Blade_Runner wrote:
Whether God is one or three in one is not the question in this ping pong game. The problem is the human ego, human conceit, hubris.
Apparently what you have going here, Tommy, is a censorship campaign, passing judgement on mainstream Christians, condemning them as "cultists", proclaiming their beliefs "immoral", attempting to suppress them. Doesn't sound very Christian to me. Sounds more like Islam's condemnation of the non-believers (infidels) without the demand for their heads.
If this makes you feel good about yourself, if you get some sort of self-satisfaction in doing this, so be it.
The author of our Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, made it clear that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, and among them is our freedom to practice religion as we see fit. This right is given us in our 1st Amendment.
In his brilliant essay, PROPERTY, the author of our Constitution, James Madison, wrote:
This term (property) in its particular application means "that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual."
In its larger and juster meaning, it embraces every thing to which a man may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to every one else the like advantage.
In the former sense, a man's land, or merchandize, or money is called his property.
In the latter sense, a man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.
He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them.
It is the godless leftists who are intent on denying us our rights to religious freedom and property.
Any honest Christian would know that ultimately God Himself will judge.
Personally, I have no problem with your nontrinitarian beliefs, you have the right to embrace those beliefs, and, as Madison said, you have the right to communicate them. However, there is a problem when you make a concerted attempt to shove your beliefs down the throats of others, to condemn others for their beliefs, and to proclaim your beliefs superior. To do so is a fundamental tactic of the uncompromising and dogmatic ideology of liberal progressivism.
Whether God is one or three in one is not the ques... (
show quote)
It is written, Blade,
“preach the word; be urgent in season and out of season;
reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with all patience and teaching.” 2 Timothy 4:2
“Now, Lord, look at their threats, and grant to your servants to speak your word with all boldness,” Acts 4:29
“...
exhort in the sound doctrine, and... convict those who contradict him.
10For there are also many unruly men, vain talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision, 11
Whose mouths must be stopped; men who overthrow whole houses, teaching things which they ought not...” Titus 1:9-11
“Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, with what will you season it?” Mark 9:50
And it is also written that he would send prophets and wise men and scribes and they would make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, like you’re in your safe space with your teddy bear all cuddly and warm and contented and justified and everything....
Wait! Stop! Nope, it goes like this:
“Therefore, behold, I send to you prophets, wise men, and scribes. Some of them you will kill and crucify; and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city;” Matt 23:34
Do you think these get persecuted and killed because they only preach positivity and confirmation?
What did you expect to feel, and how would expect to react, if you were on the wrong side of God’s wrath?
“
He said to me, Son of man, I send you to the children of Israel,
to a nation of rebels who have rebelled against me. They and their fathers have transgressed against me even to this very day.”! Ezekiel 2:3
Let me get this straight, Blade... You are claiming that your right to have your opinion is just like your right to your personal property, therefore, you should be secure in your opinions when you step out into the streets, or Internet forums for that matter, without someone challenging your opinions, because to challenge your opinions by someone who strongly disagrees with your position is all the same as someone attempting to take away your right to your opinions. Is that about it?
So, let’s say this conversation had been about abortion, and you claim yourself to be a Christian, and we both know it, and I’m a street preacher. And I’m preaching in front of an abortion clinic and low and behold you show up with your lover intent on getting her an abortion. So I start speaking to you, as a fellow Christian in this case, that abortion is murder in the eyes of God, and furthermore, Roe vs Wade was passed on false pretenses, because it was based on lies. But even still, I tell you, God’s laws are greater than man’s and as a Christian you should obey God’s laws, and have love and compassion for that living human baby, and let it live, or you will suffer the consequences.
So, if we apply your logic as you’ve applied it here in this discussion, in that situation, I would be in the wrong for attempting to rob you of your “opinion”, and “your right to your opinion”, merely on the basis of my trying, passionately, to show you, and anyone else that would hear, that abortion is murder in the eyes of God.
Congratulations Blade, you’ve just managed to justify stripping me of my right to free speech, and my freedom of religion, in deference of politically correct speech and your perceived right to be free from someone else’s free speech and your right to keep from being exposed to someone else’s religion, based on the fact that you are offended by my mere words and my strong, vocalized, disagreement with your position, and you thereby feel threatened by, my religious convictions. And this is only in public. I can only imagine how you would feel if I were, like the apostle Paul, going from house to house to warn people of the coming judgment.
Thank you for being so quick to demonstrate my point that people who are in cults, like Trinitarianism is, share similar reactions with the cult-like attitudes of leftists and conservatives, when they will not engage in reasonable discussions, but instead renounce anyone who disagrees with them as evil based on nothing more than their ludicrous idea that criticizing their view, in and if itself, is the greater evil.
No, Blade, your right to your “safe place” wherever you go in public, or at home, doesn’t equate to me denying you your right to your opinions, nor have I. Nor do your rights to your opinions equate to stripping me of my right to free speech or my right to freedom of religion.
Nor does your discomfort at being told something, in this case the truth, contrary to your traditions which have been handed down to you by the dictates of man-made edicts, translate to your right, as a Christian, to defame through ad hominem the character of someone, in an attempt to neutralize the message of, someone who is your brother attempting to restore you to God’s truth.
Your response also bears a similarity to leftists in that you accuse others of what you yourself are doing!
Your cultic-like desire to silence the messenger, ultimately, was the same type of hatred that got Jesus killed in their attempt to silence him ultimately.
“So you testify against yourselves that you are the sons of those who murdered the prophets.” Matthew 24:31
“27"Woe to you, [trinitarian] Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitened tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but inwardly are full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. 28Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.
29"Woe to you, [trinitarian] Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets, and decorate the tombs of the righteous, 30and say, 'If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we wouldn't have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.' 31Therefore
you testify to yourselves that you are children of those who killed the prophets. 32Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers. 33You serpents, you offspring of vipers, how will you escape the judgment of Gehenna?
34Therefore, behold,
I send to you prophets, wise men, and scribes. Some of them you will kill and crucify; and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues, [b]and persecute from city to city[\b]; 35that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zachariah son of Barachiah, whom you killed between the sanctuary and the altar.” Matthew 23:27-35
“You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit! As your fathers did, so you do.” Acts 7:51
“18They called them, and commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus. 19But Peter and John answered them, "Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, judge for yourselves, 20for we can't help telling the things which we saw and heard.” Acts 4:18-20
“We ought to obey God rather than man” Acts 5:29
For it is written, and I have heeded the call:
“1I command you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at his appearing and his Kingdom:
2preach the word; be urgent in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with all patience and teaching. 3For the time will come when
they will not listen to the sound doctrine, but, having itching ears, will heap up for themselves teachers after their own lusts; 4and will turn away their ears from the truth, and turn aside to fables.” 2Timothy 4:1-4