...drawn towards churches to worship God. In other words, peoples' belief in the church has plummeted because of the offenses in which some leaders of the church committed. This influences people’s decisions to enter a church and worship God based on false Christian leaders guiding and interpreting the word of God. This has been occurring through generations and generations and we are allowing the leaders of sin to define our image of the church. But we must not forget that a building does not delineate the image of God and we as Christians do not need a leader of organized religion to steer us to God but a community in which believers come together to revere him. “For as the body is one and has many members about all the members of that one body, being many, are one body so also is Christ (1 Cor. 12:12)”. We as Christians need to remember that God lives through us and as a community we can teach, motivate, and love in god’s image by righteousness of a community and not by a church that represents the image of God. If society wants to reconstitute the church of God, we need to remind the community the church is Jesus Christ and the believers of God. In order for churches to reestablish their biblical view of Christianity, they must first take necessary steps to gain the communities trust and faith. One practical step churches can do to encourage the community to return back into the church and gain their faith is to allow the community of believers to shape and run the sermons, lectures...
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...through faith alone grants us salvation, to become a disciple of Christ, or practice discipleship, requires work and commitment from the believer. The word disciple, or the Greek word mathetes, is used over 220 times in the Gospels, but not once in the Epistles, those letters written right after Christ's resurrection ("A Church-speak, n. d.). As customary for the Greek usage of the word, mathetes refers to a student who has personal interaction with their teacher. This offers one explanation as to why the word disciple is not used in the Epistles. No one had direct contact with Jesus anymore because He had gone on to Heaven to be with God. Another explanation for the absence of the word in the Epistles is that the churches that these letters were directed to were aware of Jesus' teachings about discipleship. It is possible that the writer did not mention discipleship because it would have been redundant to do so (Haines, 1999). According to the teachings of Christ, a disciple is a "true believer” and the act of discipleship is "advancing the cause of the kingdom". During Jesus' time on earth, he had many who followed him and accepted him in order to receive eternal life. Many also applied the teachings to their own lives and proclaimed them to others in order to spread Jesus' message. These people became Disciples of Christ, or "obedient believers". James 1:22 tells us, "But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deluding your own selves." This...
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...You can say nothing meaningful about God. Discuss (35) Ayer believed that ‘No sentence which describes the nature of a transcendent God can possess any literal significance’ therefore according to Ayer we cannot say anything meaningful about God. Through the verification principle, he demonstrates that all religious statements are meaningless, because for any statement to be meaningful it must be empirically verifiable for example the statement “Jesus is the light of the world”; is meaningless as there is no way to verify this. Ayer used the strong verification principle to reject any talk of ethics, metaphysics, historical and even scientific claims as they work in probability rather than certainty. The strong verification principle only regarded statements to have meaning if they could be tested in the past, present and future using sense or empirical measures to find the conclusion. Therefore statements such as “Jesus resurrected on the third day” would be seen as meaningless as we cannot test this claim in the here and now. Once again this stresses the fact that we cannot say anything meaningful about God using the strong verification principle as we cannot physically see him in our present time. This principle criticised itself because it not only meant that we could say nothing meaningful about God but also past historical events since we are unable to verify their certainty. However the weak verification principle allows statements to have meaning if the means to which...
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...Existence of God; Science As Justification Submitted to Dr. michael chiavone Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary In Partial Fulfillment Of The Requirements For THEO 626 D02 By Daniel Martin Student ID: L25178504 New Orleans, LA December 12, 2013 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page I. Introduction 1 a. Thesis and introductory explanation b. Historical development of doctrine II. Arguments for the Existence of God 3 c. Cosmological Argument d. Teleological Argument e. Anthropological III. Atheism Versus Existence of God 11 f. Evidence used to disprove God’s existence g. The believers evidence to counter IV. Conclusion 13 h. Summary of the arguments i. Applications in the church today V. Introduction The existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, immutable, monotheistic God has come up against enormous resistance from the beginning of time. Early believers such as Moses, Elijah, Paul, and Peter all had to demonstrate that their God is the one true God at times. These believers even encountered persecution and ridicule for holding on to these beliefs at times. Nevertheless the challenges to these early believers tended to be demonstrating that their God was greater than their accuser’s god or gods. At times, it was through the words of men that the God of the Bible was shown to be greater, and other times it was through the action of God in the world...
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...Breathitt, described as a “respected teacher of the supernatural manifestations of God,” has just released a new book entitled “Dream Encounters,” in which she claims Christians can have access to a secret dream language that God uses to reveal “hidden knowledge” to believers. In this book Breathitt tells believers they will be enabled to use the “revelation” obtained from God through their dreams in order to unlock their “destinies” and live lives in which they are “productive, responsible, successful, prosperous, loved and fulfilled” (p. 138).i According to Breathitt, this is done by decoding information that God has “embedded” into our dreams and through which he continues to communicate with us in personal, ongoing revelation. But there are three significant problems with what Breathitt teaches, and I will attempt to develop why these issues are unsupported by Scripture. The three problems are as follows: 1. Breathitt’s teaching is more in alignment with a pagan and superstitious—even New Age— worldview than Christian 2. Breathitt puts forth the idea that each believer has a “destiny” waiting to be unlocked, accessed, known and lived out, an idea that is contrary to the teaching of Scripture—that, as Christians, we have no “rights” to our lives. And finally, 3. Breathitt's teaching about ongoing, personal revelation from God goes against the clear teaching of sola scriptura, which is that God speaks to us through scripture alone. Dream Interpretation is New Age To help explain...
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...success just as the fire of Hell is the ultimate failure. There are many ways to achieving a favourable outcome for God has promised Paradise to those who obey Him. To them He promises serenity, contentment, happiness and peace of mind. This however does not mean that these things cannot be achieved in this life as well as eternally. A good life is possible for those who look to God, the Quran and the authentic traditions of Prophet Muhammad for guidance. Success is easily attainable and today we will discuss a few ways that we can achieve success in this life and secure the ultimate success. Righteousness The Prophet Muhammad left us with a very good working definition of righteousness. He said, “…Righteousness is that with which the soul is tranquil and the heart is tranquil, but sin is that which rouses suspicion in the soul and is perplexing in the breast, even if people give you a decision in its favour.”[1] One of the things that we as human being define as success is the ability to sleep well at night, to live with a clear conscience and here we see that righteousness provides this. Righteousness includes following the commandments of God, striving to do all acts of worship including prayer, charity and fasting with a good intention and a sincere heart. “Whoever works righteousness — whether male or female — while he (or she) is a true believer verily, to him We will give a good life (in this world with respect, contentment and lawful provision), and We shall...
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...Introduction In John’s Gospel, John provides clear evidence that Jesus is the Son of God and that by believing in Him believers in Christ may have eternal life. In the Gospel of John, it is easily discovered that John discusses the issue of sin compared to the other Gospels. John 3:16 states, “For God so loved the world that he gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” Therefore, John makes it very clear that unless sin is cleansed through faith in Jesus Christ, people will perish eternally. Thusly, this scripture illustrates the ultimate demonstration of God’s love for believers by giving the gift of eternal life through the sacrifice and resurrection of His only Son, Jesus Christ. Further, despite there being a final judgement in the future, eternal life is in the preset-tense. For example, in John 5:24 Jesus says, “I tell you the truth, whoever hears my words and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to...
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...The argument I chose was the Common Consent Argument. A simplified explanation of this argument is that there is an innate and instinctive belief in some type of god and this belief has existed willfully in nearly the whole course of humanity and throughout history. A good way of explaining this ( as the argument suggests) that it is safe to assume that a God of some type does exist and it is believed that there’s no way so many millions of people would believe In something (In this case God) if it didn’t actually exist. The best strength for this argument is that the defensive arguments against this theory fall short of being impressive. These opponents will quickly resort to cognitive science when trying to disprove this theory, but this type of science and it’s research on religions is still being fully conducted and concise facts cannot even be given as of right now because of the immaturity of cognitive science on religion and the belief if God. These scientists who oppose the common consent theory have yet to even determine whether religion in itself is just a variation or a result of some psychological occurrence whether good or bad or if it is an instinctual need. These opponents refuse to accept any proof that God exists or any God exists for that matter, but yet they have failed to disprove religious occurrences such as spiritual and mystic experiences. It’s hard to take this viewpoint seriously considering the severe lack of facts and proof that the theological viewpoint...
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...businesses. 11. You can give prestige to your name. Daniel Gonzalez 13/06/2015 English 12 First Draft, Argumentative Essay 35 Minutes “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity.” (1st Timothy 4:12) This is one of the most important verses the Bible has for young people, in fact this verse changed my life since the moment I read it. What I understand when I read this verse is: Even though you are young, you can still do great things! God has great things for young people; we only need to discover them in our daily life. Every young person should be an entrepreneur, because it gives him the opportunity to build his own future, set an example in society, and help his family since he is young. I have always liked entrepreneurship, and I believe it is the best way for a young person to make his dreams come true, make and...
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...proves gods existence, this argument is as follows: God is a being that which no greater can be conceived, a being that exists in reality is better than one that just solely exists in the mind, therefore god must exist in reality. Anselm himself argued that even through reason, those without faith could not truly understand god, as Anselm stated that the argument was never meant to for faith upon someone but this argument itself was only for the reassurance of faith, he himself already accepts gods existence. Anselm considered that reason alone can lead to error and therefore has to be supported by faith as it is only through faith that greater understanding can be achieved. if the believer accepts there is god then the ontological argument may be a valid argument that god’s existence is necessary. In the same way a triangle has 3 sides, for a believer that believes they understand the concept of god then for them god exists to quote Anselm: “For I believe this too, that ‘unless I believe I shall not understand’”. Therefore Anselm himself believes that it does not actually prove anything unless you have this preconceived notion about the existence of god, this is also known as faith. Karl Barth supports the idea that the argument in itself was to not prove gods existence but it is a prayer, this is something that many of Anselm’s critics miss. Barth argues that Anselm’s definition of god is not present as the beginning of an argument but as a description by a believer of what...
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...cause of nearly all wars, poverty, bigotry, racism, terrorism, and human suffering. It is also the most fundamental hindrance of scientific progress that mankind faces and should therefore be methodically phased out and replaced by atheism, secular humanism, and most of all, an education focused primarily on scientific literacy. What is the Essence of Religion?: It was once an inconceivable act for a human being to question the existence of some sort of a creator god, or gods. People had all the evidence they needed right in front of them: they were conscious and alive, the world was beautiful, coincidences happened which seemed much like prayer being answered, and the earth was encased inside of a celestial sphere while the heavens appeared to revolve directly around the earth, making man the very center of this profound design; it was almost as if the world was created specifically for humans. Thus, organized religion was born. Religion is the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, esp. a personal God or gods. Religion is an organized collection of beliefs, cultural systems, and world views that relate humanity to an order of existence. The earliest evidence of religious ideas dates back several hundred thousand years to the Middle and Lower Paleolithic periods....
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...claim to be God? p45 (madman, lunatic, the Devil of Hell) Hide 2 What empirical evidence sets Christianity apart from other belief systems? -The Bible's demonstrated ability to predict the future. -Chrisitianity is the only religion that gives fulfulled prophecy as one of its bases for crediblity -The Bible has a transforming power to change the lives of individuals 3 Name two sources that establish an early date of scripture. -Septuagint and the Dead Sea Scrolls p49 4 What is the unified theme of the Bible? Redemption of God? 5 What are the four qualities of inspiration? -Inspired guidance by the Holy Spirit -Inspried personality of the authors -Inspired words -Inspired text p60 6 T/F: Inspiration incorporates the personality of the writer into the final product? TRUE p60 7 According to conceptual inspiration, what was inspired? Ø God inspired theideas of Scripture, yet failed to direct the authors to record specific times Ø It is not thethoughts of the Bible that were inspired but the men who wrote the Bible whowere inspired. p62 8 What does Partial Inspiration state? -God inspired parts of Scripture -failed to identify which parts of Scripture were inspired p62 9 What does Limited Inspiration state? -God inspired...
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...In order for outsiders to see Christians as the church, believers need to be more committed to God, be more compassionate when sharing their faith, and be more transparent to visitors. Without these qualities, the church can seem uninviting. As Towns explains, "God designed the church to be a place where interactive relationships help believers experience God" (108). How can visitors experience God's love if believers are not being more like Jesus? This is why it is so important to be aware, as believers, how outsiders view the church as a whole. With these thoughts in mind, the church can only improve. A few ways, for believers to become more committed to God, is for them not to be caught up in the everyday lifestyle. There is so much technology in our world that distracts our attention from God. We need to be in the Word every day to feel His presence. God is our Father. As Towns informs, "family is the foundational social institution of society" (107). Staying committed to a local church is another way for believers to strengthen their relationship with God. Attending only on Sundays; or holidays, does not seem trustworthy or genuine. Towns informs, "The church is a flock that follows the Shepherd" (106). Daily attendance at a local church allows believers to grow in relationship with fellow believers. We were not meant to go through situations alone. The church is one body, with members of unique gifts. The church is suppose to help each other with whatever they need. Outsiders...
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...Section one: Did Jesus claim to be God?, discloses the dissimilar stand for Christians on the true state of Jesus Christ whether His is God or is He a man or is He God and a man at the Same time. Section two: Does the Bible Have Authority, discusses how the Christians were made to accept as true that the Bible is the sole basis for the words of God. Section three: How can we be confident that Jesus is returning?, opens the notion on where we are heading after our journey in this world. DID JESUS CLAIM TO BE GOD? The confusion on the true state of Jesus Christ often disrupts the mind of the believers on choosing their stand. However, the Holy Scriptures have the apparent stand on the issue on how to recognize Jesus Christ. Believers were divided to three groups on their belief on Christ’s true status such as: Jesus Christ is God, Jesus Christ is a man and last of all, Jesus Christ is God and a man at the same time. According to Apostle Paul, Jesus Christ is a man however a man that serves as the lone mediator of man to God (I Timothy 2:5). According to Apostle Peter, Jesus Christ is man approved of God by miracles and wonders and signs (Acts 2:22). Moreover, Apostle Matthew also declares Jesus Christ to be a man who was conceived in the womb of Mary (Matthew 1:18, 20). The teaching that Jesus Christ is God and a man at the same time was renounced by the Holy Scriptures to be false since the Lord God Himself stated that He is God and not a man (HOSEA 11:9) (Ezekias...
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...This means that all events within the Bible, all accounts of miracles, stories, the Flood, Moses and the Burning Bush, the resurrection of Jairus’s daughter and the healing of the unclean woman, everything, is completely true. However, it’s worth noting that this only makes sense to the believer, thus reinforcing faith rather than introducing it. In an era where logic and mathematical truth predominantly takes priority over unreliable accounts, many believe the events in the Bible to be completely true. Great thinkers such as Aquinas believe that miracle of Jesus’s resurrection is an infallible truth. If this is the case, many would ask “well, how can you prove he was resurrected and it wasn’t somebody who looked similar to Jesus and simply impersonated them or played a practical joke?”, well, to the believer, the miracles in the Bible is their understanding of how God interacts with our universe, and so demonstrating the theistic God that is Christianity. However if this is true, it brings many questions to the table, such as are miracles really a miracle for everyone, or more likely one mans blessing yet another mans curse? In relation to this, Maurice Wiles commented that a God who performs miracles for some yet not others is an arbitrary and a partisan God, meaning he...
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