beastie wrote:It doesn't make sense for you to use this reasoning if you realize it can be used against you just as easily. From the outside, it makes you believers look nonsensical. You're all telling yourselves that God has told you the REAL truth, and everyone else who thinks God has told him/her the REAL truth is simply misled or deceived. Can you understand, even in a small way, how ridiculous this makes you all look to ousiders?
And the reply to sethbag was a joke. Dang. I wish this board had smilies. I hate the little :) thing. Makes the person look like they're drunk.
Oh. So then your original reply to me was your real reply? I asked God too many times and annoyed him? I should have asked once and then never asked again, and simply lived my life as if it were true, and sooner or later, in his own time, he would have revealed it to me?
Do you realize that this sounds a lot like you just talk yourself into it? And it certainly isn't part of Moroni's promise.
I said in this post, the important thing is to live the truth you know. I think that applies to what I replied to back on another board. Although I am pretty sure it would have been the FAIR message board, and not MA&D.
I agree with that concept. You should live according to your principles, to do otherwise invites misery and self-loathing.
There are all those flat earth people who think those of us who believe in a globe are nonsensical. Do you let them determine your beliefs or actions for fear they might find you less than reasonable? I understand, in more than a small way, that unbelievers and ex-believers ridicule believers. Ridicule and mockery never changes truth. "Outsiders" have often had to change their minds when the real truth became known to them.
I don't recall telling you that God was annoyed with you. I think what you are referencing is something I believe. We ask for answers. We often gets answers we don't understand. And I think we get answers we don't "hear." I am sure what I said was more on the order, that you probably got an answer, but didn't recognize it as such. Or refused to recognize it. That could conceivably cause annoyance.
Remember that old story about the guy caught in a flood. He is up on the roof of his house praying to be saved, and a man in a boat comes by and offers to help him. The guy waves him off, "No, thank you. God will save me.," A helicopter flies over and they try to send a rope ladder down for the guy, but he waves them off. "No thank you, God will save me." The water gets higher and the guy drowns. When he gets to Heaven he is mad at God. "Why didn't you save me?" he demands. God says, "I sent a boat and a helicopter. What more did you want?"
It would have been consistent with what I believe to have said something to you on the order that you were given a witness, but refused to accept it because you wanted something bigger. You got a still small voice and you expected thunder from Heaven.
Here, again, beastie is the problem with discussing something like a spiritual witness with someone who hasn't experienced it. You can say, "maybe you talked yourself into it" because you don't have a basis to understand it. And yes, I know this sounds arrogant. Can't help it. This is just the way it is.
Just so you will know, having had a spiritual witness doesn't make a person better than someone who hasn't had one.