Texan's Opinions on and "Eternal" Question. (atheist, quote, Satan)

[hljc]

I have witnessed the dark spirit of this world which hell was created for the devil and his hoards......Where through God spiritual authority is the key , so people individually give the devil authority and go where he goes, as inaction gives the devil authority by default .....Or we surrender to Christ and reject the devil and his ways which through the spirit will give God the authority ....See God said He ``has set before us death or life , and said to choose Life that our seed will live ``

[doctorjef]

Originally Posted by hljc

I have witnessed the dark spirit of this world which hell was created for the devil and his hoards......Where through God spiritual authority is the key , so people individually give the devil authority and go where he goes, as inaction gives the devil authority by default .....Or we surrender to Christ and reject the devil and his ways which through the spirit will give God the authority ....See God said He ``has set before us death or life , and said to choose Life that our seed will live ``

This post would, of course, seem to bring in a related twist on the question of Hell, and that is the issue of Evil as a Personality, i.e. Satan and lesser demonic spirits. However, the question of a state of existence denominated as "hell" doesn't depend on subscription to a literal being called "the Devil".

The post above seems to reflect a "believe it or burn" theology. It's perhaps exemplary of the sort of literalism that TexasReb cites in his OP.

[Miss Hepburn]

Lived and loved in San Antonio for years MISS IT and TEXANS!!!
XXOO

I am now in the "Focus on the Famly, Ted Haggard Bible Belt." (Love that guy, have gone to his new place, but, ends up talking 9
outta 10 xs about money, geeze.)

Hell: A self created place in the Afterlife, that can easily be exited,
as easily as clicking your red shoes of hope.
(But, I have done decades of reading about the Other Side.)

The movie based on Anthony Borgia's books "Life In the Unseen World"....with Robin Willians, "What Dreams May Come"....is a very accurate portrayal, btw.

It is our own guilt , anger, vengeance, hate, bitterness, ruminating self disgust, etc...or say, lack of spiritual maturity or knowledge of God and opening our hearts to His ways, love, that determines our place in the Afterlife....which changes as our soul/spirit learns and grows.
There.

There is no punishing God, Father, Creator...sorry...we are "placed" where
we belong or 'gravitate' to it, though!
So be good. Keep your thoughts loving and kind always....


I don't make this stuff up...I have read a 100 NDEs and numerous books
from and about the Other Side.

[PoppySead]

Originally Posted by hljc

I have witnessed the dark spirit of this world which hell was created for the devil and his hoards......Where through God spiritual authority is the key , so people individually give the devil authority and go where he goes, as inaction gives the devil authority by default .....Or we surrender to Christ and reject the devil and his ways which through the spirit will give God the authority ....See God said He ``has set before us death or life , and said to choose Life that our seed will live ``

I'd love to pick this brain for a sec. Are there rules here? How do you know how to reject the devil? I don't imagine he is in full costume, how do you identify the devil? Is there a rule book made for people so they know how to reject him? It's a bit confusing seeing so many versions of the dark side, so how do you know when you are in bed with the devil?

[PoppySead]

[quote=doctorjef;33291446]This post would, of course, seem to bring in a related twist on the question of Hell, and that is the issue of Evil as a Personality, i.e. Satan and lesser demonic spirits. However, the question of a state of existence denominated as "hell" doesn't depend on subscription to a literal being called "the Devil".

Or does it?

[Miss Hepburn]

Originally Posted by PoppySead

I'd love to pick this brain for a sec. Are there rules here? How do you know how to reject the devil? I don't imagine he is in full costume, how do you identify the devil? Is there a rule book made for people so they know how to reject him? It's a bit confusing seeing so many versions of the dark side, so how do you know when you are in bed with the devil?

Hi PoppySead, I'd like to say something here also, if I may.
Is there a rule book? How do u know how to reject ..."the devil"?
How do u know if u are in bed with the dark side.... etc.

I don't believe a lot in the Bible, but there are kernels of truth peppered in there, imo.
One I like is that every man is born with a light and somewhere a knowing or conscience...
I believe this...it is just with our terrible childhoods, examples, watching
brutal stuff on some screen...our sense of right or even of disgust of evil is numbed...like we have layers of
mud over that light that can guide us.

Devil, to me, is a Christian term to dumb up or simplify the lower ego self..to make it more understandable
to the masses or peasants or pagans way back when.

I say if it says have that 3rd piece of choco cake that is the devil or lower ego self.
If it would hurt you or someone else and it is tempting you...that is the lower ego self, not
our higher ego selves. We just "know"...bec of our conscience.

My conscience is so in the forefront of my mind it is shocking!!
I wouldn't steal a penny someone dropped....I couldn't live with myself!
Or lie? Oh brother, I haven't in decades!

But, I Practice the Presence daily....a term for stopping and opening to feel
the Divine...so there's no mud over the light in me.

[Shirina]

It's just baffling to me that, though we live in one of the most technologically advanced and well-educated nations in the world, so many Americans still believe in such superstitious notions as angry gods and eternal torments. Far too many behave like the first Pilgrims hanging on by a thread in the New World, a time and place where all kinds of evil - from wolves to demons - lurked just beyond the firelight or on the other side of the village wall. A time and place where every cracked twig was some baby-stealing, soul-sucking demon and every wolf howl was a hermit witch casting curses upon the populace.

I really don't understand why anyone would even want to live in such intellectual darkness, but it is almost as prevalent among Americans as it is among the uneducated and illiterate populations of the Third World.

Is it any wonder, then, why the two great Superstitions of Islam and Christianity are constantly at odds? Each benighted paradigm as fearful of each other as our earliest pioneers were fearful of the dark.

[DewDropInn]

Originally Posted by Shirina

I really don't understand why anyone would even want to live in such intellectual darkness, but it is almost as prevalent among Americans as it is among the uneducated and illiterate populations of the Third World.

Neither do I.

[TexasReb]

Something else I meant to mention in the OP, is that yet another thing that makes me extremely skeptical -- putting it mildly -- about the existence of a literal, eternal, burning Hell, is the inclusion of that it will be Satan and his demon minions doing the torturing, and can derive pleasure from it all the while?

C'mon! LOL THEY are the cause of the evil on earth and in humans...but yet God gives them a pass to have a good time for all eternity tormenting some poor fool who might have played around on his wife once (or vice-versa) but never made a public production out of "accepting the Lord"?

Hell (no pun intended), that makes not the slightest bit of theological sense.

[doctorjef]

It seems rather clear to me that there are, in fact, two Christianities. The two are NOT Catholic vs Protestant or any similar institutional dichotomy. Rather, there is a Christianity that gets along fine with science as a whole, including evolution of species by natural selection and random mutation, the geological record of earth time, and post-Newtonian physics in its various streams of theory and discovery. This is a Christianity that understands that fundamentalists (the other broad expression of Christianity) make a category error when they attempt to turn religious scriptures into texts of literal factual content. Hence, this is a Christianity that understands that religion and science represent quite different endeavours. The scientific enterprise is about the delineation of functional mechanisms operating within the observable and quatifiable universe. By contrast, religion is to do with questions of ultimate meaning. Both science and religion get things wrong from time to time within their own proper domains; religion is bound to get things very wrong when applied for explanatory purposes outside its proper domain.

One can, of course, reject the notion of meaning or existential meaning, but to do so seems to fly in the face of universal human psychology.

Although I've addressed these two different approaches to relgion in terms of Christianity, it's true of relgions in general (though different religions have differnt degrees of difficulty in negotiating their proper missions relative to the scientific endeavour).