It's a song by Depeche Mode. "Personal Jesus." You know, "You're own personal Jesus. Someone to hear your prayers, someone who cares." It's pretty well known.

I didn't say you were lying about god. All I'm saying is that everyone needs to stop looking for god in manmade institutions. It all gets in the way.

Anti, I hope I can interject something here and be understood in what I am wanting to convey.

Now not singing along with Depeche Mode at all ...I still got to say that everyone has their own personal Jesus or own personal Mohammed, or own personal Buddha or any other...god or really any relationship you have in life.

Once you even just fall in love with someone, you have your own personal CindyLou or Bobbi-Jo. Do you know what I am saying?

Relationship IS a personal thing. And when one claims a relationship with deity, or spiritual leader, it is not any different than any other relationship in as much as it is personal.

What I "have" with Jesus is quite different than what another has, given it is my life and the way I perceive His interactions with me, in my life.

One could call it spiritual imagination or if God is real, faith.
At this point, I am not wanting to even address that difference.

I only mean to say that any relationship whether with deity or another person, is "personal" cos...well...we are people.

Don't expect a faith in God to be any different. That is actually what religion tries to do, tries to squelch the personality and unique relationship each one can have with God.

OD

Anti... I got one thing to say to you...

Jinx! You owe me a soda!

OD

P.S. The song also is known by Johnny Cash. I share that for the sake of Jefferson, he is getting up there in years, and may not know the one by Depeche Mode. I only know it by them myself for giving them a listen after hearing John the Revelator.

I'll take it that he's not a fan of Marilyn Manson's cover.

I used it kinda out of context to show that nobody can really have their own true understanding of God. It's unattainable unless you actually are god, like nobody can understand who I am unless you are me. They can have a relationship with their own personal Jesus, as in love and trust, that's a given, but when it comes to interpretation, we haven't even scratched the surface of the reasoning in the mind of an omniscient being, because we're not omniscient ourselves.

That's good. That's why I keep seeking...

And this:

Quote:

I'll take it that he's not a fan of Marilyn Manson's cover

again by Anti...

I lost ya on the thing you wrote about Marilyn Manson though...


OD

Thanks to the work of Simon Greenleaf, sometimes you have to love lawyers, we can say with certainty that according to history the Resurrection of Jesus did occur. Furthermore, since Jesus peformed miracles, was resurrected we know him to be the Son of God. Taking that the 4 Gospels of the New Testament revolve around what Jesus taught, and what Jesus said, we can know about God. For it is his words that are spoken through the son, for God and Christ are one and the same. Religion does not require faith, for faith is believing in the absence of proof, yet time and again, science has proven the Bible to be correct. So it would seem that not only do we have faith, but we have scientific evidence supporting our beliefs. Not bad for a 2000 year old book.......

dmk

[quote=sgtdmski;71562yet time and again, science has proven the Bible to be correct. [/QUOTE]

... as well as the exact opposite

Nothing is truly confirmed. A lot of pre-christian belief systems contained texts on divine resurrections and ascentions into heaven, inspired by cases (still present today in less developed countries) of people in catatonic states being mistaken for dead, buried in open graves or burial chambers, and waking up. This probably didn't happen with Jesus, though, because first and foremost, those nails through his feet would have meant he couldn't have been able to walk, and he definitely would have succumbed to either serious infection or blood loss in his state. That's the major problem with the whole "swoon hypothsis." Mybest guess was that it was metaphorical.

It's not 100% certain that Jesus was resurrected. There have been arguments both for and against Greenleaf's apologetics. All I know is that he lived, he had some pretty good ideas, was crucified by the Romans, and died. Truth be told, is there really anything more relevant than his ideas?

Without the resurrection, its all a waste. A guy from either Harvard or Yale made the case along time ago, and found that in a court of law, the resurrection could be proven beyond the reason of doubt.

How did he cross examine the witnesses? Were his sources reliable and unprejudiced? What about official documents? Was there proof in the Roman bureaucracy of a resurrection?