Blast from the past!

Tambora

Get your armor ready!
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I just love this place!!!!



Knight said:
TITLE OF THE WEBSITE: ChristianForums.com
SUBTITLE OF THEIR WEBSITE: Christian Forums is a multi-denominational Christian forum message board community uniting all Christians as one body.

Yet the truth divides!

Christ said...

Luke 12:51 Do you suppose that I came to give peace on earth? I tell you, not at all, but rather division.

Matthew 10:34 "Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword."

John 7:43 So there was a division among the people because of Him.

So ChristianForums.com banned Christ.

ChristianForums.com RULES state...

Christ exclaimed...

Matthew 23:33 “Serpents, brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell?

So ChristianForums.com swiftly banned Christ.

ChristianForums.com rules state:

Christ warned...

John 8:44 “You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.

And Christ turned to Peter and said...

Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.

So ChristianForums.com quickly banned Christ.

ChristianForums.coms rules state:

Christ made Himself clear...

Matthew 7:21 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.

And when the rich man asked Christ....

Luke 18:18 Now a certain ruler asked Him, saying, “Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” 19 So Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God. 20 “You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery,’ ‘Do not murder,’ ‘Do not steal,’ ‘Do not bear false witness,’ ‘Honor your father and your mother.’ ” 21 And he said, “All these things I have kept from my youth.” 22 So when Jesus heard these things, He said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” 23 But when he heard this, he became very sorrowful, for he was very rich. 24 And when Jesus saw that he became very sorrowful, He said, “How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God! 25 “For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

So ChristianForums.com deleted Christ's words and quickly banned Christ.
 

Tambora

Get your armor ready!
LIFETIME MEMBER
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Knight tells the story of how TOL began.

Knight said:
[FONT=&quot]
TOL_beginning.gif
On this, the tenth anniversary of TOL, and after numerous requests from faithful TOL alumni over the last decade, I have finally decided to reveal the true story of how it all began.

In the beginning…

No no no, not how matter, energy, and life began, but rather how TOL began. It isn’t as dramatic or grand a story as the creation of the universe, but it is a little strange, maybe even scary. In any case I think it is a story whose time has come to tell.

I was a fairly new Christian, having joined the faith just a few years before, as well as a husband and father of three. I worked as a Information Handling supervisor for U.S. West (which is a fancy way of saying that I oversaw the handling and preparation of special data), having worked my way up from the mail room.

The job was enjoyable (usually), but I did butt heads a few times with other supervisors during certain mandatory classes we (meaning my staff and I) were required to attend.

It was one of these classes, as well as the events that followed, which ignited the spark that would become TOL.

The class was titled “Cultural Diversity in the Vocation Spot” (it had originally been titled “Cultural Diversity in the Work Force” but someone complained the word “Work” denigrated the unemployed, and that “Force” was a violent word, usually associated with overbearing male figures who enjoy beating women. They tried replacing the word “Force” with “Place” but a complaint was lodged stating that “Place” was just another word for “House”, as in “dude, come on over to my place”, and as such was highly offensive to those who are residentially challenged in our society. And so the word “Spot” was finally, and after much debate, adopted).

The class was taught by a six foot seven, three hundred and ninety pound transsexual with a heavy lisp, too much makeup, and seven teeth. The teacher was dressed in a mini-skirt, stiletto heels, nylons (unshaved legs), and no bra. Although the lack of a bra was understandable after he…er…she…it? explained how she had decided to have her right breast surgically removed as a symbolic, sympathetic statement in support of breast cancer research.

As the class droned on into its third hour, having just finished with the topic “Why White Men Hate Women, Children and Puppies” (she pronounced it “Why Withe Men Hathe Women, Children and Puppiethe”), and was starting in on the new topic “Little Boys are Future Rapists”, I found my mind drifting to my current weekend project which was helping my brother Mitch rebuild the engine on his Midget race car. We were having a heck of a time maximizing piston compression and I was sure the problem had something to do with the gas to alcohol ratio for the fuel, combined with the length of the exhaust system.

Suddenly, I was jolted awake from a near comatose state by a bolt of inspiration. I had solved the compression problem. I quickly jotted a few notes on the class handout.

“A-hem!” said the giant transsexual teacher standing over me. I looked up, seeing a stubbled chin and bright purple lips. Her nametag, pinned to the deflated side of her chest, read “Stacy”.

I looked around; the rest of the class was staring at me with wide round eyes.

I smiled. “Yes?”

“Writing notes are we?” asked Stacy from above. “Care to share with the rest of the class?”

Weirdly, I felt like I was back in grade school, caught passing notes about the teacher to a friend. “No, I’m just…”

Stacy snatched the paper from my fingers. By reflex action alone I started to grab for it, but then I noticed the massively hairy forearm attached to her pudgy wrist. I felt a little queasy, my stomach lurching around a bit, and let my hand fall back to my lap.

She read out loud the words I had scribbled in the margin of the handout, her lisp spraying spit with each word. “Increase engine output.” She looked down at me over thick glasses that magnified her false eyelashes and gaudy blue eye shadow. Stacy read on. “Shorten the pipes.” She looked down at me again, and now her lips were starting to tremble, her voice sliding up an octave. “More alcohol.” And now she looked furious. Her face had gone a mean shade of red and her seven, nicotine stained, teeth were clenched tightly and bared. “How dare you?” she cried, stamping a foot. The action caused her one heavy breast to swing beneath the loose fitting, nearly see-through silk of her shirt like a pendulum. “Your kind, make me sick!”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, totally perplexed, and more than a little frightened by the giant pendulum swaying from one side to the other. It was gross but somehow almost hypnotic.

“Oh, I’ve dealt with your kind long enough to see through your silly little insults. You can’t fool me.” She shoved the handout up over her head for all the class to see. “Increase Injun output? Shorten the pipes? More alcohol?” She stamped her foot again, (I so wished she would not do that). She flapped the paper in her hand. “Code, I say, code! The white, heterosexual, Christian male’s last bastion of racist defense.”

I looked around for support. Obviously the…Stacy…thing…had gone off the deep end. But everyone had carefully pushed their chairs to a safe distance and were looking away as though they didn’t know me.

Stacy pointed a chubby finger, tipped with a long, jewel encrusted acrylic nail at me. “They are not Injuns, Mr. Big Bad White Man Slave Owner, they are the proud progeny of the once great tribes of Indigenous Native American peoples that roamed freely the hills and meadows, living in perfect harmony with nature and each other, until the white man came, slaughtering trillions of them, using germ warfare and playing on their trusting innocent naiveté.”

I started to laugh…a bad move on my part.

“You think it’s funny?” Stacy screamed. “Shorten their pipes? More alcohol? Don’t think I don’t know about that. Code for Shorten their peace pipes, so they get more wacky-tobaccy smoke into their lungs, and more alcohol so they get drunk faster—all to make them easier to control and get more work out of them with less complaints! In other words, or better yet in your words, to Increase Injun output!”

I shook my head and held up my hands. “No, you have it all wrong. I was talking about a midget engine, not…”

“THEY ARE CALLED LITTLE PEOPLE, SIR!” she bellowed into my face. “LITTLE INDIGENOUS NATIVE AMERICAN PEOPLE!”

Her lisp turned the short speech into a shower. I wiped my sopping face and stood up. “Now you just knock this off here. I’ve had about enough of…”

“Don’t you hit me, you brute,” she cried, jumping back and covering her face with both hands, an action which made the toxic pendulum start swinging again. My stomach gurgled in response. “Violence! Your kind’s answer for everything.” She cowered away from me, even though she was at least seven inches taller and outweighed me by a good hundred and twenty pounds.

“I don’t hit women,” I said through clenched teeth.

“Sexist chauvinist!”

My eyes narrowed. “But then again you’re not really a woman, are you?”

“Homophobe!”

I took a step closer to her. “I may be a homophobe but you’re a big, fat, mutilated, homo, woman-wanna-be, with bad makeup.”

She stuck out one of her chins, her nostrils flaring. “I’m not fat—I’m diet challenged and exercise impaired.” She suddenly stopped as though I had slapped her. “Bad makeup?” Her eyes blazed fury. She pointed a hairy finger at me. “You—you—conservative!”

That stopped me.

“I knew it,” she screamed, a huge smile squirming itself across her lipstick smeared lips. “A conservative! And probably a right-wing, heterosexual, CHRISTIAN, conservative!”

I took another step. “And is there something wrong with that?”

“Oh, nothing,” she mocked, “except that you’re judgmental, white, and want to burn people, who don’t agree with you, at the stake.”

“Judgmental?” I laughed. “Look who’s talking? You’re the one who judged that an innocent note I was writing was a dissertation on bigotry. And then you tried to embarrass me in front of my employees and peers, for something I didn’t even do.”

“You deserved to be embarrassed,” she hissed, her eyes narrowed slits of accusation. “You are a bad role model. How are these people supposed to learn about tolerance and acceptance from someone like you? I know your kind. A man, married to a woman who he keeps enslaved bearing children, cooking and cleaning. Going to a church that preaches intolerance and passes judgment on people culturally superior to themselves.” She shook her head roughly, sending her matted, greasy hair flopping limply. “Well I’m not going to let you get away with it. I’m going over your head and let the people upstairs know what you did to me.”

Now she was really starting to get me mad. “You’re crazy, I didn’t do a thing to you.”

“Mentally challenged,” she yelled at me, “and you did too do something. And you’re still doing it.” She covered her one flapping breast with her arms, and crossed her legs as though she were naked. “Ever since I walked into this room you have been undressing me with your eyes.”

“What?” The thought of it was almost enough to make me puke.

“Sexual harassment in the vocational spot is not tolerated here at U.S. West. And there will be repercussions. Oh yes, there will be!” She turned and ran from the room, still hiding her nakedness from my x-ray vision.

I looked around at my employees and at the other supervisors in the room. Most of the women covered their bodies just as Stacy had, as though I were leering at them. The men just looked away, well some of them, a couple of the others winked at me, which made me feel very yucky.

I went back to my office, the events going round and round in my mind. Something had to be done. Political correctness had gone too far. If this was what society had been morphed into, it was time to take a stand.

Opening the Macintosh computer on my desktop I punched in the first streams of data that would start it all.

In the beginning, the world was void of goodness and the darkness of political correctness was in the minds of the people.

Let there be light!

And thus TOL was created.[/FONT]
 

Tambora

Get your armor ready!
LIFETIME MEMBER
Hall of Fame
2006
ApologeticJedi give his view of Calvinism.

ApologeticJedi[COLOR=#333333 said:
]That everything always works out for good in this life is simply false. There are a thousand tragedies every day that do not work out for good. [/COLOR]

What Paul was saying is that in heaven the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shalh be. And this is true in the Open View point. We don't look at someone loosing their son and try to tell them that it was better this way, or worse, that God killed their son so that they could be blessed by some means down the road. :vomit:

OVers also believe God can turn around any situation, the difference is we don't view God as someone who flattens your tires just so you can have the blessing of having them aired up again. That sort of sociopath fits more with the Calvinist frame of mind.

(And that's just for the Christians! For the non-Christains the Calvinist version of God holds people under the water watching the bubbles come out, all thetime shouting to them, "Why don't you get out of the water!!!" :bang:
 

Tambora

Get your armor ready!
LIFETIME MEMBER
Hall of Fame
2005

Clete said:
An abbreviated version of the syllogism goes like this...
Clete said:
  • Freedom of choice means I have the ability to choose to do or to do otherwise.
  • Love must be chosen.
  • Therefore if I have no freedom of choice I cannot love.
  • If the future is closed I cannot do other than what the closed future has in store for me to do, I cannot do otherwise.
  • Therefore if the future is closed I have no freedom of choice.
  • Therefore if the future is closed I cannot love.
  • The inability to love is antithetical to everything Christianity is about.
  • Therefore the future cannot be closed if Christianity is true at all.
  • Christianity must be true because of the rational impossiibilty of the contrary (I will not establish this point).
  • Therefore the future is open.

This logic is iron clad; it cannot be escaped by any rational means. Closed Theism is therefore rationally impossible and since the only logical alternative is Open Theism, it must be the truth.

Resting in Him,
Clete
 
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