Hi Nicol, Nicol wrote:
Martial arts is violence and we are taught, everything connected to violence is wrong because god hates violence; as simple as that. My reply: Nicol, you are welcome to believe whatever you want, but I can assure you what you have been taught is false. Not only is it false it is quite clear the people filling you up with such doctrinal material hasn't even read their bible, or at the very least selectively skipped parts they found upsets their sensabilities. The old testament and the new testament is filled with violence and bloodshed. Some of it ordered by God himself. How about Moses and the Exidus? Do you think the Angel of the Lord killing all of the first born of Egypt was not violent? How about God parting the red sea, and as soon as Moses and the Israelites safely crossed he let the waters return drowning the Egyptian army? When the children of Israel made themselves a golden calf to worship God ordered Moses to go down and to put to death those who had started the idol worship? You think these things aren't violent? How about Joshua? After Moses died Joshua was appointed to replace Moses and to lead the children of Israel into the promised land. God instructed Joshua to kill every man, woman, child, and beast so that they would not have to deal with them later. As I recall the exact quote was to, "kill everything that moves." That was an order from God himself. Does this sound to you like God hates violence when it is justified? In the new testament when Jesus enters the temple what does he do? He sees several of the preasts selling sacroficial animals, and he becomes angry. The scriptures tell us he whips the preasts, over turns the tables of the money changers, and litterally throws them out of the temple. I don't suppose your ministers have ever read that part because it happened, and is mentioned in all of the gosples. Yet they are willing to say Jesus never resorted to violence? Well, here is one more bit of evidence God does use violence. In the book of Revelation there is a rather detailed story in Revelation 19 about Christ returning on a white horse with his angels to do what, do battle, with Satan and his followers. What do you suppose doing battle means? Giving out hugs and kisses? Perhaps a violent struggle to free the earth from Satan? My point of this message is to spell things out clearly so that you can at least see this from both sides of the argument. The bible is full of violence and God says himself, "vengence is mine sayeth the Lord." He is a God of compassion, love, and mercy, but he is also a god of vengence and violence when and if it becomes necessary. King Solomon himself put it best when he said, "there is a time for peace, and a time for war." In my opinion it is knowing the diference that counts. Think about it. If you are walking along a street and a mugger comes up to you pulls a gun are you going to stand there and not do anything about it? Are you going to just let him shoot you through the head? I would certainly hope not. God gives us the right to defend ourselves, and the old testament says that we can kill in self-defence. Perhaps you haven't been told that, but it is true. We are allowed under biblical law to defend ourselves and to kill if it is justified through self-defence. The problem with most christians here is that they haven't read the scriptures in the original languages. In the New King James version it says, "thou shall not kill." That is a translation error. If you read the Hebrew version it says "you shall do no murder." The diference is that murder, I use that term instead of kill here, to get the point across it is talking about premeditated murder. I.E. killing someone for reasons other than self-defence. People often don't understand that diference. HTH --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
