see, this is why i'm an agnostic witness.

i heard someone saying something but i'm not sure who it was nor what was being talked about.

"see, this is why i'm an agnostic witness."
First...and maybe not here, but on a different thread, could you explain to me what an agnostic witness is? I tried searching it, but I couldn't find much except for a reference to REM.

Second...this is why you agnostic? The fact that other people talk to God, and they believe He talks back? That confuses me. Why?

ThinkAloud...
Good, and well said. I do believe though that God is talking to these people. I just don't think they are listening.
I think they hear what they want to hear. My younger sister got caught up with a rather eccentric group of worshippers. She came back from a youth conference all "doped up" on the Spirit. She claimed that people were talking in tongues, passing out in extasy, and receiving revelations. I cautioned her and reminded her that these things are extremely rare. Old Testament/New Testament/any religious documents will cited very, very few cases ever. In most all of the cases, it seems, unless the person was posessed, the case involved people who had been deeply spiritual and strong in faith for many years before even getting a little bit of that good stuff. And only one occasion of something even similar to her youth conference comes to mind. It was when God dispersed the people from the tower of Babel across the world. But this was not a spiritual gift, as such. It was punishment for their audacity. I proposed to her that it might just be the fact that people want attention.

Nothing made her more angry at the time. She was having her experience reduced to attention-hungry motives from junior high students. But the next time she went, she couldn't help but see that many people seemed to be looking just for a bit of attention.

In the same respects, I believe that most people who drop the name of God into their sentences are just looking for validation. Sometimes, there is nothing there to validate. But other times, they just need to hear that they are right, especially on issues of religion. It can be so hard. If your only tool to working it out is a Bible, or even if you're lucky enough to have a good minister with some credentials, there is still so much to muddle through.

I do enjoy listening to many of them, or reading their logs, because I want to find out the type of god that they believe in. It's often times not the Christian God, nor the Jewish God. Often times, because they read the Bible on their own with little other guidance, they come to the crossroads of deciding what they think is right. It seems, though, that instead of really looking at what God wants them to do, they simply reinvent God into their image...a god that is friendly, bubbly, never gets angry, permits everything that they want to do, agrees with their sin, and smiles at the end of everyday, saying "you tried your best today, sorta, and that's cool with me, you'll get into heaven for real, I got a great place up here for you, if one of my rules is too hard to follow, just relax, it's okay, no one is perfect and I don't want you to try any harder than you feel like...drugs? okay, premarital sex?, enjoy that why I made it, abortion? sure, I don't want you being inconvienced, just know that I love you (insert if Christian: and I sacrificed my only son for you to a horrible death) so much that I've given you everything and more, oo heaven is a place on earth, bubbles, bubbles, I'm a carebear."

Normally I try to stay away from being snide, but I was actually having a bit of fun towards the end. I apologize. That went a bit too far. However, the principal is still the same. They say that God speaks to them to allow them special conditions or knowledge. Really, in most cases, I'm going to have to think that if it doesn't conform to the Judeo-Christian God as detailed, then it's probably a deception from big D. Though, tragically, most probably don't understand the difference since they've never really put themselves to finding out.

I believe that God speaks thru His Word, for those willing to discern Him. I don't claim to have personal revelations, only pieces of a puzzle that lead me in His ways. Something in the Sciptures His Word will strike me; that is God. When the Scriptures reveal how I am not living in accordance with His Will, then that is God. But God has yet to make me a prophet or to command me to write a revelation. Until then I will search for Him where He may be found and confrom my will to His.

"If God, (whichever God you wish to pick), were to influence mankind in ANY way - be it talking to JUs or talking to messengers and prophets, then what He has done is stack the deck...Our free will is gone."

I'm not exactly sure as to what you mean here. Free will is the ability to make our own decisions. Just because God says something, that does not erase or destroy free will. It doesn't even diminish it. But instead enhances it.
Free will is influenced by everything. Everything you see, hear, taste, feel, smell, sense, anything and everything that you absorb from anything around you and outside of you is an influence upon your free will. But that doesn't damage free will. In fact, for it to be supremely free will, we would need omniscience. For then we could truly make decisions unfettered by the limitation of ignorance. Ignorance is what hinders our free will. Making decisions, exercising free will, is an act of assessing the information on hand and making a judgment. Therefore, if we had perfect knowledge then we would have perfect free will. But God didn't give us that. That is the ability to choose Him and to discern Him and to seek Him. If we had perfect knowledge, what need would there be to choose Him? We would already know to choose Him. Which in a very twisted way could be perceived of loss of free will. But ultimately no one in Heaven, nor in Hell, nor on Earth removes your free will, your ability to choose. God has given that gift and does not infringe upon it.
However, one must assume that even with ultimate knowledge, you still can choose not to follow God or to be with Him, being that free will is still a choice. If anyone was close to it, it must have been Lucifer. Jealousy that free will was created and gifted to man over the hosts of Heaven was enough for him to choose to leave. As long as we're following the "standard."
So if the temptations for evil(distance from God) come from Satan, what chance did humanity have? Their free will as being influenced by one side, providing only certain information that would tempt them to choose Satan. God improved free will by offering guidance in the path of light. He doesn't require that you follow it, but he does want you to have all the information you need to make a decision.
No, free will is not disturbed by information. It is improved by it. That is why we must search out the truth, even if it seems like a jigsaw puzzle with tons of mixed up pieces. They all belong to the same truth. We have all the tools we need to work out a decision. That's what we must do.
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"are [we] to be judged by our actions (which is the standard ideology) then those actions must not be influenced in any way by Him."
If God is just, as the "standard" tells us, then how could we be judged without knowing His laws? It would be like the cops busting down your door and lining you and your family up for execution. When you get to ask them they why, they reply "that as of 5 minutes ago, it be came a crime, punishable by immediate execution, to eat potato chips." You had no idea. And you used your free will to eat those d*#ned potato chips. If you had only known, you might not have eaten them. You might still have anyways, but at least then you would have had a choice. But you really didn't get a choice, did you? You didn't know the rules or the consequences of your actions. Justice, is it? Is that the way that you hope to be judged?
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You forgot the best part of my quote that God is really a carebear.
A logical reprieve...hmmm. You mean a place/bearing/time/existence/something that isn't logical? You believe that to exist. Great!! But what bearing does it have on anything?
And you said that my quote was illogical. I agree. It was demonstrating the extreme condition of someone who creates God in his/her image and then justifies the position by saying that God told them it was cool. I think that's hideous illogical as well. I don't think people should create or modify God to fit their mold. That isn't the purpose of God in any context.
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"Well, logically, it must be..." (in reference to God being perfect...therefore we are perfect)
No. That is the denial of free will. Do I believe that we are created perfect? Yes. God has constructed us perfectly to His specifications. And He even gave us a perfect gift, the ability to choose. However, we kinda screwed that up. Original sin. Adam and Eve, they chose to see good and evil. He didn't gift us with this ability. No, we stole that. And now we see good and evil. And we do good and evil. God did not create us flawed, but we have found it fit to mar ourselves. And so we all wear the mark of Adam and Eve.
For if we were so perfect, why would God send His Son to conquer sin and death for us? If we were perfect, no problem. We wouldn't been weak enough to need a Savior. And if we were perfect as God is perfect, would we be subject to damnation?
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I have a feeling this isn't finished, not by a long shot. But I don't mind peeling onions. I am often surprised at what I find. It might be that I could agree very much with some of your thoughts. Time will tell.

well said.



hahahahah I was just thinking the same thing. I too never heard this.



God is perfect. He did not make a mistake. Did you know that he had the Savior planned from the foundation of the earth, knowing quite well when he put man and woman in the garden with freewill what would happen? God knew exactly what he was doing right from the get go. There's a well crafted master plan in the works. When all is said and done, we will realize how little and insignificant we really are and how awesome and Holy God really is. Evidently we haven't come to the point where he feels we've learned this truth yet.



That's what the world tells us, but not what God tells us. He reminds us every day how imperfect we really are. You need to listen to your instinct....  

Prophecy and speaking in tongues are two different gifts. Speaking in tongues was a gift from God in the beginning of the church for the purpose of the gospel being propagated and spread throughout the world. Both Propecy (foretelling the future) and Tongues, in my opinion, were Apostolic gifts and are no longer needed with the writing of the NT.

Yeah, 'cuz God changes and all that.

Could you reference that? I seem to have missed that in all his press conferences

That was in Woodward's first Book. When asked :Have you talk to your father before making the decision to invade. His answer was something like: I talked to higher Auithority. that implies, inmo, what i said in the article.

That was in Woodward's first Book. When asked :Have you talk to your father before making the decision to invade. His answer was something like: I talked to higher Auithority. that implies, inmo, what i said in the article.

So you have heresay incorrectly quoted with an interpretation. So you are actually saying that your statement was false.

But you have to admit it would be a change in his MO. Why would he talk to prophets, "face to face", but then once we had a book just stop talking to people? Just because of a book, whose creation is spurious at best? Makes no sense to me.

"Then there is the gift of prophecy which is being forthright in speaking out God's words. Paul would be a good example here. Peter also. To speak up in the face of adversity confidently is a gift from God."

"One is the foretelling of what's going to happen like many if not all the OT Prophets. They would speak about what was going to come to pass."

That's because Jesus hadn't happened yet, now he has there's no need to tell the future... now we tell the past, and are probably listened to about as much as the prophets were.

As for speaking in different languages, I will look that up, but I'm pretty sure it was in Acts that lots of people believed and started speaking a language they didn't even know, which left half the people saying they were drunk and half believing.

People noticed that time. But regardless, I think the world at large would refuse to believe it and it would be impossible to recreate, so it isn't talked about beyond those who it happened to/around. But in sharing the message of Christ, I think language barriers often get removed when ordinarily someone would have no idea what you were saying.

ha! You've got that right!



oh it is. I was asking for you to show me where it happens all the time in a biblical sort of way? What we are seeing today here in our own country is NOT the same speaking in tongues as was done biblically speaking. First of all it HAS to be a language. Secondly it HAS to be for someone speaking in the congregation who has never heard the gospel in his/her own language. So when I hear all these tongues speaking people, I have to ask...what language are you speaking and for whom? I've been in a church where they are all speaking "gibberish" all at once. That is NOT biblical.

Tongues is NOT for our own edification. All the gifts were and are supposed to be for others...not ourselves.



Yes, and these people went to their own countries with the gospel understanding it in their own language.



Exactly. It's not to be gibberish, but a language and Paul made this very clear in 1 Cor 12. Notice when you read that..... when it's gibberish Paul says "unknown tongue" and when it's legit he says "tongues." Paul downplays the whole tongue issue to the Corinthians who were abusing it just like they are today.

So you have heresay incorrectly quoted with an interpretation. So you are actually saying that your statement was false

A direct quote from an interview is heresay? and if my interpretetion is wrong, then what is YOUR interpretion of what he said? He didnt deny this when the book came out.

It is amazing how you blind Bush supporters defend him even in the most foolish things he does or says. Good for you. just keep defending and spinning his foolishness. it seems that it is what you have left to do.

Shouldn't God be allowed to influence things in His own creation? Well, sure. But along with that goes the responsibility of the influence. That responsibility, by His own action, is now HIS responsibility. Our free will is gone.

If we, as mankind, are to be judged by our actions (which is the standard ideology) then those actions must not be influenced in any way by Him.

Before applying your "Bible of logic and reason" you need to fully understand His method or MO if you will. He influences things in away to make it possible for us to use our own free will. He also gave us the guidelines to use that same free will. In short anything honestly and truly beyond any human's control ( and He knows what is and what is not any human's abilitiies) that human is not responsible for it. That is His MO. so dont take His infleuence as acting against your free will, in fact it is empowering and guiding it .