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Everything sounds like God and Satan are equals, and God can't stop anything.
You see, if God is real, and all of THIS is real, then God not only is permitting it, he created it all...yes, He is responsible.
Does the baker blame the bread?
And if you KNOW your bible, you don't go to hell for being an adulterer, a cheat, a murderer, an abuser, a liar, a destructive politician...you go to hell for simply not knowing God.
It is as if God designed the game, and this is fun for him.
Salvation? Salvation from who? God? Who would send you to hell for not knowing him?
Everyone goes on and on about salvation, as if it is separate from God, but it is GOD who would damn you.
But UNDERSTANDING is exactly what saves you, according to religion. Not your good works, but your acceptance of salvation, which requires understanding.
"Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding."
This sounds just like the old "Trust me, don't worry" line.
Everything sounds like God and Satan are equals, and God can't stop anything.
You see, if God is real, and all of THIS is real, then God not only is permitting it, he created it all...yes, He is responsible.
Does the baker blame the bread?
And if you KNOW your bible, you don't go to hell for being an adulterer, a cheat, a murderer, an abuser, a liar, a destructive politician...you go to hell for simply not knowing God.
It is as if God designed the game, and this is fun for him.
Salvation? Salvation from who? God? Who would send you to hell for not knowing him?
Everyone goes on and on about salvation, as if it is separate from God, but it is GOD who would damn you.
It is my belief that it's all a FAMILY matter. Inside each physical body is a spirit body that animates and integrates the physical. In my belief, those spirit bodies were created long before this earth was by God the Father. It is His desire to give us an opportunity to 'grow up' and become like Him. For that purpose He has given each of us (including Satan and his followers) the freedom to CHOOSE.
Mortal life provides us with exposure to opposites: good and evil, light and darkness, health and sickness etc. Every day we use our freedom to choose to become more like God (light) or more like Satan (dark). So, in effect for each individual, WE have the power - the power to CHOOSE for ourselves to follow or not to follow our conscience and what we know about the nature of God from the teachings of His prophets who know Him.
God and Satan are not equals anymore than is a child equal to his/her adult parents. Satan is a spirit child of God, but one who rebelled against Him and His plan of salvation in our premortal life, as mentioned above.
"Salvation" means to become enough like God because of our free choices and the Atonement of Jesus Christ to be allowed to live with Him for eternity, and to learn and progress forever.
To understand God, life, the universe, everything, relate it all to FAMILY (children learning how to grow up and become like their adult parents) and it begins to make a whole lot more sense, at least it does for me.
It is my belief that it's all a FAMILY matter. Inside each physical body is a spirit body that animates and integrates the physical. In my belief, those spirit bodies were created long before this earth was by God the Father. It is His desire to give us an opportunity to 'grow up' and become like Him. For that purpose He has given each of us (including Satan and his followers) the freedom to CHOOSE.
Mortal life provides us with exposure to opposites: good and evil, light and darkness, health and sickness etc. Every day we use our freedom to choose to become more like God (light) or more like Satan (dark). So, in effect for each individual, WE have the power - the power to CHOOSE for ourselves to follow or not to follow our conscience and what we know about the nature of God from the teachings of His prophets who know Him.
God and Satan are not equals anymore than is a child equal to his/her adult parents. Satan is a spirit child of God, but one who rebelled against Him and His plan of salvation in our premortal life, as mentioned above.
"Salvation" means to become enough like God because of our free choices and the Atonement of Jesus Christ to be allowed to live with Him for eternity, and to learn and progress forever.
To understand God, life, the universe, everything, relate it all to FAMILY (children learning how to grow up and become like their adult parents) and it begins to make a whole lot more sense, at least it does for me.
That's how I see it.
But you don't know this as fact.
And to say Satan is like God's child...why couldn't God just annihilate him instead of letting him torture humans?
Oh,you would say, that God will get rid of Satan after the end of the earth, but that's AFTER billions of people were harmed by him.
What father would let his children be attacked or harmed, and say they would do away with the abuser later on?
But UNDERSTANDING is exactly what saves you, according to religion. Not your good works, but your acceptance of salvation, which requires understanding.
"Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding."
This sounds just like the old "Trust me, don't worry" line.
Spiritual understanding is best gained by spiritual means such as faith, prayer, fasting, scripture study etc. For those who want to know God better, those spiritual methods of getting to know Him are vastly superior to trying to discover and know Him by exercising reason and intellectual methods of inquiry. (Though an intellectual study of the bible can lead to spiritual 'between the line' promptings as one gets 'in tune' with the Spirit that motivated those who wrote the scripture.)
That's the thing atheists fail to understand and why they often ask those who who have a satisfying relationship with God to prove He exists with the tools of science. They fail to understand that man is a dual being, composed of both spirit and physical matter (spirit body created by Heavenly Parents, physical body created by mortal parents.)
Ultimately, there is much we have to accept by faith because not many get to see God with their physical eyes. Faith in things unseen is a hard thing for some people to wrap their intellect around, but as we journey through life we daily exercise faith in many things. (E.g. that drivers of vehicles will stop when the traffic light is red on their side, that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow, that when we flip a light switch the light will turn on, etc.)
And to say Satan is like God's child...why couldn't God just annihilate him instead of letting him torture humans?
Oh,you would say, that God will get rid of Satan after the end of the earth, but that's AFTER billions of people were harmed by him.
What father would let his children be attacked or harmed, and say they would do away with the abuser later on?
Why give us the freedom to choose when there are no choices? How else could we be tested if there was no opposition?
"For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my first-born in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility." 2 Nephi 2: 11, 15
Why give us the freedom to choose when there are no choices? How else could we be tested if there was no opposition? "For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my first-born in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility." 2 Nephi 2: 11, 15
Choose what? Hell or God? No one would consciously choose hell. There doesn't seem to be much of a choice. No one knows God, or what he is really about or after, so the trust isn't there. You haven't seen him, so you can't be sure he is going to give you what you think you are going to get.
Perhaps it will all end like those prayers...praying for help, praying for things you need and just getting no response.
Yes, if you know your history, you know that Hitler succeeded in taking all of Europe except Britain. All he had to do was take Britain, and he had the whole thing. Come on, you can read about how Britain was the last hold out.
He nearly did succeed and it was the US that stopped him in Europe and North Africa, and Hitler's venture into Russia was stopped by his arrogance toward the cold Russian winter.
Ahh....he would have gotten away with it if not for those darned US and Russians!!!
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