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Yes. I affirm the Bible. But the Bible is true whether or not one affirms it. And the statements that are contained in it are true whether or not one affirms them to be true.
Yes. I affirm the Bible. But the Bible is true whether or not one affirms it. And the statements that are contained in it are true whether or not one affirms them to be true.
actually the bible is methophorical story weather one understands it or not.
Its like carrying a 90lb dumb bell to the car and someone saying "Be careful; watch your elbows"
I'd love to hear if you have any verses in the Bible that suggest that we've existed eternally
There is Jeremiah 1:5 and Psalm 139:16
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Originally Posted by BaptistFundie
, and that we got to choose to become mortal.
However I'm not aware of any teaching/verse on this portion of the statement/question.
The closest concept on this I can personally relate seems to run counter: in my NDE I had surrendered my life/being to The Father for Him to do with as He willed - then kapow He sent me back. It's difficult to explain the combined excitement/disappointment of being 'sent back' , and I still can't. All I know is that I put it in His hands without any hesitation or doubt. Did I do the wrong thing?
Now prove that "Knew you" means that there was an eternal past. The word doesn't mean a relationship, as much as it means that God knew us in his mind's eye before he created us.
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However I'm not aware of any teaching/verse on this portion of the statement/question.
The closest concept on this I can personally relate seems to run counter: in my NDE I had surrendered my life/being to The Father for Him to do with as He willed - then kapow He sent me back. It's difficult to explain the combined excitement/disappointment of being 'sent back' , and I still can't. All I know is that I put it in His hands without any hesitation or doubt. Did I do the wrong thing?
I can't and really won't speculate on a personal experience like that. Sorry.
yes.
we choose to incarnate in physical existence.
yes we are eternal beings.
yes eternity runs in both directions.
so yes of course we existed before we were born.
I agree with you, up to this point.
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and that is what reincarnation is, choosing to incarnate
again and again
lifetime after lifetime.
dozens of lifetimes. hundreds of lifetimes.
Well, I don't believe in reincarnation, but I do believe in continued growth and progress after death -- just as the same individual as we were here on earth. I'm curious, though... What would cause someone to decide not to incarnate a second, a third, or a twenty-sixth time? And if someone decides not to incarnate again, what would happen then? Would he continue to exist as he did in his final incarnation or would something else happen?
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i also believe when we choose to come back, that we often stay with the same loved ones. the love we have for specific others is so strong that we choose again and again to be with each other. perhaps in different configurations, such as parent and child, or siblings, or sweethearts.
Interesting. This implies that we not only choose to incarnate, but how to incarnate. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but this seems to imply that your mother could be your mother right now, and then your lover in a different life. I'm afraid that doesn't sit too well with me, but you could be right as well as I am. At any rate, I mostly wanted to discuss our pre-mortal existance (or as you would possibly say, our first pre-mortal existance), so I'll leave reincarnation for another thread.
Makes it easier to ignore if you don't believe it, doesn't it?
nope, thats not how people like me think.
We take what you say. We then compare to what is going on in and around ourselves. We take the notion to as many people as we can and ask about it.
The most important thing is to take what we think to people that do not think like us and see how it holds up.
Then we attach weight to the statement as reasonable, unreasonable, and may be determined by the situation.
I put your bible in my pile of resources to determine how the universe works. It carry's no less weight than others. But, if I am talking about cooking an omlet, I kind of don't use it.
In the thread, "What Do You Expect After Death?" Pleroo made the following statement:
[My] thoughts at the moment are that we get to choose whether or not to have this physical experience, so if we're here, it must be because we wanted to be, for whatever reason.
I don't agree with this.
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To be perfectly honest, I was genuinely surprised to hear someone say that. I know this is what Mormonism teaches, but I had no idea that anyone else out there might also believe it. Because I thought it would be an interesting subject to discuss, I am starting this thread. I'm sure Pleroo and I don't believe exactly the same thing, but here are my thoughts, just to get the ball rolling.
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First off, I believe we are eternal beings. That doesn't just mean that we will never cease to exist. It also means that we have always existed -- or at least that the whatever it is that makes up our life-giving spirits has always existed.
I agree with this in part. While I believe that God is eternal, I don't believe that *we* are "eternal" in the same sense. We either always "existed" with God's eternal existence OR, we actually have a beginning of our existence. That beginning may have 'existed' before our human birth, but how long before our birth?
The universe...that is, the physical universe is said to have a beginning. We estimate it's age to be about 13.8 billion years old. Plus, many believe that God created the universe out of "nothing". But before He actually made the first stride toward the physical creation of the universe, the whole concept may have 'existed' in the mind of God.
Does EVERYTHING that God thinks about come into some form of existence other than remain simply an idea in God's mind?
I understand that some people ask, "Why did God drown those people during The Flood? Why couldn't God have simply *POOFED* them out of existence?" Yet, I'm confident that God thought about that. But if He DID that, it wouldn't have worked, according to His Ultimate Plan. So, while God may have thought about the possibility, it doesn't mean it would come into existence, simply by Him thinking about it.
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Unlike the rest of you, I'm sure, I believe that God, our Father in Heaven, created our spirits out of highly refined matter that is co-eternal with Him, and that He gave each of us the choice as to whether we wanted to take part in the mortal experience.
I don't think that we necessarily had a choice to be born and partake in the 'mortal experience'. I know of many people who would not have chosen to be born, had they known ahead of time, what pain they may have had to endure while here on earth.
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I'm not really sure how well we all understood what that meant, but I don't believe there is a single soul who has ever been born who did not willingly choose to participate in mortality here on Earth. This means, of course, that human beings had a pre-mortal life.
I DO believe that God knew us before we were born. I DON'T believe that we knew ourselves. I also don't believe that pre-birth, that we had a 'form' that also had a consciousness that we were aware of. So, I don't think that we had a 'pre-mortal life'. We may have existed for many eons before our birth on earth, but that "existence" was in God's mind. Not necessarily as a conscious 'being/entity' before our physical birth.
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That's all I'm going to say for starters, but I hope this thread will generate some interesting dialogue
Katzpur, as long as you are on this forum, I don't need coffee to jumpstart my mind... Thanks for starting, and yet, a NUTHER thought-provoking thread!
We have quite a few posters stating things rather definitively for things that have never been proven and are not even mainstream thought.
Which is okay. We each believe what we believe. But, just sayin'.
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Thanks for starting, and yet, a NUTHER thought-provoking thread! 
