, to justify the sayings of the corrupted text. does that make sense to anyone?

I really don't wish to continue because I hate to think that I may cause someone to stumble on his path to God. As much as I disagree with the beliefs of people, I can think of nothing worse than to remove that peace of mind from someone.

What if the text I refer it has only been translated once. Would you call that corrupted

[Just Dave]

What if the text I refer it has only been translated once. Would you call that corrupted

People always make claims that the Bible has been corrupted or edited.

In order to call something corrupted one must first have the correct standard in which to measure that corruption with.
If corrupted what standard does a person have to make that claim?
Where did they get this standard from?
What evidence do they have backing up this standard as being authentic?

If edited what was edited?
What evidence can the skeptic point to showing the areas where the editing took place?
What copies to they have to show this?

On the other side of the coin we have New Testament manuscripts out of the first/second century, unchanged copies of the Old Testament going back to the 7th century and the Dead Sea Scrolls which predate the 1st advent of Christ by 200-300 years.

[Barang]

i don't believe in the christian idea of hell. the teaching of impermanence is a big part of Buddhism. there is no eternal punishment. we do have our own version of hell and it sucks, but like all things it is not permanent. you can find the correct path in hell and work your way out.

In this life, you break the law you go to jail. If you're convicted of a heinous crime, you get thrown in prison for life or get the death penalty. Either way is permanent.
Same way with God, His judgement will come and will send those who broke His laws to hell or prison if you will.
God and earthly goverment both hand out lifetime sentences. Think about that.

I believe that if God is truly as loving and just as you all say that we are misunderstanding God entirely. I don't think that anything would be required to enter "heaven" although I don't necessarily believe in the "heave and hell" thing.

It's just a messed up story. He created us, knowing that we would sin. Even when he required perfection... isn't that sort of cruel? If that isn't he knew that he would for some reason have to kill his son in order to cover a people who he created with the ability to sin in the first place....
take a lot from the new age perspective that we are here to gain experiences to reach spiritual maturity or some **** like that... that's about as deep as i'll get with Icomplete strangers.

Laws are created to have uniform standard and to keep things in order. Can you imagine a country or a home without them? It will be chaotic! and complete anarchy!
Because of our sin nature, God is reaching to us so that we don't have to go to hell. That is not cruelty, that is Love.
He sent His Son Jesus to pay for our sins so we don't have to go to hell.
Jesus took our place at the cross so that we don't have to. Like in a hostage situation: we're held by terrorist and going to execute us but Jesus came and had us freed in exchange for Himself.
He gets executed and we're free. Wouldn't you call that Love?

[mossy]

Mossy,what does Buddhism teach about Jesus Christ?

Nothing. Buddhism was founded long before Jesus walked the earth. He is not important in Buddhism.

[mr2ndamendment]

Just jumping in here.

I've known people who believe the Bible to be the direct word of God and I've known people who think it's a complete fairy tail.

I studied and got a BA in History -it's always been my passion. Between all my education, the most important class I ever took was a "Bible as Literature" class in high school. The class worked to look at the Bible not as the direct word of God, but as a document derived from mankind over the many centuries. It basically had us study the Bible as a book and how it came to be -at least what we can verify through archaeology and known history. Already some may disagree with the premise of this study, but it had to come from somewhere and it was written by human hands, was it not? You can argue those human hands were inspired by God, but at the end of the day the Bible we have today is the result of human hands creating it (inspired or not).

I look at the Bible not as a book or even two separate books -I look at it like a library of books. Sparing the entire lecture, these are the important things we know about it. We know that the Old Testament started as the spoken word, passed around the campfire and down the family line for hundreds of years before anyone bothered to write it down and start canonizing it. Between just the first five books of the Old Testament (the writings of Moses), we see at least several different writing styles present at various times. From a historical/linguistic perspective, it's clear it was written by several authors at the least, and we find it hard to understand how Moses can write about his own death.

The Bible had been amended many times, some books thrown out, some included throughout various times in history. It was translated into dozens of languages before it was finally translated to English.

What I'm trying to say is I personally think it can be irresponsible to interpret every single word as the literal word of God -too many changes occurred, too many people had their hands on it, too many people could have modified and manipulated certain parts to align with their own beliefs. We can talk about the New Testament but are we not going to talk about how the Old Testament lays forth the rules for selling your daughter and owning slaves? Certainly we must agree that we should not at every word as the literal word of God -but then again, which God are we talking about? The God of the Old Testament had no mercy -Lot's wife turned into a pillar of salt for just looking back at the destruction of the evil cities. When God wasn't pleased with the world he flooded it to kill off everything besides Noah and his lot. The God of the New Testament is far more peaceful and forgiving -either God had a change of heart or it's a different entity entirely.

What I'm trying to say is that I think we should take value in the Bible -it has many good lessons and important stories and figures that we should study. We should obtain the good we can from its teachings and lessons, but I find it potentially dangerous to hang onto every word as the literal word of God, with how many known changes have occurred throughout the ages.

I think it'll always be an important literary work to humanity and it should remain so, and it will always be a guiding light for those in need, but we must also keep in mind where it comes form. We shouldn't get wrapped around the axle about the details and we should focus more on the light we can get from it.

Just my 2.5 cents, no disrespect anyone.

[Just Dave]

Nothing. Buddhism was founded long before Jesus walked the earth. He is not important in Buddhism.

Buddhist don't have anything to say about Jesus?

[Just Dave]

Just jumping in here.

I've known people who believe the Bible to be the direct word of God and I've known people who think it's a complete fairy tail.

I studied and got a BA in History -it's always been my passion. Between all my education, the most important class I ever took was a "Bible as Literature" class in high school. The class worked to look at the Bible not as the direct word of God, but as a document derived from mankind over the many centuries. It basically had us study the Bible as a book and how it came to be -at least what we can verify through archaeology and known history. Already some may disagree with the premise of this study, but it had to come from somewhere and it was written by human hands, was it not? You can argue those human hands were inspired by God, but at the end of the day the Bible we have today is the result of human hands creating it (inspired or not).

The Bible makes it clear (2 Tim 3:16)

I look at the Bible not as a book or even two separate books -I look at it like a library of books. Sparing the entire lecture, these are the important things we know about it. We know that the Old Testament started as the spoken word, passed around the campfire and down the family line for hundreds of years before anyone bothered to write it down and start canonizing it. Between just the first five books of the Old Testament (the writings of Moses), we see at least several different writing styles present at various times. From a historical/linguistic perspective, it's clear it was written by several authors at the least, and we find it hard to understand how Moses can write about his own death.

That's a contradictory statement

The Bible had been amended many times, some books thrown out, some included throughout various times in history. It was translated into dozens of languages before it was finally translated to English.

Here

What I'm trying to say is I personally think it can be irresponsible to interpret every single word as the literal word of God -too many changes occurred, too many people had their hands on it, too many people could have modified and manipulated certain parts to align with their own beliefs. We can talk about the New Testament but are we not going to talk about how the Old Testament lays forth the rules for selling your daughter and owning slaves? Certainly we must agree that we should not at every word as the literal word of God -but then again, which God are we talking about? The God of the Old Testament had no mercy -Lot's wife turned into a pillar of salt for just looking back at the destruction of the evil cities. When God wasn't pleased with the world he flooded it to kill off everything besides Noah and his lot. The God of the New Testament is far more peaceful and forgiving -either God had a change of heart or it's a different entity entirely.

Click the above link

What I'm trying to say is that I think we should take value in the Bible -it has many good lessons and important stories and figures that we should study. We should obtain the good we can from its teachings and lessons, but I find it potentially dangerous to hang onto every word as the literal word of God, with how many known changes have occurred throughout the ages.

I think it'll always be an important literary work to humanity and it should remain so, and it will always be a guiding light for those in need, but we must also keep in mind where it comes form. We shouldn't get wrapped around the axle about the details and we should focus more on the light we can get from it.

Just my 2.5 cents, no disrespect anyone.

In red, I could point out more issues with your statement but this should suffice for now.