Tr2

I am a paramedic and do not consider nurses part of the "brotherhood". I respect what they do, but they do an entirely different job. An in-hospital setting has a fraction of the risks. What point is that? I proved that you don't need faith to do good. Your response was basically, "they don't count". Considering the amount of skill required to do the job I think it's fantastic pay.

Because it's a convenient excuse for the lack of ability to produce somethingn that never existed.

You are dismissing what every firefighter, police officer, paramedic, and soldier do because they get small paychecks for what they do.

Satan is real, he plays for the Sabers.

That is exactly what you are doing. Do you think $30k a year is the reason why hundreds of thousands of men and women put their lives on the line to help other people? I know that they didn't put their nation's heroes on crosses. They executed people who had committed crimes. This man was a criminal. Is there anything that causes you to believe this man did one single good thing in his life? Don't give me what he could have.I know the behavior of people like the thief on the cross. His last bit of desparation on the cross was motivated by a fear of going to hell. I remember treating a man, a long time ago, in the back of my ambulance for almost 30 mins. This guy dealt narcotics to kids and the father of a kid who had overdosed had shot him. He cried all the way to the hospital, saying how sorry he was. He lived. I'll never forget seeing him, a year later, standing outside of a school selling coke to 8th graders. Whenever i think of the thief I think of this man because they exhibited the same remorse when they got desparate. I am not fooled as easily as others.

I know about the various things that Joseph Smith penned. I'm not concerned about that. My comment was directed at the historical writings about ancient civilizations. That history is the one that I want to see verified and proven. I would also like some verification about these gold plates that vanished into thin air before any objective person could view them. It seems very convenient to me. Who? People who have spent their entire Christian lives with their heads buried in books and not experiencing what God really has? Of course they would learn to find fault with it. Christianity is a very poor religion when you do not experience the life that Jesus died to give you. I know that if it wasn't for certain life experiences I would never be able to accept much of the bible.I think many scholars have contributed wonderfully to Christianity over the years. However anyone who doesn't have a real-experiential relationship with Christ, their opinions do not interest me greatly. If somebody came along and wrote a book about fatherhood, yet had no children or child raising experience, would you accept their opinions about what you should be doing? To a very large degree you would not. Credibility is the biggest thing here. Much of Christianity you have to experience outside of the literature. I guess you failed to read this in your bible, "Paul's letter to.......". If i were to write a letter "Trident's letter to snow", who do you think that would be intended for? i don't know why you are failing to understand this, it is not very difficult. Why should I believe he is a prophet? Convince me. I wouldn't have chosen them to be. However you can clearly see that God chosen them and set them apart. You can't honestly say somebody like Moses, Joshua, Jeremiah or Isaiah was not set apatt from everybody else. If so then I don't think there is any point in discussing this further because you cannot see the obvious. But you dismissed it before you ever read it in the first place. I can guarantee that you have never taken an honest look at it. Never examined LDS literature as closely as you have the bible. I think that you'd rather just not know if your religion is a sham. It's easier that way. If you ever went through your own literature the same way you went through the bible, you would dismiss mormonism very quickly. There may be holes in the bible, but nowhere near the holes that are in mormonism. So you cannot defend your point, so you just ignore what I say and counter-attack. Typical.

So it is dependent on me. If I earn something for myself, how does that make God good? I didn't realize that God was so much like my boss, he will only give me what I earn for myself. My boss is a jackass, what does that say about a God that would do the same?

Are you keeping that information from the rest of us? I'm just guessing that there are more athiests in the world than Rabbi's who feel that way. I didn't realized just because people had an opinion that made it right. I do know that the more educated people are, the less Christianity is about having a relationship with God. I can't name many scholars who can describe the relationship they have with God. The 10 commandments were God's laws to civilization. Paul's letters were not. Do you ever wonder why Paul spoke of the major issues of those civilizations and why he was so specific? Since this is your train of thought, every time I speak to another person on this board will you think I am speaking to you? Don't worry, you don't have to explain why you won't dare look at mormon doctrine and literature the same way you look at the bible. You are so scared of learning truth that you'd rather not know. I can't imagine living like that. IF mormonism was wrong, wouldn't you want to know about it?So who is a prophet? A group of men decided that GBH was a prophet. The lifestyles of the OT prophets made it obvious who the prophets were. I agree that God speaks to prophets, I just want to know who they are. No I should just claim all these visitations by angels, come up with a book that nobody knows the origins to and nobody can prove the existance of, and say "this is what God wants". I think I've got this cult thing down now.

Moses defended a fellow countryman not a brother. I want you as my laywer then next time I kill somebody. When I post on a Tao te Chin discussion board then I will get up to date on that. Can i received God's grace without works? Yes or no will do. If the answer is no then grace is not about God's goodness, it's all about me.

Why should I believe LDS scriptures? There is no historical basis for it, we don't know where it comes from, considering it is 200 years old there is no good reason why we should not have originals to compare the writings to.So because a few Rabbi's don't believe the OT that mkaes it so? They do not speak for me, nor countless other scholars who do not agree with them. You fail to understand that Paul was not speaking to the United States of America in 2004. He would have addressed other CULTURAL-SPECIFIC-ISSUES (which is entirely what he did). If I were to write a letter to George Bush regarding what I thought he was to do, and you got hold of it and applied those words to your life, that would be stupid because I was not talking to you in the first place. The OT and NT were written entirely different. How many times do I have to say that? Then that is hypocritical. You will not subject your own beliefs to facts. You are living in a dream world. You would have a tough tiem justifying that based on the following facts:1) God speaks to modern man through biblical scriuptures. Using the NT, it is impossible to justify that. 2) In the OT God spoke in person directly to the people. Things in 2004 are not the same as they were in the OT. They cannot be compared because things are so different. You need to stop comparing these two very different cultures as though the same logic still applies.

Firefighers, police officers, paramedics, EMT's, and soldiers. I will use the men that I know as proof. On my truck there are 3 other men. We go on an average of 10 calls per day. We help at least one person each call, but in truth it's far higher. I'll use 1 for the sake of this discussion. We work roughly 20 days per month. Over a 25 year career, based on those figures, each of these men will have helped 60,000 people. Not one of them believes in God. I guess you can do good without faith. How many mormons can say they have helped 60,000 people? No, he died on the cross. Once you were put on the cross you stayed there until you were dead. He never got down off of that cross to do anything. I know that, but you are linking grace to faith and faith to works. I am telling you what you are telling me. I will not argue that point, but that is not what we are discussing. So is God's grace non existant without our works? Nobody ever came down off of the cross alive, the Roman government made sure of that. Some people are failing to realize that the cross was equivalent to our gas chambers, and hangings. It was an execution, not something somebody got out of. Galatians 1, and then read Joseph Smith's tale of how God chose him to bring mormonism to the world. You will see exactly what I am talking about. Not really. Mormons are dependent on works. If you believe what I believe then you'll believe that grace is present with or without works. Works are nothing more than an outward sign of faith. We differ in opinions here. I agree. So you care about the person you spend your life with but you don't care about the person who you would spend eternity with? I can't wrap my head around that kind of thinking. You just said that's what you did. You think, you do not rely on books. Remember? I don't know how you do one without the other. Read the whole bible, then you'll be able to have a half-educated discussion here. I've read a few pages out of a surgical procedures book but I'd never be stupid enough to go up to a physician and try to tell him about something I know very little about. That is what you're doing here. There are many people well read on what we are discussing here. You really have no clue to what you're talking about. Like who? That argument is not as relevant today as it was 100 years ago. I cannot think of a civilization that has not heard about Jesus. I can tell you about the many that have rejected Him. Show me the words of Christ that back that up. Don't worry, you'll see how true it is one day. If you want to gamble with you life like that then you must be one helluva poker player. Moses murdered a man in cold blood right before God called him to save Israel. Paul likked Christians before he wrote some of the most important literature in the bible. The most important men in the history of Christianity were some of the most immoral men. Some people need to realize that just because you think one way, that doesn't mean God thinks the same way. Unlessyou are naive enough to think that God is wrong for disagreeing with you.

True, but just because you do good works doesn't mean you have faith. I see phonies every day. The hardest workers of good I know are athiests and agnostics. But he didn't. He did nothing before he died.

I notice how it's the dumb ones who have the discussions and the smart ones who avoid them. I guess it is smart to stay away from a discussion in which you have nothing to say. You have no place is this discussion, just keep moving.

I noticed that there wasn't a whole lot about works, just when it was combined with faith, and even then you didn't show how works justify us. I'll never argue with the faith justification. Faith gives ground for grace. Faith requires no action, for example look at the thief on the cross. He did NOTHING to deserve salvation.

Do you care about the person you marry either, does it matter?Your personal opinions are unfounded in anything of substance. They are nothing more than uneducated ideas you want to believe. USN, Let's pretend you and I knew a guy named Sam. You describe Sam as 6'1, 210lbs, with a masters degree in science, who had 3 kids, and a wife, who was born in Dallas. I describe him as 5'6, 120lbs, who dropped out of school at 16 yrs old, who had a gay lover. would you say we're talking about the same person? That's basically what's happening here. I can show you numerous spots where the bible says to avoid what mormonism currently presents. Would that be sufficient? I can show you where the bible directly refutes mormon doctrine and where it refutes how mormonism came into existance. Would that be ok for you? Mormons believe they are saved by grace after they've done all they can do. The bible says we are saved by grace alone. That is quite a big difference.

At least you're being honest.In regards to what you mentioned about the gay bishop. What they have done is pick and choose what parts of the bible they are going to believe. They have made excuses as to why they shouldn't have to believe certain aspects of the bible. Whether it be mormonism, homosexuals, etc. the arguments all seem the same. There are certain beliefs that do not fit in with biblical scripture so there are reasons created why those scriptures are not relevant. I've seen it done by numerous groups. some have been rather innocent and others have been very bad. Things like LDS's word of wisdom are the smaller things. The WOW is not a biblical commandment but some treat it like it is. It isn't that bad in the long run, in fact it is probably good for you, it's just not a commandment and shouldn't be treated as such. I see the same liberities being taken now with the Old Testament scriptures. By the end of this e-mail I hope to at least convey what I think about all this. Whether you believe it or not is not my decison. We know quite a bit about how the bible was compiled. I wish I could locate a book where I read about an Egyptian General named Moses who fought many wars and had tremendous conquest in the exact same time period that the bible says Moses was around. Those writings were in no way associated with the bible, they made no connection with the bible. It was a history book, which was very solid evidence in convincing me that the OT was not a fictional story. We know who the people were, we can track their civilization, we know where they were.When the bible was compiled over 400 years they made no changes to the material itself. They just selected which would be included in the bible and which wouldn't. There were 4-5 main selection lists over those few hundred years. What we have now is a result of the best scholars of that day deciding which books fitted in and which didn't. Have you read all of the Aocrypha? There is a notable difference between those writingds and the bible. We have talked about the apocrypha before and why it's not in the bible so we don't need to go there again. No book has been scrutinized (sp?) like the bible has. That is why we have around 50 translations of the bible. Whenever I need to understand something I go through the major ones and figure out what they were trying to say. The books were chosen based on how they matched up to the rest of them. With the OT, there were so many books telling the same story. 2 people telling the same story is a good indication that it actually happened. I don't. Most of the bible's books have a distinct author. That is based on the author's writing style, who would have kept historical records at that time. There are a lot of ways to figure out that ..... wrote the book of..... Now you're trying to compare the OT to the NT in writing style. Most of the OT and the Gospels are historical accounts of what happened. All of Paul's writings were written for specific people at a specific time period addressing specific problems. If Paul's adivce was not to marry, thenI thik that was the best for the people he was writing to. If you wrote a letter to your wife and somebody got hold of it and made it universal, it wouldn't work for everybody because not everybody has the same relationship strengths/weaknesses as you and your wife. I accept historical literature as literate. Yes, we pick godly and ungodly beliefs to have. But you have never applied the same level of criticism to the BoM, D/C, POGP that you have applied to the bible. I know that because they couldn't hold up to a fraction of what you put the bible through. We wouldn't accept that? We would have no choice! What would we do about it? People could do nothing more than pout and say "this is not fair".Based on what you wrote is appears as though you do not have all the facts at your disposal, or are just choosing to ignore them. I find it funny that a some can have such objections to the bible yet so readily believe the BoM. It makes me laugh.

Well here is the big thing, we are not talking about the same person. If the Jesus of the bible was the same as the Jesus of mormonism then you would be correct and I'g be with you 100%. i am Jesus' brother by adoption. He is not Satan's brother. We've been here before and I've discussed this so many times I won't bother this time. To briefly describe my opinions: Jesus never bled in Gethsemane, He atoned for nothing in the garden, nobody shed the "passover lamb's" blood in the garden, the cross portrays a victorious Christ according to the bible where mormonism looks at the cross as a shameful sign. Want to know why this is so, go back into the archives. I won't post all this again because some are too lazy to use the search function. I am correcting misconceptions and lies about Jesus, if that deserves admonishment I welcome it. Of course that is important, it is the most basic nature of God. To suggest it's not important is ridiculous. Considering that the bible directly says this is NOT so, it is important. You don't seem to understand the most basic foundations of any of these belief systems. Or it could be that the crucifixion was the most common execution ritual in the Roman empire. The crucifixion was designed as a statement to those who would dare to break the laws.

No it wasn't aimed at you directly. at least that wasn't my intention. Relax tough guy. I wanted somebody to say this. The mormon Jesus: The literal son of god and his goddess wife The brother of all spirits born in heaven Was married and had wives Had a beginning Atoned for sin on the cross and in the garden of Gesthemene The bible's Jesus: Not the literal son of god and his goddess wife Not the brother of all spirits born in heaven Was not married and did not have wives Did not have a beginning Atoned for sin on the cross alone There is only one Christ, that is correct. That means one of these guys is an imposter. Those are opinions that cannot be backed up, what I posted are facts. Speak for yourself!

2 things: 1) Many LDS will not like this movie because it depicts the Jesus of the bible, not the Jesus of Mormonism. It depends of which Jesus you go to the theatre expecting to see the story of. Remember that it's ok to think differently from your church leaders. 2) If this film displays violence, good. Does anybody think that crucifixion is a pleasant thing? Finally somebody wants to make an accurate film. Will they show Jesus gasping for air on the cross like he would have been? Or will it show when they broke his legs, which was standard for all crucifixions? People do not appreciate things until they experience the realism of the event. Many people had no appreciation for WWII until Saving Private Ryan came out. Most didn't care about Somalia in 1993 until Black Hawk Down came out. People do not appreciate reality until they can see it. Considering that we don't crucify anyone these days maybe a movie will help communicate how horrible it actually was. I've read, in great detail, about what happened at those crucifixions and it was horrible. Some of the best films ever made have had R ratings. I'd rather have an R rated movie that portrays a real even rather than one of those nice Jesus films that did everything but have Him sing and dance while on his way to death.

You don't answer my questions. Why should I answer yours? You go off on these little trips by yourself and then get frustrated because I don't follow you. Give me a good reason why i should do something you refuse to do? I asked you a very simple question and I'll try again. If you refuse to believe that God could have killed people, as was being discussed here, why should I believe anything else the bible has to say regarding the character of God? A large portion of God speaking to Israel in the OT was regarding taking violence to their enemies. If this is not true then why should I believe the other parts of the bible where it says God speaks to men. Or more importantly why should i believe that God speaks to your prophet? This tactic of yours is not new. Question one part of the bible and that throws the rest off. When your religion exists for the purpose of undercutting the bible I guess this is to be expected. You answer my question and then, and only then, I'll answer yours. Am I really asking too much? Since you don't answer questions that are asked of you I don't anticipate you'll have anything to say other than some elitist comment that shows how much better you are than me.

snow, Again, you answered a question that nobody asked. Give me a reason why your argument holds and ground? Your source to discredit the bible is the bible itself. Why don't you spend more time talking about the issues at hand and less time thinking up insults. It is very easy to name call. You have not had a lot of success with the theological discussions that I've seen you involved in, since you've ducked most of them. Are you going to discuss anything here or just throw out insults? I used to act the way you do, then I turned 9 years old.

snow, So again, there is no basis whatsoever for you to want to not believe this. You just refuse to. At least be honest and say "I don't believe this because I don't want to". God's willingness to use deadly force is one of the most significant things of the Old Testament and you just want to cut it out because it doesn't you don't think God would do that. As I said before,why believe the parts about God being loving if you choose not to believe the other parts about him being harsh?

So there is no reason other than you just refuse to believe it. Do you think it is an accident whenever a police officer shoots somebody? "Oops, my hand mistakenly took my weapon out and woops I seemed to have pointed it at another person and by golly I just happened to depress the trigger." You are 100% correct. That reasoning and logic came from trial and error over time. If man cane come up with that logic, what do you think God is capable of? If a human being is smart enough to realize that is the best method of operation do you think God just might be clever enough to think of that too? Based on what I know of God, my only thought in this is, there must have been no other choice. I am not as smart as God and just because I might think it's wrong that doesn't make it so. Anyone out there who is as smart as God, feel free to give your opinion.I do wonder if anyone is willing to say "I do not know".

So you just don't want to believe it? You have no reason whatsoever other than you are picking and choosing what you want God to be like? I don't blame you for having a belief system where your God conforms to what you want him to be.What is your opinion of a SWAT team that shoots somebody to save the life of an innocent person?

Those children were murdered in cold blood because a fearful man decided it would be done. Do you have any reasons to think that? Or is it because you don't want to believe it. If you choose not to believe that portion of the bible why believe any other portion? How does one accept on thing and yet reject another?