Spin the Wheel

[Lionel Refson]

Genesis Chapter 9 [9:1] God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth."
The flood has subsided, Noah and his sons have been saved.. All that remains are the descendants of us all Noah and his sons, the Fathers of the whole human race. God or if you are Muslim, Allah then blesses all of us, through our ancestors equally. This is the first blessing that God was to give to all of us and it is quite remarkable. Note the lack of religious instruction. Note the lack of any conditions attached. Remember how you should be reading this with God’s perfection in your mind’s eye! Ask yourself how come God made no rules on how we were to behave or worship him? At this key stage? Why is this? God’s first and only blessing to the WHOLE of humanity carries great weight.

Could it be that God could not see our future and therefore got His blessing wrong, or perhaps God forget to tell us about religious duties and made a mess of the whole opportunity. We can’t accept a God that gets it wrong, isn’t so all-powerful and makes a mess of things. that would not be God. It is more than reasonable to argue that God should be perfect, perfection. God should know all about our future and our past and tailor the blessing accordingly which clearly is what happened. We are all equally blessed, especially when God must have known that the descendants of Shem would become Semites i.e. Jews and Muslims, no more blessed, despite their religions, than the descendants of Ham or Japheth. . But humans are not equal are we?. We are not born into materially the same set of circumstances BUT we are all equally God-blessed, through our ancestors, the ancestors of the whole world. God didn’t get it wrong God is always right

The key point is that we all have the same value in the eyes of God even if our material circumstances differ wildly . Ergo an atheist is as equally blessed as a Rabbi or Imam, in the eyes of God, without any dispute. Remember this is Gods first and only blessing to the whole of humanity. God could have said, "Be fruitful and multiply. Those who bow down to me and wear hats will get to the heaven, the rest Hell".

We could therefore conclude that God does not endorse religion. Of course, it would be argued that many later verses contain all the prescriptive elements of religion as given to God by Moses BUT there is none of it in the First Blessing. Perhaps the later parts were added or amended? That is not such a wild theory.

Following on from Genesis 9:1 we read

9:2-9:4[9:2] The fear and dread of you shall rest on every animal of the earth, and on every bird of the air, on everything that creeps on the ground, and on all the fish of the sea; into your hand they are delivered. [9:3] Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. [9:4] Only, you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its soul and blood.The meaning is clear Don’t eat flesh with its soul and blood i.e. don’t eat live animals is sound advice and may contain a reference related to health and medicine but for now it is not one that we are concerned with..

[9:5] For your own lifeblood I will surely require a reckoning: from every animal I will require it and from human beings, each one for the blood of another, I will require a reckoning for human life.This is a reference to the after-life and the day of Judgement No one on this Earth can prove whether or not there is an after-life but according to God who is infallible there is something more for us It would not be wild to assume that if we hold God's blessing to our hearts and be fruitful to ourselves and others we would not walk down the wrong path but it is the next verse that should make us reflect a while.

[9:6] Whoever sheds the blood of a human, by a human shall that person's blood be shed; for in his own image God made humankind.
God doesn’t kill nor punish us. Read the verse again…Whoever sheds the blood of man through man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God He made man. What God is saying here is so very clear. “If you do the very worst of crimes i.e. murder then even then I am not going to intervene and cause holy fire to sweep down from the heavens."

In other words God is not going to punish the murderer in this life even though he or she is acting in a manner contradictory to the Blessing where God blessed us all equally to be fruitful and multiply.. God is saying "Because humans were made in my image then it’s up to humans to try the murderer be fair as I was with Adam and Eve and Cain the murderer who killed his brother and yet I spared him. Give your murderer a fair hearing and sentence him. If you kill him then it is your right”The implications of this are far-reaching. Anyone who kills in the name of God is not killing in the name of God at all. We were all equally blessed. As God is not orchestrating any of these killings we can see right through the phoney theology of religions that urge us to shed blood in the name of unless again one blasphemes by assuming incorrectly that God got his blessing wrong. This verse is one of the verses used by religion to teach the philosophy of an eye for an eye i.e. they’ve killed your ancestors so you should kill them. But the verse does not mean that in any way. .

The often-overlooked part of the verse are the words for in the image of God He made man. The point is that God had already forgiven Adam and Eve for disobeying him and Cain for killing his brother. God had already shown us what mercy is and Noah and his Sons would have understood. If the worst of crimes is punishable by us, not God, what about all the rest of our crimes against each other. I believe it is right to say that the punishment for these crimes would also be down to us. In fact God doesn’t seem to be involved or want to be involved in our daily life, despite what later religions preach to us and it’s the later religious nonsense that would be thrown at you if you were to dare stand up and say that we are all equally blessed and God does not punish us but then in my opinion, the later religious writings are just man-made echoes of the earlier stories and poor ones at that. What would you value more do you want the original or a poor, twisted, added to and unoriginal copy?

Of course, counter arguments to this conclusion could be ..But in the Torah later The Israelites with God’s help killed all sorts of tribes.”These writings came later in the Torah. God/Allah who is without error nor mistake gave us these words first and would not have changed His mind, nor contradicted himself, nor got his original words wrong. It is likely that there were embellishments but not here, not at this early and original stage, where scribes struggled so hard to write down the words correctly and without error..

Perhaps the later stories were the works of fiction. It is a well-known that the Genesis chapter predates the other chapters.

Another argument might be But in Jeremiah/Isaiah/Ezekiel/Amos etc. it states...

These are not the words of God/Allah. These writings all come much later on.

Another objection might be “But it states in the new testament or the Koran”

The New testament and the Koran came much later than the Old testament, How could an-all seeing Allah/God change His mind and why would the subject place more emphasis on a later work than an earlier one. The original blessing did not state “Smite only the unbeliever or those that do not follow the ways of God". It does not ask for the help of man to clear up the sinners. It cannot be explained in any other way. By omission, God had said nothing to us about rape, or robbery, or fraud, or sexual relations with the same sex or anything else. That is because God made it so clear to us here by simple omission that all other acts are subject to the law of Man. He gave us that freedom.. According to what God said we have the right to kill, those who murder unequivocally. This is big news and directly counters the commandment “Thou shall not kill”, but it is there in Genesis in black and white.

cont

 

[Lionel Refson]

The next verses are equally important

[9:7] And you, be fruitful and multiply, abound on the earth and multiply in it.
[9:8] Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him,
[9:9] "As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you,
[9:10] and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark.
[9:11] I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth."
[9:12] God said, "This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations:
Note the words used "You and your descendants after you" and "For all future generations". It is very clear here that the Covenant and by implication the Blessing were both everlasting, for all time, not to be changed, altered nor corrected.by God. After all an Infallible being, with perfect future sight making such important announcements, would not get them wrong or make an error. We are eternally blessed and for eternity we have been promised never to be destroyed. A far cry from what the three Abrahamic faiths would have you believe.

A Reverend once said that this verse meant “God will never destroy us ever again by water" and it reminded the writer of the row he once had with a well-known Rabbi who insisted the same until the writer pointed out that its says right at the end “.For everlasting generations"

We are going to be everlasting according to God. So, if we add that to the nonsense that the priest and rabbi said “God will never destroy us by water again in Gods covenant for everlasting generations. What meaningless rubbish! God doesn’t decide not to destroy us with floods leaving other means open, if that was the case we wouldn't last for everlasting generations…God promises never to destroy us ever again for everlasting generations, so what on earth do we need religion for?
One I can see years of guilt and misery melt away from the God-fearing guilt-ridden when they read this whatever their religion. God doesn’t avenge, God doesn’t destroy God doesn’t kill, God doesn’t command us to destroy each other. God promised for everlasting generations never again to hurt us so what on earth are all these wars about in the Middle–East then?. Nothing to do with God that is for certain.

9:13] I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.

[9:14] When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds,

[9:15] I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.

[9:16] When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth."

[9:17] God said to Noah, "This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth."

[9:18] The sons of Noah who went out of the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham was the father of Canaan.

[9:19] These three were the sons of Noah; and from these the whole earth was peopled. It is an everlasting covenant with a blessing that is for all time from the time of Noah.

This is the oldest and most original covenant we have with God. This is God’s promise to us. These commands from God are the ones we must keep........ An all-knowing all-seeing God would have known that we would break this Covenant but God did not add in caveats nor details of what would happen, not if but when we broke this Covenant by shedding blood. The Covenant still stands. The words are clear.

It is essential to understand that an Infallible God makes and Infallible Covenant and that everything that follows on in the Bible after this Covenant is just the words of man. BUT there is more. “Everlasting generations” means that God will never destroy us ever again. Add that to the blessing and you will understand that God is not for killing in this world and that no human can dare to stand up and say that God nor Allah demands that they should kill. That IS blasphemy. Anyone who kills in the name of God is a liar. To summarise we have a God who tells us to rule ourselves, who has blessed us to be fruitful and multiply and who has promised never again to destroy us for everlasting generations, so we can say without fear of contradiction that there is no God involvement in this world and anyone who states that there is a liar.

We have stopped at Genesis 9:19 This is not the end of the Bible by any means BUT it is the first and last time God blessed all of us together. After this we get a nasty little story about Noah getting drunk and then we have a God of Abraham appearing, far more tribal in tone, far less universal and lacking the Perfection of God that we have been seeking so much so that we start to feel that this new God is not God at all but a tribal invention favouring one set of his creation over another and with a whole new set of rules. It doesn’t sit right. God had made no mention of any of these new developments when he gave us His Blessing and promise and suddenly God is a Hebrew one. The poor Canaanites were slaughtered, but were they not also blessed and covenanted with through their ancestor Shem, never to be destroyed. What happened to the God of Noah? Did he disappear behind some rainbows or did the later stories take the concept of God for their own .

Tearing Up The rest of The Bible
Everything after God's blessing to Noah and his sons, contains tribal interest and should be rejected . First the Jews with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Samuel, King David et al, then The Christians with Christ and the Apostles and finally Islam with the prophet Mohammed. In order to be free from religious guilt and fear, only the words of God should be heeded and the only words of God that do not contain tribal interest and that were spoken to the whole of humanity without difference were in Genesis 9 . Once you have read up to Genesis 9:19 you have received the only words of God that you ever need.

Conclusions
You have been shown that even the Bible itself points to the undeniable truth that there is no God that operates in this world. We are right to be secular, to live in a secular society and to treat others as equal. We are right not to be afraid of God or afraid of being punished for being naughty, because even murderers are ours to deal with and not God’s. So much fear and guilt caused by religion and now our very way of life is being challenged by an image of a bloodthirsty God driving the dark forces of terrorism. Only by cutting God out of the equation altogether and side-lining the Semitic religions can we hope for a safe world for our children. Should you want to know whether there are any prescriptions to live in this world from the above then consider these

1/We should be fruitful to self and others. We should encourage fruitfulness in self and others. Being fruitful to self means adopting the mental and physical condition of looking after oneself, guarding and evaluating one's thoughts and outwardly being amenable and personable.. being fruitful to others means helping and encouraging others, doing all what one can to make the lot of others more bearable, helping them to thrive; family, friends, communities.

2/ We should not believe in divine punishment in this life, i.e. removal of fear

3/ We should treat all others as equals as God blessed all people equally.

4/ we should discard religious custom and tradition and encourage others to do the same.

5/ We have freewill

6/ We should multiply

7/ We should avoid eating live animals

8/ we should not have fear nor guilt, The ultimate conclusion to this thesis is one that will cause consternation in religious circles. Religion was a human creation that is both unnecessary, inasmuch as humanity does not need it and misleading inasmuch as neither Judaism Christianity nor Islam gives us the true nature of our relationship with God. indeed, if anything they take us far away from our Creator. We kill in the name of God, we fight wars in the name of God, we bow down, pray and worship God in different ways and yet God never instructed us to do any of these things. The only true path for each and every one of us to return to God is to abandon religion forever and a good start would be to remove everything in your Bible from genesis 9:19 onwards!

9/ If we feel a need to pray to God then we should first state that we are aware that we have freewill and that God does not get involved with worldly affairs. Then pray anyway.if it please you

 

[Unguru]

How about when I masturbate? Am I then serving "the god of masturbation"?

Yes, why not? I know that was a joke but the ancient Greek deities where pretty hardcore-porn, if you know what I mean (even having sex with corpses and raping people, massive homosexual orgies etc)

Maybe if you wish, you could convert to that?

 

[Trailblazer]

I wouldn't say that there is nothing logical about it, because whether God has an exclusive religion or not is circumstantial. And the concept of sin makes perfect sense to me because I can see it all around me and evidenced within myself.

I guess you mean that God could have an exclusive religion if He wanted to.

I did not mean that I do not believe there is sin; I only meant that I do not believe that just because Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate an apple from a tree, all of humanity was cursed thereafter. Rather I believe that humans have a lower material sinful nature and a higher noble spiritual nature, and we have free will to choose to live according to one or the other of those natures. That is explained here:

“In man there are two natures; his spiritual or higher nature and his material or lower nature. In one he approaches God, in the other he lives for the world alone. Signs of both these natures are to be found in men. In his material aspect he expresses untruth, cruelty and injustice; all these are the outcome of his lower nature. The attributes of his Divine nature are shown forth in love, mercy, kindness, truth and justice, one and all being expressions of his higher nature. Every good habit, every noble quality belongs to man’s spiritual nature, whereas all his imperfections and sinful actions are born of his material nature. If a man’s Divine nature dominates his human nature, we have a saint.” Paris Talks, p. 60

THE TWO NATURES IN MAN​

We inherited the propensity to sin from Adam, but not because Adam ate an apple from a tree. Rather, when Adam was born he entered into the world of good and evil, the material world... The attachment to the material world, which is sin, was inherited by the descendants of Adam... It is because of this attachment that men have been deprived of essential spirituality and instead have the propensity to sin.

Thing is, Witnesses dont believe that only a small subset of christians will be saved. They believe that all others who claim to be christian are not christian at all. So those who would be saved are the only true Christians.

But who are they to judge who is a true Christians and who is not? Jesus said to judge not, lest ye be judged.

I have no problem with this if it is actually what God wants. I like Christianity because the God has a standard of Holiness that he expects all his creation to attain. I would regard him as having no standards if he didn't and I wouldn't respect him for that.

I do not have any problem with what God wants, but why would God want only a few people to be saved? It is not as if the JWs are the only ones who have high standards of moral behavior. The Baha’i standards are very high, almost impossible for most people to actually meet. I like that because I believe the standards should be set high since humans are capable of meeting these standards if they put away their selfish desires.

The concept of Christianity is not that he grants one group as special and abandons all others. The fact that he wants his followers to spread the gospel means that he isn't abandoning all others. But it does mean that he has a standard and he wants them to reach that standard. If people don't want to reach that standard then there is no reason for him to save them. They want to remain a faulty creation.

Although I do not believe in being “saved” since I do not believe in a literal hell that people go to, I agree that not everyone should get the same deal in the afterlife because that would be unjust. Those who towed the line deserve a reward and the others won’t get that reward. The entire system is predicated on the fact that God gave us free will to choose what to believe and how to behave.

There is a lot of conflict in interpretation but I find that that is because most Christians do not actually read the Bible to the point of knowing the book well. Plus when it comes to books in general, understanding them depends on whether a person likes reading, is used to reading, can critically think etc. There are too many variables when understanding books. And when belief is involved interpretation really becomes subjective. And then the dangerous thing about having designated interpreters is that one relies on them rather than the book, which means that they can make any interpretation they want to suit their own ends and the followers would be ignorant. This was what was addressed during the Reformation. The Catholic Church had leaders who were the only ones allowed to interpret the holy book and then after the Bible was printed in the common tongue, many people realised that they were talking nonsense and formed other groups. The Witnesses have the same idea in that only the Governing Body is allowed to interpret the Bible, Muslims have it with their scholars, cults have it with their leaders etc. I think that having a set intepreter is the most dangerous. That person (people) have too much power and the followers hand over power to them. Having no official interpreter works well because when many people come to the same conclusion independently then it is more likely that the book is actually saying what they say it is saying. The problems with open interpretation is when a group of people set up one of those interpreters as an official interpreter and give them power.

I agree that there should not be one or more interpreters that we have to rely upon in order to understand scriptures. In the Baha’i Faith we have two appointed interpreters but we are also free to interpret the Writings of Baha’u’llah by ourselves. Their interpretations just make it easier for some people who have trouble understanding the sometimes ornate style of language in which the scriptures were written. But once we understand the interpretation it is a lot easier to go back to the scriptures and understand what they mean.

At the moment I believe that an intelligence created the universe. What form that intelligence takes I have no basis of saying. Could be one person, many people, a flying spaghetti monster, Azathoth (hopefully) etc.

It sure seems as if you have gone full circle.

Regarding the bible, I pretty much understand the explicit points. Like the old testament, the establishment of Israel, Christ having to die for sins etc. Those are pretty straight forward.

Where is it in the Bible that Christ had to die for our sins? Where did Jesus ever say that? That is the most important question, for anyone who thinks logically. There is no reason to believe in original sin the way Christians do. Jews and Muslims reading the same Bible do not interpret it that way.

What Christianity did was try to FIT their beliefs about Jesus into the Old Testament, so they extrapolated, making the Old Testament to be all about Jesus. But the Old Testament was not about Jesus, except for SOME of the prophecies that foretold Jesus. But the prophecies referring to a Messiah of the latter days were not about Jesus. The Jews knew that and that is one reason they rejected Jesus as their Messiah.

Since Baha’is do not believe in original sin, there was no penalty to pay. That is the difference between Christianity and the Baha’i Faith beliefs. Since we all have a higher noble spiritual nature and a lower selfish material nature (sinful nature) Jesus saved us from our lower material nature by giving us His teachings that, if followed, free us from the chains of bondage to our physical nature and the material world. The cross sacrifice was a symbol of detachment and self-denial, the example we are to follow. The remission of sins is the remission of our sinful nature that intervenes between us and God:

The following quote explains how it was the Word of God as well as the cross sacrifice that freed us from the chains of bondage. Christ gave us His teachings (profusion of His bounties) and then later died on the cross (suffered the greatest martyrdom) so we could be free of sin and attain everlasting life.

“…those who turned toward the Word of God and received the profusion of His bounties—were saved from this attachment and sin, obtained everlasting life, were delivered from the chains of bondage, and attained to the world of liberty. They were freed from the vices of the human world, and were blessed by the virtues of the Kingdom. This is the meaning of the words of Christ, “I gave My blood for the life of the world” 6 —that is to say, I have chosen all these troubles, these sufferings, calamities, and even the greatest martyrdom, to attain this object, the remission of sins” Some Answered Questions, p. 125​

Many other things such as prophecy is open to interpretation. The fun thing about the Bible is that the essentials are explicit and the rest is open to discussion and debate. It is like piecing a puzzle together as one can understand many aspects of prophecy through knowing what the symbols and patterns mean. It is a book that is constantly hyperlinking itself. So even though interpretation is open ended it is only open ended to a certain point because it retains a base foundation based on referencing what was previously written and its common symbols and patterns.

What essentials do you think are explicit? What do you consider the base foundation?

 

[Trailblazer]

Basically I believe in God without religion and you believe in God via one united religion, more or less.
if you check my signature you will see exactly how I believe what I believe. IMHO your faith has a hopeless uphill struggle ie in uniting, finding common agreement ,whilst my approach still has an uphill struggle but one that is perhaps less steep. I don't have any followers and don't want not expect any. But anything that destroys even one little part of the power of the Abrahamic religions, allows the true voice of God a little more room in this world of shouting religions...and religions are being challenged more and more.

The Baha’i Faith is considered an Abrahamic religion, but is not like Christianity or even Judaism. It is closer to Islam but not the same, because this is an entirely new religious cycle. What all these religions, as well as the religions, share in common are the essential spiritual virtues; they will never be abrogated, for they are spiritual and not material truth… faith, knowledge, certitude, justice, piety, righteousness, trustworthiness, love of God, benevolence, purity, detachment, humility, meekness, patience and constancy, showing mercy to the poor, defending the oppressed, uplifting the fallen....

Certainly the Baha’i Faith has an uphill battle, but the entire religion is predicated upon the belief that Baha’u’llah was the Manifestation of God of this age and whatever He revealed was identical with the Will of God… I do not believe that God operates in this world, except through His Manifestations who speak with His Voice and reveal His Will to humanity.

The way you have described God and free will is practically identical with Bahai beliefs. If I did not know better, I would say you are a Baha’i; you are so methodical and rational in your approach. Did you come to all these conclusions on your own?

In brief, I believe that all the older religions have misinterpreted their scriptures, not all of the scriptures, but many of them. This pertains mostly to Christianity which started with the myth of original sin being why we needed Jesus as a sacrifice. (I will address that in my next post.) They then went on to say that Jesus was God in the flesh which is sheer blasphemy, the Jews knew that. Moreover, Jesus never claimed to be God or a sacrifice for original sin; this was all made up by the Church as a reason why everyone has to believe in Jesus or go to hell! You really got me started now.

But Jews have also gone astray, by rejecting Jesus, who was a Manifestation of God, crucial for the progress of the human race. Muslims, well the only real mistake they made was in rejecting the Bab and Baha’u’llah.

I pretty much agree with everything you wrote in your blog post. Below are the highlights of what I wholeheartedly agree with:

• No, it matters not who God is. The point is that God is our Creator and by definition must be Perfection..

• There is a God, but He Does Not Operate In This World

• this Creator does not get involved with, nor intervene in this world. In other words, whilst God sees all things God has given us freewill and the responsibility of dealing ourselves with the wickedness that some commit

• God must be Perfection and would create and treat us all equally. God would allow us freewill but regardless of this God would have to be omnipotent omnipresent, omnipresent all-powerful, all-knowing, all-seeing and perfect to be God and nothing less would suffice. God would never be towards his creations, weak, indecisive, violent, destructive, vengeful, demanding of followers, praise and worship, angry and so on. Why not? Surely if God were all-powerful, God could be anything that God wishes, and this must be true but to us his creations he is as an ever-loving all-powerful parent that has blessed us with free-will. It is a difference between "could" and "would". God created our world, blessed us all to be fruitful and multiply and has no wish ever to destroy us, no matter how bad we get.....

In order to be free of all the guilt, fear and oppression that religion can cause, it is necessary for you to go travel back with us to the beginning of things, to a time when religion did not exist, a time of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel and Noah and contemplate exactly what God should be; Perfect, All-Seeing, All-Knowing. The answer to your suffering lies in the simplest of times, before religion walked on this earth.

I believe that religion has always existed in some form, and it existed as long as humanity has existed, although not in its present form. Before the art of writing existed, religion existed in another forum.

The reason I say religion has always existed is because God has always sent Manifestations (what I normally refer to as Messengers of God) and they established religions. Then over time, man tampered with those religions and changed them, and that is one reason God had to send a new Messenger; another reason is because God had a new message to reveal that was pertinent to the age in which it was revealed, and the new Messenger brought the message and the remedy mankind needed at that time to address the ills from which it was suffering.

 

[Trailblazer]

Adam and Eve
God made man and woman and wished to give them freewill i.e. the right and ability to make choices, otherwise they would have been as slaves. You can’t descend from heaven and just give your people free-will, their awe of you will make them instant slaves. God wanted to give Adam and Eve freewill, wanted them to be free. He warned them not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, on pain of death BUT being perfect as we have already posited, God surely knew they would disobey.. God had sent one of His creations to offer the other choice to Eve i.e. to have knowledge of good and evil and all that entailed, and the serpent made it an enticing choice, to know what is good and what is not.

Eve made her choice and the exit from the garden was not a punishment, it was our choice. We chose to be free of the simple life and instead chose a much more arduous and yet more fulfilling path than just tending animals in the Garden. We were not tricked. We obtained what we wanted and still do, we obtained knowledge and self-awareness. i.e. before the decision was made Adam and Eve like animals, had no knowledge of themselves, no ability to see themselves. Like animals they were unable to stand outside themselves and view themselves objectively. We humans have been given that gift. No person is able to give another interpretation in keeping with the idea of God as perfection. God didn’t tempt Adam and Eve. For what purpose would he do that if God already knew, being so all-seeing that they would disobey? Utter illogical nonsense!

Yet that is what we have been taught for centuries. Why would we assume that God is either flawed or not so powerful? There is only one vaguely relevant counter –argument to the logic and it goes like this “The Lord works in mysterious ways” That is a very weak and useless argument. Another question one could ask is Why God, who could have created perfection did not make us perfect. The answer is simple. In the garden of Eden, we had perfection, no worries, fear, stress, dangers and so on but we chose freewill and self-awareness. We chose the world we now live in. We have freewill and that means we are not beholden nor ruled by a higher power. We have self-awareness which means we are aware of ourselves and the world around us. Unlike an animal which is set on a simple system of surviving i.e. by eating, sleeping defecating and procreating, we humans, should have no the fear of being controlled and because of self-awareness we have higher minds and more complex thought processes.

Well said.... I agree with all of that as it is congruent with Baha'i beliefs.
The only caveat is that an Omniscient God could override our free will IF he wanted to, but He doesn't.

 

[Samael_Khan]

I guess you mean that God could have an exclusive religion if He wanted to.

Yes. Thank you for phrasing it better

I did not mean that I do not believe there is sin; I only meant that I do not believe that just because Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate an apple from a tree, all of humanity was cursed thereafter. Rather I believe that humans have a lower material sinful nature and a higher noble spiritual nature, and we have free will to choose to live according to one or the other of those natures. That is explained here:

“In man there are two natures; his spiritual or higher nature and his material or lower nature. In one he approaches God, in the other he lives for the world alone. Signs of both these natures are to be found in men. In his material aspect he expresses untruth, cruelty and injustice; all these are the outcome of his lower nature. The attributes of his Divine nature are shown forth in love, mercy, kindness, truth and justice, one and all being expressions of his higher nature. Every good habit, every noble quality belongs to man’s spiritual nature, whereas all his imperfections and sinful actions are born of his material nature. If a man’s Divine nature dominates his human nature, we have a saint.” Paris Talks, p. 60

THE TWO NATURES IN MAN​

We inherited the propensity to sin from Adam, but not because Adam ate an apple from a tree. Rather, when Adam was born he entered into the world of good and evil, the material world... The attachment to the material world, which is sin, was inherited by the descendants of Adam... It is because of this attachment that men have been deprived of essential spirituality and instead have the propensity to sin.

Please clarify what you mean by curse? I think that needs clarifying because there are multiple ways of viewing the word "curse". Christianity also claims the two natures. the "lower material sinful nature" is called "the flesh" and the "higher noble spiritual nature" is called associated with "being made in God's image" or "being lead by the spirit" (read Romans regarding this). What you say is almost, not quite, in line with what the Bible indicates actually. The difference is that in the bible man is sinless for a period while on earth and then disobeys Gods and then the downward spiral with humanity starts. I see evidence of how this could theoretically be true through Psychology and genetics. Psychology explains that how one is raised and how society has influenced them makes them prone to doing things that the Bible states are sinful. Science shows us that genetically we can be disposed to giving into certain sins easier, such as having a shorter fuse or being more lustful. It could be that the psychological aspect produced the the genetic aspect (I don't know, but certainly it has been proven that how one thinks has physical affects, such as the results of stress). So if our original parents sinned first then it has a snowball affect as is shown in from when Adam and Eve sinned to the whole world being so violent that God wishes to destroy it. The bible shows a sharp escalation. In this way, Adam and Eve are responsible for our sinful nature plus we have to be punished for when we give into it, in the same way that people are punished today for crimes even though they might have been heavily influenced into doing so by their parents or have a genetic disposition to do so as inherited genetically by their parents. So it makes sense to me.

But who are they to judge who is a true Christians and who is not? Jesus said to judge not, lest ye be judged.

Well, Christians are allowed to judge, such as when Jesus constantly judged the Pharisees or when the apostles judge members of the congregations through their writings. Jesus and the elect have also been given authority to judge in the end times. The way to judge who is Christian or not is through what the Bible says. So there are disqualifying factors.

So for instance: 2 John 7 - 10. Obviously if a person denies then that Christ came in the flesh they are not Christian. If one doesn't believe in a God they are not Christian. There are many disqualifying factors.

The Witnesses believe that they have "the Truth", as they call their faith constantly, so they believe that they already know more than anybody else. So they don't consider other religions as anything as they are all deceptions of Satan. They are encouraged to spend time teaching "rightly dispose" individuals who are fairly open to their viewpoint. They consider those who question too much (even if the questions are valid and they have no answer for it) argumentative, opposers or apostates. They do not entertain alternative viewpoints to them so therefore they are ignorant to a certain extent and believe that they are the only ones with a proper viewpoint. Consider this when discussing with a JW and pay attention to how many times they concede when you make a valid point. This is the overall view of JW's and what they are encouraged to do by the Watchtower Organisation but there are many individuals in the group who aren't like this.

I do not have any problem with what God wants, but why would God want only a few people to be saved? It is not as if the JWs are the only ones who have high standards of moral behavior. The Baha’i standards are very high, almost impossible for most people to actually meet. I like that because I believe the standards should be set high since humans are capable of meeting these standards if they put away their selfish desires.

Well, they believe that God wants all to be saved, which is why they preach, but they have to meet a certain standard before He will save them. JW's have sort of a weird outlook to this (since I wasn't raised a Witness I didn't have that view of non Witnesses, which always bugged me). Read publications and watch JW videos. In many cases they portray non Witnesses as morally inferior by making blanket statements about "Worldly" people. Yet in manycases theysay there are those who are morally OK. They do not encourage Witnesses to make friends with non Witnesses because they say they are bad association.

Quoted example in a 2013 Watchtower publication:

w13 2/15 24

"Our choice of associates. Of course, some contact with unbelievers—such as at school, at work, and when sharing in the ministry—is unavoidable. It is quite another matter, though, to socialize with them, even cultivating close friendships with them. Do we justify such association by saying that they have many good qualities? “Do not be misled,” warns the Bible. “Bad associations spoil useful habits.” (1 Cor. 15:33) Just as a small amount of pollution can contaminate clean water, friendship with those who do not practice godly devotion can contaminate our spirituality and lead us into adopting worldly viewpoints, dress, speech, and conduct."

Although I do not believe in being “saved” since I do not believe in a literal hell that people go to, I agree that not everyone should get the same deal in the afterlife because that would be unjust. Those who towed the line deserve a reward and the others won’t get that reward. The entire system is predicated on the fact that God gave us free will to choose what to believe and how to behave.

Witnesses do not believe in "Hellfire" hell, but they do believe that those who are not deserving will be destroyed. The Reward received is actually eternal life as John 3:16 states. Those who do not tow the line do not receive that reward of eternal life, therefore they cannot be eternally in hell.

I agree that there should not be one or more interpreters that we have to rely upon in order to understand scriptures. In the Baha’i Faith we have two appointed interpreters but we are also free to interpret the Writings of Baha’u’llah by ourselves. Their interpretations just make it easier for some people who have trouble understanding the sometimes ornate style of language in which the scriptures were written. But once we understand the interpretation it is a lot easier to go back to the scriptures and understand what they mean.

OK. I agree with that then

It sure seems as if you have gone full circle.

Well, I am actually going back to basics. It is what I was forced to do when i left the Witnesses as my whole world view was turned upside down.


Will reply to the rest in my next post.

 

[Samael_Khan]

Where is it in the Bible that Christ had to die for our sins? Where did Jesus ever say that? That is the most important question, for anyone who thinks logically. There is no reason to believe in original sin the way Christians do. Jews and Muslims reading the same Bible do not interpret it that way.

Christ says:

John 10:11: "I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep."


Mark 10:45: "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many."

So Christ died as a ransom. The idea of him dying for our sins is because he is associated with the sacrifice of a lamb, which was slain for forgiveness of sins. On the day of Atonement especially all sins were forgiven.

In the book of John, John the baptist says explicitly that Jesus takes away sin as the Lamb. Since you would accept Jesus words, and Jesus validated the prophethood of John, then that makes John's words to be as authoritative as Jesus' own. John says:

John 1:29: "The next day he saw Jesus coming to him and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!"

At his last supper Jesus says:

Luke 22: 19-20

19 And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”

20 In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.'

In the above he is blatantly associating himself with the sacrificial lamb symbolically as evidenced by the same practiced used when sacrificing a lamb (except for drinking of the blood) in Exodus 12:8.

In fact in order to see the link between Jesus and the sacrificial Lamb sacrificed for sins, one has to know the whole Mosaic Law, especially the ceremonial Laws and temple services. Then when you read the new testament Gospels you will see the links which is actually quite extensive.

Also one shouldn't ask "where did Jesus say something" since the Gospels are eyewitness testimony so even his quotes could be made up. If people are willing to accept quotes attributed to him then what they actually saw is also reliable. So one should interpret the meaning of Christs death based on his words, actions and ceremonial references made through his actions. The cool thing about ceremonial references like the sacrificial lamb and ceremonies associated with it is that they have specific imagery and a specific sequence of imagery. So when something makes use of a specific symbol in a certain sequence then one can be assured that there is a link between the two, which makes them explicit imagery. You should study types and antitypes for a broader understanding of this and then come to a conclusion. In fact Jesus used types and antitypes, which is symbolism, when he made reference to old testament stories to make evident a reality.

Read:

A Study of Biblical Types

Chapter 28. Types And Antitypes - Dispensational Truth - Study Resources

Does the Passover lamb prefigure Jesus?

As for the idea of original sin, I will only hold the interpretation of the Jews view in regard. The muslims have very little knowledge about the Bible and their arguments against it are predictable because they get them mostly from scholars like Ahmed Deedat. All "informed" muslims I have encountered and watched in debates reveal a very ignorant, proof text based understanding of the Bible and they take phrases out of context. This is largely because they first and foremost hold the Quran to be definitely true. They reject anything that contradicts the Quran to be false. Therefore, since the Quran contradicts the Bible, they claim the Bible to be wrong automatically. But the Quran claims to confirm previous scriptures so they have to make up stuff using the book they claim to be corrupted so that it confirms their own book to some extent. That is a tinted lense viewpoint and an illogical approach. The same can be said about when Christians read the Quran. But then again most muslims I know have recited the Quran but do not understand it. I actually see many similarities between the way Sunni muslims and JW's go about things.

I love how the Jews interpret the bible and most people I know who really want to study the bible love hearing their viewpoints too. One can learn so much from them. But they do make weird statements though. For instance they say that sacrifices are for involuntary sins. Yet the Atonement sacrifice below contradicts that:

Leviticus 16:18-22
And he shall go out to the altar that is before the LORD, and make atonement for it, and shall take some of the blood of the bull and some of the blood of the goat, and put it on the horns of the altar all around. Then he shall sprinkle some of the blood on it with his finger seven times, cleanse it, and consecrate it from the uncleanness of the children of Israel. “And when he has made an end of atoning for the Holy Place, the tabernacle of meeting, and the altar, he shall bring the live goat. Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, confess over it all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions, concerning all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and shall send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a suitable man. The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to an uninhabited land; and he shall release the goat in the wilderness.

Interesting thing about the above though is that it is not a lamb, but a bull and a goat which is used for sin.

This whole topic is extensive. So I will stop for now. Otherwise I could go on for ever.

What Christianity did was try to FIT their beliefs about Jesus into the Old Testament, so they extrapolated, making the Old Testament to be all about Jesus. But the Old Testament was not about Jesus, except for SOME of the prophecies that foretold Jesus. But the prophecies referring to a Messiah of the latter days were not about Jesus. The Jews knew that and that is one reason they rejected Jesus as their Messiah.

There is one prophecy directly about the Messiah in Daniel and it says that he had to come before the second temple was destroyed which is Daniel 9:25-26. If Jesus wasn't the Messiah then who was? Also the book of Revelation points to what will happen in the end days and that is centred around Christ being the saviour to usher in the New Heavens and New Earth. Jesus makes reference to himself as the Leader Messiah in Daniel in Matthew 23:10. Later in Matthew 23 and Mark 13:14 he refers to Daniel again, and in this case he tells his apostles to watch out for the "Disgusting thing that causes desolation". With Daniel 9 having the only scripture I know of mentioning the messiah I would believe that Jesus is the final one. In Matthew 28:18 Jesus says that all authority has been given to him. Couple this with what the rest of the apostles write about him relating the end times then there is no doubt that what is written about him is that he is the end days messiah. In fact the Jews rejected him because he was challenging their tradition and he wasn't the political Messiah who would save only the Jews which is what they wanted.

Since Baha’is do not believe in original sin, there was no penalty to pay. That is the difference between Christianity and the Baha’i Faith beliefs. Since we all have a higher noble spiritual nature and a lower selfish material nature (sinful nature) Jesus saved us from our lower material nature by giving us His teachings that, if followed, free us from the chains of bondage to our physical nature and the material world. The cross sacrifice was a symbol of detachment and self-denial, the example we are to follow. The remission of sins is the remission of our sinful nature that intervenes between us and God:

The following quote explains how it was the Word of God as well as the cross sacrifice that freed us from the chains of bondage. Christ gave us His teachings (profusion of His bounties) and then later died on the cross (suffered the greatest martyrdom) so we could be free of sin and attain everlasting life.

“…those who turned toward the Word of God and received the profusion of His bounties—were saved from this attachment and sin, obtained everlasting life, were delivered from the chains of bondage, and attained to the world of liberty. They were freed from the vices of the human world, and were blessed by the virtues of the Kingdom. This is the meaning of the words of Christ, “I gave My blood for the life of the world” 6 —that is to say, I have chosen all these troubles, these sufferings, calamities, and even the greatest martyrdom, to attain this object, the remission of sins” Some Answered Questions, p. 125​

​

So then your belief about sin fits Christianity but deducts some aspects it seems.

What essentials do you think are explicit? What do you consider the base foundation?

The base foundation is the fall of man from obedience to disobedience, Noah's flood, the lives of the patriarchs, the Exodus, the Mosaic law, the events of Jesus life, the apostles understanding of the meaning of Jesus sacrifice. So the "scarlet thread" so to speak. One cannot understand the ending without understanding the beginning and the inbetween. Mainly it is eschatology that is open to interpretation and not a base foundation. The explicit essentials are probably even less that I mentioned.

Wow! This was long winded!

 

[JJ50]

Christ says:

John 10:11: "I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep."


Mark 10:45: "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many."

So Christ died as a ransom. The idea of him dying for our sins is because he is associated with the sacrifice of a lamb, which was slain for forgiveness of sins. On the day of Atonement especially all sins were forgiven.

In the book of John, John the baptist says explicitly that Jesus takes away sin as the Lamb. Since you would accept Jesus words, and Jesus validated the prophethood of John, then that makes John's words to be as authoritative as Jesus' own. John says:

John 1:29: "The next day he saw Jesus coming to him and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!"

At his last supper Jesus says:

Luke 22: 19-20

19 And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”

20 In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.'

In the above he is blatantly associating himself with the sacrificial lamb symbolically as evidenced by the same practiced used when sacrificing a lamb (except for drinking of the blood) in Exodus 12:8.

In fact in order to see the link between Jesus and the sacrificial Lamb sacrificed for sins, one has to know the whole Mosaic Law, especially the ceremonial Laws and temple services. Then when you read the new testament Gospels you will see the links which is actually quite extensive.

Also one shouldn't ask "where did Jesus say something" since the Gospels are eyewitness testimony so even his quotes could be made up. If people are willing to accept quotes attributed to him then what they actually saw is also reliable. So one should interpret the meaning of Christs death based on his words, actions and ceremonial references made through his actions. The cool thing about ceremonial references like the sacrificial lamb and ceremonies associated with it is that they have specific imagery and a specific sequence of imagery. So when something makes use of a specific symbol in a certain sequence then one can be assured that there is a link between the two, which makes them explicit imagery. You should study types and antitypes for a broader understanding of this and then come to a conclusion. In fact Jesus used types and antitypes, which is symbolism, when he made reference to old testament stories to make evident a reality.

Read:

A Study of Biblical Types

Chapter 28. Types And Antitypes - Dispensational Truth - Study Resources

Does the Passover lamb prefigure Jesus?

As for the idea of original sin, I will only hold the interpretation of the Jews view in regard. The muslims have very little knowledge about the Bible and their arguments against it are predictable because they get them mostly from scholars like Ahmed Deedat. All "informed" muslims I have encountered and watched in debates reveal a very ignorant, proof text based understanding of the Bible and they take phrases out of context. This is largely because they first and foremost hold the Quran to be definitely true. They reject anything that contradicts the Quran to be false. Therefore, since the Quran contradicts the Bible, they claim the Bible to be wrong automatically. But the Quran claims to confirm previous scriptures so they have to make up stuff using the book they claim to be corrupted so that it confirms their own book to some extent. That is a tinted lense viewpoint and an illogical approach. The same can be said about when Christians read the Quran. But then again most muslims I know have recited the Quran but do not understand it. I actually see many similarities between the way Sunni muslims and JW's go about things.

I love how the Jews interpret the bible and most people I know who really want to study the bible love hearing their viewpoints too. One can learn so much from them. But they do make weird statements though. For instance they say that sacrifices are for involuntary sins. Yet the Atonement sacrifice below contradicts that:

Leviticus 16:18-22
And he shall go out to the altar that is before the LORD, and make atonement for it, and shall take some of the blood of the bull and some of the blood of the goat, and put it on the horns of the altar all around. Then he shall sprinkle some of the blood on it with his finger seven times, cleanse it, and consecrate it from the uncleanness of the children of Israel. “And when he has made an end of atoning for the Holy Place, the tabernacle of meeting, and the altar, he shall bring the live goat. Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, confess over it all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions, concerning all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and shall send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a suitable man. The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to an uninhabited land; and he shall release the goat in the wilderness.

Interesting thing about the above though is that it is not a lamb, but a bull and a goat which is used for sin.

This whole topic is extensive. So I will stop for now. Otherwise I could go on for ever.

There is one prophecy directly about the Messiah in Daniel and it says that he had to come before the second temple was destroyed which is Daniel 9:25-26. If Jesus wasn't the Messiah then who was? Also the book of Revelation points to what will happen in the end days and that is centred around Christ being the saviour to usher in the New Heavens and New Earth. Jesus makes reference to himself as the Leader Messiah in Daniel in Matthew 23:10. Later in Matthew 23 and Mark 13:14 he refers to Daniel again, and in this case he tells his apostles to watch out for the "Disgusting thing that causes desolation". With Daniel 9 having the only scripture I know of mentioning the messiah I would believe that Jesus is the final one. In Matthew 28:18 Jesus says that all authority has been given to him. Couple this with what the rest of the apostles write about him relating the end times then there is no doubt that what is written about him is that he is the end days messiah. In fact the Jews rejected him because he was challenging their tradition and he wasn't the political Messiah who would save only the Jews which is what they wanted.

​

So then your belief about sin fits Christianity but deducts some aspects it seems.



The base foundation is the fall of man from obedience to disobedience, Noah's flood, the lives of the patriarchs, the Exodus, the Mosaic law, the events of Jesus life, the apostles understanding of the meaning of Jesus sacrifice. So the "scarlet thread" so to speak. One cannot understand the ending without understanding the beginning and the inbetween. Mainly it is eschatology that is open to interpretation and not a base foundation. The explicit essentials are probably even less that I mentioned.

Wow! This was long winded!

You said it.

 

[Lionel Refson]

The Baha’i Faith is considered an Abrahamic religion, but is not like Christianity or even Judaism. It is closer to Islam but not the same, because this is an entirely new religious cycle. What all these religions, as well as the religions, share in common are the essential spiritual virtues; they will never be abrogated, for they are spiritual and not material truth… faith, knowledge, certitude, justice, piety, righteousness, trustworthiness, love of God, benevolence, purity, detachment, humility, meekness, patience and constancy, showing mercy to the poor, defending the oppressed, uplifting the fallen....

Certainly the Baha’i Faith has an uphill battle, but the entire religion is predicated upon the belief that Baha’u’llah was the Manifestation of God of this age and whatever He revealed was identical with the Will of God… I do not believe that God operates in this world, except through His Manifestations who speak with His Voice and reveal His Will to humanity.

The way you have described God and free will is practically identical with Bahai beliefs. If I did not know better, I would say you are a Baha’i; you are so methodical and rational in your approach. Did you come to all these conclusions on your own?

In brief, I believe that all the older religions have misinterpreted their scriptures, not all of the scriptures, but many of them. This pertains mostly to Christianity which started with the myth of original sin being why we needed Jesus as a sacrifice. (I will address that in my next post.) They then went on to say that Jesus was God in the flesh which is sheer blasphemy, the Jews knew that. Moreover, Jesus never claimed to be God or a sacrifice for original sin; this was all made up by the Church as a reason why everyone has to believe in Jesus or go to hell! You really got me started now.


But Jews have also gone astray, by rejecting Jesus, who was a Manifestation of God, crucial for the progress of the human race. Muslims, well the only real mistake they made was in rejecting the Bab and Baha’u’llah.

No jews went astray when they started writing about God being tribal

I pretty much agree with everything you wrote in your blog post. Below are the highlights of what I wholeheartedly agree with:

• No, it matters not who God is. The point is that God is our Creator and by definition must be Perfection..

• There is a God, but He Does Not Operate In This World

• this Creator does not get involved with, nor intervene in this world. In other words, whilst God sees all things God has given us freewill and the responsibility of dealing ourselves with the wickedness that some commit

• God must be Perfection and would create and treat us all equally. God would allow us freewill but regardless of this God would have to be omnipotent omnipresent, omnipresent all-powerful, all-knowing, all-seeing and perfect to be God and nothing less would suffice. God would never be towards his creations, weak, indecisive, violent, destructive, vengeful, demanding of followers, praise and worship, angry and so on. Why not? Surely if God were all-powerful, God could be anything that God wishes, and this must be true but to us his creations he is as an ever-loving all-powerful parent that has blessed us with free-will. It is a difference between "could" and "would". God created our world, blessed us all to be fruitful and multiply and has no wish ever to destroy us, no matter how bad we get.....

I believe that religion has always existed in some form, and it existed as long as humanity has existed, although not in its present form. Before the art of writing existed, religion existed in another forum.

The reason I say religion has always existed is because God has always sent Manifestations (what I normally refer to as Messengers of God) and they established religions. Then over time, man tampered with those religions and changed them, and that is one reason God had to send a new Messenger; another reason is because God had a new message to reveal that was pertinent to the age in which it was revealed, and the new Messenger brought the message and the remedy mankind needed at that time to address the ills from which it was suffering.

....or God gave us a message in Genesis which we being human and having freewill have corrupted and lost. Over the generations there have been those who have found and repeated the message but self-serving individuals have twisted even these messages and used them for their own ends, branding the messenger as heretical, blasphemous etc . I suppose the small gap between us is whether God keeps sending messengers or whether if we strip away everything that stops us having child-like wonder and awe, we would hear the original message for ourselves

God must be crying in frustration. The freewill God could easily remove from us, makes us deaf
I came to my conclusions myself after 40 years of looking for God. I know little of the bahai faith I was born conservative Jewish and have travelled far from that, in order Taoism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam and back finally to God and me..

Re Jesus
Jesus had some very good advice including Matthew 18:3 and said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Only by reading Genesis as a child looking for the diamond perfection of God can any sense be made of it
But Jesus was no more than you or I, as we are all children of God. Anything deifying Jesus is a corruption.

 

[Firemorphic]

As for the idea of original sin, I will only hold the interpretation of the Jews view in regard. The muslims have very little knowledge about the Bible and their arguments against it are predictable because they get them mostly from scholars like Ahmed Deedat. All "informed" muslims I have encountered and watched in debates reveal a very ignorant, proof text based understanding of the Bible and they take phrases out of context. This is largely because they first and foremost hold the Quran to be definitely true. They reject anything that contradicts the Quran to be false. Therefore, since the Quran contradicts the Bible, they claim the Bible to be wrong automatically. But the Quran claims to confirm previous scriptures so they have to make up stuff using the book they claim to be corrupted so that it confirms their own book to some extent. That is a tinted lense viewpoint and an illogical approach. The same can be said about when Christians read the Quran. But then again most muslims I know have recited the Quran but do not understand it. I actually see many similarities between the way Sunni muslims and JW's go about things.

Sure some people don't know their stuff but then it's obvious you yourself don't quite understand it, hence your confusion. It's a can of worms and really devalues what both have to offer when you open that can, particularly in that way.
I can't speak for whatever idiots you've spoken with but you've got a very substandard understanding of our position, on either side it's likewise easy to generalize from a limited experience.

 

[Lionel Refson]

As for the idea of original sin, I will only hold the interpretation of the Jews view in regard. The muslims have very little knowledge about the Bible and their arguments against it are predictable because they get them mostly from scholars like Ahmed Deedat. All "informed" muslims I have encountered and watched in debates reveal a very ignorant, proof text based understanding of the Bible and they take phrases out of context. This is largely because they first and foremost hold the Quran to be definitely true. They reject anything that contradicts the Quran to be false. Therefore, since the Quran contradicts the Bible, they claim the Bible to be wrong automatically. But the Quran claims to confirm previous scriptures so they have to make up stuff using the book they claim to be corrupted so that it confirms their own book to some extent. That is a tinted lense viewpoint and an illogical approach. The same can be said about when Christians read the Quran. But then again most muslims I know have recited the Quran but do not understand it. I actually see many similarities between the way Sunni muslims and JW's go about things.

Muslims believe the Old Testament was God's first book and was the true word of God up to the part where the Jewish scribes started to depict God as a Hebrew God only. They accuse the Jews of having changed the texts. But before that part,it is holy to them ie Genesis Noah/Nur

 

[Samael_Khan]

You said it.

I know it might be long for some people, but i didn't want to let all my effort go to waste by shortening it

 

[Samael_Khan]

Sure some people don't know their stuff but then it's obvious you yourself don't quite understand it, hence your confusion. It's a can of worms and really devalues what both have to offer when you open that can, particularly in that way.
I can't speak for whatever idiots you've spoken with but you've got a very substandard understanding of our position, on either side it's likewise easy to generalize from a limited experience.

Well I live in Cape Town which has a large Muslim community and I haven't encountered any other viewpoints. But these are mostly Sunnis around here.

I should actually correct my viewpoint in that I am speaking about the Sunni's I have spoken to. So Shia viewpoint, Ahmediyya (hope that is how it is spelt) etc I do not know.

The muslims I have encountered and apologists I have seen on debates, such as Shabir Ali, Ahmed Deedat, Zakir Naik and them, have a predictable viewpoint. So I found that I only had to know a set amount of counters because I could predict the arguments and watching debates became boring because they regurgitated the same stuff without much progress.

My above statement is about their view of Christianity which I have encountered many times. And knowing what I know about the Bible and hearing their arguments, I find that they are not willing to do critical thinking or come to accurate knowledge of the text.

I totally get where you are coming from and would be happy for you to help me understand. I do generalize regarding Sunni muslims because I have had many discussions with them and encounter the same arguments. I am not speaking about the other branches of Islam though because I have never encountered them.

 

[Samael_Khan]

Muslims believe the Old Testament was God's first book and was the true word of God up to the part where the Jewish scribes started to depict God as a Hebrew God only. They accuse the Jews of having changed the texts. But before that part,it is holy to them ie Genesis Noah/Nur

The muslims I have spoken to disagree right from the start. They believe that Adam was in heaven first and then sent down to earth whereas in the Bible Adam is on Earth. They also disagreed with the flood story as they say the flood was localised.

 

[Samael_Khan]

Christ says:

John 10:11: "I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep."


Mark 10:45: "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many."

So Christ died as a ransom. The idea of him dying for our sins is because he is associated with the sacrifice of a lamb, which was slain for forgiveness of sins. On the day of Atonement especially all sins were forgiven.

In the book of John, John the baptist says explicitly that Jesus takes away sin as the Lamb. Since you would accept Jesus words, and Jesus validated the prophethood of John, then that makes John's words to be as authoritative as Jesus' own. John says:

John 1:29: "The next day he saw Jesus coming to him and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!"

At his last supper Jesus says:

Luke 22: 19-20

19 And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”

20 In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.'

In the above he is blatantly associating himself with the sacrificial lamb symbolically as evidenced by the same practiced used when sacrificing a lamb (except for drinking of the blood) in Exodus 12:8.

In fact in order to see the link between Jesus and the sacrificial Lamb sacrificed for sins, one has to know the whole Mosaic Law, especially the ceremonial Laws and temple services. Then when you read the new testament Gospels you will see the links which is actually quite extensive.

Also one shouldn't ask "where did Jesus say something" since the Gospels are eyewitness testimony so even his quotes could be made up. If people are willing to accept quotes attributed to him then what they actually saw is also reliable. So one should interpret the meaning of Christs death based on his words, actions and ceremonial references made through his actions. The cool thing about ceremonial references like the sacrificial lamb and ceremonies associated with it is that they have specific imagery and a specific sequence of imagery. So when something makes use of a specific symbol in a certain sequence then one can be assured that there is a link between the two, which makes them explicit imagery. You should study types and antitypes for a broader understanding of this and then come to a conclusion. In fact Jesus used types and antitypes, which is symbolism, when he made reference to old testament stories to make evident a reality.

Read:

A Study of Biblical Types

Chapter 28. Types And Antitypes - Dispensational Truth - Study Resources

Does the Passover lamb prefigure Jesus?

As for the idea of original sin, I will only hold the interpretation of the Jews view in regard. The muslims have very little knowledge about the Bible and their arguments against it are predictable because they get them mostly from scholars like Ahmed Deedat. All "informed" muslims I have encountered and watched in debates reveal a very ignorant, proof text based understanding of the Bible and they take phrases out of context. This is largely because they first and foremost hold the Quran to be definitely true. They reject anything that contradicts the Quran to be false. Therefore, since the Quran contradicts the Bible, they claim the Bible to be wrong automatically. But the Quran claims to confirm previous scriptures so they have to make up stuff using the book they claim to be corrupted so that it confirms their own book to some extent. That is a tinted lense viewpoint and an illogical approach. The same can be said about when Christians read the Quran. But then again most muslims I know have recited the Quran but do not understand it. I actually see many similarities between the way Sunni muslims and JW's go about things.

I love how the Jews interpret the bible and most people I know who really want to study the bible love hearing their viewpoints too. One can learn so much from them. But they do make weird statements though. For instance they say that sacrifices are for involuntary sins. Yet the Atonement sacrifice below contradicts that:

Leviticus 16:18-22
And he shall go out to the altar that is before the LORD, and make atonement for it, and shall take some of the blood of the bull and some of the blood of the goat, and put it on the horns of the altar all around. Then he shall sprinkle some of the blood on it with his finger seven times, cleanse it, and consecrate it from the uncleanness of the children of Israel. “And when he has made an end of atoning for the Holy Place, the tabernacle of meeting, and the altar, he shall bring the live goat. Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, confess over it all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions, concerning all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and shall send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a suitable man. The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to an uninhabited land; and he shall release the goat in the wilderness.

Interesting thing about the above though is that it is not a lamb, but a bull and a goat which is used for sin.

This whole topic is extensive. So I will stop for now. Otherwise I could go on for ever.

There is one prophecy directly about the Messiah in Daniel and it says that he had to come before the second temple was destroyed which is Daniel 9:25-26. If Jesus wasn't the Messiah then who was? Also the book of Revelation points to what will happen in the end days and that is centred around Christ being the saviour to usher in the New Heavens and New Earth. Jesus makes reference to himself as the Leader Messiah in Daniel in Matthew 23:10. Later in Matthew 23 and Mark 13:14 he refers to Daniel again, and in this case he tells his apostles to watch out for the "Disgusting thing that causes desolation". With Daniel 9 having the only scripture I know of mentioning the messiah I would believe that Jesus is the final one. In Matthew 28:18 Jesus says that all authority has been given to him. Couple this with what the rest of the apostles write about him relating the end times then there is no doubt that what is written about him is that he is the end days messiah. In fact the Jews rejected him because he was challenging their tradition and he wasn't the political Messiah who would save only the Jews which is what they wanted.

​

So then your belief about sin fits Christianity but deducts some aspects it seems.



The base foundation is the fall of man from obedience to disobedience, Noah's flood, the lives of the patriarchs, the Exodus, the Mosaic law, the events of Jesus life, the apostles understanding of the meaning of Jesus sacrifice. So the "scarlet thread" so to speak. One cannot understand the ending without understanding the beginning and the inbetween. Mainly it is eschatology that is open to interpretation and not a base foundation. The explicit essentials are probably even less that I mentioned.

Wow! This was long winded!

To clarify, which I should have more thoroughly, I am referring only to the Sunni muslims that I have come across. I have been told that their views are very different to the Shia viewpoint. I am surrounded by Sunni muslims from where I come from so it is all to easy for me to say generalised "muslims" and only be referring to them. All the debates I have watched have been between Christians and Sunni muslims as well.

 

[IndigoChild5559]

There are many religious systems that exist on this planet. How does anyone actually know which one could be the correct one, when none of them can actually verify what they claim as truth factually?

Certainly the fact that it is a tough job doesn't mean one should shrug it off.

 

[Trailblazer]

The muslims I have spoken to disagree right from the start. They believe that Adam was in heaven first and then sent down to earth whereas in the Bible Adam is on Earth.

I did not know that Muslims believed that. Baha'is also believe that Adam was in heaven first; that is, the soul of Adam was in heaven before it came to earth to be united with Adam's body, and then Adam's soul united with His body and He was born on earth.
The reason Baha'is believe that is because we believe that Adam was a Prophet and the souls of all Prophets have preexistence in heaven:
(96) PRE-EXISTENCE - of Prophets
The Prophets, unlike us, are pre-existent. The soul of Christ
existed in the spiritual world before His birth in this world. We
cannot imagine what that world is like, so words are inadequate to
picture His state of being.
(Shoghi Effendi: High Endeavors, Page: 71)
********
I will be working on responding to your posts to me that I got yesterday.
I also have my own forum, so I got bogged down answering posts there much of yesterday.

 

[Trailblazer]

Well I live in Cape Town....

Lucky you, that is a beautiful place to live... I am so jealous.

 

[Trailblazer]

....or God gave us a message in Genesis which we being human and having freewill have corrupted and lost. Over the generations there have been those who have found and repeated the message but self-serving individuals have twisted even these messages and used them for their own ends, branding the messenger as heretical, blasphemous etc .

Again, I agree with everything you said. That is exactly what Baha'u'llah wrote...

“This is the Day when the loved ones of God should keep their eyes directed towards His Manifestation, and fasten them upon whatsoever that Manifestation may be pleased to reveal. Certain traditions of bygone ages rest on no foundations whatever, while the notions entertained by past generations, and which they have recorded in their books, have, for the most part, been influenced by the desires of a corrupt inclination. Thou dost witness how most of the commentaries and interpretations of the words of God, now current amongst men, are devoid of truth. Their falsity hath, in some cases, been exposed when the intervening veils were rent asunder. They themselves have acknowledged their failure in apprehending the meaning of any of the words of God.” Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, pp. 171-172​

I suppose the small gap between us is whether God keeps sending messengers or whether if we strip away everything that stops us having child-like wonder and awe, we would hear the original message for ourselves.

I think that God keeps sending Messengers and one reason He sends them is to correct all the errors and misconceptions that came to exist in the former religions as the result of the corruption of man.

God must be crying in frustration. The freewill God could easily remove from us, makes us deaf
I came to my conclusions myself after 40 years of looking for God. I know little of the bahai faith I was born conservative Jewish and have travelled far from that, in order Taoism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam and back finally to God and me..

Interesting that you have been in all those religions. I cannot relate to that personally, because I was not raised in any religion and my first religion was the Baha'i Faith which I joined when I was 17 years old, during my first year of college. I think the main reason I was able to see the truth of it right away was because I was not raised as a Christian, like most Americans. My parents were both raised Christian, but both dropped out long before us children were born.

Jesus had some very good advice including Matthew 18:3 and said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Only by reading Genesis as a child looking for the diamond perfection of God can any sense be made of it
But Jesus was no more than you or I, as we are all children of God. Anything deifying Jesus is a corruption.

Again, we agree... Anything deifying Jesus is a corruption. Jesus never claimed to be God, that is sheer blasphemy. It was the Church that made Jesus into God with their false doctrines.

Baha'is believe Jesus was a Manifestation of God, what I usually refer to as a Messenger of God, because He manifested God on earth and brought a message; but Jesus was not God in the flesh, because God cannot incarnate His Essence and become a man.

I never read Genesis till fairly recently, and reading it with a Baha'i understanding I can understand what it means. Of course, Christians disagree with me, in particular regarding the Adam and Eve story and original sin.