No More Fear

By Colin ~

I live in England and since my late teens have been believing in Christ. I recently turned 61 now and I can see that I’ve been fooled. I am or have been angry with myself and with the preachers and the church.

I grew up around the Jesus "One Way" movement, including "Spree 73" with Billy Graham, Johnny Cash and Cliff Richard. I must say I am somewhat thankful that my whole heart and soul was not 100% into all this over all the intervening years, though for the last 18 years I have been a devoted believer.

I lost my mum recently. She had a real shit couple of years before she passed away with numerous medical conditions. In and out of hospitals constantly, though I regularly prayed for her to get better. My bigger, much larger concern was for mum to be saved. After all, wasn’t this God's will? However, all the praying never changed a thing, not in healing or in becoming saved.

Then after my mum's funeral I was attending the evening service at Gadebridge Baptist Church singing "What a friend we have in Jesus," hearing that God – for the millionth – time loves me. (Here was another hymn that said I was among the scoffers that nailed Jesus to the cross.) The sermon that Jesus/god wants my all my praise. I’m grieving the nightmare in my head is the person that really really loved me (my mum) is in some Hell because God didn’t see fit to save her.

I’ve tuned into Andrew Wommack and Joyce Meyer over the years. I have gone to KT Temple in Kennington in London and listened to the sermons there (Colin Dye) more exciting that a Baptist Church.

I’ve brought into this and couldn’t understand how Isaiah 53 could be anything other than the prophesy about Jesus,

Listened to Andrew Wommack talk about how you just need faith. Alarm bells started going off with him when he was in Scotland and said not only was his son raised from the dead but now his wife also.

Joyce Meyer very very convincing but a multi millionaire. Every week I go to my local baptist church thinking I wished we were more like KT Temple or the Joyce Meyer people. So, so glad I wasn’t in an environment like that because I'd a be hurting more than I am now.

John Loftus, thank you for asking if I fear the hell in Allah's world.

This writing of mine isn’t great, as I’m still upset, angry, grieving the loss of God and my mum. But I'm not currently living in fear. I’ve great friends in the Christian world, but dunno what I’m going to talk about with them now. Friends outside the church? Can’t really talk about how I feel about the Bible and Christians, the church, "the truth..." Me and my thoughts are a complete mind scrabble. My new horizons are life nature, Richard Dawkins, the Jurassic coast of England, that people’s sexuality is okay, what ever it is. Most people are okay.

We all look after ourselves, but most do care for others beyond just themselves.

Comments

Are You an Atheist Success Story?

By Avangelism Project ~ F acts don’t spread. Stories do. It’s how (good) marketing works, it’s how elections (unfortunately) are won and lost, and it’s how (all) religion spreads. Proselytization isn’t accomplished with better arguments. It’s accomplished with better stories and it’s time we atheists catch up. It’s not like atheists don’t love a good story. Head over to the atheist reddit and take a look if you don’t believe me. We’re all over stories painting religion in a bad light. Nothing wrong with that, but we ignore the value of a story or a testimonial when we’re dealing with Christians. We can’t be so proud to argue the semantics of whether atheism is a belief or deconversion is actually proselytization. When we become more interested in defining our terms than in affecting people, we’ve relegated ourselves to irrelevance preferring to be smug in our minority, but semantically correct, nonbelief. Results Determine Reality The thing is when we opt to bury our

So Just How Dumb Were Jesus’ Disciples? The Resurrection, Part VII.

By Robert Conner ~ T he first mention of Jesus’ resurrection comes from a letter written by Paul of Tarsus. Paul appears to have had no interest whatsoever in the “historical” Jesus: “even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, we know him so no longer.” ( 2 Corinthians 5:16 ) Paul’s surviving letters never once mention any of Jesus’ many exorcisms and healings, the raising of Lazarus, or Jesus’ virgin birth, and barely allude to Jesus’ teaching. For Paul, Jesus only gets interesting after he’s dead, but even here Paul’s attention to detail is sketchy at best. For instance, Paul says Jesus “was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” ( 1 Corinthians 15:4 ), but there are no scriptures that foretell the Jewish Messiah would at long last appear only to die at the hands of Gentiles, much less that the Messiah would then be raised from the dead after three days. After his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus—an event Paul never mentions in his lette

Christian TV presenter reads out Star Wars plot as story of salvation

An email prankster tricked the host of a Christian TV show into reading out the plots of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Star Wars in the belief they were stories of personal salvation. The unsuspecting host read out most of the opening rap to The Fresh Prince, a 1990s US sitcom starring Will Smith , apparently unaware that it was not a genuine testimony of faith. The prankster had slightly adapted the lyrics but the references to a misspent youth playing basketball in West Philadelphia would have been instantly familiar to most viewers. The lines read out by the DJ included: "One day a couple of guys who were up to no good starting making trouble in my living area. I ended up getting into a fight, which terrified my mother." The presenter on Genesis TV , a British Christian channel, eventually realised that he was being pranked and cut the story short – only to move on to another spoof email based on the plot of the Star Wars films. It began: &quo

ACTS OF GOD

By David Andrew Dugle ~ S ettle down now children, here's the story from the Book of David called The Parable of the Bent Cross. In the land Southeast of Eden – Eden, Minnesota that is – between two rivers called the Big Miami and the Little Miami, in the name of Saint Gertrude there was once built a church. Here next to it was also built a fine parochial school. The congregation thrived and after a multitude of years, a new, bigger church was erected, well made with clean straight lines and a high steeple topped with a tall, thin cross of gold. The faithful felt proud, but now very low was their money. Their Sunday offerings and school fees did not suffice. Anon, they decided to raise money in an unclean way. One fine summer day the faithful erected tents in the chariot lot between the two buildings. In the tents they set up all manner of games – ring toss, bingo, little mechanical racing horses and roulette wheels – then all who lived in the land between the two rivers we

Morality is not a Good Argument for Christianity

By austinrohm ~ I wrote this article as I was deconverting in my own head: I never talked with anyone about it, but it was a letter I wrote as if I was writing to all the Christians in my life who constantly brought up how morality was the best argument for Christianity. No Christian has read this so far, but it is written from the point of view of a frustrated closeted atheist whose only outlet was organizing his thoughts on the keyboard. A common phrase used with non-Christians is: “Well without God, there isn’t a foundation of morality. If God is not real, then you could go around killing and raping.” There are a few things which must be addressed. 1. Show me objective morality. Define it and show me an example. Different Christians have different moral standards depending on how they interpret the Bible. Often times, they will just find what they believe, then go back into scripture and find a way to validate it. Conversely, many feel a particular action is not

On Living Virtuously

By Webmdave ~ A s a Christian, living virtuously meant living in a manner that pleased God. Pleasing god (or living virtuously) was explained as: Praying for forgiveness for sins Accepting Christ as Savior Frequently reading the Bible Memorizing Bible verses Being baptized (subject to church rules) Attending church services Partaking of the Lord’s Supper Tithing Resisting temptations to lie, steal, smoke, drink, party, have lustful thoughts, have sex (outside of marriage) masturbate, etc. Boldly sharing the Gospel of Salvation with unbelievers The list of virtuous values and expectations grew over time. Once the initial foundational values were safely under the belt, “more virtues'' were introduced. Newer introductions included (among others) harsh condemnation of “worldly” music, homosexuality and abortion Eventually the list of values grew ponderous, and these ideals were not just personal for us Christians. These virtues were used to condemn and disrespect fro

Search This Blog

No More Fear

Labels