"The kingdom of God, is just something for christians to hope for in the future" (Page 3)

deuce916: doulas4life, do you know what love is - because it sure isn't in the god you're referring to.

doulas4life: @ deuce916
precious soul,
one who is loved by God let me start by saying to you and anyone else who may be wondering I am not on drugs.
and falsely acccusing believers in Jesus of being on drugs does not make it true, and it will not help you on judgment day.
wisdom is justified by her children... Matthew 11:19 "The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Look, a glutton and a winebibber, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!' But wisdom is justified by her children."
I forgive you and I hope Jesus will too, if I do not forgive you Jesus will not forgive me.
seek Jesus while you still have hope, JESUS LOVES YOU SO MUCH THAT HE DIED TO SAVE YOU.
now as for your question yes I do know what love is, I know love because God loves me,
1Corinthians 13:4 Love suffers long [and] is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up;
1Corinthians 13:5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil;
1Corinthians 13:6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth;
1Corinthians 13:7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
1Corinthians 13:8 Love never fails. But whether [there are] prophecies, they will fail; whether [there are] tongues, they will cease; whether [there is] knowledge, it will vanish away.
If you do not believe God is loving you do not even know God, it is time that you get to know God.
Learn how God saved Daniel from the lions in the lions den, or saved Moses from a flood, or how Jesus gave sight to the blind, and was able to feed many people with not very much food. Learn how Jesus was falsely accused for you, put on trial for you, had nails driven into Him, hung on a cross bled and died for you, to forgive you of your sins. Even look at the gifts God gives you... the food you eat is God given, the fact you are breathing is a gift from God. and the fact that me and you are not in hell right now should prove to you God is loving.

deuce916: I know you can read about what love is but I doubt you know what it is. And if your god let anyone go to a hell means it's not a god of love.

deuce916: "JESUS LOVES YOU SO MUCH THAT HE DIED TO SAVE YOU." Well according to that logic I don't have anything to worry about - DO I.

doulas4life: I do not see hell as a sign God is not loving, I see it as a sign God is holy. Why should people get raped in heaven, or get stolen from in heaven, do you think God wants to reward the faithful with a place full of pain? do you think people will be in hell who God did not warn before it happened? I do not. and if you have not repented yes you do need to worry, God will not force you to love Him. please precious soul seek God .

deuce916: So your god can do whatever it wants.

Gygaxx: Anybody's god can do whatever they want it to do. That's baked into their belief in the almighty. All, however, think that their god is the only one that counts, so somebody (if not everybody) has to be wrong. Then, I'm absolutely not impress by the fact that they claim that they are able to communicate with such a god and obviously read its mind. But place a Jew, a Christian and a Muslim together to debate this topic; and you'll see disagreement in practice.

Coffrey: doulas, I don't want to sound like a dick or anything, but the idea of God is a childish one and you seem like it to me, when two 8 year olds talk about Santa Claus, you're one who still believes it while the other 8 year old has grown up. The paint this image of God as flawless character, but actually he's extremely flawed and has failed many times. do you think that if God was perfect enough to make us right, that we wouldn't need a hell to begin with? Think about it. You punish your child whenever he does wrong, right? If your child never does wrong, then you have no need to punish. Hell at the very least is an admission by God that he fucked up making us, that most of us will turn out not the way he wanted and do things he didn't want us to do. And because he fucked up, instead of being that god of lovingness and forgiveness, he instead chooses eternal punishment because he is not perfect enough to conceive of an idea of anything else.

I got one question for you. Is God's love unconditional?

window: Stop asking such questions, Coffrey. They are meaningless as long as the people providing them constantly keep casting God in their own heavily adapted mould. You only feed the trolls, who feast on the opportunity to proselytise...

Coffrey: Well you can't challenge their views on something ambiguous. I don't know if you've notice, but they tend not to care if someone wants to hear their proselytizing or not, so might as well get something out of it, like a definite answer.

doulas4life: @ Coffrey
You can persecute me, ridicule me, laugh at me, mock me, or call me names but it will not change the fact Jesus is real. It will also not change the fact Jesus wants to save you, or that I still have love for you.
I believe God gave us free will, and I think God did that for more than one reason
1.) because He wants real love from us, God does not want to force us to love Him. If God forces us to love Him and be what He wants then we are like a trained machine, our love is like that of dvd players. However if God gives us a choice and we still love Him that love is real. Think about Adam and Eve and why would a loving God allow that tree to be there? I believe God was giving them a choice.
Much like in deuteronomy
Deuteronomy 30:15 "See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil,"
I do not think you like fake love and I know God does not like fake love. So you see God did not make a mistake when He made us,
God chose not to make us robots forced to do what He wants, He gave us choices.
2.) to bring God glory and place more value on us.
Now to answer your question part of me wants to say yes it is unconditional because I know that God is willing to forgive a sinner, even a sinner like me.
but part of me is not sure because I know if people do not repent and accept Jesus as their Lord and savior they will be in hell.
what I can tell you is that the love of God is perfect and not corrupt, and considering what God is willing to forgive I for one think that it is more than enough.
God gave me my life to begin with,
and I will be counted with the greatful souls,not the ungreatful.
precious soul think about these next verses Matthew 11:28 " Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Matthew 11:29Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
Matthew 11:30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

Coffrey: Well if God's love was unconditional, then there would be no one in hell, right? Obviously his love has conditions, steep conditions. Let me ask you this. Let's say that when you die, you die, no afterlife or anything. If I pointed a gun at you and said "Do you love me? If you say no, I'll shoot you in the face" am I giving you a legitimately choice there?

doulas4life: I did not say the alternative to God was good.

Coffrey: Would you call me holding a gun to your head and telling you to love me or die a choice? Like choosing if you want Coke or Pepsi, a legitimate choice.

doulas4life: @ Coffrey
you may not like the alternative to God but it is still a choice good or evil, life or death,
but unlike your example of a pepsi or coke choice this decision last a long time.

Coffrey: I agree, getting shot in the face is not good.

Okay, I have another question for you. There's a new shop owner in town and the local mafia goes to him and asks for "protection money" and if he doesn't pay, something bad will happen to his store. Is the mafia giving him a choice or is it extortion?

doulas4life: I think it is both. Are you going to try to say then God is doing both?
God made you, He owns you and He only wants to do you good,
like exceedingly abundantly above all you could think or ask,
if you choose not to accept Jesus that is on you.
and it is a little different than your example do you not agree?

Coffrey: I don't think he owns, I never ask for any of this and I very much disagree on what he thinks is good.
I think the example is completely synonymous. The mafia is extorting money or your store will burn and God is extorting my devotion and blind obedience or I will burn.

I'll use a more accurate example. If you have a child, would you lock him/her in the basement and torture them forever if they didn't love you enough?

Combine: If you try to find the real God outside the religions, you will see another image altogether. God doesn't fit any human description. Seek Him directly without paying any attention to all the shiny and flashy religious signs that tempt you to deviate from the path that leads to Him.

Coffrey: Without religion, how do you prove which path to take?

xapim: in american mythology , you toss a rock and the spirit guides you, the great medicine wheel ?

doulas4life: @ Coffrey
He created you, it is not likely you are breathing right now without His help.
Of course you belong to God. You might disagree with what God says is good but do you honestly think you know more than God does? Do you honestly think you understand the full damage of sin? Consider a drug addict who might think their drug addiction only hurts them.
Do they fully understand what it does to the people around them?
God ask you too seek Him,
as for your next question by the way thanks for this kind of question are you trying to set me up?
I do not agree with child abuse, and that is not a good example either.
God sent His only begotten son to the cross to save you, Jesus was falsely accused for you, put on trial for you, was nailed to a cross bled and died to save you, he raised the dead, brought sight to the blind, put the Bible in the world so you would know the truth, Jesus might of even sent foolish people like myself to tell you the truth. He has done so many things for you but the one thing He is not going to do is violate your free will.
Do not try to compare Jesus to an abusive parent, you need to learn who God is.

Coffrey: Well to be historically accurate, Jesus had nothing to do with forming Christianity, it wasn't a thing until 40 years after he died. But you just explained the very reason why I think I am moral than God. God came to life to sacrifice himself to himself to act as a loophole for a rule he created. I can't even believe that other people believe this as literal truth. But that aside, God, in all is infinite wisdom, could only come up with human sacrifice? Great, now God is an Aztec, is basically what's going on here. Why couldn't God have just forgiven everyone and eliminate the need for Hell?

Okay, I'll revise my question to be even MORE accurate. So after whipping a man to death in front of your child claiming it absolves him of all sin, would you lock your child in the basement if he didn't love you enough?

Byakuya: "god put the bible in the world so you would know the truth"? all the bible is, is stories i mean i read a book with stories in when i was a kid and i didnt believe a beanstalk could grow up to the heavens or little red riding hood couldnt see that grandma was a wolf and that is what the bible is a book of fairytales god didnt send it because some one wrote it

Coffrey: Oh, I always miss things with these posts, haha. If the bible is God's way of putting "the truth in the world", he is the most incompetent, lazy, and I would say, by godlike standards, a retarded buffoon. So this is what he did: he appealed to a tribe in a region where there are bunch of other tribes with their gods, rather than appealing to maybe Israelites and fuck, why not Aztecs and an African tribe or two? Or northern barbarians? But no, just this one little tribe amongst other little tribes. Not only that, if Israelites died out, doulas, you would be talking about someone else's god who put the truth into the world through a book, it's the same thing.