Will you make it to Heaven?

[Vincitveritas]

Take the quiz and see!

jesusplusnothing.com/the-heaven-test

@carbonarya Completely different kettle of fish.

No they're not. They are both people who chose to put themselves out there, and who people will therefore criticise when they don't have a chance to respond.

What about other celebrities? Why is it okay for your youtuber pal to criticise Daniel Radcliffe and Lil Nas X but not for me to criticise him?

@Vincitveritas - the God you follow in my opinion didn’t have high standards - not a character to aspire to. The way I live my life is better than that, I’m not answerable to any God and have no concerns about the threats about where I might end up. It only seems that Christians are worried - not a good way to live your life.

I know someone who had that. I’m going for Neverending story,

I’m having - Fix You by Coldplay!

@Hawkins003 Stayin' Alive works😅Like Neverending Story too @OMG12 . How about Startrekkin' (across the universe)?

@carbonarya No, I think it's rude but as they say, you do you hun.

@Parker231 You're claiming to be better than God now?

No, I think it's rude but as they say, you do you hun.

What's rude. Criticising politicians? Or mr clickbait on YouTube criticising celebrities?

Vincitveritas Comparing humans to elephants isn't a great analogy though. We aren't just another animal species. If you were ever in the position of having to choose between saving the life of a baby elephant or saving the life of a child, there'd be no contest.

Christian arrogance is* *astounding. This view of not being "just another animal" is viewing our world through christian glasses. If a mother elephant were to be put in a place where she had to kill a human to protect her own baby- you bet she would protect her own- just as humans do.

The horseshit spun in the bible about man having dominion over the fish, the animals and the earth is truly poisonous. The idea that this planet and all it contains was created for men to control, use, eat, abuse is killing our planet.
Humans have no special god given rights, christians seem to think this whole global ecosystem is here for our use.

Well it isn't.
Humans are just another species sharing this planet with millions of other species.
Humans are not particularly special in the grand scheme of things- our evolutionary adaptations have seen us grow to do some incredible things, but I can't hold my breath as long as a seal can, fly with wings of feather, we aren't even the most prolific species on this planet.

Any ideology that tells us this planet is our to burn, pollute, plunder destroy, and ravage because homo sapiens somehow have some special importance is morally corrupt.

The christian god sounds like a monster, and I am very glad he doesn't exist. But that does not stop the influence of adherants carrying out the dirty work of their imaginary deity.

@Vincitveritas I'm a little surprised that you do not know the difference between striving to improve (which is good) and striving to be perfect (which is impossible and unhealthy). I'm on board with the former, obviously.

What makes me use the word Christian? Because Christ is very important in my spiritual journey. I am limited in what I can say but I would say that Jesus and Christ are two things that can be separated. Jesus, yeshua ben josef - the man, a spiritual teacher who reached a level of enlightenment and was the anointed one (made sacred/divine)- Christ.

I believe that within all is the ability to realise our own Christ Consciousness, to become enlightened, to get close to and ultimately rejoin with God from whom the physical world separates us. I have my ideas who or rather what God is. This “christ consciousness” is seen across different religions across time. Even amongst many who are atheist who see this purely an internal enlightenment.

The West is bathed in the symbols and language of mainstream Christianity which makes this a natural way for people in the West to express this journey. For me, this is true message of the Bible, that we can transmute ourselves, turn from water to wine, alchemically from lead into gold. We need to die and be resurrected as Jesus to go from blindness to being able to see clearly as Paul Just like Jesus we can walk on the water, rise above the corporeal elements, it was not just Jesus who did this but Peter by having faith in his own divine status. The bible is full of help in changing ourselves to realise we are Christ too.

My magic is a way of realising this.

Yes - not difficult to be better an imaginary and cruel god.

@OMG12 Thank you for explaining. 😊

but re another posters comments about the churches view on women’s rights I’ll leave you with Paul (after all the majority of the NT is arguably him and therefore sola scriptura is effectively making you a follower of Paul) 1 Corinthians 14:33

Paul wrote 7 books out of 27, which I wouldn't say counts as most.

You took a crucial sentence from the previous verse "as in all the congregations of the Lord’s people" and added it to the next verse, changing the meaning. Paul is writing to the church in Corinth, which was known to be a hot mess and in need of much direction. Sometimes reading the Bible within the context it was written is helpful.

Matthew 18:6 isn't the contradiction you make out. If you read on, it's talking about God's judgement to come on the evil in this world, not individuals judging each other:

"Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to stumble! Such things must come, but woe to the person through whom they come! If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell." Matthew 18:7-9.

Also, Peter wasn't able to walk on water through his own kind of divinity but by his faith in Jesus. As soon as he took his eyes off Jesus and became afraid of the roaring waves, Peter began to sink. That's why Jesus rebuked him saying, "You of little faith, why did you doubt?".

@speakout My flabber has been well and truly gasted. It's quite a stretch to blame Christianity for environmental damage such as pollution, deforestation, over hunting, climate change and the rest.
I take those Bible quotes, such as "The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.", to mean it is our responsibility to act as guardians of this beautiful creation God has given us. I'm the softest animal lover going - won't kill spiders or flies and cry like a baby after unavoidably running creatures over while driving.

I absolutely agree with reading the Bible in the context it was written. A book written thousands of years ago within a culture who were oppressed and longed for a saviour, looking for something to save them from the oppression of Rome, or possibly traumatised from being involved in persecution themselves. But all tied into first and second century ad in the case of the New Testament. That’s why it’s pretty pointless to take it literally.

Fully aware of Corinthians, it doesn’t take away one of the ways Paul told them to sort out the church was to keep women quiet and subservient to men.

Yes Paul definitely wrote 7 of the books nearly a third but scholars have attributed up to 14 of the books to him. Either way the cannon was constructed with a heavy bias towards Paul. Why was that?

I would very much argue it was Peter having faith in his own Christ status that enabled him to walk on water, as soon as he started to doubt his own divinity he sank (fell). Remember that none of the disciples recognised Jesus until he identified himself. Sometimes it’s hard to recognise the higher part of yourself (remember Mary didn’t recognise Jesus either outside the tomb).

Falls often happen when we lack faith in ourselves, when we become obsessed with our sins rather than divinity. But maybe those falls are but an illusion.

@OMG12 Apologies, I haven't read your other post yet!

Everyone going to heaven/the afterlife is the only thing that makes sense because if you assume man has divine origins, then that must be all of mankind from the beginning of time.

Except that I don't believe man has divine origins, not in the way you think anyway.

...Why did he allow all the rest of creation to go off on tangents?

I guess it's that peaky free will again. God gave the nation of Israel strict instructions to worship only Him, but they still chose to go off on a tangent, even melting down their precious metals to make an idol in the middle of the desert.

Was it Noah and the flood or the carpenters in the tale of Gilgamarsh who built the ark??

That would be Noah. There's tales of a great and terrible flood, in the distant mists of time, the world over. The Epic of Gilgamesh shares striking similarities with the biblical account. I think, rather than being copied, it came about from a distant branch of Noah's descendants, with tales of events passed down through the generations via oral tradition. The differences would be a result of a 'Chinese whisper' effect and influences infiltrating from surrounding cultures. The ark came to rest on a mountain in Turkey - not a million miles away from ancient Mesopotamia.

@OMG12

The Jews were Gods chosen people. Their law was that handed to them by God. Yet Paul decided (contrary to much of the very early Jesus cult practice) that actually you didn't have to be a Jew.

Paul didn't decide that on his own. This is the main info we have on the decision and (in a nutshell) is based on Jesus acting as the Passover lamb and a literal fulfilment of the Law:

The Council at Jerusalem
Certain people came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the believers: “Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.” This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them. So Paul and Barnabas were appointed, along with some other believers, to go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders about this question. The church sent them on their way, and as they traveled through Phoenicia and Samaria, they told how the Gentiles had been converted. This news made all the believers very glad. When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and elders, to whom they reported everything God had done through them.

Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, “The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses.”

The apostles and elders met to consider this question. After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them: “Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. He did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear? No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.”

The whole assembly became silent as they listened to Barnabas and Paul telling about the signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them. When they finished, James spoke up. “Brothers,” he said, “listen to me. Simon has described to us how God first intervened to choose a people for his name from the Gentiles. The words of the prophets are in agreement with this, as it is written:

“‘After this I will return
and rebuild David’s fallen tent.
Its ruins I will rebuild,
and I will restore it,
that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord,
even all the Gentiles who bear my name,
says the Lord, who does these things’ -
things known from long ago.

“It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood. For the law of Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath.” Acts 15:1-21.

God gave the nation of Israel strict instructions to worship only Him, but they still chose to go off on a tangent, even melting down their precious metals to make an idol in the middle of the desert.

Why would he need to be worshiped?

But the epic of Gilgamarsh was written 500-1000 years before Genesis. There are differences such as given dimensions which would indicate they’re not the retelling of the same event but an adaptation of the earlier story. It’s clear throughout the Old Testament that there is a narrative against Babylon - obviously a politically motivated stance - where East meets west - something arguably still raging today.

if you don’t think man has divine origins what do you think about Genesis where the Elohim created man and woman in their image?

So why did God choose the Hebrews? What had he got against the other people of the world? Was it free will when they knew nothing of that God?

@OMG12

But the epic of Gilgamarsh was written 500-1000 years before Genesis.

I don't think that makes much difference, although we have no way of knowing exactly when it was written. Estimates put it at between 2100 and 1200 BC, that's a huge time scale. Same with Genesis, which is estimated to date to around 1440 B.C. (so could potentially be older than the EOG) I'm including the many other flood stories from other parts of the world in that theory.

Rain check on the other points.

I have no idea! 😮
I've never seen Heaven sooo..😬
Sorry I am quite sceptical of religion being de facto atheist.
At the same time I do respect people and there religion as long as it is not forced upon ..especially children.
Sorry just my opinion 😊🤞🙋‍♀️

Have you met God?
Sorry I'm intrigued 🧐😊
Apparently there are over 4.000 religions on the planet!
The Hindus are interesting they worship many God's 🤔
Hope you've had a good day.😁😊🤞😃

I’m not sure where you have the date of 1440 BC from re Genesis. This article re Gilgamarsh sets out the likely dating and development of the story. Whilst This article looks at the development of the flood story in genesis. As you’ll see historians have analysed the evidence and set the two stories apart by hundreds of years (prob over 1000).

will revert later on Paul and friends.

looking at religion as a whole polytheism is actually the predominant structure. Indeed there are indicators in the Old Testament that there are elements of Polytheism (which is unsurprising given the influences in the writings).

Religions are human created stories, often containing important truths but people get hung up on the narrative of the story rather than the truths therein.

Religions are human created stories, often containing important truths

But how do we which of the stories contain any truths?

And how do you even define 'truths' without any evidence?

By searching and testing them out. Experimenting with them in your own life. I’m not taking about the chapters in the story, which God did what etc, I’m talking about whether the advice, guidance resonates with you and helps you improve yourself spiritually (and indeed just generally)

You have to step away from a scientific mindset and concentrate solely as to what works for you,