You read the New Testament first to keep the resurrection and redemption in proper perspective? That’s that like telling someone about the cure to their terrible disease so they have a proper perspective of it before telling them they even have the disease or what it is. As an example, the patient has cancer but doesn’t know it. He doesn’t even know what cancer is. Or what chemo is. The doctor walks in after getting results from some testing and starts off with (in a hypothetical situation, remember…and slightly on a smart-alic/satirical manner) “Chemotherapy will cure you. We pretty much radiate the crud out of you until you are glowing a nice golden yellow and the problem goes away. Now you will have to live the rest of your life without hair and could be ridiculed about being bald, but that is completely worth it.” The patient’s response is going to be “what the heck do I have and why do I need to be irradiated?!” “Oh, you didn’t know? You have cancer!” “What’s can-you know what, I’m going to go see someone else who will actually give me something to help.” Biblically speaking he ends up getting into drugs and alcohol and other stuff that temporarily gives the illusion of no pain and no problems but he still will have cancer and die from it. Pretty much the same thing when you start with “Jesus died on the cross in Calvary so that if you only believe in Him you will be saved, although you might get the snot beaten out of you for your belief in Jesus.” Then move into “You are a horrible sinner. Have you ever lied? yes, okay, well…what do you call a person who tells lies? a liar. God says if you commit one sin it is as though you committed them all. You have this problem of sin. Yours is in the form of telling lies, and it’s horribly fatal. You’ll end up in what God calls “the second death”, the “pit of fire”, and even “Hell”, a place of eternal torment and suffering…Oh, and gnashing of teeth.”

Just something to think about there.

And here’s the problem with some of the arguments: They are all invalid.

The Bible was translated by many men to english in 1611 after having been commissioned for translation by King James (hence the version “King James Version”). Yes, this was 400 years ago. Unless I’m forgetting how to do math again. But for 400 years people have learned Hebrew and gone back and compared the original Hebrew with the Old Testament and the Hebrew NT with our NT. For 400 years people have been learning Greek and going back to the Greek NT and comparing it with out NT. Here’s the big problem with “it was written a long time ago by a lot of people”: The King James Version has, for 400 years, been proven time and time again to be the best translation we could possible have of the original texts.

There are many denominations: but if they don’t follow biblical teachings they do not follow the God of the Bible which means they cannot believe upon the Jesus of the Bible which culminates with them being unable to be saved. If they follow a translation that *changes* the wording of the Bible (ie. Mormon teachings say that Jesus told the thief on the cross that he shall “live as though with me in Heaven”, when, according to the original texts, the translation is that Jesus said “You shall be with me in Heaven”. This completely changes and perverts God’s Word. That means they can’t believe in the God of the Bible because they don’t even believe in the same Bible. (despite the fact they have the KJV translation as well…they just still believe that Jesus didn’t say what the Bible says he said) If they don’t believe in the same Bible, they cannot believe in the true God of the unadultered, unaltered, unperverted, true Bible. And no belief in the real Jesus. And no Heaven. Which they perverted the image of Heaven anyway so what’s it matter? It’s all called idolatry because these different versions and denominations are changing God to fit their worldly views. This is specifically mentioned as idolatry.

Also, if you have a problem with the translations, learn and become fluent in Biblical Hebrew and go learn what it says. ie. yahweh ruach is the “the spirit of God”, “ruach” being “spirit” or “holy spirit”. “ruach” also translates to “air”, “breath”, “water”, “soul”. Essentially, it literally means every single word that biblically makes up life. So “Yahweh Ruach” is the literal Life of God. And seeing as all these things were used for the creation of human life, we are literally the Life of God. And by sin we brought death into this world, perpetually being born into sin. “for the wages of sin is death”. When we sin, not only are we making an account that gives us death, we are killing ourself. If we kill that which is made by the “Ruach” of God, we kill our given “Ruach”, we kill our given Life…we commit suicide.

There, I know a little bit of Hebrew that relates mostly to the Hebrew names used for God and have just taught you an amazing lesson: Sin is so bad and you commit all by one because one sin kills Life. You just learned something about the actual translation of the Hebrew Bible. So, again, if you are not content with KJV and whatever else we have come up with, go get yourself a Hebrew Bible and a Greek NT and start learning.

Oh, and when the Bible talks about “believing on Christ and repenting”, it’s talking about turning from sin. Not turning from sin and starting to do righteousnesses on your own for “while we are in our iniquities, all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags before God”. It means stop trying to do anything yourself and let Jesus do all the work. In other words, an active homosexual who is also a “Christian” has failed to allow Jesus to do all the work while continuing to knowingly and willfully sin against God (like swimming towards the ocean while lifeguard Jesus tries to pull you towards land) and in that the person is NOT saved (lifeguard Jesus knows when the person He is saving from drowning in the oceans of the world is still trying to swim towards the world and will just let that person go…kind of how it works).

Plus there is the fact that Christianity is not a religion but a life. You don’t “practice” it, you don’t “keep it’s tenants”. You live the life of Christ after Salvation…you can’t do that if you do not make His life your life…in other words you can’t let Jesus live His life through you if you purposely let sin or the world into your life. As a Christian it should be horribly detestable that any actual Christian (born again) would support a type of marriage that Jesus specifically spoke out against. How can you both love Jesus and tell Him, the all powerful, all knowing Son of God who is of God and has all authority in both the heavens and the earth, that what the world wants to be right is more important than what He deems is right? It’s like going to get on a subway train but when you get one foot on you keep the other on the gound outside the train door. A couple of things will happen: you will probably be forcibly removed the train, you might (might) get yanked into the train, or nobody does anything, the train gets to going as the doors try to close around you, and you turn into a pretty new paint job for the train door on both sides, the wall of the tunnel, the ground, and probably a few people around where you just were.

And last but not leasting, separation of Church and State was about the government not making any laws concerning establishments of religion. SoCnS argument is invalid.

Additionally Scott, I do not have a problem with Dan Cathy’s beliefs or your beliefs for that matter. I have a problem with how he spends an enormous amount of money. Do you agree with the criminalization of homosexuality? Do you agree that in countries that do criminalize homosexuality that the death penalty is appropriate?