God probably has bigger and better things to do than to bother with insignificant human beings. People 'punish' each other in their ignorance of divine love making life hell for themselves and others. I do not know the Divine mind. It seems you not only do, but perhaps tell it what to do.


 


      "God created man and man created God. So is it in the world. Men make gods and they worship their creations. If would be fitting for the gods to worship men" - Gospel of Thomas, Logion 85:1-4
< replied-to message removed by QT >

Says who? What of all thos who lived before or never heard of Christianity? The Bhagavadgita tells me Krshna is the True god, the Qur'an tells me Christians fell into idolatory, Jews correctly point out that Jesus failed every definition of the Messiah unless there was some sect we don't know enough about. Early Christian writings contradict later ones and Protestants even replaced the traditional ld Testament with a different versio after 1500 years. How can they or we know better than those in Roman times?



 


    "I am established, I am redeemed and I redeem my soul from this aeon and from all that comes from it, in the name of IAO, who redeemed his soul unto the redemption in Christ, the living one" - Valentinus
< replied-to message removed by QT >

BBQ wrote:

> If your forum is open to all religious views, why is it
> that only Christian postings are getting deleted?

Hi, BBQ,

If you scan through the many postings on this message board, you will see that there are MANY more messages from a Christian perspective than there are from any other perspective.

However, you will see that I delete the messages that make it VERY PLAIN that the poster will not listen to any other point of view.

If you were to say, "I believe that God hates unrepentent sinners, but I recognize that not every believes this", then your post would not be deleted.

But when you say "The Bible is the ONLY Truth" and make it very clear that you believe everyone else to be wrong, your post will be deleted.

> If this board was truly open, I could post my dogma, and
> others could post their own. Then, we could all have
> viable debates and /or discussions. This way we could all
> learn from each other.

If you posted your opinions, and acknowledged them to be your opinions, then it would be seen as an attempt for debate and discussion.

But it appears to me that you aren't interested in listening to other points of view. I'm reminded of the difference between two debaters and their styles of debate. One debater listens to the other debater while he is speaking and decides what he will say next based on what he hears the first person saying. The second debater doesn't listen to the opposing point of view, but spends his time preparing his next argument without even paying any attention to the other person.

It appears to me that you are only interested in letting someone else post their messages so you can say that they are wrong.

> I see this as a closed board, not open to all views.

As long as you make it clear that you are posting your messages based on what you have been taught, and show respect for other points of view, NOT saying that others are wrong, then I see your posts as welcome.

But when you post a message that states your views as 100% FACT and make it clear that everyone else is wrong, I see you as having a closed view.

I am open to the fact that your opinion is correct for this point in your life, and I applaud you for having a strong belief in God.

I just don't believe that you have yet seen 100% of the truth, because I don't believe that 100% of God's truth can possibly fit inside one book. I believe that God has put bits and pieces of His truth in other places for us to find.

> If I believe that Christianity is the true religion, and
> you do not allow opposing views to counter mine, by
> deleting my posting before others have a chance to argue,
> then you are a theological tyant, and that, my little
> Ikeman, is most certainly not an open discussion board.

I allow opposing views when it is for discussion.

Keep your posts as "discussion friendly" and not as sermons.

Keep in mind that you don't see me post messages saying that various views are wrong because they disagree with mine. Instead, I look for things in other points of view that appear to agree with things that I believe, but when i see something that I don't agree with, I don't say that it is wrong for everybody, I merely decide that it's wrong for me today.

For example, I respect your belief that EVERYONE MUST AGREE WITH YOU, but I don't expect everyone to agree with you. And if they don't agree with you, I don't believe that God hates them, because only God knows what is truly inside their heart.

I respect the right of a mad bomber to believe that God wanted him to explode a bomb on an Israeli bus, but that does not mean that I believe that it was right for him to do it. But I won't say that God hates him for that sin, because I don't know what is inside that bomber's heart.

I agree, to some extent, with Jerriais's point in message \m1478

> God probably has bigger and better things to do than to
> bother with insignificant human beings.

I believe that God is letting us live our lives, and that it will be at some indeterminant point in the future when we will review our lives after death, and decide whether or not we accomplished what we were supposed to accomplish in this life.

He went on to say:

> People 'punish' each other in their ignorance of divine
> love making life hell for themselves and others.

I do believe that we create our own hell, hell on earth. Major sins in this life can control what kind of after-life existence we will have, whether in a type of after-life or in a new life. (Personally, I believe that we will have other lives in order to learn the lessons we don't completely learn in this life, but I don't think of future lives as necessarily being "hell" but I do believe that some people do create future lives that will seem that way.)

> I do not know the Divine mind. It seems you not only do,
> but perhaps tell it what to do.

I certainly don't know the Divine mind, except that I know that it is much larger than I can possibly imagine.

That's why I am very clear that I do not understand fully 100% of the truth. If God is infinite, and I believe that (she / he / it) is infinite, then it is not possible for me, in one lifetime, to understand even a small percentage of God's truth.

BBQ: I respect the fact that you believe that you understand 100% of God's truth, but that does not mean that I believe that you have a "lock" on that truth. I believe that there is room on the Earth for other bits and pieces of the truth.

So, why don't you post messages about your opinions, but say as part of your postings that you're interested in discussion.

After all, The Bible says that

"The Living God is the Savior of all" (one of the Timothy letters)

and the Koran says that other religions also honor the same God

"Be ye Muslim, Jewish, Christian or Sabian, if you honor God ... you have nothing to fear" (second part of the Koran)

Let's look for ways that we can agree, even when it appears there is no room for agreement.

Instead of deciding that everyone else is wrong, why don't you look for things that they believe that you can agree with.

If I were to decide that a religion is wrong because one thing was wrong with it, I'd be an atheist ... because there is something wrong with every religious point of view, including my own.

For example, I do not believe that it is right for me to go to Canada or Mexico to bring back slaves, even though the old testament tells me to.

I prefer to ignore what I believe to be wrong, and simply agree with what I believe to be right, and work to understand the difference.

John (at)

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Edited by author 06-27-2005 04:23 PM

Quoting Prior Messages

When you are replying to a prior message, please do not leave the entire message after the text of your reply. Instead, selectively quote what you are actually replying to, and delete the rest.

If you simply REPLY to a message, and leave all that prior message below your message, QT might delete that prior message and substitute this message:

< replied-to message removed by QT >

as it did with Jerriais's message /m1479

So, please "quote" what you are replying to, but don't put the entire prior message below your signature.

John (at)

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John, someone on Roy's forum thought you may have blocked Scott from here and that he hadn't seen the message about Roy having a forum. If you have blocked him, could you let him back long enough to see Roy's forum please? Then he'll quit bugging you and he can talk to us :) Thanks

<< John, someone on Roy's forum thought you may have blocked Scott from here and that he hadn't seen the message about Roy having a forum. If you have blocked him, could you let him back long enough to see Roy's forum please? Then he'll quit bugging you and he can talk to us :) Thanks >>

Hi, Jessica,

I haven't blocked anyone on this forum, though I have deleted a few messages after they were posted, because they appeared to be 100% one-sided.

In fact, as I recall, after deleting one of Scott's messages, I posted a message suggesting that he e-mail Roy for details on that forum, and added the information for Roy's contact to message \m3, the rules message that is mentioned in my signature, so that people can find it.

It would cost me $50 per year to block particular individuals, and it's not worth the price to me.

John (at)

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Edited by author 07-07-2005 08:53 AM

How to use enlarged font, bold print and
other fancy effects in your QuickTopic postings?

SHORT REPLY:

1. Follow the Directions that are posted on the REPLY PAGE
2. I'm reminded of a shirt that I own with a picture of the BIBLE on it. The caption? "If all else fails, read the directions"

LONG REPLY:

1. Go to the web page for this group: http://quicktopic.com/26/H/SNGVxkAaQ22e
   or go to the web address for your group, whatever it is.
2. Click POST A REPLY.
3. Read the "NOTES" below and to the left of the SUBMIT MESSAGE button
   (below the "Your Message" window)
   (above the "Below are some recent messages for reference" area)
4. Specifically, click the link in the message
   "You can use selected HTML tags to format your message too."
5. Even more specifically, just use HTML tags and see what happens, but be prepared for some interesting failures if you don't read the directions first.
6. If you want to bold or italicize a word or phrase, just use this style (B)bold(/B) and (I)italicize(/I) (but be sure to use angle-brackets, aka < and >)
7. If you want to enlarge or shrink a word, just use (BIG)enlarge(/BIG) and (SMALL)shrink(/SMALL)
8. There are many other examples.
9. I should point out that the one NOTE is not honest. The first note says "The topic administrator can view the IP address from which you post this message." This is ONLY true if the topic administrator has paid the $49 per year.
10. Don't just start using the HTML you have already learned. READ THE DIRECTIONS FIRST. Some HTML tags work, some don't.
11. You will need to do extensive experimentation. Some tags will only work to one level.

    For example, on a web page, you could nest (BLOCKQUOTE) text (/BLOCKQUOTE) within other blockquote tags to get indented text within indented text. You can only use one level of blockquote here on QuickTopic

12. Some tags you will NOT use, like (P) and (BR) because you handle those by just pressing your ENTER key. Other tags just plain might not work.
13. Sometimes, you need to butt things together to get them to look right in the final analysis. For example, to create a heading followed by text, I have to butt this together:

    (H2 ALIGN=CENTER)This is the heading(/H2)and this is the next paragraph

I should point out that as long as you limit your "free editing tools" to the basics, like bold, underline, and most of the things that are "inline" (part of a paragraph), you only need to post your message once. Just type the tags as you type your reply. (You can even type the tags if you reply by e-mail).

But if you get fancy and use the horizontal rule tag (HR), heading tags like (H2 ALIGN=CENTER), blockquotes and other fancy things, and then try to make everything look perfect in the web window, you almost need to send one message with all your HTML and with linebreaks before and after your special tags as mentioned in this paragraph, then use EDIT to remove the line breaks before and after the paragraph.

The message you SUBMIT first will be what goes out by e-mail. The message you EDIT then SUBMIT will only change the webpage.

Example, if you decide to put in a heading, the first draft might look like this:

prior paragraph

(H2 ALIGN=CENTER)heading(/H2)

next paragraph.

That would go out in e-mail as:

prior paragraph

heading

next paragraph

but would appear on the web page with about three blank lines before and after the heading. For your EDIT, you would change the code to:

prior paragraph(H2 ALIGN=CENTER)heading(/H2)next paragraph.

which would show up on the page correctly.

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If the information on this page has been useful to you, please consider making a donation to my favorite good cause, http://www.godloveseveryone.org/donate/index.htm

(The above is an example of using hotlinks in your QT posts, just type the full address starting with http:// and it will turn into a hotlink. You can also hotlink message numbers by preceding them with /m as in my pointer to the rules posting /m3.)

There is a long way to create hotlinks, and that is the same way that you use to create a hot link on a web page: (a href="URL")link text(/A).

If you need additional information, feel free to ask me. I can even give you my phone number if you feel that would be helpful.

And when you make your donation, please donate according to the perceived value of my advice. If I am teaching you how to use your QuickTopic message board more efficiently, you should pay me as you would a tutor who comes into your home to help you learn something. My business is consulting, but I live in a very rural area, so I need the business and the donations. (To give you an idea how rural this area is, we're half an hour from the nearest Wal-Mart.) My web pages and my consulting are my only business, and I can use the business.

John (at)

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If you appreciate these pages, please make an appropriate donation
Please use the links on our web pages when you shop at our advertisers, especially Amazon.
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