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Goodbye Jesus

Has God gotten nicer over the years?


ToddJ

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This is a sermon excrept from Sinners in the hands of an angry God by Jonathan Edwards

 

The wrath of God is like great waters that are dammed for the present; they increase more and more, and rise higher and higher, till an outlet is given; and the longer the stream is stopped, the more rapid and mighty is its course, when once it is let loose. It is true, that judgment against your evil works has not been executed hitherto; the floods of God’s vengeance have been withheld; but your guilt in the mean time is constantly increasing, and you are every day treasuring up more wrath; the waters are constantly rising, and waxing more and more mighty; and there is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, that holds the waters back, that are unwilling to be stopped, and press hard to go forward. If God should only withdraw his hand from the flood-gate, it would immediately fly open, and the fiery floods of the fierceness and wrath of God, would rush forth with inconceivable fury, and would come upon you with omnipotent power; and if your strength were ten thousand times greater than it is, yea, ten thousand times greater than the strength of the stoutest, sturdiest devil in hell, it would be nothing to withstand or endure it.

The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood. Thus all you that never passed under a great change of heart, by the mighty power of the Spirit of God upon your souls; all you that were never born again, and made new creatures, and raised from being dead in sin, to a state of new, and before altogether unexperienced light and life, are in the hands of an angry God. However you may have reformed your life in many things, and may have had religious affections, and may keep up a form of religion in your families and closets, and in the house of God, it is nothing but his mere pleasure that keeps you from being this moment swallowed up in everlasting destruction. However unconvinced you may now be of the truth of what you hear, by and by you will be fully convinced of it. Those that are gone from being in the like circumstances with you, see that it was so with them; for destruction came suddenly upon most of them; when they expected nothing of it, and while they were saying, Peace and safety: now they see, that those things on which they depended for peace and safety, were nothing but thin air and empty shadows.

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment. It is to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night; that you were suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep. And there is no other reason to be given, why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God’s hand has held you up. There is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to hell, since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship. Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down into hell.

 

God was so angry in times past that I find it comical.  

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My, the ol' fella certainly has mellowed out, lately!   :D

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Gods are projections of the humans that believe in them.  Any reference, writing, thought or speech about gods originates exclusively from humans.  Whether a particular god's personality changes over time depends entirely on the individual human or group of humans (sect) who believe in that god at the time in question.  The evidence reveals a plethora of different gods existed (in the minds of believers) with various personality and character traits in the past and a somewhat different group now exists with somewhat different personality and character traits.  Some have become "nicer" over the centuries.  Some have become "meaner" over the centuries.  Some have stayed more or less the same.  There is strong correlation (some say causation) between the particular human society and any gods of that society.

 

Johnathan Edward's projection of his god (contained in the example of his writing in the OP) is but one projection from one human.

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One might speculate that we could get a more realistic idea of trends through computer data.  They analyze shopping data, so surely we could search "moral" data....i.e. some particular "moral" crime.  The data might suggest if a trend has a deviation on some set idea. 

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The Gnostic Marcion, and possible creator of Christianity, believed & taught there are 2 different Gods. Marcion believed the tyrannical God of the OT could not possibly have also been the loving, gracious, forgiving God of the NT.  

 

Marcion believed and taught this NT God was a different more powerful God that was superior to the OT God. Marcion referred to this NT God as the unknown God. Marcion Churches were much more numerous than the orthodox Catholic Churches in the 2nd century until the Catholic Church excommunicated Marcion as a heretic for believing & teaching there are 2 Gods.

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47 minutes ago, Geezer said:

The Gnostic Marcion, and possible creator of Christianity, believed & taught there are 2 different Gods. Marcion believed the tyrannical God of the OT could not possibly have also been the loving, gracious, forgiving God of the NT.  

 

Marcion believed and taught this NT God was a different more powerful God that was superior to the OT God. Marcion referred to this NT God as the unknown God. Marcion Churches were much more numerous than the orthodox Catholic Churches in the 2nd century until the Catholic Church excommunicated Marcion as a heretic for believing & teaching there are 2 Gods.

It doesn't really look like the God in my OP is either one.  There was no hell in the OT, or if there was it was seldom mentioned.  Where in the OT were people afraid of the flames of hell?  The God of the OT was strange and brutal, but none of the Isrealites would have ever gone to battle were they afraid of some eternal torture chamber.  

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1 hour ago, ToddJ said:

It doesn't really look like the God in my OP is either one.  There was no hell in the OT, or if there was it was seldom mentioned.  Where in the OT were people afraid of the flames of hell?  The God of the OT was strange and brutal, but none of the Isrealites would have ever gone to battle were they afraid of some eternal torture chamber.  

 

Both heaven & hell are man made concepts. Religion needed a reward to lure people in, thus heaven was created. They also need a way to control people, thus hell was created. Both concepts were necessary & have proven to be very effective.

 

 

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Wait a minute, ever notice how people tell lots of miracle stories, but there is very rarely a modern miracle story about god killing people. They say god still does miracles today, but he gave up killing? 

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Frequency of Miracles.png

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20 hours ago, megasamurai said:

Wait a minute, ever notice how people tell lots of miracle stories, but there is very rarely a modern miracle story about god killing people. They say god still does miracles today, but he gave up killing? 

 

Like did you so not see the Tsunami that wiped 250,000 people from the earth. Heathens they were.

 

And Florida - Hurricanes galore. Fires in California. 

 

God is still at work my friend. Open your eyes and behold the glory of the LOORRRDDD.

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God of the Bible is a prick. "You ate the fruit I planted in front of you and told you not to eat, and left the talking snake there while I went away even though I'm omnipresent and omniscient, and now you've forced me to KILL YOU!!! Stupid bitch, look what you made me do! <smack> You deserve to be treated horribly from now on. And you'd better agree with me..."

"Oh yes, though you slay me yet will I trust you!"

"Yeah, like that." <smack>

 

Clearly there is a strong division in churches. Some are all about money and looking good, others are still like Edwards and are fire and brimstone preachers. I used to like the latter because they sounded more like the Bible. Now I see the psychotic narcissist attitude of the bible god and dumped his ass.

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I must say that a study of the Bible without a lot of spin produces a God that is much worse in the New Testament than the Old. There is no idea of hell until we get to some stuff Jesus said. Honestly, makes Hitler and Stalin look good in comparison.  They could only horribly kill people once.   There is a lot of spin, spurious unBiblical reasoning and myth making Christians do to get around this fact.

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