evangelical movement

[Hawktawk]

https://theweek.com/speedreads/933569/b ... ious-right
https://www.gospelherald.com/articles/7 ... BdPBDz3MaA

I was raised in a holy roller atmosphere, country churches and fire and brimstone preachers. Early in my life I accepted christ, the whole story written in the bible had a ring of truth to me, well more in my heart than anything I ever read or heard a preacher say. As I grew up I rebelled hard, sowed some seeds and reaped a bitter harvest. I returned to the church in my late teens and entered into a ministry course. I preached from the pulpit in that time, taught sunday school, read the bible cover to cover many times. And i lived it too, I picked up hitchhikers and literally gave them the shirt off my back, gave one a 100$ coat in the middle of winter.I tried to live right, didn't party, abstained from sex. My second year in school i met a girl in my choir. A whirlwind courtship and rocky failed marriage and I was back on the run.

God and I declared a truce in the early 2000s. I didn't know I was bipolar and that was surely a factor but the churches felt like some kind of cult full of stuffy judgemental hypocrites. Pastors seemed to drone on when the only person who wanted to hear any more out of them an hour into their sermon was them.

Other than weddings and funerals(I've preached and sang at both)I haven't darkened the door of a church in 20 years. God and I get along great, its just people that call themselves Christians and support utter depravity , immorality, racism, etc I don't agree with. My faith was the first reason I rejected Trump and he's done nothing but give me more reasons every day. Nice to see I have some well placed company. Not sure if Jesus is a Biden man but he sure aint a Trump man...

[curmudgeon]

Then surely you must be familiar with the book of Revelations. Seems the planet may be at that crossroads.......

[NorthHawk]

If you choose to believe in God, you really don't need organized religion to practice its teachings.
For that matter you don't even need to believe in God to live a good life that's kind and respectful
of others.

[Hawktawk]

Then surely you must be familiar with the book of Revelations. Seems the planet may be at that crossroads.......

Yes I believe we are seeing end time prophecy fulfilled . Corona is a total God thing . A little virus bringing the world to its knees , 50 million people in this country support a madman . The world is pregnant .

I apologize I didn’t really express myself properly . I’m not debating faith , I’m pointing out the train wreck the evangelical movement has become . Self inflicted and totally deserved : much like the party they support they need to be eradicated . They are an enemy of the faith they profess to have .

[Hawktawk]

If you choose to believe in God, you really don't need organized religion to practice its teachings.
For that matter you don't even need to believe in God to live a good life that's kind and respectful
of others.

I believe good people have a bigger hand steering the wheel . I didn’t mean to shove my beliefs on anyone . This was about the group of hypocrites supporting a loony toon president who couldn’t spell god if you spotted him the G and the D. They are going down as they well should.

[trents]

If you choose to believe in God, you really don't need organized religion to practice its teachings.

Yes you do. You need the encouragement of like-minded people to help you stay on track. The Bible tells us to not forsake the assembling of ourselves together, "as is the habit of some." Hebrews 10:25

For that matter you don't even need to believe in God to live a good life that's kind and respectful
of others.

But why would you do that? "Living a good life that's kind and respectful" implies there is absolute right and wrong. How else would you gauge what is "kind and respectful." Those standards come to us ultimately from somewhere, something, someone who is transcendent. Otherwise, it's just the dog eat dog, survival of the fittest of the evolutionary hypothesis. We instinctively know what is right and wrong, what is good and bad because we have been created in the image of God. The image is very tarnished but it's still there. And it is renewed when we place faith in Jesus Chirst.

[Aseahawkfan]

I'm not much religious. Humans know right and wrong by by their ability to interpret emotional and physical cues. Sometimes they over-ride these cues with other types of compulsions that lead to vice and terrible behavior. Humans are more emotionally driven than rationally driven, which is why we have the chaotic, emotionally driven environment we do. It's why leaders appeal more often to emotion than they do reason. They know it is easier to manipulate human emotions such as fear, pride, anger, and the like than to manipulate a human based on reason given our capacity for information processing differs greatly as do the types of information we all consume.

I still don't know why so many people like to buy into end time scenarios as occurring in their time when the world was far, far worse in the past. For some reason someone can read a history book about wars, famines, plagues, and the like far, far, far worse than we are dealing with now, yet somehow come to a conclusion that it is somehow the end times and worse now. It doesn't matter to them that life is the easiest it has ever been worldwide. I can only surmise that because the world is not as they prefer it they manufacture in their mind some nebulous idea of prophecies fulfilled even when these prophecies are nebulous and every single generation of men who have read these same prophecies have fit them into their end times viewpoint for thousands of years. Yet they have never been right. You should never try to predict the end times or listen to fools who do as they have always been wrong.

You should try to live a better life for yourself, your family, and your fellow man. You should never think of life as a zero sum game. It isn't. The more people doing better in the world makes for a better world. You do not have to take food off someone's plate to eat. It is always better to show someone how to put food on their own plate and provide an environment where they can feed themselves that makes the world a better place. That is what we should all strive for, improving the world where all can prosper because a prosperous human has more to share with his neighbor when times are hard while the stingy, greedy man who takes from his neighbor is surrounded by thieves and beggars and criminals of his own making because his wealth is taken from their plate and he must always fear his neighbors taking from him because that is the lesson he taught them. So just keep working for a better world in what way you can and it will improve.

I myself always try to teach people to invest and learn to manage their money well. They don't need to be rich to have a stable, prosperous life. They just need to manage what income they have intelligently and make smart life decisions to improve and then pass on that information to their kin and friends to improve. If this happens enough, then life overall improves. It's unfortunate how few young people listen instead desiring to spend their lives pursuing vice and useless activities like video games and watching too much TV. Life require an active interest in personal success. If a person can't even manage that, then no amount of reconfiguring the world will cause a lazy, unmotivated person to prosper.

[Hawktawk]

Again not to preach asea but that was kind of a long way of saying Christians that believe the Bible are full of it or ignorant . Is Dangeruss a fool? He lives his faith , shares it . Faith is the evidence of things not seen and yet believed . Without faith it is impossible to please god for no one can come to god without believing that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.

The Bible isn’t a history book. It’s a riddle , a magical book. As it described itself “ the living word “. study to show yourself approved , rightly DIVIDING the word of truth. It’s not just a book .

My god causes men to rise from their bed and go 1000 miles to do his bidding ( whether they believe in him or not ). I’ve been helped by some of those pawns on the chessboard . I’ve been that person helping people .ive been saved from certain death on numerous occasions .

And advising everyone to get rich sounds a lot like the prosperity doctrine preached in those evangelical churches. Falwell got 10.5 million to leave his dads university after getting caught in sordid degrading sexual
deviancy perving on his wife with a pool boy . The love of money is the root of evil. Plus The more money you make the richer person in the graveyard .

Not everyone can be wealthy . It’s the treasure you lay up
In heaven that matters eternally . It’s your legacy . I won’t belabor the point but I would not renounce my faith for anything faith in god is not religion . Evengicals is religion , dogma, hypocrisy of the highest order.

[Aseahawkfan]

Again not to preach asea but that was kind of a long way of saying Christians that believe the Bible are full of it or ignorant . Is Dangeruss a fool? He lives his faith , shares it . Faith is the evidence of things not seen and yet believed . Without faith it is impossible to please god for no one can come to god without believing that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.

The Bible isn’t a history book. It’s a riddle , a magical book. As it described itself “ the living word “. study to show yourself approved , rightly DIVIDING the word of truth. It’s not just a book .

My god causes men to rise from their bed and go 1000 miles to do his bidding ( whether they believe in him or not ). I’ve been helped by some of those pawns on the chessboard . I’ve been that person helping people .ive been saved from certain death on numerous occasions .

And advising everyone to get rich sounds a lot like the prosperity doctrine preached in those evangelical churches. Falwell got 10.5 million to leave his dads university after getting caught in sordid degrading sexual
deviancy perving on his wife with a pool boy . The love of money is the root of evil. Plus The more money you make the richer person in the graveyard .

Not everyone can be wealthy . It’s the treasure you lay up
In heaven that matters eternally . It’s your legacy . I won’t belabor the point but I would not renounce my faith for anything faith in god is not religion . Evengicals is religion , dogma, hypocrisy of the highest order.

I said those who believe they can predict the end times are fools. I will not change my mind on that. Predicting the end times is foolishness and about as accurate as predicting the end of the world using science. They are never right and should stop with the nonsense. Religious or scientific folk have no idea when the world will end. Their end of the world predictions are irresponsible and false fear-mongering. If you are coming to religion because someone is selling you on the end of the world, you are coming to religion for the wrong reasons.

I did not advise people to get rich. I said you do not need to be rich to manage your money well and be prosperous. Bad money management, bad behavior, and bad life choices are more often the culprit for failed lives than the "system that only benefits the rich." I've never made a high income from a job or business, but I've also never managed my money so poorly that I could not afford my responsibilities. When I hear all these folk complaining about wealth gaps, their terrible lives, and the like, I wonder if they have first tried to correct their behavior before they look to some outside source for correction. If they have not, then they should not be allowed to use the power of the mob vote to take money off folk because they wish to be irresponsible and have others pay for their irresponsible life choices.

I will state again what I stated before: life is not a zero sum game. You should re-read what I wrote above because you did not understand the content, which had nothing to do with getting rich or love of money.

[RiverDog]

As a rule, I stay out of most religious debates or discussions. I did not receive any religious training and consider myself an agnostic.