Well God delivered me and answers many prayers, sometimes the answer is no or wait.
Ha, that's funny. God answers prayers, but sometimes he doesn't so I wait until I'm satisfied in some way then I give God credit.....You just debunked prayer and this relationship with God perfectly.
I have a Covenant with God through Jesus Christ and have been born again and He gave me His Spirit who strengthens me, He promised to keep me from stumbling and will present me faultless before Him in the end. He didn’t promise an easy life though, but said His Grace would be sufficient in all circumstances. He has been faithful to that for over 30 years now.
You’re very wrong in your assessment. Maybe that’s what’s wrong, your unbelief and skepticism, don’t see that attitude working with God.
You say I'm wrong yet fail to show how and continue to sound like the origins of your story is exactly as I predicted. All you are describing is being taken in by a story. A myth. It gave you motivation, as myths do and that's it. Since that time I believe you have joined some fundamentalist group who is obsessed with being "born again".
I have debunked the phrase using Christian literature and demonstrated it just means belief. Shall we re-visit this theology lesson?
The ideas you present are Hellenistic in origin. I just read another paper on this historical fact. Things you describe right here are echoed in Greek salvation religions.
HELLENISTIC IDEAS OF SALVATION IN THE LIGHT OF ANCIENT ANTHROPOLOGY
PAUL WENDLAND
University of Gattingen, Germany
Christian and Hellenistic ideas of redemption cannot be sharply separated.
The deity's resurrection from the dead gives to the initiates, who see their own destiny prefigured in his adventures,
hope of a life after death.
The consciousness of estranecment between man and God, and a longing to bridge this chasm, are fundamental to all religions of redemption. In the development of antiquity from the sixth century B.c. on, this type of thought, for which the way is already pared in the older elements of popular faith, confronts us a definite and vigorously increasing religious movement. Reformers, prophets, and puritans propagate a profounder piety, which often mystic in character. The ecstatic Dionysus religion becomes the most important factor in this development. In this religion to common people, the poor and the needy, directly attain a more profound and personal relation to the deity. The believer loses his individual consciousness in enthusiasm and
receives the divinity into himself. In moments of orgiastic ecstasy he experiences
the ultimate goal of his existence, abiding fellowship with the god, who, as redeemer and savior will free him through death from the finiteness, the suffering, and the exigencies of the earthly life. Orphism sets forth this religious experience in a mystic theology which exerts a strong influence upon Pindar and Empedocles, for example, and which suggested to Plato his magnificent treatise on the dest of the soul.
According to Posidonius the soul has a heavenly origin. It is an offshoot from the fiery breath of God held captive in the prison-house of the body through birth into the earthly world, but
destined for return to its higher home.
Only he who in life preserves the divine part from defilement will ascend after death above the lower spheres and rise to the divine source. Our reverence for the starry heaven above us and for the wonders of the cosmos proves the human soul's relation to the heavenly world, and this mystical consciousness of likeness with the divine begets an other-worldly ideal of life.
From the second century A.D. on we possess rich source materials regarding the mystery cults and the profusion of new religious developments which grow out of the syncretism of the time. These sources acquaint us with the prevailing religious tendencies of antiquity in its declining period. Purification and rebirth, mystical union of the believer with the deity and the hope of bliss in the future world, revelation and charismatic endowment which essentially constitute redemption-these are the motives dominating the rites, sacraments, faith, and teaching of this syncretism. As enjoined in the liturgy of the Phrygian mysteries.
The deity's resurrection from the dead gives to the initiates, who see their own destiny prefigured in his adventures, hope of a life after death.
….. the soul, conscious of its divine origin, strives for redemption from its foreign and unrelated companion, the body.
It seeks deliverance from things sinful, material, and mortal. But the fundamental motive in these various representations is the same; it is longing for elevation above the earthly world and its ruling powers, i.e., for deification. The end of redemption is a life of eternal blessedness. T
he redeemer is the deity to whose service one devotes his whole life in order to obtain his help and favor.
But notions and expressions akin to Hellenistic mysticism are already present in, the Pauline doctrine of redemption. Sin is traced back to the flesh and to the natural man. According to Rom. 8:19-22 perishable, degenerate creation looks for deliverance from transitoriness and for the revelation of the sons of God. As the apostle fervently longed for freedom from the body of death (Rom. 7:24), so also redemption is for him deliverance from aiv e'VeCrd, (Gal. 1:4). This leaning toward a "physical" and cosmic extension of redemption is an approach to Hellenistic conceptions. Paul's representa- tion of the believer as living and suffering in Christ, as crucified, buried, and raised with him, recalls the similar way in which the Hellenistic mystery-religions relate the believer to the dead and risen god (Attis, Osiris, Adonis). Thus Paul actually appears to be indebted to Hellenistic mysticism for certain suggestions. As Plato used Orphism, so Paul appropriated forms of expression for his faith from the mysticism of the world to which he preached the gospel.
The relationship of Christianity to Hellenism appears closer in the Ephesian letter. Here Christ is the supreme power of the entire spirit-world, exalting believers above the bondage of the inferior spirits into his upper kingdom (1: 18-22). Christians must struggle with these spirits, among whom the sKoopoipdrope6 (astral spirits) are named. In like manner from the second century on Christ is more frequently extolled as a deliverer from the power of fate.' When Ignatius regards Christ's work as the communication of ryv^oaR and &0c9apria, and the Eucharist as food of immortality, he, like the author of the Fourth Gospel, shows the influence of Greek mysticism. Irenaeus' realistic doctrine of redemption also has, in common with Greek mysticism, the fundamental notions of deification, abolition of death, imperishability, and gnosis.
