A serious question. No judgment from any of you, or me, or us

This board kinda rose out of a Christian thing.  There still are many here that subscribe, and are not ashamed [Love you Scottmitchell, Dallasblack, and others!  And, we miss you Alex!!], to hold the Bible dear...As the inspired word of God itself.  Please do not allow this to turn into a flame-f'ing-fest.  I, personally, grew up SDA.  Went to SDA school until 9th grade, and still believe some of the theology, like subscribing to the Mosiac dietary law.  Stats overwhelmingly show that SDA's have a longer lifespan than any other organized religion.  They don't smoke, drink, do drugs, or eat pork/scavengers.  There is other factors that I still believe are good about that piece of Christianity.  But I will digress, because I truly believe that organized religion is bullshit.  Personal spirituality in whatever is the only way to not get caught up in other's flawed thinking.

My question here is - What do you think about John the Revelator - or the book of Revelations, in particular?  Going back to how I was raised, SDA's believe they got it figured out.  The believe they are the prophesied "remnant" people, because they follow the 10 commandments [the only thing in the whole Bible written by God's own hand], iincluding keeping the Seventh Day holy, such as the Jewish people always have.  They have churches and missionaries in every country on Earth, including North Korea, as the Revelations says the remnant church will.  A "remnant" is a piece of the original.  The SDA's have done everything they can to be as much like the original Jesus followers.  But, I am way off track here.

My real question is about the end times.  Nostradamus is an entertaining piece of history.  But, Revelations describes everything to a T.  From the 3 tribes of pre-Europe, that were decimated, to the Crusades, to what eventually became the French Revolution and Bastille Day.  Between everything in Daniel 7 and the what John saw in his visions has come true.  And, I know this will piss some people off, but the Beast and the Whore of Babylon?  The Pope and the Catholic church.

I super hope this only sparks a discussion and not get into real heavy back n forth.  Of course, Religion is one of the three things we are not supposed to talk about.  Along with money and Trump's hairpiece sex.  But I am being genuine when I ask about your beliefs, the end of the world as we know it, or if this planet with all its nukes will survive for a long more time. Thx for indulging my inquiring mind.

I was raised and still am Southern Baptist. I believe the Bible is the inerrant word of God.I agree with you about organized religion. So many people get caught up in it and forget what they believe in. To me Christianity is a relationship with Jesus Christ, plain and simple.

As far as Revelations goes, it’s a very mysterious book. There are lots of opinions and people who claim to know what all the symbols and visions mean but in the end it’s just guesses. I take it as God knows and one day we’ll all know too but for now I just take it on faith.

Thrasher73 wrote:

I was raised and still am Southern Baptist. I believe the Bible is the inerrant word of God.I agree with you about organized religion. So many people get caught up in it and forget what they believe in. To me Christianity is a relationship with Jesus Christ, plain and simple.

As far as Revelations goes, it’s a very mysterious book. There are lots of opinions and people who claim to know what all the symbols and visions mean but in the end it’s just guesses. I take it as God knows and one day we’ll all know too but for now I just take it on faith.

Thrashy - You do not believe that book was presented to be deciphered? Why else would it exist?

UNCLE SAXON'S KICKASS CDS wrote:

Thrasher73 wrote:

I was raised and still am Southern Baptist. I believe the Bible is the inerrant word of God.I agree with you about organized religion. So many people get caught up in it and forget what they believe in. To me Christianity is a relationship with Jesus Christ, plain and simple.

As far as Revelations goes, it’s a very mysterious book. There are lots of opinions and people who claim to know what all the symbols and visions mean but in the end it’s just guesses. I take it as God knows and one day we’ll all know too but for now I just take it on faith.

Thrashy - You do not believe that book was presented to be deciphered?   Why else would it exist?

I believe John wrote what he saw and he saw what the Lord revealed to him. Knowing exactly what he saw or was talking about is guess. There are things that I think are pretty well described like the part where they looked for someone worthy to open the seven seals. No one was worthy then in came the slain Lamb that was worthy. The lamb is Jesus. That part I think is pretty evident.

You do know that John wrote Revelations 151 years after Jesus, The lamb, was slain? You comment is not historically accurate in that sense.

I agree with Thasher, it’s a mysterious book. And to be honest... something that freaked me out when I was younger (It actually still does).

John’s visions were 100+ years after the death and resurrection of Christ, but it was a vision from God for people of the future to figure out.

What TZ stated above is just one of the many issues I have with the theology with which I was raised.

I mean, if you are God and you have something important to tell your people, why would you couch what you wanted to say in "riddles" and obscure metaphors that are open to an infinite number of interpretations. 

I could go on and on about how so many of the concepts I was taught in church make no logical sense to a thinking person but I guess that's where the concept of "faith" comes in.   And apparently I don't have any because life seems way too random to me to have an all knowing being actually pulling the levers on all of it. 

I still believe there's a God and I still believe he sent his Son to die for mankind but as far as either one's daily involvement in world affairs, I don't understand how a logical person can believe that. 

And if you're going to tell me that everything bad that happens is because man has free will and chose badly so God is just letting it play out then I'm not buying that argument.  If everything good that happens in life is God's blessing and everything bad is because of man's failure in the Garden of Eden then a rock, a bird or even my cats could be God using those standards.  I'm not buying it.

Maybe God didn’t want to spell it out literally because everyone would freak out and live every day in fear. A little mystery makes it more interesting anyway. Would you want to know the day you die? Maybe some do, but I think most people don’t.

Troublezone wrote:

Maybe God didn’t want to spell it out literally because everyone would freak out and live every day in fear. A little mystery makes it more interesting anyway. Would you want to know the day you die? Maybe some do, but I think most people don’t.

 Then why bother saying anything at all? 

If all you're going to do is leave "mystical clues" that are therefore subject to multiple interpretations then what's the point?


And the Book Of Revelations is the least of my problems with the theology I was brought up with; the whole thing just doesn't make any sense to me.

Here's the bottom line for me:

Explain to me why obviously evil people like child molesters and mass murderers can skate through life with no physical ailments at all yet innocent infants are stricken with horrible and ultimately deadly diseases.

How does that make sense?  And don't try the "Man's fall" argument because that doesn't wash; we've all fallen.  So why do the innocent suffer and the evil do not?

I know what you’re saying Toho and trust me I struggle with that too. Why do bad things happen to good people? Why does the wicked get off Scott free so many times? The only thing i believe is their day is coming. God has a plan and a purpose. It might not make sense now but in the end it will. That’s the only comfort I have.

UNCLE SAXON'S KICKASS CDS wrote:

You do know that John wrote Revelations 151 years after Jesus, The lamb, was slain?  You comment is not historically accurate in that sense.

How is not accurate? Jesus is the slain lamb. He was and is and forever will be. John went to heaven in these visions. Jesus was there. He had already been crucified. Hence, the slain lamb.

Even science can’t explain everything. The Big Bang doesn’t cut it. It’s too random for the complexity of life on earth. Everything seems to point to a creator. Unfortunately we live in corrupt world. I hate to say it toho, but this isn’t the garden of eden.

The original plan is dead. Just sin, pain and death is what we get in these human bodies. Only our souls can be saved.

Man, such a tough question to answer.

I was raised as a Catholic, and still am. I too can't stand organized religion, where people are taught to live in fear and focus on useless formalities, thus ignoring the true essence of faith.

Being a good Christian is in the daily acts mainly. It's about how you treat others, how you raise your family. It's not about forcing your beliefs on others.

Being a good Christian is absolutely not about showing of, and telling everyone that you are a believer, that you fast and pray.

If there's someone i cannot stand, it's religious hypocrites who claim to be good Christians, while doing the exact opposite and hurting others.

You can't hold God as responsible for every bad thing that happens. God gives us life and then let's us be. It's up to us to handle this gift he gave us.

When i offer you a Christmas gift, do i go around asking you how you're treating it and if it's still ok? No. It's up to you to take care of it.

The book of revelations is a scary one. I've read it and i have even been to Patmos, where John had written the book. I do believe that this book is true but should not be interpreted textually.

I do not believe any of it, I was raised by a Catholic mother and then sent to Sunday at a Baptist Church. I even went to accept Jesus in my heart at one point, but I do remember being really really young and thinking all of this is bullshit.

If you claim to be a Christian and you live it, than I respect you, but if you claim your a Christian and banging your mistress, you can go **** yourself.

I would say I left the faith a long time ago, but I do not think I ever had any faith, at least not the type of faith that was supposedly required by the pastors I heard speak.

Roman Catholic by upbringing, but not really a religious person. I have found little use for it in my daily routine.

tohostudios wrote:

Here's the bottom line for me:

Explain to me why obviously evil people like child molesters and mass murderers can skate through life with no physical ailments at all yet innocent infants are stricken with horrible and ultimately deadly diseases.

How does that make sense?  And don't try the "Man's fall" argument because that doesn't wash; we've all fallen.  So why do the innocent suffer and the evil do not?

Raised Church Of God as a kid, then Cumberland Presbyterian until my early 20's. Currently Methodist. Denomination matters not to me, I just pick somewhere that we all like to go. And I am the rare Christian Democrat (I have no idea how religion became so entwined with politics).

I've wondered ToHo's question as well. My youngest daughter is the absolute sweetest kid (she is 10 now). She has never been a problem and has never been disciplined because she is such a good, kind hearted kid. She is well mannered, soft spoken and the quietest kid in her class. When she was 8 she was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. There is no cure as it is an autoimmune disease. It's a struggle to maintain but having an insulin pump has worked wonders. She of all people didn't deserve this in life. Why not me? My older daughter also asked "why not me?". None of it really makes sense but diabetes is on our mind at all hours of the day and night. Sorry to slightly go off topic....

As for Revelations, it's a pretty cool book but hard to understand. The way I see it is that John was shown what was going to happen. It was beyond belief for him seeing things he had never seen before. So he described what he saw. And I imagine when he saw it, it was going pretty fast as it happened. Take a car for example - we all know what one looks like and how it works. But what if John saw it? How would be describe it? "A large wagon with no horse full of people moving at a high rate of speed". Or if he saw the Space X rocket launch into space. "A large cylinder with massive amounts of fire and explosions went into the sky and went as high as the eye can see". I just feel like it is things that he saw and wasn't quite sure how to explain a lot of it.

John heard a loud voice like a trumpet. Maybe it was a loudspeaker and having never seen one that was the description he gave.

I just imagine that if any of us are around to see any of what he describes we would also have no idea how to explain it. Imagine trying to explain the USS Enterprise to someone who has never seen it and has no idea what a spaceship is. "Well, it is a ship but it isn't on the ocean, it flies above the earth. It has a large circular section on the front but it is flat and is attached to a tube with 2 protruding arms that have 2 more cylinders on the back. It can fly faster than the speed of light using something called warp, which gives it the capability to travel at very fast speeds". If you explained it like that someone who had never heard of it and never saw it and never knew of space travel would say "Okkkkkkk".

Anyway, I need to go give the book of Revelations a read, haven't read it in a long time.

I guess I'm kind of in the same boat as Manny, I just don't deal with any of it anymore.

(Warning: Rant follows)

I was raised Lutheran, but we were never hard core church goers, just the "Easter and Christmas" types. My parents tried to make us go to Sunday school when we were kids but unless they were passing out free copies of those awesomely terrible Christian Archie comics or letting me draw pictures of the Earth being destroyed by floods and fire, I wasn't interested. ("No, Keith. Jesus did not have wheels.")

I tried to walk the "right way" for a while in my early teens but it never really made much sense to me. "Let me see if I got this straight: there's an Invisible Sky Being who requires us to dress up nicely and crowd into a special building once a week to tell him how great He is, and give him money. Then we drink his kids' blood and eat his flesh? Oooooo-kay."

With that mindset, of course, there was much worrying that I was going to go to Hell for what I now know is normal teenager "question everything" stuff and spent way too much time doing this mental circular clusterfuck: "Y'know, I'm not sure I really believe in all this God stuff, but I don't wanna go to hell, so I guess I'd better believe ... but what if He knows I don't really believe? Am I gonna go to hell anyway?" Et cetera, et cetera.

My wife did not grow up in any church environment so when we got together the religiosity was never an issue. Still, we tried half-heartedly to get into the church thing to make the old folks in the family happy. We were married in my family's church, joined the local Presbyterian church when we moved to our current home town, attended semi-regularly for a while, baptized our kids there, etc., etc. but as time went on it became less and less important so we just let it fade away. The Reverend who was running things when we joined has since retired and we've never met the replacement, nor are we likely to. I imagine we're probably not even on the membership rolls anymore.

I think the cracks in my "faith" really started getting bigger when my father passed in '99. I had been married for less than a year, had just moved into my first house, my parents were celebrating their 30th year of marriage, everything was great, and then boom - he was diagnosed with leukemia in October and was dead by Christmas.

At his funeral, I heard a lot of "At least he's with God now" or "God must have had plans for him." I was like "Well, what the f**k about the plans HE had? What kind of God takes a good man away from his family when he's only 55, and had plenty of living left to do? He'll  never get to retire and go fishing, or meet his grandchildren. If that's God's will, then f*** it. I don't want any part of it."

A few years later, same thing happened to my mother-in-law, a dear lady who loved her family and her grand-kids more than life itself. BANG - outta nowhere, heart attack at 54. Once again we heard the "it must have been God's will" stuff. Our church attendance pretty much stopped after that.

My Mom, however, has gotten church-ier as she's gotten older. After my father passed she joined a new church which she attends every week. I'm fine with it cuz she's in her 70s now and it keeps her active and social, I don't even mind that everything she emails me now has a Bible verse tacked onto the end, haha.

Occasionally Mom still gives me crap about my lack of religion ("When's the last time you went to church, son?" "It'll be twelve years this week, Ma... what's your point?") but when she tries to start stuff I simply choose not to engage.

My brother's the same way -- he told me a while ago that she'd asked him about the lack of Gawd in his life, and he sez "I dunno, honestly, the whole thing just seems kind of dumb." She flipped out and said, "I raised you better than that!" to which he replied, "No, you raised me to think for myself. Ooops."

It kinda reminds me of that old Bill Cosby routine about his mother spoiling her grand kids-- "This is not my mother! This is an old woman who's trying to buy her way into Heaven now!"

So yeah, in a nutshell: if people ask me about my religious views, this is my standard answer: "the Lord and I have an agreement. I try not to do anything that will piss Him off, and He doesn't strike me with lightning. So far it's working out well."

For real, though, I guess my "views" would consist of "I don't care who or what you worship as long as you're not a dick about it..." (or to quote those other great philosophers, Bill and Ted, "Be excellent to each other.")

TL, DR version: Those of you who got that old-time religion, good on ya. I gave it a shot, it didn't fit me, I'm done with trying and I'm a lot happier for it.

Just an observation...

I can see a pattern or common thread of many people that lose faith. It usually involves tragedy or unanswered questions. And those are valid feelings. Faith isn’t easy when bad things happen. We can become bitter and resentful toward God. If a seed has been planted at some point, God will keep trying to reach out. I just hope it doesn’t get to the point of a seared conscience.

Quote :

 She flipped out and said, "I raised you better than that!"

If I had a buck for every time my mother has said that to me for the same reason, I could retire now instead of waiting 5 more years.  She's laid that guilt trip about not going to church on me for years now.  Like there's something inherently sacred about going to a brick and mortar building (she's learning a bit of truth now that the corona virus has shut down her church). 

And I hear ya TZ, it's all about faith when it comes down to it and I guess I don't have very much because I'm all about logic and my observations of what I'm supposed to believe vs how I observe the world just doesn't make any logical sense.

No judgments. We’re all on a journey (not the band).

tohostudios wrote:

If I had a buck for every time my mother has said that to me for the same reason, I could retire now instead of waiting 5 more years. 

Five more years?  I thought you had been suckling the SSI teets for some time now!!!  I have a whole file on my laptop of good things to say after your HOM Eulogy!!!  

Too bad Toho is on his deathbed.  Too weak to comment on the love I have for him and his principals.... [Right Toho? ]

So, This thread actually turned out really cool. I am gonna start a poll in this room with all of your thoughts, as I read and perceive them. Gonna start with 5, so, please do not respond in that thread. Send me a PM with a suggestion to alter the poll and I will add another entry to said poll. Keep all discussion about this in this thread. We will see how this poll plays out with everyone staying anonymous throughout. Peace be with you....and also to you.

I'm much like Freddy. My grandmother tried her hardest to give me the religion bug, but it never really took after I got old enough to think for myself. She was Lutheran, and I'd go to church with her every Sunday, do the whole Sunday school thing, and other things. As I got older, I told her I didn't want to go anymore. She actually started to bribe me to go with her. That lasted for a while, then even bribes couldn't keep me going.

When I entered my teens, I started dabbling in Satanism. Mainly thanks to music. I never did any rituals or try my hand at magic and shit, but it did give me a feeling of inner strength I didn't know I had.

It was right around then that my grandmother wanted me to get baptized. At first I was totally against it, but then she bribed me again. She would buy me any ring I wanted from my uncle's Jewelry store and I would get baptized. I saw a cool ass skull ring, and she bought it for me. Still have it btw, but it's so worn, it's not much of a skull anymore.

We ended up getting baptized together. I remember the priest asked me if I denounce Satan, and I gave him a chuckle and said sure. He looked at me really funny, almost made me start cracking up. Got a wooden cross for my efforts, and first thing I did with it is hang it upside down. I eventually burned it. On a side note, when my grandmother died, I found the cross they gave her that day and it sits on my shelf my stereo is on as I write this.

Anyways, I no longer consider myself a Satanist. I've since read about many religions including some of the bible without bribery lol I do believe in God, but I don't believe in any organised religion. I think every religion I've looked into all have valid things to them, so in a way I've made my own religion out of bits and pieces from each. I know for a fact the soul is real, and there is an afterlife. No way in hell do I believe you go to heaven or hell after you die though.

Anyways, about the book of revelation goes, I've read that one the most. Been years, and I've actually thought about reading it again. I'm not sure how I feel about it, though when I heard they were trying to insert a new bill of law titled HR 6666, and it had to do with tracking us like cattle over this covid bullshit, I immediately thought of the book of revelation.

These are some crazy times for sure. I've actually thought this was going to happen years ago. Just when I was feeling comfortable and planning to die an old man from natural causes, I'm now wondering if I should have better prepared. I do believe everything happens for a reason, and as the saying goes, God doesn't give you more than you can handle, so if I can remember that, then I'll be fine if shit really hits the fan hard.

Anyways, like Freddy, i don't care what anyone's beliefs are. As long as you don't try to force it on me, we'll get along just fine. Start preaching to me and get ready for an argument you probably won't like lol

Quote :

Anyways, like Freddy, i don't care what anyone's beliefs are. As long as you don't try to force it on me, we'll get along just fine. Start preaching to me and get ready for an argument you probably won't like lol

 Yep!  That's where I come down.  I really don't care what your faith is unless you try to tell me you're right and I'm wrong.  Ever notice that doesn't seem to happen from people practicing Hinduism or Buddhism or any other "non-Christian" religion? 

I actually sometimes envy people who have a faith that helps pull them through tough times because I'm pretty sure I don't have that.  In my life I feel like when the shit hits the fan it's totally on me to try to get through it; it must be a blessing to feel like you have help.