- The line seemed to stretch back forever. Hundreds of millions of souls, waiting patiently for their turn before the throne. The date... Well, the day is Judgment Day, so you won't find it on any calendar. The queue of people winds its way down the mountain, through the valley and off into the far distance. Everybody in the queue can see the final destination at the mountain peak. A hundred miles away, they can see it perfectly clearly. And they wait, moving forward a couple of steps at a time. Towards God, and the Decision. At the head of the we find a young Christian, wearing an expression of awe and joy. Behind him, an atheist, looking slightly astonished, examining a leaf she has picked from a nearby bush, trying to decide if it is real or not. Heaven, she thinks, should be whiter, with more dry ice swirling about; not look like a Welsh hillside on a hot day. The Christian steps forward for judgment. "Hello Martin". God's voice is calm and gentle as He speaks. &q

I was doing a little Internet surfing when I came across this article on “Hearing the Voice of GOD” The full article for anyone mildly interested is here: http://www.layhands.com/HowToHearGodsVoice.htm The parts of the article that grabbed my attention as I scanned it, I just have to comment on. It would be quite entertaining on a parody site, such as Landover Baptist Church, or something similar. However, this is not a parody as the author or authors of this site are serious about this stuff. Look at the following two paragraphs quoted from the article. Another way that the Holy Spirit guides us is by giving us a "check" in our spirits when something is wrong, and by giving us an "inner witness" when something is right. I will try to describe how I experience these things, but please realize that you might not be able to fully relate to my descriptions. When you learn to recognize the "check" and the "inner witness" within yourself, you might d

In the last couple of days, I have been exchanging emails with a believer in Australia. I haven’t been called mate since I was in Australia some 9 years ago, just before I retired from the military. I enjoyed my time in the land down under, and the people there were very nice. Oh, and I was a believer then, and corresponded with other believers there for some time after my short stint in Townsville Aus. The reason I make special mention of this exchange is that in her letters I recognize some of the thinking I myself once held dear. Now that I am free from religious dogma, and have been for the past few years, I think it is interesting to observe how fallacious her arguments are. I once thought this same approach with unbelievers to be effective, yet now I am embarrassed to realize how infantile I was in my thinking. This is not to imply I think I have nothing more to learn, no, it is just a realization of how much I didn’t know then, yet how arrogant I was in my ignorance. She posted

1. Never accept any thing on faith. Faith is just an excuse for laziness. Get out and do some research on the origins of your god. Question things that don't make sense or defy logic. Don't accept ignorance. 2. Find out where the money you donate really goes. Most churches are big business organizations which prey on the fears of the sick and elderly, or try to influence minors before they can think for themselves. They are not required to give an accurate accounting of funds taken in. 3. Realize that every tax concession given to a religious organization must be made up in some other way. You, the tax payer, are supporting religions you may not even believe in, or approve of. Demand a full accounting of all funding churches receive. Find out how much actually goes to charitable causes, how much goes to outreach propaganda, how much goes into business investments, and how much is sent to headquarters. Would this money be better distributed by your local government to aid the co

I first posted this "testimony" to the web on July 27, 2001. If you too have found Christianity specifically, or religion generally, to be less than satisfying for any reason, please consider posting your own "testimony" to this site by clicking here , or message me by clicking here. I t is invariably a shock to Evangelical Christians to come across someone who has turned his or her back on the “faith was once delivered unto the saints.” Most believers will quickly dismiss an ex-Christian by piously pointing out that anyone who turns away from Christ was never a real believer. Or, as an insider might say it, “They were never born again.” There is Biblical support for the assertion. 1 John 2:19, which addressed the problem of First Century apostates, states that: “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.

IN the opening year, 1793, when revolutionary France had beheaded its king, the wrath turned next upon the King of kings, by whose grace every tyrant claimed to reign. But eventualities had brought among them a great English and American heart -- Thomas Paine. He had pleaded for Louis Caper -- "Kill the king but spare the man." Now he pleaded, -- "Disbelieve in the King of kings, but do not confuse with that idol the Father of Mankind!" In Paine's Preface to the Second Part of "The Age of Reason" he describes himself as writing the First Part near the close of the year 1793. "I had not finished it more than six hours, in the state it has since appeared, before a guard came about three in the morning, with an order signed by the two Committees of Public Safety and Surety General, for putting me in arrestation." This was on the morning of December 28. But it is necessary to weigh the words just quoted -- "in the state it has since appea

"The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell." [Saint Augustine] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Often a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and distances,... and this knowledge he holds with certainty from reason and experience. It is thus offensive and disgraceful for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about such things, claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture. We should do all that we can to avoid such an embarrassing situation, which people see as ignorance in the Christian and laugh to scorn." [St. Augustine, "De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim" (The Literal Me

Translations and Reprints from the Original Sources of European History, (Philadelphia: Department of History, University of Pennsylvania, 1894) vol. 1, no. 4, 2-5 Hanover Historical Texts Project Scanned by Linda Xue, May 1998. Proofread and pages added by Jonathan Perry, March 2001. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Munroe's introduction: These are the most valuable sources for the crusade Of Frederic II. Each of the contestants tells the story from his own standpoint. We have comparatively little data for controlling their statements and determining their motives. See Rohricht: Reitrage zur Geschichte der Kreuzzuge, Vol. I. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gerold, patriarch of Jerusalem, to all the faithful--greeting. If it should be fully known how astonishing, nay, rather deplorable, the conduct of the emperor has been in the eastern la