Hello~!
First of all, I'd like to give thanks to you for your trouble to run this site.
I'm a Korean woman who're very interested in the Christianity.
In Korea, we have 10 million of Christians, and some of them are very weird and lunatic.
They even demonstrated while the World Cup period, because our soccer supporters' name is "Red Devil".
I do hate them because they always threat about "hell".
Anyway...I have a question to the Christians.
Did all the people of Old Testament go to hell?
(None of them believed Jesus Christ as their Savior.)
Even Moses, Isayah, Solomon, king David, etc?
You guys say, only through Jesus Christ people can go to heaven.
And, before the Christ, the poor people have all gone to hell, right? (This is what I've heard from ministers.)
I think Christianity is a very funny religion.
(Or a Myth?)
It's a pleasure for me to read those people who have the same thought.
Have a good weekend~!
Jennifer Lee
I'm a Korean woman who're very interested in the Christianity.
In Korea, we have 10 million of Christians, and some of them are very weird and lunatic.
They even demonstrated while the World Cup period, because our soccer supporters' name is "Red Devil".
I do hate them because they always threat about "hell".
Anyway...I have a question to the Christians.
Did all the people of Old Testament go to hell?
(None of them believed Jesus Christ as their Savior.)
Even Moses, Isayah, Solomon, king David, etc?
You guys say, only through Jesus Christ people can go to heaven.
And, before the Christ, the poor people have all gone to hell, right? (This is what I've heard from ministers.)
I think Christianity is a very funny religion.
(Or a Myth?)
It's a pleasure for me to read those people who have the same thought.
Have a good weekend~!
Jennifer Lee
Comments
I live in the bible belt in the USA and if there's a hell, this is it.
Christians will conveniently overlook the fact that, according to their doctrine of salvation by grace, everybody who lived before Jesus is burning in eternal torment. The doctrine of hell is one of the most absurd things about christianity. Its amazing to me that christians can so easily overlook this. It's also absurd to me to think that two thirds of the modern world dies and goes to hell because they do not believe in something as ridiculous as christianity.
You say that you have 10 million christians in Korea. What is the total population there? I'm curious as to what percentage of the population is christian. In the USA, 80% of the country is christian! Here, in Dallas, that figure is even higher and there are perhaps millions of christian and catholic churches. There are two Buddhist temples, one Islamic mosque, one Jewish synagogue, and one temple of the Ba'hai faith. It's ridiculous. I'm surrounded by nonsensical christianity! I'm glad to have found this website also.
I've studied nine religions, and I'm something of a "wierdo" around here.
Anyway, it's great to hear from you. Good day!
We have been exposed to the Bible which was brought over here in 1492, by Christian European Pilgrims fleeing religious persecution and looking for free land.
The voyage of 3000 miles over open seas was very treacherous, many pilgrims got sea sick, many pilgrims died, there were no restrooms, no fresh water, not many provisions, the food was stale, many discomforts, no comfortable beds, many pilgrims were wishing that they could die, but they brought along their Christian Bible to comfort them and when they reached landfall they immediately gave thanks to their Bible God and set up an alter to pray and thank God for allowing them his grace for them to make the long voyage over here, where they could worship their imaginary God without religious persecution.
Now having made the long and stressful voyage and with many of their fellow pilgrims having died at sea, they presumed that it was the Bible Gods Holy Will that they survived the long and stressful trip, to spread God's Holy word to the inhabitants of the new found land.
Little did they know that America had already been discovered for many thousands of years previous, it had already been discovered by the Native Indians. This land belongs to the American Indian. America is rightfully the sole property of the American Indians, to this very day, we do not own this land, it was stolen away by force and by murder of the American Indians, this land was not given to the pilgrims as a gift, from the American Indians.
We now have a people that think that they are doing the will of the Christian God on property that was taken by force and murder in the name of God and Jesus.
This country was not founded on Christian principles, the Bible says "Thou shall not kill" but it did happen, many many Indian children and women and elderly Indian peoples were murdered by the spread of Christian pilgrims coming over in boats by the thousands, eventually in less than just 50 years, over 60 million Indians lay dead.
"The indian chief Hatuey fled with his people but was captured and burned alive. As "they were tying him to the stake a Franciscan friar urged him to take Jesus to his heart so that his soul might go to heaven, rather than descend into hell. Hatuey replied that if heaven was where the Christians went, he would rather go to hell."
go to:
http://www.truthbeknown.com/victims.htm
it's horendous!
We now in this day of 2006, have people in power that believe that they are doing the will of the Christian God.
We have people in America today, that pretend that they talk to God on a regular basis.
We have people in American today that believe there exists a God that would condone the murder of people that do not believe as they do.
We have people living in America today that believe in demons, devils, angels, heaven, hell, spirits, ghosts, virgin births, invisible god and jesus, speaking in tongues, gifts of the spirit, holy ghosts, prayer, witches, souls, faith, miracles, superstitions, talking snakes, talking donkeys, talking bushes, etc.
These are the American Christians, the majority of them are adults, over 21 years old, but they are completely insane, but they refuse to see that they are insane because they have been scared and frightned beyond their ability to reason, for the fear of going to man's imaginary Hell.
Christians in America and elswhere I'm sure, have been intentionally scared and frightened by the threat of Hell by preachers all over the world, for them to hand over their money to them.
Christianity is a fear based religion with a threat of Hell invented by a man, to frighten and scare people to motivate them to give their money to the preachers.
Christianity serves no other purpose, it has no other purpose, because no other purpose exists.
Christianity is a cruel and mean and murderious religion.
We have Christian preachers in America that have been caught molesting little children girls and boys and preachers have been caught molesting adults too, we have preachers that have been caught embezzling moneys from the church, we have Christian preachers that have killed their wives, we have Christain preachers that have been caught in lies, and these are the ones that have been caught, there is many we never hear about.
Christianity is not of a god, it's man's invention.
All religions are man made, stay away from all religions.
I think that giving some people a bible is like giving a baby a hand grenade to play with. They just don't know what to do with it - its kind of like a weapon of mass destruction in some people's hands.
As I look back over my religious experience, I realise that alot of those who were in leadership in churches had their own agendas, and they weren't really worried about anyone's 'salvation' but were more worried about how they looked. And as someone else on this site said a while ago, the church leaders are the one's with so much to lose if they can't sell religion. They would be out of a job, if all churches closed down. Whereas, I am one of the lucky ones - it doesn't worry me in the least now if I don't go near a church - since I had nothing to lose, and my sense of self wasn't dependent on being one of the principle players in the game.
Hell is such a big topic, and if people get frightened of going there, then the church leaders have this as a point of control to keep people dependent on the church.
Tonight I was searching through my email at yahoo.com there is a search function there similar to most search engines. I save many articles on my yahoo.com email so that I never lose them and tonight's search yielded something unrelated to the business topic I was looking up. Here it is, an article that confirms everything about the harmfulness of bringing religion into communities, politics, medicine and lives:
http://web.pitas.com/fullmoon/04_15_2002.html
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020401/pollitt
God Changes Everything
Katha Pollitt
PRINT THIS ARTICLE
EMAIL THIS ARTICLE
WRITE TO THE EDITORS
TAKE ACTION NOW
SUBSCRIBE TO THE NATION
Let's say there was a school system or a chain of
clinics on whose professional staff were a certain
number of men who molested the children in their care
and who, whenever this behavior came to the attention
of their superiors, were shifted to another school or
clinic, with parents and colleagues, not to mention
the justice system, kept in the dark whenever
possible. Imagine that this practice continued for
thirty years through a combination of out-of-court
settlements, sympathetic judges and politicians,
stonewalling lawyers, suppression of information,
fulminations against the media. Don't you think that
when the story finally broke, the men who had made and
implemented the policy would be held legally
responsible--for something? Certainly they would lose
their jobs.
Bring God into the picture, though, and everything
changes. The bishops who presided over the priestly
pedophilia in the Catholic Church's ever-expanding
scandal are not likely to follow Boston's Father
Geoghan, convicted and sentenced to nine to ten years
and facing more charges, into the dock, much less the
cellblock. After all, they are men of God. Thanks to
God, the Catholic Church can run a healthcare
system--10 percent of private hospitals in the United
States--that refuses to practice modern medicine where
women are concerned: not just no abortion but also no
birth control, no emergency contraception for rape
victims, no sterilization, no in vitro fertilization.
The church can agitate against the use of condoms to
prevent the spread of AIDS, even in desperate Africa,
a position as insane as South African President Thabo
Mbeki's stance against antiretroviral AIDS drugs, but
that generates a lot less outrage in the West. It can
lobby in Ireland against allowing suicidal women to
have abortions and intimidate a 14-year-old rape
victim in Mexico into carrying to term; it can
practice total sex discrimination, barring women from
the priesthood and therefore from sharing in the
political life of the church, and still demand to be
taken seriously when it speaks of human rights or
ethics--rather like the Philadelphia parochial school
recently reported as giving academic extra credit to
students who march in antiabortion-rights
demonstrations even as the church goes after public
funding through vouchers. No secular institution could
get away with any of this, any more than a secular
psychotherapist or family counselor could get away
with telling poor mad Andrea Yates what the Protestant
evangelist Michael Peter Woroniecki did: that Eve was
a witch whose sin required atonement in the form of
perfect motherhood and that working mothers are
"wicked."
Another example: Let's say a group of Americans decide
that they would like to live where they believe their
ancestors lived 2,000 years ago, even though other
people have been living there for centuries and don't
like the idea one bit. If these people were Cajuns who
wanted to park themselves in the Bois de Boulogne,
everyone would think they were out of their minds. If
they were American blacks taking over swatches of
Ghana, people--including many black people--would
laugh at their historical pretensions and militaristic
grandiosity. It would certainly be a relevant point
that these settlers are not displaced persons or
refugees--they have perfectly good homes already. But
once again, God changes everything: The former
Brooklynites, Philadelphians and Baltimoreans now
camping out in "Judea" and "Samaria" (the West Bank to
you) wave the Bible and the Israeli government
lavishes on them all sorts of privileges--cheaper
mortgages, income tax breaks, business development and
housing grants--with results that are disastrous for
Israel and Palestinians alike and that now threaten
the peace of the entire world. In a recent front-page
story, the New York Times treated the longing of
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to return to
their homes in Israel proper as a psychological
obstacle to their forging any kind of rational future,
individual or collective, and maybe it is-- maybe it
would be better for them to forget the old homestead
and demand reparations. But at least the old woman
mourning a sewing machine left behind when she fled
Beersheba fifty years ago really, personally owned
that sewing machine; the family picnicking year after
year in the ruins of its former property has living
memories of farming that plot of land. It is not a
notional "ancestral" possession supposedly guaranteed
in perpetuity by God. In this case, the religious
fanaticism is not coming from the Muslims.
Elsewhere, of course, it is. God has been particularly
busy in the Islamic world, building madrassahs,
issuing fatwas, bringing in Sharia with its bloody
stumps and beheadings and floggings and
stonings--seventeen people have been stoned to death
so far under the "progressive" Khatami regime in
Iran--and underwriting a wide variety of dictators and
monarchs and warlords. When gods start multiplying,
matters don't improve: Polytheistic Hindu zealots have
slaughtered 700 people, including many children, in
revenge for the torching by Muslims of a train
carrying Hindus from the site of the Ayodhya mosque,
destroyed by a Hindu mob in 1992 because it supposedly
occupied the site where the god-king Ram was
supposedly born. As I write, Hindu fanatics are
threatening to fight Muslims for a strand of beard
hair preserved in a Muslim shrine in Srinagar, which
they claim belongs not to Mohammed but to Hindu
religious leader Nimnath Baba. How many children will
be burned to death over the proper attribution of that
holy facial hair?
Think of all the ongoing conflicts involving religion:
India versus Pakistan, Russia versus Chechnya,
Protestants versus Catholics in Northern Ireland,
Muslim guerrillas in the Philippines, bloody clashes
between Christians and Muslims in Indonesia and
Nigeria, civil war in Sudan and Uganda and Sri Lanka,
in which last the Buddhist Sinhalese show a capacity
for inflicting harm on the admittedly ferocious Hindu
Tamils that doesn't get written up in Tricycle. It's
enough to make one nostalgic for the cold war--as if
the thin film of twentieth-century political ideology
has been stripped away like the ozone layer to reveal
a world reverting to seventeenth-century-style
religious warfare, fought with twenty-first-century
weapons. God changes everything.
Get The Nation at home (and online!) for 75 cents a
week!
If you like this article, consider making a donation
to The Nation.
PRINT THIS ARTICLE | EMAIL THIS ARTICLE | WRITE TO THE
EDITORS | TAKE ACTION NOW
We have 50 million people in South Korea only. And, the Christians are 10 million among us. (20%)
I'm so glad that we have "Buddhism" here. The Buddhists are 12 million. Lots of foreign people thesedays come here to study Buddhism.
And, among the atheists, the anti-Christian emotion is so prevailed. Some people made their own anti sites. Actually, I'm one of the members of those sites, someone told me to visit here. :)
(http://gigabon.com/bbs/board.php?bo_table=b012)
They translate some articles here and put on their board. They have this "ex-Christian.net" menu. And, the members also want to put their articles on here. So, I just did kinda test if I can put an article here. And, now...I feel really good.
Thanks for your troubles to answer my Q, and hope you guys keep peace and happiness in mind by your own way. Thanks again. I'll see ya soon~! (Cause I'm the responsible person who has to translate Korean into English.)
We are loosing social service to what we call here "Faith Based initiatives" where the Government gives our tax money to churches to do services. This money, laundered through a vast network of "foundations". The Joshua Organization gets faith based money for teaching you children to be foot soldiers for the religious right. 7 % of interns in congress our from this program. They are at campaigns passing out pamphlets showing the world is 6,000 years old before they can vote. There is a good argument being made that the rise of Christian Nationalism in the U.S is becoming much stronger and may be one of the biggest issues we face in the near future. Anti Abortion laws were just passed in South Dakota and Louisiana. Were going backwards. The Godless are welcomed less and less in our society.
Tim Rumford
www.PriestsGoneWild.com
Unfortunately, if the USA collapses, there´s gonna be a lot of Chernobyls to deal with in a couple of years.
Guess which one of these events God will intervene into and keep from happening.
None, (0), because (IT) is the one that set the universe into motion, and the extinction of the human race will be a non event as far as the universe is concerned, as it expands or contracts through time.
Dan (We don't have time to waste with believing mythological concepts like Christianity, or any of the myriad of others that man has made up, life is to short, and our time here is limited)
I'm sure he's responsible for the millions of fundamentalist misled
masses there.
Moonpearl is right,...fundies teach that Jesus descended into hell and led those in captivity free,..I wonder if that included Judas and all the millions Jehovah had slaughered over 4,000 years!(including pregnant women and children)
Rev.Cho is a troublemaker. There's a public rumor that whenever he stays at luxury hotels, he has time with call girls.
You don't want to believe this? He got syphilis once, and got the treatment at the hospital. (You know, the doctors and nurses have a big mouth...)But, unfortunately, he infected his pox to his wife, Mrs. Cho.
This rumor must be 'true', because many anti-Christians are joking with his case. (How funny it is...haha:))
NEways...I feel sorry I didn't know I have to introduce myself like others do. Next time, I'll introduce how old I am, when I joined or left, etc with some statistics about the corruptions of Korean Christianity.
Bye, dudes~! :)
This "miracle"is what thrusted him to cult like status,...he now boast millions of followers in S.Korea thru his mega church and thosands of small "cho" churches!
This guy is nothing but a con man who is praised by most all the charismatic type leaders in the world.
(Welcome to ex-christian.net from Fort Worth,Texas)
As you guys know, he is a "legend" in the Christian world. Some foreign ministers visit his church to learn his "managing & marketing skills". He has hundreds of branch churches in the world, and also have a big daily newspapers, and this is runned by his son. (maybe the resurrected one...:))
His main church's annual budget is 700 billion won. (700 billion US$) But, he continually expand his businesses. I don't know why he need so much money as a minister. He's the one who made the Korean churches be more greedy. :(
And, he has several newspapers, not one. Sorry~!
And, he has several newspapers, not only one...
Most of us were just like you,..so we know how f--ked up you are.We would never suggest someone like Jennifer Lee go anywhere near you for advice,...WAKE UP MAN!(sell your crap somewhere else.)
When Jesus Christ died, His death was effectual to all those that believe in Him...hence, the Jewish (Old Testament people)people that believed in this coming messiah were saved. Their faith in the coming Christ saved them from Hell. Therefore, the statement that Christ makes "I am the Way, The Truth and The Life. No man comes unto the Father except by me" is true! The Jews and Gentile believers of the Old Testament did come to the Father by Him, the Coming Messiah, Jesus Christ.
Somehow you're purporting this as pure fact. How do you know the above statement made by you is true?
Do you somehow possess first hand knowledge that this is true? Is it true because of your longing and you intend it to be true?
By the way, the majority of Jewish people (of the OT) that lived before christ were already dead before christ arrived, but yet you insist that you have some form of first hand knowledge that the Jewish people were saved from hell...lol
Isaiah 45:21 says I the Lord, and there is no God else beside me.
Yet the majority of living Jewish people reject Jesus as the messiah, even though Jesus was a bonified Jew himself, and many many living Jews witnessed Jesus's death, are Jewish people this blind not to recognize the prophesized saviour and to have witnessed his death and yet are still somehow stupid enough not to recognize a man sent by god to save them, that rose from the dead?
Fundy answer! God has hardened Jews hearts, although Jesus was a bonified Jew himself, with a blood line of David, and Mary inseminated by an an angel sent by god.
How did Jesus get a bloodline of David through Mary whom was not of any kin to Joseph?
Crawl out of this one aaron!
Romans 8:29-30 "For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.
All are predestined. Faith, is useless.
John 10:30-31 I and my Father are one. Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him."
Is Jesus God?
John 14:28 "My Father is greater than I."
Luke 14:26 "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children,and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple."
Matthew 24:14 "And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come."
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/judaism/FAQ/06-Jewish-Thought/section-9.html
"However, for Jews, gehenna--while certainly a a terribly unpleasant place--is not hell. The majority of rabbinic thought maintains that people are not tortured in hell forever; the longest that one can be there is said to be 12 months."
The christian hell is one of the many reasons why I don't believe in christianity. In order for the doctrine of "salvation by grace alone," which the christian church is built upon, to work, there must be an eternal place for "non-believers," therefore, they will spend eternity in hell. This is ludicrous. I hope you see that. Absolutely ludicrous. For christians to have their eternal reward, there must be an eternal reward for non-christians.
You said on 06/28 at 5:55 pm, "I believe that it [the christian worldview] is a valid position and that most questions can be answered when you stop looking at the evidences and through tainted 'glasses' which I believe both sides are guilty of."
You believe that most questions can be answered, how about this one?
1.) If a christian is "saved" by the death on the cross, then why did Christ say, in the book of Matthew, "But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in?" (Matt. 23:13.)
This, again, Christ said before the death on the cross, which is necessary for the christian salvation to work, as you should know. From this passage, it appears as though Christ is admitting to some way into heaven that the scribes and Pharisees not only have knowledge of, but also have the power to "shut up" against men! In the final line of said passage, Christ appears to reveal that said "way" into heaven is in the present moment by saying in the present tense, "for ye neither go in," disregarding the afterlife altogether! Remember, Jesus himself said this, long before the crufixion.
When you're finished with that one, I've quite a few more for you to explain.
Jesus is quoted as saying ""I am the Way, The Truth and The Life. No man comes unto the Father except by me."
The Jews that lived and died before JC, had no knowledge of his existance, yet you say the Jews had faith in him, how is this possible? Yet you insist you believe it's true!
When Isaiah says that I am the only god and there is no other, this is why the Jews never accepted Jesus as a messiah, yet you boldly say that they had faith in Jesus.
Sorry dude, you're really confused!
And if there were Jews present at Jesus's cruscifixion, there is not one Jewish account in the NT, why not? But yet they had faith in Jesus...lol
Get real Arron!
Dictionary.com defines "propitiation" as a sacrifice to a God.
This passage clearly tells us that the death on the cross "saved" the entire world! Apparently, it's not necessary to "accept Jesus!" We're ALL "saved!" Hallelujah! Wahoo! Party on, man. Everybody's going to heaven when they die! Now, how the hell does this correlate with the doctrine of "salvation by grace alone," where, again, only christians are going to heaven and the rest of us will burn forever? How would one correlate first John 2:2 with the final judgement scenario in revelations where some among us are "cast into the lake of fire, which burneth and tormenteth forever?"
Most of us here have read the bible thoroughly enough to decide that christianity is just not believable to us. I've found many, many, passages, such as those I've mentioned above and in my prior post, which led me to disbelieve in christianity. If you want to believe in it, go ahead! We here just don't believe in christianity and that's all there is to it.
Here's another question for you, Aaron. Are we, as ex-christians, "saved" or not? We once "accepted Jesus, since we were once christians, then decided we couldn't believe in christianity. Technically, we should be "saved," yet, Paul said that if a person "leaves the fold," he or she cannot return. Either we are "saved," or we can never be! Which is it? Either way, you're wasting your time trying to "save" us, which shows that you are not really serving your "true purpose" by posting here.
One more question. Why can't you christians agree on whether or not we here are "saved?" We get different answers from the christians who visit.
Christianity is nonsense.
If something LOOKS like horseshit, and SMELLS like horseshit, IT'S HORSESHIT!
I could go on and on...
Why would the Jewish (Old Testament people), need to be "saved", if they didn't believe in "hell".
And, again, here is the link, if you need to learn how to read, then, there are classes available.
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/judaism/FAQ/06-Jewish-Thought/section-9.html
"However, for Jews, gehenna--while certainly a a terribly unpleasant place--is not hell. The majority of rabbinic thought maintains that people are not tortured in hell forever; the longest that one can be there is said to be 12 months."
"Who cares what majority of rabbinical thought was??? When does majority make it right or even what the Bible teaches? Anyway, that a whole other topic. Just wondering where that came from I guess."
Obviously, you do, by making the statement that the Jews actually needed saving. Again, the Jews didn't need saving, they believed in Gehenna, which is "not" hell, by a far stretch. So, why would "faith" in a savior be required by the Jews, in order to be saved, if "they" didn't have anything to be saved from? They had no need of a Jesus to save them from hell.
The Jews were looking for a messiah, to bring them into power in their New Kingdom on earth, they were never to leave, and go to heaven, they were to inherit their new kingdom on earth.
"Quoting random Scripture and jotting a note underneath is not a good way to argue. It's probably better to explain the passage (or your interpretation of it) so we can get what you're saying. I don't have time to go through each one of those trying to figure out what you mean by them...honestly...not trying to to be a jerk about it:)"
Its okay, I realize after reading your post, that you have no idea about your own religion, and after stating that you require someone to interpret your own bible for you, I suspect that you need some personal study time.
Do you find it odd that you make statements about the bible, yet, you know less than the people you are talking to? If you want to make a statement about your religion, give the scripture and reference, and we'll talk, at least then, I'll know you are actually reading the bible, instead of making highly opinionated statements.
Words of wisdom :-) Well, some people seem to wipe their shoes over and over, and pretend they're not stepping in it ;-)
I've also read that the fastest-growing religion in Korea are Buddhism, and the biggest (or second-biggest; can't remember) group is EX-Christians. I have always found that Eastern religions, philosophies, and ways of live made more sense than Western ways, and I guess that good old Asian sensibility finally got the better of many Korean Christians' faith.