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Messenger: Jeffrey Di Lion Sent: 12/12/2022 10:18:53 AM
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Bless up to all rasta bredrens and sistrens

I have done a likkle research on the bible and I have some critical questions.
These questions tho, are not for the Muta bible burning types. This is for the rastas who are PRO bible.

1. firstly i wonder about the bible being black people's story.

Most Rastas I'll ask would say that the skin of Yashua is described as burnt brass and his hair as wool, giving a clear picture of an African Christ. But when I read it myself, only his feet are like burnt brass and his hair is WHITE like wool and his whole face shines white. How could you get "white as wool" to "as wool" ?

Numbers 12 desccribes Miriam's face as being "White as snow" No matter how scared a black person is, His/her face could never change pigment.

Mutabaruka recently asked a question: "How can The Bible be black people's story if the first new testament was printed in greek?

2. In the last chapters of Moses, the Israelites kill the Midianites and take their women as prisoners (Sex prisoner?)
They even sacrifice some of the women. Deuteronomy 2:34 says: "At that time we took all his towns and completely destroyed them - men, women and children. We left no survivors." So they killed innocents too.. They also kill innocent animals just to burn them for god and not even to eat them. How could that ever be from god?

Deuteronomy 22:28 says that if a man rape a woman, he shall marry her. So there is no punishment for him, but he gets a wife instead? hmmm..


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RGex4HSCS8

In this documentary Jordan Maxwell goes deep into the doctrines which Christianity has taken from the spirituality of ancient Egypt.

For example: He finds out that the first cross was egyptian and had nothing to do with Christianity. It was drawn with a sun in the middle because that sun-worshippers wanted to illuminate when the sun was less prominent in the northern hemisphere(in december). This makes sense as you need to seek light in the dark. Although many Christians burn fire at "sun-worship" and view it as "paganism", The Jesus worshipping has copied a lot from the ancient egyptian spirituality. The religion has stipulated that he should be born in December, because Jesus takes the role of the light that is born in a dark time.

So originally it's the sun dying on the cross and getting reincarnated and not a human being. So The Bible is based on sun worship
which is "Whose Lord" in the book.

The documentary also says that the 12 apostles are taken from the 12 specific areas which the sun visits during a day according to the ancient sun worship.

I am not saying that I am against the Bible and that this is necessarily true. But I am asking for a clear explanation why the Bible is "the word of god". Hope that you can answer me as. I will humble myself

Give thanks


Messenger: IPXninja Sent: 1/25/2023 3:32:13 PM
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I think enough time has passed. These questions should be fair game now.

Sorry, I'm not really pro or anti-bible. I don't think that's a healthy way to approach it even though I've been both before.


1. black people's story

who has feet described as the color of burnt brass that doesn't apply to the rest of their skin? Since Yeshua wasn't described as having vitiligo (or in those days it would have been called leprosy) I think it's safe to apply that color to his entire body. However, this is also a VISION of John. There's no way that Yeshua's hair, at the age of 30-33, was already white like snow. There's also no reason to believe he aged past this point after the resurrection. IMHO, I think the answer is in

Matthew 17:2
And was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light.

So because this is a VISION it allows it to blend figurative/metaphoric with reality. After all, the beasts John saw represented governments, not descriptions of real animals. So the white more likely corresponds to this idea of "brightness" not whiteness, which went back to at least the days of Moses.

Exodus 34:35 (similar to verse 30)
And the children of Israel saw the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses' face shone: and Moses put the vail upon his face again until he went in to speak with him.

The presence of God (and the divine in general) is culturally associated with light. And fire emits light which is why the burning bush and the appearance of God as a fiery element on Sinai. This got borrowed into the Greek gods as well, usually depicted in white robes and Zeus often has white hair with lightning in his hands. I don't think they copied this from Hebrew sources as much as both had a common source.

John's vision was based on what he believed about Yeshua. I do not believe the Trinity theory is truly supported in the NT like people think it is. Instead, I believe John saw Yeshua as someone who would be in the presence of God and therefore have a human form but like Moses, would have a kind of illumination.

Again, this is different from "white" because biblically, white (where there was supposed to be pigment) was associated with disease and death. Most references speak to leprosy.

Leviticus 13:3 (and verse 4)
And the priest shall look on the plague in the skin of the flesh: and when the hair in the plague is turned white, and the plague in sight be deeper than the skin of his flesh, it is a plague of leprosy: and the priest shall look on him, and pronounce him unclean.

We also see where one of Moses's "miracles" was to show his hand being white and then healed. Although an argument could be made that it was simply more white than usual I seriously doubt it would be some kind of sign or wonder if there was only a slight difference. White skin can temporarily change color under different, non-magical, conditions.

People also say that a person "turns white" as a fear response (of course that mainly applies to white folks), but how much of that is figurative? Is there any evidence that a single white person has actually gotten whiter when placed in a scary situation?

One of the main reasons Yeshua is thought to be black has nothing to do with a description but rather the fact that his family went to Egypt... TO HIDE.

Egypt is the same country where Abraham was so convinced his life was in danger because his wife would stand out for her beauty that he lied and pretended they weren't married. Is this really a place that a white family would go to hide? This is like one of the arguments against Idris playing James Bond. The argument was that James Bond kind of needed to blend in. A black dude running around getting chased would hardly be able to do that in most of the previous James Bond movies. Every corner he slipped around, someone would be like "there he is! Get him!"

So the likelihood of Yeshua being brown-skinned is quite high. Even if we believe the Hebrews were a completely separate people when they entered Egypt, the idea that one family stayed the same color, in Egypt, is not rational. Unless they were deeply inbred that's not how genetics work. So the only logical reason they could hide in Egypt is that they looked the same as the Egyptians.


Messenger: IPXninja Sent: 1/25/2023 3:49:43 PM
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2. In the last chapters of Moses, the Israelites kill the Midianites and take their women as prisoners (Sex prisoner?)
They even sacrifice some of the women. Deuteronomy 2:34 says: "At that time we took all his towns and completely destroyed them - men, women and children. We left no survivors." So they killed innocents too.. They also kill innocent animals just to burn them for god and not even to eat them. How could that ever be from god?


It's not. There were certain things the people wanted to do that Moses simply went along with. He was a strong authoritarian type of leader but even he had limits because the truth is that every leader fears being overthrown. And that is because, like a parent with children, there are periods where the child tests the parent to see if they should fear or respect them. This is the same reason why Aaron made the golden calf and the same reason Israel got Saul as their first king. It wasn't a democracy. It's just that the people also had an influence over what they were allowed to do and the direction they would go in.

The way that Numbers discusses this activity makes me think that other nations/tribes were doing the same thing so they didn't necessarily consider it wrong. For perspective, they took entirely the same approach to slavery. Slavery was being practiced before they were even a nation and even if they questioned how it was done, they didn't question its entire existence. It was even legal for them to beat their slaves as long as they didn't leave lasting scars. Later on, they began to do this more to foreigners. But to me... that is simply hypocrisy. And it lasted so long that Yeshua addresses the mentality that arose out of that hypocrisy in the NT by talking about how they were to be neighbors and how neighbors should be treated. This was triggered by their disdainful mistreatment of the Samaritans.

Although the Israelites believed they were guided by God, they weren't going off of anything that God wrote. They were being led by other humans who believed themselves to be acting under the inspiration of God. That's not exactly the same thing. It's more like being guided by your consciousness combined with the arrogance and hubris that the voice in your head is bigger and more important than the voices in everyone else's. Unless you're a psychopath, we all have a conscience. But conscience is relative to what you know and experience.

So as far as the way women were treated and taken as spoils of war... there is really no excuse for that, nor should anyone attempt to find one. It was simply and objectively wrong, and indicative of the problems with patriarchal systems that discriminate against women.

Also, the deaths of children were an ancient practice many cultures did in order to prevent future revenge/threats. That is also wrong and lazy. There were better ways to handle that but at the end of the day, the Israelites, according to their own words, were literally ROBBING people. So maybe don't complain about someone growing up to get revenge if you are doing something bad that they would have a reason to seek justice against. For example... the way they attacked Canaan was by taking them by surprise. It's not like they were attacked and were defending themselves. Manifest Destiny was their intention and excuse. But is there truly an excuse to kill people and take their land? It's 2023. By now we should all know there is not. Period.


Messenger: IPXninja Sent: 1/25/2023 4:54:26 PM
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2(b)

As far as rape, its important to read the whole context. Rape was definitely not allowed.

25 But if a man find a betrothed damsel in the field, and the man force her, and lie with her: then the man only that lay with her shall die.

26 But unto the damsel thou shalt do nothing; there is in the damsel no sin worthy of death: for as when a man riseth against his neighbour, and slayeth him, even so is this matter:

27 For he found her in the field, and the betrothed damsel cried, and there was none to save her.

28 If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found;


If you raped someone you were executed. Period. This text is trying to judge cases in which a woman could be punished for not being a virgin because this was an issue for her betrothal. If a man sought a wife the family would tell him if she was a virgin or not. Everyone wasn't a virgin but virgins fetched a higher (bride) price. The husband wouldn't find out though until trying to consummate the marriage so at that point it was too late. They were married. But the deceit couldn't go unpunished and it also provided these men a way out of the marriage so if she was found to not be a virgin they would execute her for the deceit. Make no mistake about it. Morally and ethically, this isn't right. In essence, women were being punished because MEN didn't want virgins and because heir fathers wanted to sell them at a higher price. It's not like the woman is the one who got paid that money. It was her father. This wrong, but yet another one of those things that they did not originate.

The other thing that needs to be said here is that women and men should have a right to fall in love. It's crazy that this has to be said here. However, men thought it was their right to take offers from men and choose the man their daughter was going to marry. This is how Laban screwed over Jacob by substituting Leah in for Rachel. And these girls had to obey their fathers so they went along with either the marriage or the deception.

So the text talks about whether a woman slept with a lover vs whether she was raped. If she was raped she wasn't guilty but if she was in love with someone and slept with her lover then she was guilty and could be executed. The most famous story of this is Yeshua's mother because I'm 100% sure she was probably in love with someone else and got pregnant by him. Joseph could have divorced her but that would have legally triggered her execution and he didn't want that to happen. But the story shows how it was his choice as the husband to keep it quiet so that she wouldn't be stoned to death.



Messenger: IPXninja Sent: 1/25/2023 5:11:46 PM
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2.(c)

"So originally it's the sun dying on the cross and getting reincarnated and not a human being. So The Bible is based on sun worship
which is "Whose Lord" in the book."

This can only be opinion since none of the disciples actually admitted to any deception. But keep in mind...

Paul used to be Saul. The disciples were afraid of him even after his conversion. They didn't trust him and for good reason. The stories of his conversion aren't even in agreement with each other and it could have easily have been an attempt to draw out the "ringleaders" of this rebellious movement.

That being said, rebellion is exactly what it was. There is a whole political layer to the end of the "messianic" story. The truth is that the disciples had reason to lie about their deceased master who may or may not have claimed to be the messiah. But to understand why this claim may even be in doubt you have to understand that Yeshua's words are quoted. It's not like he wrote his own story. So that gave everyone the ability to use his words for their own agenda. We know the agenda of Judas because it is captured inside the story. However, we do not know everyone's true motivations and how close they were aligned to Judas.

Why is this relevant?

If you were to claim to be the messiah what you were claiming to be is the next king of Israel, chosen by God. This is not just a big claim. It was dangerous and rebellious because Israel was not allowed to have a king since they were a under the Roman empire at the time. But this caused the people great financial stress just like Americans under the British taxes where eventually Americans fought for independence. So we have to understand that taxes are a big reason for people to rebel. So if you were a disciple of the "future king" then you were at the front lines of the rebellion and would draw the interest of Rome.

Why is Paul important? Because keep in mind that Paul was a Roman citizen and could therefore not be treated the same as the disciples. Paul never even met Yeshua and he only comes into the story after Yeshua's public execution. The use of the cross in this context is irrelevant because the cross wasn't used by the Romans for any religious purpose. It was a torture device.

The followers of Yeshua were looking to him, not simply as a spiritual leader but as a chief insurgent who could rally all 12 tribes against Rome. Please trust that it would take all 12 tribes (which were previously separated) and even then the Jews knew that they would probably sill lose which is why they worked with the Romans and snitched on Yeshua in order to protect their people. We look back and say they were wrong but the truth is they were trying to avoid the slaughter which later happened in 70AD; pushed by the zealots. See people wanted to use Yeshua politically even after his death.

At some point Rome changed tactics. Instead of trying to smother this political movement, it adopted it as a religion. And so Paul and others were instrumental in getting the Greeks to accept "the gospel" as if it had nothing to do with fighting against Rome. And in that argument they made it so that it was similar to pagan beliefs and merged holy days and so forth. This is why "Christ mass" is on Dec 25th. A pagan holy day. This is also why Christians worship on SUN-day instead of the sabbath. Christianity is a Roman religious merger.



Messenger: GARVEYS AFRICA Sent: 1/26/2023 2:55:07 AM
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You are as valid as being the true word of God as the Bible is
Humbly and respectfully


Messenger: IPXninja Sent: 1/26/2023 9:41:03 AM
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I was in a rush yesterday and forgot to make one point about the messiah that I sometimes take for granted. It's something Christians don't usually know but Israelites and Rastas should.

In Hebrew, the word messiah translates to anointed with oil. Many people know that but the significance is that the king was anointed with oil. So where as Christians tend to think there is only one messiah and this is a prophetic identity of a "chosen one", in actuality there were many messiahs, and claiming to be one simply meant you were claiming to be the future king. Of course, the significance of this and the reason why it is ignored in Christianity is that Yeshua never became king.

The claims surrounding this particular messiah candidate were crushed by Rome, but the movement didn't want to die when the head was cut off the snake. So they took the prophecy back to the drawing board and invented a "Second coming" in which he (the same candidate) would fulfill the prophecy. Note that the prophecy isn't even slightly fulfilled by someone simply claiming to be the Messiah. Nor does the prophecy contain the death of the candidate or this notion of sacrificing the messiah.

This is the reason why most religious Jews today reject the idea of "Jesus Christ" because Jews have to study the TNK (The Old Testament). Christians don't and mainly focus on the NT. Don't get me wrong. There are concepts of sacrifice in the OT and you can make the argument that a blameless human was the ultimate sacrifice. But there are problems with this. YHWH had already said he would not punish the son for the sins of the father. They used animal sacrifice in order to avoid human sacrifice but it was a METAPHORIC RITUAL that they practiced for the purpose of feeling the loss and shame of having caused that needless death. It was also like paying a heavy fine. It was supposed to be a deterrent. It was supposed to REDUCE sin. Instead, there came a time when people simply sinned knowing that they could afford to pay the fine and so it did not have the effect it was intended to have. That's when YHWH famously said he hated it.

Many Christians today sin all the time knowing that the "price" has already been paid and all they have to do is say "sorry". I have a step-granddaughter and she kept doing something I told her not to do. When I threatened to punish her she said "sorry" but then did it again and again. Each time I told her "sorry means you're not going to do it again. So you're not sorry." And she got punished.

After the failure of Yeshua to become king, unite the 12 tribes, and defeat Rome, the story got changed and the enemy went from Actual Rome to a Metaphoric Rome of Sin and Death and the devil so that people could see Yeshua as the savior. But I ask you. Did it work? Did people stop sinning? Did the followers of Yeshua stop sinning? Did they even take a long vacation or hiatus from sinning? No, they did not. And even the Catholic church realized that the death of Yeshua wasn't enough and so they imagined and introduced a new hell of eternal damnation and torture, and a place in between heaven and hell called purgatory, and they had a new priesthood that would hear your sin and assign new penalties and fines. This benefitted the church as well as offered a stronger deterrent than someone who died who the sinner never met and had no real connection to. The truth is that most Christians do not love or care about "Jesus". They only love and care about what they believe he did for them. But that's not enough to stop most of them from sinning. And because sin was never conquered (just as they failed to conquer Rome) the world we live in is still a merger of heaven and hell. And the state we live in is a continuation of our original choice to sin.

Nothing has actually changed since the beginning. The point was never about taking away the penalty of sins you did in the past. The point, for those who actually want to understand the bible, was to create a future where we STOPPED sinning. Because that future, not a physical place, is called HEAVEN. This is why Yeshua said, "The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand". At hand is a temporal reference; meaning that it was coming soon. So while most people are chasing a place and still doing the same sins on repeat, those who are spiritual adopt the spirit of "the son of God" in order to become "children of God". These children of God are the ones who stop sinning which basically means the love they have for people makes them incapable of trying to hurt others. It's like how doctors take an oath to do no harm to their patients. It doesn't mean they won't ever make mistakes that will harm a patient, but it will never be their intent. This is the whole point of the NT and it is the greatest failure of Christianity not to see it. And if you doubt me, that's okay. I always try to come with some kind of evidence. And that evidence, in this case, is my favorite chapter of the bible.

1 John Chapter 3 (this is the most important chapter in the bible)
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+John+3&version=KJV




Messenger: IPXninja Sent: 1/26/2023 10:38:33 AM
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https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+John+3&version=KJV

I recommend this chapter even to people who hate the bible. Why? Because this goes beyond religion into pure spirituality. Religion can be corrupted and changed but spirituality... is everyone's individual path to divinity; to their higher self. Spirituality is your internal growth towards personal enlightenment and humanity is starting to learn that.

Verse 1 of this chapter tells you the proper understanding of who Yeshua was; not a physical son of God but a spiritual son because that is the ONLY way one could be such. The whole notion of an actual son is lies cooked up by the Roman merger of paganism and Hebrew culture. The Bible says "God is a spirit". A spirit cannot have a physical child. They did this in order to make him more like other pagan mythical gods that were personified and who would have sex with mortals, producing demigods.

On the other hand, both Adam and David were called sons of God in the bible. So when it says "this day have I begotten you" what it means is that God (or someone speaking for him) sees the "image and likeness" of God in that person. Genesis says that God created man in his own image and likeness. However, people wanted to believe that they mirrored their creator. But 1 John 3 shows you that this mirroring was mainly spiritual or figurative.

9 Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.

10 In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother.

11 For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.

12 Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother's righteous.

You can toss out the entire NT as simply an example of this parable being flipped. Instead of killing a brother, the NT is about a man sacrificing himself for his brothers (the other children of God). It is an example to FOLLOW meaning that's how we should be, not running around saying "I believe in Jesus so I'm saved." That's 100% garbage. This represents a misunderstanding of what the whole of the bible was trying to save people from. Evil.

The fifth commandment is about obeying your parents so you can have a long life. What is your (metaphoric) heavenly father concerned with that you are expected to obey? It's the law. But the entire law, as many teachers taught it, can be summed up by love. Thou shalt love the Lord they God with all thy heart and all thy soul and all thy might and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. This is the whole law and the prophets. Paul understood this because he said the law was a schoolmaster. It existed to get people to understand love and DO THAT. If you do that you don't need the bible. It's not a diss of the bible. It is an understanding of progression and completeness. You're not supposed to stay in school your whole life. You're supposed to GRADUATE like a bird leaving the nest. Spiritually, when you have matured into adulthood you should be like your parent and able to have your own children who you also teach well. So when you "train up a child in the way that he should go so that when he gets old he will not depart from it" the result is that now the parent (God) can TRUST you to live on your own. I could argue that's what Adam's test represented; whether or not he could be left alone. Because he failed, guidance was required.

1 John 3 makes this all very simple. It disabuses people of the mistaken notion that they are children of God just because they "believe in Jesus". It says whosoever (not discriminating race, religion, creed, etc) is born of God does not sin. Period. You cannot sin if you have God's spiritual DNA. The word of God is his "Seed". So when the word of God (spirituality) lives in you, it overwrites the corruption of sin. So even though I do not live my life according to what the Israelites believed, I still recognize that the word is already in me and I live a certain way, according to the highest ideals I can fathom, because that is what the seed/word/spirit in me says to do. That is the will and desire of my conscience. And that's why I totally reject Moses's genocide, the corporate theft and pillaging of the Israelites, the sexist patriarchy, etc. etc. The Bible calls the Israelites stiff-necked because they constantly tried to do what they saw the corrupt world doing. And the point is that corruption is "the devil" and so the devil also has a seed that influences people's conscience (mental programming). So if you follow that programming you are a child of the devil (verse 10). And as his child you help to create hell on earth. As a child of God you help to create heaven on earth. Both of these are the choices of free will; the same choices that have existed from the very beginning.

No matter what you or I choose to believe, what I understand is that these biblical characters are related to very real concepts. I don't care what religion a person is, good and evil are universal concepts. So it doesn't matter if one group of people use YHWH to teach about goodness and another people use other names/deities if the concepts they are teaching are connected. To war against them just because they use other names is missing the point of the lessons entirely! And that is itself, Cain killing Abel. Cain and Abel were basically of two different "religions" in a sense. Cain's spirituality was in agriculture and Abel's was in animals. They both believed they were right and God did not give them instructions prior about which was the acceptable offering.

What is the truth? Which one was correct? You may think Abel's was correct but you would be wrong. It wasn't about the offering. It was about the spirit. Cain's offering wasn't accepted because Cain himself wasn't accepted. Cain wasn't accepted because "his own works were evil and his brother's righteous". In other words, let me be perfectly honest. It doesn't matter what your religion is if you are evil. You can be the most pathological zealot for your religion and you can use that to kill people you disagree with just as Cain killed Abel; just as Christians killed Jews and Muslims during the Crusades. They were equally self-destructive because they even killed Christians who dared to have different personal beliefs and would not follow their doctrines.

When Christians took black people as slaves they did damage to those people that extended for hundreds of years and continues to their children's children's children's children. What I'm saying is... everyone makes the mistake of taking all this stuff literally when the object/representation was NEVER the lesson. It wasn't the thing that mattered. Cain chose plants because he loved them. There was nothing wrong with plants or offering them as a sacrifice. You were supposed to sacrifice the thing you loved! For Cain to offer an animal sacrifice would have been a lesser sacrifice FOR HIM. Because what you're also sacrificing, in sacrificing what you love, is a part of yourself!

There was nothing wrong with his individual source of inspiration. Plants are equally part of nature as animals are. If you're not a farmer how are you going to be as inspired by plants as a farmer is? You have to find inspiration in what speaks to you! All of nature speaks! But our affinity towards all of nature is not equal. Cain was bad, not his plants. Muslims who are bad are bad, not their source of inspiration. But if they are corrupt that corruption will show up in their writings, holy or not. If Hebrews are corrupt it will show up in their writings, holy or not. Do you see?

This is why the bible is both good and evil. It is truth. The truth is that the history of all humans contains both good and evil; knowledge and ignorance. I choose to accept both as parts of the whole but I don't have to DO both because I choose the path of goodness/righteousness. I'm able to distinguish good from evil and separate the two. I'm not going to follow the Israelites as if they were perfect or "chosen". That was their hubris and arrogance. And yes, some of that passed into my DNA as well and I am sorry I come off that way. I'm not perfect. But I try to be as good as I can be and I think that's what matters. Being "born of God" is what matters. You can call yourself whatever you want, read whatever you want, learn whatever you want, and specialize in whatever field you want. Spiritually, it's all the same as long as you are GOOD.

If you are dependent on the bible that means someone has to tell you how to love. All of these dos and don'ts... you only need them until you have an understanding of what they represent. If you understand the heart of the law you can apply it anywhere.

When James spoke of pure uncorrupted religion he didn't speak of it in terms of what you believe but rather what you DO. What does your belief cause you to DO!? If you don't do it then you should question how much you believe it. This is why "belief" in Jesus is worthless unless it inspires a change in action/behavior. True belief is about how it changes you. Once you understand all this from the bible it means you have "consumed it". And now it's a part of you. I don't read the bible anymore but I know it and I go back and reference it when talking about biblical things which is why I love biblical questions. But the ultimate love is that I understand it and I don't have to look up all these quotes because I remember them, even if not word for word.

People think there is some kind of magic wand. They believe that they will be reborn physically and go to heaven and they will be cleaned up and magically won't sin anymore. But nowhere in the bible does it ever suggest that such a magic wand exists. You cannot have free will if your choices are externally limited, forcing you to make the right choice. That is something you have to learn and choose to do on your own. That's why those who do it are considered the children of God and those who don't are the children of the devil. Period. It sounds harsh because everyone wants to be loved and accepted. But a parent cannot reward bad behavior without teaching their children that being bad is okay; even beneficial.

So going back to the questions... NO. There was no "God" in the Israelites raping and pillaging. There was no "God" in the decision to take someone else's land or count their women as spoils. There is no God in burning "witches" at the stake. There is no "God" in the Trail of Tears or the enslavement of Africans. There is no "God" in executing people who don't believe you talk to "God". This is no "God" in anything that is bad because "God" literally represents the concept of goodness. This doesn't mean that humans always know what's good and bad. Therefore, they might have thought that God orchestrated a flood or famine because of their superstitious belief in a person who is always in control of everything. This is simply a false belief. So you cannot simply take the entire bible as fact. You have to understand and navigate the humanity of the writers and their recollections (and exaggerations) of their history told from their perspective. And "God" is their inspiration to do better and to promote righteousness and to keep telling these stories and parables and higher standards. Again, "God is a spirit".

24 And he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in him. And hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us.


Messenger: Jeffrey Di Lion Sent: 4/29/2023 6:59:48 AM
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IPXninja Thank you so much.
This helped a lot give thanks


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