Someone recently passed this article on to me, which I posted on another board. It was promptly removed. So sad . . .

Frightening News from France

Once again, the real news in France is conveniently

not being reported as it should. To give you an idea

of what's going on in France where there are now

between 5 and 6 million Muslims and about 600,000 Jews,

here is an email that came from a Jew living in

France. Please read! Will the world say nothing - again - as it did in Hitler's time?

"I AM A JEW -- therefore I am forwarding this to

everyone on all my e-mail lists. I will not sit back

and do nothing." Nowhere have the flames of

anti-Semitism burned more furiously than in France:

Lyon, a car was rammed into a synagogue and set

on fire. In Montpellier, the Jewish religious center

was firebombed; so were synagogues in Strasbourg and

Marseilles; so was a Jewish school in Creteil - all recently.

A Jewish sports club in Toulouse was attacked with

Molotov cocktails, and on the statue of Alfred

Dreyfus in Paris, the words "Dirty Jew" were

painted. In Bondy, 15 men beat up members of a

Jewish football team with sticks and metal bars. The

bus that takes Jewish children to school in

Aubervilliers has been attacked three times in the last 14 months.

According to the Police, metropolitan Paris has seen

10 to 12 anti-Jewish incidents PER DAY in the past

30 days. Walls in Jewish neighborhoods have been

defaced with slogans proclaiming "Jews to the gas

chambers" and "Death to the Jews."

A gunman opened fire on a Kosher butcher's shop

(and, of course, the butcher) in Toulouse , France;

a Jewish couple in their 20s were beaten up by five

men in Villeurbanne , France . The woman was

pregnant; a Jewish school was broken into and

vandalized in Sarcelles , France . This was just in

the past week.

So I call on you, whether you are a fellow Jew, a

friend, or merely a person with the capacity and

desire to distinguish decency from depravity, to do,

at least, these three simple things:

First, care enough to stay informed. Don't ever let

yourself become deluded into thinking that this is

no t your fight. I remind you of what Pastor

Neimoller said in World War II: "First they came for

the Communists, and I didn't speak up, because I

wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and

I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew. Then they

came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up,

because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me,

and by that time there was no one left to speak up

for me".

Second, boycott France and French products. Only the

Arab countries are more toxically anti-Semitic and,

unlike them, France exports more than just oil and

hatred. So boycott their wines and their perfumes.

Boycott their clothes and their foodstuffs. Boycott

their movies. Definitely boycott their shores. If

we are resolved we can exert amazing pressure and,

whatever else we may know about the French, we most

certainly know that they are like a cobweb in a

hurricane in the face of well directed pressure.

Third, send this along to your family, your friends,

and your co-workers. Think of all of the people of

good conscience that you know and let them know

that you and the people that you care about need

their help. The number one best selling book in

France is "September 11: The Frightening Fraud,"

which argues that no plane ever hit the Pentagon."

Wow . . .I can't believe this is still going on. When I first signed on, y'all were arguing over this and now weeks later you still are. . .I am a Christian and it really turned me off from this board as a whole. Remember as you all are going back and forth, there are others reading this. Some maybe just like me and be disguested by it all. I have found support else where, but others may not know where to look and may never get the support they need. Just something to think about.

Stacey

Stacey...

This part of LBT (the Rants and Raves forum) is not intended to provide support. Generally, people looking for support would peruse the other forums. R&R is a place to go and let our hair down and, yes, sometimes argue. Rest assured, however, that if things ever get out of hand, the Mods will step in and lock the thread.

I certainly never intended to upset a fellow Christian. I sincerely try and find a middle ground between standing up for what I believe in and brow beating other people who might believe differently.

This kind of thread is a bit like horror movies.....some like them, and some don't. If you are disgusted, I suggest you simply don't go there. Many LBT members never venture into Rants and Raves for that very reason. They find the sight of blood distasteful.

And Lauend. . .I NEVER specified who disgusted me because it all does.

That's why I asked. I didn't want to pass judgement and make a possibly regretable remark without knowing what you were disgusted by.

I have to agree with Carlene. No one is forcing anyone to read threads at this board. If anyone doesn't want to read a certain thread or get involved in political or religious discussion, they don't have to. We aren't standing behind anyone with a whip at their computer saying, "You MUST read this! Or else!" To imply that this single thread makes the entire site unsupportive is simply illogical.

Just so everyone knows I have not abandoned my resolve to be less of a slug.....I walked 5 miles today.

AND I finally got the dogs bathed. (When you lie down with dogs....you would rather they didn't smell like dogs.)

Tomorrow I tackle the carpet....or at least the "high traffic" areas.

Middle Son and his family took us out to lunch (a "thank you" for doing his wife's Power Point presentation for her college Lit class). We went to Red Hot and Blue (a rib place, for those not familiar). I ate one rib and about 1/3 of a sweet potato. A perfect Bandster portion lunch!

Yesterday at church, we spoke about the two kinds of Christians:

#1. The God Fearing kind

#2. The God Loving kind

The #1's will be quick to tell you how much they Love God and Love Jesus, but they preach fear.

The #2's do not fear God. They do the work of Jesus, helping their fellow man, searching for peace and looking out for their brethren (of any faith, race or nationality), not because they fear the consequences, but because it is the "Christian" thing to do.

We also spoke of three kinds of people

Type A: People who do bad things

Type B: People who not do bad things because they fear being arrested or ostracized

Type C: People who not do bad things because they want to do good

The people at my church fellowship try to be 2C type people.

I got a neat little book for Valentine's Day called "Kabbalah on Love". It is a simple guide to understanding love. It has some very good lessons on love of all kinds: love of your spouse, your children, your friends. It tells you basically that you should do things for others without thinking of yourself.

That is sometimes very hard to do. Many times we do good works just because of how it makes us feel about ourselves or what we are going to get in return. As TOM's post pointed out, some of us don't do bad things because of the fear of going to hell. I would say that some people do good things because they fear hell. That fear is very selfish. Selfishness has no part in true love.

In the final lesson it tells us that if we practice the golden rule, everyone will benefit and we will be able to achieve true love.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Simple to say, harder to do everyday all the time. But it is definitely achievable and if everyone would practice this most important rule, all of mankind would benefit because we are each and every one a part of the whole of mankind that God created.

I may not have done a very good job of relating the meaning of the book, but if you are interested, they have it in the national bookstore chains.

In an earlier post I mentioned that even though it is ascerted that God made man in his own image I believed that the opposite is true, Man creates God in his image. I don't want to offend anyone but I think that this is an interesting concept especially if you apply it on an individual basis. For every person who believes in God there is a seperate God who really is the mirror image of them, except this God is an omnipotant version of themselves.

When you define your God you are defining yourself, or at least your supreme self. This supreme self may not be perfect to the world but a representation of your vision of who, what and how a supreme being might look, act and behave.

When someone describes their vision of God I believe they are telling me much more about who they are or who they would aspire to be. If your God is a more kind and gentle God there is a good chance you are as well Individuals who are very black and white tend to view God as a rule maker. The more conservative or Liberal the person the more conservative or liberal their God.

Genesis:

26:

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

27:

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

Since God created everything, it is probably safe to assume, that there was nothing except God at one time. So let's examine what God must look like. Why would God have a nose? Does God need air? Where was the air? How does God breath in space?

Why does God need eyes? Does not he have the ability to see what is invisible and what is in my heart and mind? What was there to look at before he created anything?

Why does God have ears? Can't he hear what is in my mind? How would the sound be transported without air? What was there to hear before he created anything?

Why does God have a mouth? Can't he put words into my mind that no one else can hear? How would his voice be transmitted without air between Heaven and the Earth? Does He need a mouth to eat? What does He eat? What did He eat before He created all the things that He would be able to eat? Before Genesis, I mean?

There are only four purposes of a mouth. To breath, to eat, to speak and to kiss (or similar use). With no air there would be nothing to breath and nothing to transmit sound, leaving only eating and kissing. But as explained in the last paragraph, there was nothing to eat, because God hadn't created food yet and no one to kiss.

Did God have arms and hands? What was there to hold before he created anything?

The need for a stomach and lungs are therefor not required. And the need for a heart is to transport oxygen and nutrients around the body, but no air equals no oxygen and since there was no food, God didn't need a heart (or blood either).

Why did God have a penis? There are only three purposes of a penis and since God neither ate nor drank and since he didn't procreate, I doubt if the third use was considered. Some might claim that he was called the master because of his habit of the third use, but I doubt it.

Now we can be pretty sure that God had no rectum for all the reasons stated above.

Did God have feet? What was there to walk on before he created anything?

My point is that if we are created in God's image, why did God have all these unneeded parts?

Could it be that God is a one celled amoeba that is millions of miles in length and diameter, with a huge brain. Maybe he did create man in that image and maybe each day in Genesis is actually billions of years and it took billions of years for the amoebas to evolve into humans.

Also, if man was created in the image of God, why is he so defective? Wouldn't God have given the best of everything; eyes, ears, etc. to man? Man is probably the weakest animal (pound for pound) on the planet. Many animals have superior eyes. Many animals have superior hearing and many animals have a superior sense of smell. Most of the senses of man are inferior to what animals have. Man is also unable to deal with nature without covering. Most animals do fine with their skin as their only requirement for dealing with nature. If man is created in God's image, is God also so defective?

Many might see this as mocking God. No, it is asking intelligent questions with the one thing that the literal (word for word) Bible advocates and the allegorical Bible advocates agree on; that humans have the best of; MY BRAIN.

Maybe God is actually an enormous brain. He gave us these bodies so that we could live and survive in this life before we learn and grow and pass on to the next life. Our energy, that doesn't die, contains our brain which is how we actually survive. Without our brain, how would be know when we are experiencing eternity or an after life?

Therer is a huge difference in challenging beliefs and being mean to people. . .

Who was mean to whom?

This is not a facetious question.....I'd really like to know your opinion on this.

Wow . . .I can't believe this is still going on. When I first signed on, y'all were arguing over this and now weeks later you still are. . .I am a Christian and it really turned me off from this board as a whole. Remember as you all are going back and forth, there are others reading this. Some maybe just like me and be disguested by it all. I have found support else where, but others may not know where to look and may never get the support they need. Just something to think about.

Stacey

This is in the way of a debate on matters of theology and belief systems and is not intended to be a support thread. That is why it is found, as others have pointed out to you, in the Rant and Raves forum. Some of us find these discussions passionately interesting and quite intellectually stimulating. You, it seems, do not fall into this category. And that is just something for you to think about.

CORRECT! All believers are called to be priests to our God, and Jesus is the High Priest. Our designated priesthood is what gives us access to the trhrone of God the Father, in the name of Jesus the Son.

The Book of Revelation...Chapter 5

6 And I saw between the throne (with the four living creatures) and the elders a Lamb standing, as if slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God, sent out into all the earth. 7 And He came and took the book out of the right hand of Him who sat on the throne. 8 When He had taken the book, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each one holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. 9 And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.

10 “You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God; and they will reign upon the earth.”

TommyO: I continue to love reading your posts. You sound like a very good person. Thanks for hanging out here with the rest of us and sharing your unique insights and approach to religion! I find them very interesting, indeed.

I am going to assume that this is a serious post, but I have my doubts! God created us in His spiritual image. Obviously, God is spirit and does not have a physical body,with the exception of when He took on flech and became a man as Jesus.

Just as God is triune in nature (Farther, Son and Holy Spirit) so is man a triune being (Body, Soul and Spirit)

Genesis:

26:

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

27:

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

Since God created everything, it is probably safe to assume, that there was nothing except God at one time. So let's examine what God must look like. Why would God have a nose? Does God need air? Where was the air? How does God breath in space?

Why does God need eyes? Does not he have the ability to see what is invisible and what is in my heart and mind? What was there to look at before he created anything?

Why does God have ears? Can't he hear what is in my mind? How would the sound be transported without air? What was there to hear before he created anything?

Why does God have a mouth? Can't he put words into my mind that no one else can hear? How would his voice be transmitted without air between Heaven and the Earth? Does He need a mouth to eat? What does He eat? What did He eat before He created all the things that He would be able to eat? Before Genesis, I mean?

There are only four purposes of a mouth. To breath, to eat, to speak and to kiss (or similar use). With no air there would be nothing to breath and nothing to transmit sound, leaving only eating and kissing. But as explained in the last paragraph, there was nothing to eat, because God hadn't created food yet and no one to kiss.

Did God have arms and hands? What was there to hold before he created anything?

The need for a stomach and lungs are therefor not required. And the need for a heart is to transport oxygen and nutrients around the body, but no air equals no oxygen and since there was no food, God didn't need a heart (or blood either).

Why did God have a penis? There are only three purposes of a penis and since God neither ate nor drank and since he didn't procreate, I doubt if the third use was considered. Some might claim that he was called the master because of his habit of the third use, but I doubt it.

Now we can be pretty sure that God had no rectum for all the reasons stated above.

Did God have feet? What was there to walk on before he created anything?

My point is that if we are created in God's image, why did God have all these unneeded parts?

Could it be that God is a one celled amoeba that is millions of miles in length and diameter, with a huge brain. Maybe he did create man in that image and maybe each day in Genesis is actually billions of years and it took billions of years for the amoebas to evolve into humans.

Also, if man was created in the image of God, why is he so defective? Wouldn't God have given the best of everything; eyes, ears, etc. to man? Man is probably the weakest animal (pound for pound) on the planet. Many animals have superior eyes. Many animals have superior hearing and many animals have a superior sense of smell. Most of the senses of man are inferior to what animals have. Man is also unable to deal with nature without covering. Most animals do fine with their skin as their only requirement for dealing with nature. If man is created in God's image, is God also so defective?

Many might see this as mocking God. No, it is asking intelligent questions with the one thing that the literal (word for word) Bible advocates and the allegorical Bible advocates agree on; that humans have the best of; MY BRAIN.

I can hardly wait for TOM's reply...

FWIW, I took TOM's post as serious.

I wouldn't! When you talk about those who are into handling snakes, standing outside abortion clinics with shotguns, etc., those, to me are ultra Conservatives and real kooks. What I consider Conservatives are those who accept the Bible literally and serve the Lord to the best of their ability, without allowing feelings and opinions to get in the way.

And yes, I did say that the majority of the profession Christian church has strayed into liberalism and is following error in their teaching, and I make no apoligy for that. It is sadly true.

I should have said "Fundamentalist", rather than "Charismatic". My mistake. But you did accuse the vast majority of American Christians of being liberal, and you did say they had "strayed from biblical truth", so yes....I would say that you have indicated an ultra-conservative point of view.

He was, but His primary reason for coming and His primary message was SALVATION! Anything else was secondary. Without salvation, social issues mean nothing.

Huh, I think Jesus was quite concerned with social issues as well. His stance on them, some might call liberal.