Re:The main thing in islam is monotheism, Oneness (tawheed).
They reject your ideas about God having a son.
And they reject your cross idolatry, and Holy Ghosts, and whichever number of gods you have this week.
I get the sense you aimed this at ATA is because he's beating a dead horse? If I didn't explain well enough why Christianity is monotheism, please let me know. Doesn't the Koran say the Christians had the truth, but lost it? This is what I have heard. It is exiled, Gnosis is gone, removed, declared a heresy.
Is it unreasonable to make an analogy? God is a tree, divine beings are fruits of his branches, but the tree is one?
No, Vehcklox if you are Christian the moment you die you go straight to heaven, if you are not christian you go straight to hell. Can you show me where purgatory is mentioned in the bible? it is not mentioned anywhere, it is those heretical gnostic texts you read, they are wrong.
Again, for someone who puts so much trust in a Catholic-produced book, you surely don't have any in trust in Catholic teaching. In spite of the Catholics condemning Gnosis as a herecy, they seem to teach a great deal of purgatory. But to answer you, lets take a look at Matthew 5 (KJV):
23Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee;
24Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.
25Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison.
26Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.
Verse 23 lets us know that the subject is regarding giving offerings to the lord, 24 links what is described in verse 23 directly with the content in 25 and 26, therefore verses 25 and 26 are the context to verse 23 and one can see it is a metaphorical story, spoken like a parable.
The scenario illustrated paints a picture of the nature of verse 23, by using an analogy to describe the nature of the prison, a prison whose judge is the lord. But notice the words: "thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou has paid the uttermost farthing". This directly implies that one 'gets out' at some point, thus either indicating that if
hell is being spoken of, that the 'eternal' aspect of hell is not how long you stay, but how long the place exists in and of itself.
I got some of that from this site, very interesting read:
http://members.cox.net/sfobro/purga.html
This verse on a different topic, but also relevant to this one on purgatory, really peaked my interest as well as others which outline the basis for belief in Purgatory:
2 Machabees 12:46
"it is a wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they may be loosed from their sins."
It is interesting ATA, how you talk about the 'word of God' as a singular entity, when in fact not only were the Gnostic texts thrown away 200+ years after the death of Jesus, but that later on with the successive division of sects, unto the present day, the same continues to happen, as we see from the Book of Mormon.
Quote from that site I posted:
I hate to break the bad news but the Protestant Reformers rejected 2 Machabees and six other Old Testament books that were in the Septuagint Version even though they were recognized by many early Church Fathers and the Catholic Church. The same Church, in fact the only institution, that determined which writings were to make up the Canon of the Bible. How people can accept and profess that the Bible is the Word of God yet reject the institution that determined which writings would constitute the Canon of the Bible is beyond my comprehension. Getting back to Purgatory. I sometimes get side tracked forgive me.
So what this ultimately comes down to, is that the bible is the word of God, not only according to who, but
which bible canon are you referring to?
As if division of sects wasn't enough, an educated believer must mire through the history of accepted and rejected, and competing doctrines throughout the entire span of Christendom. Where rivaling Christian denominations often even paraded under the war banners of differing nations. Meanwhile, almost all the denominations, having found reason to split from the former sect, disregard or forget the fact that the institution they came from had rejected texts as well. Essentially the eyesore multiplied upon itself and spreads like a disease, calling itself "Christianity".
Then the very ones it wishes to convert with love, like Indians, Africans, South Americans, or the Chinese only get to see the horrendous miscarriage which once, long ago, for a very short time, was a beacon of light to the world. Comming at them with condemnation for being what they mistake to be: "heathenous idolators", when in reality, as what we see from Theosophy, many religions thought to be primitive, actually have idiosyncracies that are unmistakably synonymous with Christian ones, when one actually bothers to study them.
What about the lake of fire then?
As quoted by ATA, hell will be thrown into the lake of fire. After 108 lifetimes, the soul doesn't recieve any more opportunities to create a new soul (become born again), and self-realize, the ego and karma accumulated becomes too heavy, and the soul has exhausted it's lifespan.
The only option then is the lake of fire, complete destruction of the soul.
Also, I'm disappointed that Gnostics believe that God will punish you if we don't follow his will for we all have free will. Although I do believe in the law of karma.
I am disappointed as well, this world has a terrible karma, and this time is the dark age of kali yuga. It is said the angel overseeing the earth made a mistake and forgot about the karma of this world. Genesis said God grieved that he made man flesh. The situation is far more unfortunate than it should be, and not
primarily because of our faults. You should read on the gnostic site about this.
What other option is there? If you have holes in a ship, it will sink, unless renovated. The law is just, therefore the knowledge is open to all now. Alchemy is no longer shrouded behind the veil of Medieval secrecy, or Templar rites, or Masonic degrees, stuck in some obscure corner of closed Chinese Taoist or Hindu practice (which also teach black tantra, an abomination). Man by his own vices, and the influence of devils have confounded the knowledge of God under threat of murder. The angels themselves then hid the knowledge from man, or else like modern technology, he would misuse it and create a scenario far worse than the one we have now. Even if someone loses their soul in hell, there are worse fates, like paying excessive karma on top of that, or having been born again with a new soul, but then facing the second death of that new soul, which is unfathomably more painful. Let me remind you of the stories in the Old Testament regarding the Nephilim, who spawned giants through the sin of taking wives of the daughters of men...
And what happens to the consciousness?
It takes on the life successively through the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms to acquire and develip a soul/mind/spiritual body all over again. The same ladder it climbed up, climbed back down, and must once again climb up again. Evolution, and devolution.
After about 3000 times of doing this, if that spark of consciousness hasn't acquired mastery, it goes back where it came from, the happiness of heaven. But it doesn't know itself, or have any cognizance or mastery. It's like the difference between an ant, and a God.
