Diagoras wrote: ↑Mon Apr 26, 2021 6:46 pm
2timothy316 wrote: ↑Fri Apr 23, 2021 9:29 amI gave an illustration that there is a way out of death. No matter how death comes. Some see that as a hope for them as a way out of death and for them and the people they love. As you said, as it stands right now every human being will die. Yet I think there is a way out.
You think there’s a ‘way out’ of death, then.
That's what I have read.
"And he will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be anymore. The former things have passed away.” - Rev 21:4
The fear of which possibly drives a significant proportion of all religious thought at some subliminal, if not conscious level, as death is perhaps the ‘greatest unknown’. When all the scientific evidence points to death being ‘the final end’, it’s fine for some people to cling to hope for something better. Not everyone is comfortable with the idea that they live but a brief time, after all.
I have read exactly what death is, it is not unknown to me and I do not fear it. Both science and the Bible are in agreement. "For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing at all...there is no work nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom in the Grave, where you are going." - Ecc 9:5, 10
I have also read that life is fleeting, "In themselves the days of our years are seventy years; and if because of special mightiness they are eighty years, yet their insistence is on trouble and hurtful things; for it must quickly pass by, and away we fly.” - Psalm 90:10
2timothy316 wrote:Then there are the people that are completely fine with dying. They have been listening to other types of groups other than religious groups that are telling them that death is just a part of life. They have no interest in getting off the road they are on. A person might use fear to get them off that road but of course we see that doesn't work hardly at all. Honestly, folks that are doing this fearmongering are not leading anyone to life but just another lane on the same road.
<bolding mine>
Are we agreeing that trying to convert non-believers to Christianity by the use of fear doesn’t work? I hope so. I’d think that this was quite effective in the past, and still works to an extent on less well educated people, but the trend is most likely a close inverse correlation with intelligence.
It worked for a little while until people gained access to the Bible after centuries of it being kept from people under pain of death. When Christendom lost it's ability to burn, hang, and torture the fearmongering grip it had loosened. It still works on many people uneducated and well educated. There are people with PHDs in all sorts of fields that still believe in hell. Don't underestimate the power of tradition and peer/family pressure.
2timothy316 wrote:Let what comes in the future prove who is right and who is wrong.
For this to have any practical use to us, you’ll have to be a lot more specific.
All of what is to come is in this thread.
Good luck to them - I expect their warnings will increasingly fall on deaf ears.
Agreed. Yet some will listen and want what comes after the last days which I quoted at the beginning of this reply. I already know the numbers will be few for life and many for death. “Go in through the narrow gate; because broad and spacious is the road leading off into destruction, and many are the ones going in through it; whereas narrow is the gate and cramped the road leading off into life, and few are the ones finding it.”—Matt. 7:13, 14.