It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. How many pictures are these words worth?

"Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household. He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it." (Matthew 10:34-39 NASB)

"If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple." (Luke 14:26)

"But now, whoever has a money belt is to take it along, likewise also a bag, and whoever has no sword is to sell his coat and buy one." (Luke 22:36 NASB)

Those are some eye openers.

yep opened my eyes wtf

So where is the love in Christianity?

marriage?


So when will the Vatican be Throwing Islamic to the Lions?

You are aware that nobody expects the Spanish inquisition....

The OP is just an example of trying to
imterpret scripture,

before ones spiritual eyes have been opened yet ....

Also, when SCRIPTURE IS TAKEN OUT OF CONTEXT ,

one also misses the meaning..... ENTIRELY.

(also notice , to whom the scriptures were referring to).

Is this where the term "God fearing" comes from?

The Word has to be rightly divided and studied.

For instance....

The word "hate" mentioned in the scripture in the OP here.... ,

has an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT MEANING ,

from the use of the word "hate" in OTHER parts of scripture.

One must Study the original meaning of the word, ALSO.

Alright my learned acquaintance, please enlighten us as to these peculiarities or is your wisdom merely idle talk. According to the Merriam Webster dictionary there are only two definitions of hate.
Hate:
1 a: intense hostility and aversion usually deriving from fear, anger, or sense of injury b: extreme dislike or antipathy :
2: an object of hatred

Which one were they using in the quoted passages?

Seems to me the only "imterpret"-ation being made is by you, trying to make those "appear" nicer than they are. All the OP did was take lines from the Bible. I don't see him, anywhere in his post, saying what those lines mean.

And statements like this, is why I won't be wasting further time here.

There ARE people out there who DO want to learn....

and are NOT just coming on a forum, wasting other people's time.


Take care now.

Attempt to preserve the illusion of safety for self and for loved ones within an illusion (like family members) ...ultimately for the sake of self, with no sight of anything greater for ALL... Soon misery ensues.

Illusion gives way to bitterness...

Restless and discontent as loved ones seem to more and more fall short in the mutual collusion of concealing insecurities.

Soon, hate wells up... Fear and denial of hate, clinging tightly to ideas of being "good", more denial of negative, yield to more negative.

When most interested in preserving status quo for self and immediate loved ones, without question... illusion eventually evaporates, leaving nothing but painful, stark reality.

Dissolve illusion of only self as important and challenge perception of those around self at the cost of utter abandonment (willing to lay one's own life down) for truth and for the sake of greater learning for ALL...

This Yahshua was talking about who is for him and who is against him.

He was speaking mainly of the end of this age.

That you will have to take a stance for terrorism will be at every corner of the world. Know one will know who to trust.

He is saying you must be ready for these times for when they come it will be hard to leave mother father or children who go after the beast system.

You can tell them but you can not save them.

The word Hate hear is an alagory of how hard it will be to do this.

To leave them for the truth of Yahweh.

This has been all through time true it is nothing new.


2 Peter 2:4-3:1

For if Yahweh did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment; 5 and did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly; 6 and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them to destruction, making them an example to those who afterward would live ungodly; 7 and delivered righteous Lot, who was oppressed by the filthy conduct of the wicked 8(for that righteous man, dwelling among them, tormented his righteous soul from day to day by seeing and hearing their lawless deeds) — 9 then Yahweh knows how to deliver the righteous out of temptations and to reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgment, 10 and especially those who walk according to the flesh in the lust of uncleanness and despise authority. They are presumptuous, self-willed. They are not afraid to speak evil of dignitaries, 11 whereas angels, who are greater in power and might, do not bring a reviling accusation against them before Yahweh.

12 Depravity of False Teachers


But these, like natural brute beasts made to be caught and destroyed, speak evil of the things they do not understand, and will utterly perish in their own corruption, 13 and will receive the wages of unrighteousness, as those who count it pleasure to carouse in the daytime. They are spots and blemishes, carousing in their own deceptions while they feast with you, 14 having eyes full of adultery and that cannot cease from sin, enticing unstable souls. They have a heart trained in covetous practices, and are accursed children. 15 They have forsaken the right way and gone astray, following the way of Balaam the son of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness; 16 but he was rebuked for his iniquity: a dumb donkey speaking with a man's voice restrained the madness of the prophet.

17 These are wells without water, clouds carried by a tempest, for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.

18 Deceptions of False Teachers


For when they speak great swelling words of emptiness, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through lewdness, the ones who have actually escaped from those who live in error. 19 While they promise them liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by whom a person is overcome, by him also he is brought into bondage. 20 For if, after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Yahshua, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the latter end is worse for them than the beginning. 21 For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered to them. 22 But it has happened to them according to the true proverb: "A dog returns to his own vomit," and, "a sow, having washed, to her wallowing in the mire."


NKJV


These are what hate refers to the selfish acts against Yahweh. You must put on the whole armour of Yahweh because the fiery darts will start at your own family and friends as Satan goes after the righteous he has no reason to attack others.

This is what Yahshua was saying and they understood putting Yahweh 1st.

Then here it is explained for us what to expect when the evil one shows his ugly face. Which will be seen as a angel of light by the world.

Thus the only deviding line to know what is good and evil is the word and to know who your true brethern are is the word that they keep. It is a promice to the believer a knowledge rejected by the world...Blessings...Miles

This is the whole problems with what the Mediterranean religions have become, particularly Christianity, but also Judaism and Islam as well.

It is my belief that Jesus was indeed a Buddhist. He spoke in parables like a Buddhist and taught the very same things as Buddha.

The problem with Christian fundamentalists is that they try to have their cake and eat it too. And they do this by demanding that certain things in their bible must be taken literally whilst other must be taken as abstract parables.

For example, if Jesus says you must hate your family and take up a sword to follow him that's an abstract parable. But when he says that he and the father on one that's to be taken literally.

They can't seem to realize that it's ALL parables and metaphors. Jesus never claimed to be the son of the God of Abraham LITERALLY.

For example, Jesus said, "Before Abraham was I AM". That's a metaphor for saying that we are all eternal spirit. But Christians demand that this be taken LITERALLY to mean that Jesus existed as an egotistical persona before Abraham. But that's clearly not what he had meant.

The Bible makes perfect sense once a person gets past the idea of taking everything literally. But then it also becomes clear that Jesus was not the excuslive son of the God of Abraham sent on a mission as a sacrifical lamb. And it also makes sense that Jesus was actually denouncing that myth and trying to teach people the truth of life as it had been realized by Buddha.

I'm currently taking a course on Buddhism and I'm convinced now more than ever before that Jesus was indeed a Buddhist. There's no doubt in my mind at all now. Before I saw that as a potential conjecture, but now I'm convinced of it's truth. Jesus not only taught Buddhism but he even taught it using precisely the same type of parables that Buddhists had traditionally been using.

All the superstition about Jesus having been born of a virgin, dying as a sacrificial lamb of God, and raising from the dead to prove that God can do it, is nothing more than added demagogurey by the writers who exaggerated about Jesus when they wrote the gospels.

Buddhism is the way. And that was the message of Jesus.

ThomasJB,

You think that's bad? You should read the Quran sometime...!!!

Double Post

Yet it is claimed that THIS is the word of god...!

Ink and paper... tools.

Hate is not a function of truth. It is a function of control.

These words we take literally seem to mean utter brutality!

Perhaps they're more like code for greater understanding of relationship between self and higher self.

No illusion/delusion dissolved (of only self as most important) until one actually identifies, acknowledges and accepts that they've been operating purely for self all along. Further faulting self for operating this way seems to only lead straight back to looking only at self. More of the same.

Challenging one's own perception at the cost of utter abandonment of anything once believed.

Will the Higher Self carry me through?

Abracadabra...


Your enlightenment is refreshing!

In Buddhism there is a saying: If you meet someone claiming to be the Buddha kill him for the Buddha is in all of us (and everything).


This has got to be the most eloquent way of preventing Deifying someone which included Buddha. Buddhism is about the Philosophy and not about a man. There is a history to Buddha and he was a real person who was written of by more than one of his contemporaries. Not once did he ever say that enlightenment came through him. He taught that each of us must find our own enlightenment and that he was only providing a direction to seek it.

Many who understand these principles have found that we needed no religion in our lives.

Buddhism also recognizes good and evil as integral parts of us and we are in the middle trying to either keep or tip the balance and that Karma plays into this maintenance of balance. Buddhism is often confused with Hinduism and the two are wholly different. Funny how the big three religions tend to leave the Buddhists alone!

That's really rich!

When convenient, take the Bible literally, and when not, interpret it to mean the EXACT OPPOSITE OF WHAT IT'S SAYING. Will the higher self carry me through?!!

That's it, I'm gonna go out to my backyard and burn me a bible to feel better!