Learning Genesis

[Mitspa]

How can you describe something as being from another realm when you don't actually know what that realm is?

I've no doubt that if I had faith in god as you do that I would enjoy these mysteries but I require evidence before acceptance.

If god is something that "the mind cannot grasp" how do you understand it?

That's the point we are More than just a brain, in fact it is known that the heart is very much the ruler of the brain.
And I don't understand everything or even most things about the spirit realm, but I have some ability to understand. Its like the Ocean, I have some understanding but I must learn as I go along the truths of that realm.

Depending on how one describes the term "mind"? For that could be just the head or all the senses including spiritual etc..

 

[God calls me Olivia]

'Believe in colours' is not how I would describe it. I perceive things as having a colour because of how my eyes and brain interpret the reflection of those lightwaves from that object.

Other people will have a slightly different perecption of a certain 'colour' than I do. Other animal species see things much differently and see lightwaves that are invisible to me but the actual lightwaves absorbed or reflected by the object are the same.

I can see you are going to have fun with this.

Okay so you know that color really can't be measured by anything but sight and that there is no way to measure what a person's perception of that color is. Sounds a lot like your view of people and the Holy Spirit. All things really come down to the experiential. If you were to have a thread asking members of this forum to state things that God told them in advance (that they didn't know) yet came true, you would have pages of testimony. For example, when I used to have a big stereo over where I slept, God one night told me to take it down because there was going to be an earthquake. I did and what do you know an earthquake happened in the middle of the night. I am sure that most believers on here have tons of experiences like this. I do.

 

[God calls me Olivia]

How can you describe something as being from another realm when you don't actually know what that realm is?

I've no doubt that if I had faith in god as you do that I would enjoy these mysteries but I require evidence before acceptance.

If god is something that "the mind cannot grasp" how do you understand it?

Faith is the only way to understand the spiritual realm. What if you were willing to give up your unbelief and then with full heart, mind, and conscience be willing to trust in God to reveal himself to you? How in any way would this harm you? You could always go back to this existence that you are experiencing. It is like a scientist saying I want to know but I am not willing to do the experiment.

All science starts out as something the mind can't grasp until someone finds a way to grasp it. Believers know that the only way to grasp this concept is by faith. How would faith hurt you?

 

[TubbyTubby]

Faith is the only way to understand the spiritual realm. What if you were willing to give up your unbelief and then with full heart, mind, and conscience be willing to trust in God to reveal himself to you? How in any way would this harm you? You could always go back to this existence that you are experiencing. It is like a scientist saying I want to know but I am not willing to do the experiment.

All science starts out as something the mind can't grasp until someone finds a way to grasp it. Believers know that the only way to grasp this concept is by faith. How would faith hurt you?

It's not a matter of willing, more that I can't accept blind faith - it just isn't an option for the way my mind works. This obviously appears quite bizarre to you but if I were to ask you to suspend your faith for a few days and explore the wonders of science and then go back to your gods later you would be equally as stuck I guess.

 

[TubbyTubby]

Okay so you know that color really can't be measured by anything but sight and that there is no way to measure what a person's perception of that color is. Sounds a lot like your view of people and the Holy Spirit. All things really come down to the experiential. If you were to have a thread asking members of this forum to state things that God told them in advance (that they didn't know) yet came true, you would have pages of testimony. For example, when I used to have a big stereo over where I slept, God one night told me to take it down because there was going to be an earthquake. I did and what do you know an earthquake happened in the middle of the night. I am sure that most believers on here have tons of experiences like this. I do.

I don't really have a view about the holy spirit as there is no evidence for it, same for messages from god.

Did you warn your friends about the earthquake?

 

[calvin]

It's not a matter of willing, more that I can't accept blind faith - it just isn't an option for the way my mind works. This obviously appears quite bizarre to you but if I were to ask you to suspend your faith for a few days and explore the wonders of science and then go back to your gods later you would be equally as stuck I guess.

So then Tubby Tubby, when you typed "....and then go back to your gods later.....", your use of the plural of god; was that a typo or something else? Was it born out of a total contempt for Christians some of whom are dialogging with you? Christians have only one God, and since that word is used by Christian believers as a proper noun, the Queen's English requires the use of a capital 'G'.

 

[TubbyTubby]

Ignorance I suppose, I always refer to gods in plural because there are so many of them. I suppose on a christian forum I should accept your monotheism and use a singular term. I will try to remember to capitalise when referring to your God.

 

[AllieWi]

@TubbyTubby

I saw in previous posts, you have inquired about Jesus, and have questions about even his existence, and if he did exist, was he really who he said he was. What’s interesting is Jews have been asking the same question for nearly 2000 years. Was Jesus really the Son of God? The majority of Jews have so far rejected Jesus as the Messiah, and believe the New Testament is mostly blasphemous. Yet, in their very own bible, Jesus is all over their scriptures. You just need to know how to look for him. If the universe he created is awesome and unimaginable, so must his word, or the Holy Scriptures. I will attempt to show you Jesus was there from the very beginning.

Here are the first 7 words of Genesis in the Hebrew. Hebrew reads right to left. I am no Hebrew expert or scholar by any means, but to use a mechanical term, you can say each letter, word or phrase is akin to an automobile engine. It is made up of many parts, and you can tear it apart to see what it looks like inside. That’s what is unique about the Hebrew language, it is very concrete versus English or Greek that has many abstract terms and vocabulary. Each letter has a meaning to it and had its own picture in the ancient pictograph of what was seen with the natural eye.

בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ

As you can see, Genesis 1:1 is made up of 7 words, and I want you to get a picture of a menorah in your head with each word making up one candlestick each. Menorahs have 7 candlesticks by the way.

Revelation 1:12-13 And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks; And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man,

John 1:1-3;14 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.
14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of lthe only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.

So if Jesus was the Word, and he was from the beginning, we should be able to see him from the very foundation of the world.

Revelation 13:8-9 And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. If any man have an ear, let him hear.

Job 38:4-7 Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? Or who hath stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof; When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
Isa 28:16 therefore so says the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I place in Zion a Stone for a foundation, a tried Stone, a precious Cornerstone, a sure Foundation;

Eph 2:19-20 Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God; And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone; In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord:

Kind of getting the picture? If Jesus was the cornerstone, the bible the Jewish people use has the chief cornerstone right smack dab in the beginning. I will attempt to show you in an upcoming post using the Hebrew language. If the bible is true, it truly is the most awesome book ever inspired as nobody could ever construct a book in this way.

I have tears in my eyes. Thank you for that. INCREDIBLE.

 

[calvin]

Ignorance I suppose, I always refer to gods in plural because there are so many of them. I suppose on a christian forum I should accept your monotheism and use a singular term. I will try to remember to capitalise when referring to your God.

Thank you.

 

[Silk]

Tubby, I think you missed Olivia's point. We sense (hear) sound but most of what we know about sound scientifically was arrived at by centuries of experiments, thinking and theorizing. Strangely enough, sound waves, tho unseen, are proven the first time you hear something (except the deaf who must believe what everyone else says they hear). I don't need to know how sound works to hear. I don't need to know how light works to see. I don't need to know how the TV works to watch it. You have claimed you are spiritually deaf, dumb, and blind and claim because of this state that the spiritual realm is unreal, imagination, wishful thinking, whatever. You are not getting that you are talking to people where the spiritual realm is proven. And everyone is trying to tell you that you must ask for your "own proof" by the creator and it will be given.But you do need to listen. We get that testimonial will not work. Maybe reading scripture and discussing it will lead you in the right direction - maybe not. We all see you on a cliff in that realm you don't believe in and we don't want you to walk off that cliff without trying to help you see what you are doing. Wouldn't you try to do the same for us, if the positions were reversed?

 

[God calls me Olivia]

It's not a matter of willing, more that I can't accept blind faith - it just isn't an option for the way my mind works. This obviously appears quite bizarre to you but if I were to ask you to suspend your faith for a few days and explore the wonders of science and then go back to your gods later you would be equally as stuck I guess.

Hi Tubby, It is not that your mind can only work a certain way, it is that you use your mind in a certain way. You have control over your mind, even if it seems that it has control over you. If you really desired to know God you would force yourself to change your mind by deciding to not believe that you can only think one way. There are atheists and agnostics that became believers when some type of catastrophic incident happened in their lives or when they realized they couldn't take the void inside anymore and that they needed something more powerful and intelligent in their lives to help them intervene in the problem. Does this mean that those who were saved that way used their imagination to overcome? No what it means is that their lives were so horrible that they were willing to do anything including suspending their disbelief and believing that God is real.

Suspending disbelief is most often used for stories and media. It is while you are immersed in the story you go out of your normal mind and believe what is happening in the story or movie. The reader or movie goer will in a sense become part of the story as an onlooker believing what is happening because they are so engaged in the movie that they forget their usual reality. However suspension of disbelief can be used in real life as well.

You would need to suspend what you believe for a time, that is get out of your mindset so you could have faith in what God is saying. The bible says, "faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ" (Romans 10:17). To build up faith you would not only have to hear the word, but hear the word spiritually. There are many who look at the bible, like Genesis and yet do not really learn anything because they are reading it from the physical mindset. Those who are saved however, are taught to see the bible spiritually by the Holy Spirit. Even if you don't believe the Holy Spirit you should not discount the spiritual reading because that is the reading that brings faith. Of course you have to be willing to suspend your disbelief and give hearing the bible spiritually a try (not that the bible is a story, but it is the idea of being willing to really hear a different perspective without allowing all your thoughts to contradict the perspective in a stone like manner). That is hearing what the Holy Spirit is saying to believers. It really is fascinating. If contradictions come up in your mind it would be good to ask questions and be open to the possibility that what we are saying could be truth rather than completely dismissing it since we know that proof of proof would have to be infinite for the material realm to be proven, so proof by the experiential of Christians shouldn't fully be discounted.

When I saw how many pages there were in this thread, I thought everyone would be further along in Genesis then they are. I personally was excited to go through a spiritual reading of Genesis and would still like to. However, before we start that, if you are still willing, I would like to separate our God from the gods of other traditions since that is something that you wonder about. Why do people choose one and not the other.

So I would ask you, what would be the qualities of perfect God in your opinion?

 

[TubbyTubby]

I'll come back to these questions soon but I want to get on with Genesis really.

11 Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth”; and it was so. 12 And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 13 So the evening and the morning were the third day.

I think I was up to here. What I don't understand is how did plant life survive without sunlight? If it was only for a day (as in 24 hours) then I can see how but if a day was a thousand years as some suggest then the plants would simply die.

 

[TubbyTubby]

Hi Tubby, It is not that your mind can only work a certain way, it is that you use your mind in a certain way. You have control over your mind, even if it seems that it has control over you. If you really desired to know God you would force yourself to change your mind by deciding to not believe that you can only think one way. There are atheists and agnostics that became believers when some type of catastrophic incident happened in their lives or when they realized they couldn't take the void inside anymore and that they needed something more powerful and intelligent in their lives to help them intervene in the problem. Does this mean that those who were saved that way used their imagination to overcome? No what it means is that their lives were so horrible that they were willing to do anything including suspending their disbelief and believing that God is real.

Suspending disbelief is most often used for stories and media. It is while you are immersed in the story you go out of your normal mind and believe what is happening in the story or movie. The reader or movie goer will in a sense become part of the story as an onlooker believing what is happening because they are so engaged in the movie that they forget their usual reality. However suspension of disbelief can be used in real life as well.

You would need to suspend what you believe for a time, that is get out of your mindset so you could have faith in what God is saying. The bible says, "faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ" (Romans 10:17). To build up faith you would not only have to hear the word, but hear the word spiritually. There are many who look at the bible, like Genesis and yet do not really learn anything because they are reading it from the physical mindset. Those who are saved however, are taught to see the bible spiritually by the Holy Spirit. Even if you don't believe the Holy Spirit you should not discount the spiritual reading because that is the reading that brings faith. Of course you have to be willing to suspend your disbelief and give hearing the bible spiritually a try (not that the bible is a story, but it is the idea of being willing to really hear a different perspective without allowing all your thoughts to contradict the perspective in a stone like manner). That is hearing what the Holy Spirit is saying to believers. It really is fascinating. If contradictions come up in your mind it would be good to ask questions and be open to the possibility that what we are saying could be truth rather than completely dismissing it since we know that proof of proof would have to be infinite for the material realm to be proven, so proof by the experiential of Christians shouldn't fully be discounted.

When I saw how many pages there were in this thread, I thought everyone would be further along in Genesis then they are. I personally was excited to go through a spiritual reading of Genesis and would still like to. However, before we start that, if you are still willing, I would like to separate our God from the gods of other traditions since that is something that you wonder about. Why do people choose one and not the other.

So I would ask you, what would be the qualities of perfect God in your opinion?

I would want a perfect God to create a perfect world. In fact if God was perfect why bother creating a world full of sinners anyway? Why not just 'float around' and enjoy being perfect instead of bothering about us at all? If I was him and wanted a planet full of people just to worship me I would have been a little more careful with my creation.

A perfect God would have no need for us. If he must have us as playthings and to worship him then at least make the Earth a nicer place to live. There is no need for disease in a perfect Gods world unless he delights in suffering. Same goes for earthquakes, volcanos and tsunamis et al.

And my God would show himself, just once would do instead of being hidden from view for eternity so you need faith to believe him.

And a perfect God would not allow his creation to make up thousands of other gods to challenge his position and lead to argument and wars.

I could go on....

 

[Silk]

God did not create robots - He gave us free will to choose between Him and evil. In Eden, before the Fall, there was no disease, no death - just abundance. Humankind chose to know evil and the rest, as they say, is history.

 

[TubbyTubby]

God did not create robots - He gave us free will to choose between Him and evil. In Eden, before the Fall, there was no disease, no death - just abundance. Humankind chose to know evil and the rest, as they say, is history.

I would suggest that I am the only one demonstrating free will by choosing neither God nor evil.

 

[Silk]

If you don't choose God, you have automatically accepted evil. Those be the only two options. You have not demonstrated free will, you have defaulted.

 

[calvin]

I'll come back to these questions soon but I want to get on with Genesis really.

11 Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth”; and it was so. 12 And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 13 So the evening and the morning were the third day.

I think I was up to here. What I don't understand is how did plant life survive without sunlight? If it was only for a day (as in 24 hours) then I can see how but if a day was a thousand years as some suggest then the plants would simply die.

We have already seen that before the Sun and Moon were created there was light....why would that light be incapable of sustaining plant life?

 

[calvin]

I would want a perfect God to create a perfect world. In fact if God was perfect why bother creating a world full of sinners anyway? Why not just 'float around' and enjoy being perfect instead of bothering about us at all? If I was him and wanted a planet full of people just to worship me I would have been a little more careful with my creation.

A perfect God would have no need for us. If he must have us as playthings and to worship him then at least make the Earth a nicer place to live. There is no need for disease in a perfect Gods world unless he delights in suffering. Same goes for earthquakes, volcanos and tsunamis et al.

And my God would show himself, just once would do instead of being hidden from view for eternity so you need faith to believe him.

And a perfect God would not allow his creation to make up thousands of other gods to challenge his position and lead to argument and wars.

I could go on....

Define perfect. If someone makes something that 100% fulfills the purpose for which it is made, how is that not perfect??

 

[TubbyTubby]

If you don't choose God, you have automatically accepted evil. Those be the only two options. You have not demonstrated free will, you have defaulted.

No, the idea of only two choices being free will stems only from your monotheistic belief. Your definition of free will is nowhere near the actual definition of making a choice with no constraints as you have constrained yourself by having two choices.

Free will is actually a lot more than God/evil even if you refuse to believe me. I don't choose God and I am most definately not evil therefore I must be something else - "good without God".

 

[calvin]

No, the idea of only two choices being free will stems only from your monotheistic belief. Your definition of free will is nowhere near the actual definition of making a choice with no constraints as you have constrained yourself by having two choices.

Free will is actually a lot more than God/evil even if you refuse to believe me. I don't choose God and I am most definately not evil therefore I must be something else - "good without God".

By whose standards are you declared "not evil"? Yours?
If you, or I were compared to Jesus, we would both come a very poor second.