I have been thinking lately that people on this site are so very concerned with facts, knowledge, evidence, and intellect. I must include myself in this strive to know more about the truth and it is often invigorating to debate about issues involving Christianity and personal belief. However, I think I have been overlooking the most powerful tool for sharing my testimony with others...and that is just it. I need to share personally how God has changed my own life. We could argue Scripture up and down or talk about contentions that seem to exist, but what about the personal testimony of believers and how Jesus Christ has changed their lives.
When you examine Paul's life in the New Testement, you find that he did not have time to attend Bible College after his life was dramatically changed by the power of the Holy Spirit. He immediatly began to preach and write letters to churches based on his own testimony. Just days previously, he was heavily persecuting Christians...and then suddenly he was one himself. That is a pretty dramatic change and one that can only be found as supernatural. He later became one of the most influential people in the development and spread of the Christian church. He didn't have all the answers but he sought to follow after Christ with his whole heart.
I have been very convicted by this simple message of personal life change. Perhaps it is not all about the facts and hard evidence. I can tell you with all integrity that Jesus Christ has changed my life....PERSONALLY. I would not take such an avid stance on this unless I knew for certain that He can give you the abundant love that you have always needed. I would not share this with others if I wasn't sure that Christ has the ability to rock your world! If it wasn't the absolute truth, it would not even be worth sharing so why would I? I already know without a shadow of a doubt that Christ loves me and I will someday spend eternity in heaven with Him....it has nothing whatsoever to do with the good works that I have done. So, why would I tell anyone about it unless I really wanted everyone else to know of the greatest love story ever told? I wouldn't...but I do because I know the love that He has for you, a love so great that He died a humiliating death so that you can be with Him!
Sometimes it is just as simple as this...a simple verse found in the book of John.
John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever should believe in Him might not perish but have eternal life."
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Of course, I'm unaware of any historical evidence of Paul's sudden conversion. I am disinclined to trust the bible if that is the only source.
"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything."
Friedrich Nietzsche
If you are not counting on Paul's sudden conversion in the Bible, would you discredit my own conversion as well as the millions of others who have come to know Christ as their personal Lord and Saviour? Paul is just one example that happens to be taken from the Bible. I guess you don't have to count on that, but at least trust me that Jesus Christ has changed my own life in a totally amazing way.
Bekka Joy
The reason I don't take the bible's tale of Paul seriously is because I have no reason to believe the bible is true. I do beleive that you are Christian and I'm sure that it makes you happy and I assume that it gives you a sence of purpose in a way that you didn't have before. However, people of other faiths expirience, I can gather from what they tell me, the exact same thing that you describe. Faith can do that. Sort of like the placebo affect.
"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything."
Friedrich Nietzsche
"Just days previously, he was heavily persecuting Christians...and then suddenly he was one himself. That is a pretty dramatic change and one that can only be found as supernatural."
Claude Vorilhon became Rael and began preaching that Elohim, currently translated as God should be translated as "those who came from the sky," essentially aliens. That would make the creators of life on Earth extraterrestrial beings. This is clearly a pretty big change in thought brought on by supernatural or at least strange circumstances, and by your reasoning must be true. After all, it certainly changed his life and he has attracted a reasonable number of followers.
Anyone who doesn't already believe in Christ will likely dismiss your personal experiences as delusion and self-deception, no more convincing than arguning facts or scripture. It is YOUR faith, and those of us atheists not in dire philosophical straits aren't going to be converted because you managed to make your life better and attributed it to God or Jesus or whoever.
By all means continue to do good things and live a good life, but don't expect too many converts around here. Why focus on trying to get people to believe that your entirely subjective experience is objective reality?
Res ipsa loquitur.
memento mori, mahalo.
"Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real-estate above principles."
"I have been thinking lately that people on this site are so very concerned with facts, knowledge, evidence, and intellect. I must include myself in this strive to know more about the truth"
You say this, but then you follow on to say this:
"Just days previously, he was heavily persecuting Christians...and then suddenly he was one himself. That is a pretty dramatic change and one that can only be found as supernatural."
What??!! A guy changes his mind, so that 'can only be found as supernatural"? How can you claim to have even the slightest interest in truth if you are so willing to write off something as unmiraculous as this as only explanable through supernatural means. You've given up and yileded to fairyland explanations before you've even started to question.
"Perhaps it is not all about the facts and hard evidence."
Ahhh, so that first bit about how you were just like those who strive for truth was just to make you sound more credible. I get it. 'I'm just like you guys and even I, as one of you, can see the truth in Christianity. I know what you're thinking, but I'm not one of those other Christians, I'm into real truth." Then you just stop pretending and come out with it "perhaps it's not all about the facts and hard evidence".
Why be so disingenuous from the start? Why pretend to be concerned with truth, only to turn around and suggest that facts and hard evidence are superfluous in some way in deducing what is true? It's like me saying, hey guys I'm a Christian just like you, but I don't believe in God....
"I would not take such an avid stance on this unless I knew for certain that He can give you the abundant love that you have always needed."
Yes you would, of course you would, you just claimed that "perhaps it's not all about facts and hard evidence". You claim that a supernatural explanation is the only kind that could explain a man changing his mind. Now you expect us to find some shred of credibility in your 'avid stance' in something you claim to know for certain. I suggest you consider what 'certain' actually means.
"If it wasn't the absolute truth, it would not even be worth sharing so why would I?"
Um....
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I am the people my mother warned me about.
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/tuffgong
TUFFGONG
Senior Executive Administrator™
Actually, Paul was already a biblical scholar prior to his conversion. In Acts 22:3, Paul states that, "I am verily a man which am a Jew, born in Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, yet brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, and taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers, and was zealous toward God, as ye all are this day."
"Gamaliel" is a reference to Gamaliel the Elder, or Rabbi Gamaliel I. Paul is said to have studied Mosaic Law under Rabbi Gamaliel in Jerusalem during the mid-First Century C.E.
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"Vi Veri Vniversum Vivus Vici." ~ V.