Anti-Semite Robert D. Bowers Is A Christian Terrorist"

Sorry if this is a bit meandering, but here we go:

To be a Christian is not just a belief, but is actually defined by a spiritual state, namely having had one's heart changed into not wanting evil. The acts/works are the evidence of this, but it is the spiritual state of the heart that defines a Christian. That is why Jesus even limited its membership, saying:

"21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ (Matthew 7)

To be a Buddhist does not require a spiritual change in the same way, to the point that the membership is actually defined by what the members hearts are drawn to. Therefore to compare Buddhism and Christianity is an apples and oranges comparison because to be a Christian is by definition inconsistent with a heart that would seek to truly harm others, which isn't core to Buddhism. It's like asking if law-abiding citizens can commit crimes, versus can factory workers commit crimes.

To be a Christian, as the name itself indicates, is to believe in the notion of Jesus as the Christ.

Evil is relative, defined by cultural norms. Religion, Christian or otherwise, is not needed to know what it is, since rules and laws not only suffice, but may supersede such. Hence why most Christians don't observe the Sabbath and women are no longer stoned to death should their hymen be discovered to not be intact on their wedding day.

Getting dunked in water and repeating some prayers is hardly transformative. It's a symbolic act, a fairly simple puberty rite.

Buddhism IS spiritual transformation, ever illuminating and ongoing, and without middle men - no irate Gods required. It's your own journey, finding yourself and your part in existence and it, you.

The concept of Jesus, compared to what proceeded, is very Buddhist, albiet, minus the depth and introspection.

Truth is a constant, not relative. For example, there was a time that African Americans were seen as less valuable than others. Now they aren't. Reality didn't change just because public opinion did.

Truth is indeed in plain sight, and God does allow for non believers who recognize it, but there is a constant effort from the devil to distort it. This is deception.

If you choose to see baptism as nothing but being dunked in water, then you won't see anything transformative. And proper baptism isn't about birth or puberty, but is a physical representation of what God is doing in the spiritual.

There is a time to be irate. Anger is a response to injustice, perceived or otherwise. God's anger is always in truth, for example, being angry with the false religion that had people sacrificing their infants. In a fallen world, if you have love for anyone or anything, you will become angry at some point when the loved one is harmed.

If you think following God is lacking in depth and introspection, than you obviously don't know Him. There is far more, but have you so much as read the wisdom books of the Bible like Proverbs and Ecclesiastes?

I mean the state of one's spirit or soul. If you are a Christian it means that your spirit has actually been cleansed by repentance (seeking to stop being prone to evil), baptism (cleaning off what has already been committed), and the acceptance of the Holy Spirit which changes the core of what your spirit longs for. Real Christians have actually received an embryonic piece of God's heart in their spirit, and thus don't thirst for evil at their core the way others do. However, it does take time and effort for this to permeate the whole being.

I just realized that you also asked what I meant by 'spiritual.' I guess it's an understanding that is easy for a Christian to take for granted.

In the beginning, God created both the spiritual (heaven) and physical elements of creation (earth) (Genesis 1:1). Spiritual elements of the world are perceptible, but are far more subtle, and are difficult to discern. The physical tends to follow the spirit, so people who don't believe in the spirit will often accredit spiritual things to the physical 'symptoms.' For example, how do you really know someone loves you? They can buy you presents and do helpful things, but then so can a scammer because those things themselves are not love. The better your spiritual discernment, the better you will be able to tell the difference. In fact, with someone you know really well, the spiritual connection can be so strong there can even be rare occasion where you don't even have the physical clues, and still know what is going on in their head. Twins are know for those kind of things.

Every living thing has a spirit, though there is more to the spiritual creation than that. Just like in the physical, there are animate and inanimate things in the environment. God is spirit, too. People have different gifts when it comes to perceiving the spirit, which can be confusing, too. Whereas mostly everybody has the same senses in their physical body, in the spiritual, it is the whole community that is seen as a body to need all the 'spiritual senses' (biblically called spiritual gifts) represented. For more examples of these see 1 Corinthians 12 (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Corinthians+12&version=NIRV)

Genesis1:1 In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth.

There is no spirit or spiritual in real Judaism, at least not as you define it. The Torah is about the physical. Spirit is feeling, intention, the function which is your emotions.
The concept of a physical/spiritual duality is a Hellenistc introducion, not Hebrew.

Many verses in the Old Testament discuss the spirit in a man. There are far more than this. The Old Covenant was indeed about the physical. The New Covenant was about the spiritual.

Genesis 45:27 But when they told him everything Joseph had said to them, and when he saw the carts Joseph had sent to carry him back, the spirit of their father Jacob revived.

Numbers 14:24 But because my servant Caleb has a different spirit and follows me wholeheartedly, I will bring him into the land he went to, and his descendants will inherit it.

Numbers 27:18 So the Lord said to Moses, “Take Joshua son of Nun, a man in whom is the spirit of leadership, and lay your hand on him.

Deuteronomy 2:30 But Sihon king of Heshbon refused to let us pass through. For the Lord your God had made his spirit stubborn and his heart obstinate in order to give him into your hands, as he has now done.

Job 7:11 “Therefore I will not keep silent; I will speak out in the anguish of my spirit, I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.

Job 10:12 You gave me life and showed me kindness, and in your providence watched over my spirit.

Job 17:1 My spirit is broken, my days are cut short, the grave awaits me.

Job 32:8 But it is the spirit in a person, the breath of the Almighty, that gives them understanding.

Psalm 31:5 Into your hands I commit my spirit; deliver me, Lord, my faithful God.

Psalm 32:2 Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord does not count against them and in whose spirit is no deceit.

Psalm 34:18 The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

God is only spiritual, but Jesus took on human flesh as well.

(I can't reply below your red comment) You actually have it backwards. Thought is primarily spiritual, but your brain stores data and is an interface between the physical and spiritual. When God went to make the physical, the challenge was likely more to make physical creatures capable of thoughts, which required some measure of spirit to be present. It is your spirit that guides the use of your brain, not the other way around.

The soul is technically a combo of your spirit and your mind/brain, but people disagree on this so spirit and soul often get used interchangeably in speaking.

You cannot detect the spiritual with the physical, though there can sometime be similarities in how they feel (spiritual tingles, the silent voice/thought language, your mind's eye). You would have an easier time seeing with your ears, though, then truly finding the spiritual via the physical. Spiritual characteristics are things like intentions and emotions. Satan's favorites are doubt, fear, and especially pride. God's are things like "love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control," to extrapolate from Galatians 5:22-23. The brain helps modulate and translate the spiritual into the physical, but it isn't the real source of our intentions and emotions. Dreams often are a good example of the same thing, with our mind connecting physical representations to things our spirits are experiencing or connecting to.

If you really want to recognize the spirit, your best bet is to ask God to show you. If you don't really want to see the truth of it, you won't though; the spiritual is most likely subtle by design

I describe what I've encountered. It's kind of like two unconnected people both describing a tomato as red and round.

Of course you are going to see commonalities between the false and the true. That's what deception is. If false religion didn't contain some truth, no one would fall for it. Satan's falsification, though, doesn't discount the true. If anything, its one of the devil's favorite techniques to inoculate people against the true. Pharaoh's magicians could produce serpents from their staffs, just like Moses could. This is yet another reason why discernment must include the spiritual, not just the physical.

I respect that you are seeking to defend the truth, but there are some verses you might want to consider: 1 John 4:1-6 (Why test if we are to throw everything out?) Acts 17:10-12 (The Bereans) John 14:12 (You will do greater things than these)

On some of what I say you mistook my descriptions for doctrines. I don't pretend though, that everything is straight out of the Bible because the Bible is not the totality of God. Jesus himself said that he couldn't teach everything while he was here, but instead pointed the disciples towards the coming of the Holy Spirit, saying in John 16, "I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. 13 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. 14 He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you." To apply the Bible is to have a relationship with God, and the Bible is core to that relationship, but who God is, is too vast to be limited to any book. Even of the time Jesus spent on the earth it says in John 21:25, "Jesus did many other things also. If every one were written down, I think that the world would be too small to hold all the books that would need to be written. Yes, it is so!"

Soul means anima, life, as in your animated body, not some apparition that inhabits the shell of your body.

The Gods Yahweh and Elohim were cantankerous, demanding, jealous, spiteful, wrathful creatures.

Satan (as originally described before being borrowed and demonized in favor of their own patron Gods by the Egyptians, Sumerians, Iranians, Hebrews, then Romans), was the original good God, the light, the giver of wisdom.

Take the Eden story, erase the names, give it to someone who is unfamiliar with it to read and ask them which God was good, which was wasn't. The one who offered the gift of wisdom and knowledge of good and evil (the Christian transformation you described earlier) vs the one who threw a tantrum because they partook of the fruit and cast them all out to be marked with damnation (original sin) for eternity. If you need to be dunked in water to figure out which one had your best intentions at heart, which one was a petty vindictive selfish tyrant, then you are far from being born again.

I've clearly had a different experience of God than you have.

Living things are both physical and spiritual. The spiritual is just subtle, though God does have to enable recognition. You can ask for it, but, no, it doesn't come on the terms that you want by design.

To some extent we are able since we are both physical and spiritual but there are several things going on. First of all, Satan’s rebellion messed a lot of things up in creation itself. I don’t fully understand all of the implications, but this limited some of what God wanted to be freely available. Second, with The Fall of mankind in the garden of Eden, deception was introduced. Deception is the mixing of the true and the untrue so that it is difficult to tell what is really true. Third, there is a concerted effort by Satan to further confuse and obscure things.

(Part 2 of 3) Furthermore, like many other of our senses, we have to learn and even be taught about how to use them. For example, when my niece was an infant she would see something in front of her hands and try to get it, but would end up kicking her feet instead of moving her arms, and then be frustrated and confused about why this wouldn’t work. Most kids naturally read the spirit but try to respond through physical means. Learning to navigate the spirit requires both experience and direct teaching via a guide (primarily God but also through others). Instead our society actually ignores and downplays the spirit. Even in a Christian home I had a lot of unlearning to do because of the media and school environment. The world taught me to go by facts and ideas instead of reading the situation; this caused me great difficulty in life because I couldn’t respond quick enough to other people since much of what is communicated between people is spiritual. A possibly more relatable example of the need for a spiritual guide is that when my niece got a little older, she had to have people teach her to recognize emotions like sad, mad, frustrated, etc. These have a spiritual component which makes them much more difficult to relate to than the tangible, physical things of the world, but discussing them with her and answering her questions was enough. Some things basically get addressed by parents giving positive or negative responses to children’s choices, but if you can address the root cause of a behavior when it is actually coming from a spiritual place, you can better direct your child in how to respond in new situations. For example, once when my niece was a tot, she started acting oddly rebellious beyond the understanding of a toddler. I instantly knew that something outside of her was influencing her, so rather than just dealing with the rebellion, I dealt with the source, and the problem didn’t arise again.

(Part 3 of 3) Also, while God is seeing that creation progresses to the point of seeing clearly (“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.” 1 Cor. 13:12), having to trust God along the way to guide requires and produces humility. The Bible celebrates that “God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him” (1 Cor. 1:27-29). I have seen the beauty of this in seeing the mentally handicapped grasp what the intellectuals miss. The world values intelligent people as more valuable than others, but since God created all minds, He isn’t impressed by such things. What impresses him is the heart, and needing the humility to ask Him to open your eyes to the spiritual is the ultimate field-leveler on this.

Soul simply means life, at least according to the Hebrews. When someone dies, so does it because it is merely the function of a living body.

There is no spiritual realm/plane in the Torah. That's a Hellenistic introduction and part of the corruption of what became today's Christianity.

You are correct that wind/breath/spirit were all the same word. This was intentionally used when God talked to Nicodemus about the Holy Spirit in John 3.

Realize that things WERE different in Old Testament times because Jesus hadn't yet died on the cross. Apparently there was disagreement on if there was an afterlife, because Jesus and Paul both dealt with the fact that the Pharisees believed in the resurrection, but the Sadducees did not. I wouldn't cite this website for just anything, but here is an article that does a nice job of discussing how much resurrection was mentioned in the Old Testament: https://www.icr.org/article/resurrection-old-testament/

The thing with Sheol is that it's in the last book, the book of Job. The only mention in the Torah, and people in it were observed sleeping.

The Covenant was basically for men to folllow the Commandments, and they'll have productive fields and faithful wives and most of their kids won't die young, stuff like that. No afterlife.

(Part 1) God didn't know Satan would rebel. God is generous with authority, so Satan had real power to mess things up. Even God learns things, so He now is more cautious. I know that with humans God reads their whole life all at once, but doesn't know before they exist what they will choose. It was probably similar with Satan. By the way, my answers always include things God has shared with me via either my walk with him or prophecy. I believe nothing can disagree with the Bible, but there are some things God just didn’t share in the Bible. The Bible itself says that God would do this (John 16:12).

The problem with facts in the context I described is that they are insufficient on their own for interpreting situations at the speed of life. As a child I became an easy target for bullies because I would try to interpret motives based too much on clear-cut actions and black-and-white ideas. By going too much on mere facts, it would take hours and even days to figure out where someone was coming from when they meant me harm. I realized this difference all the more when as an adult I worked as a substitute teacher and had to write up any significant interactions. It took me several years of leaving late from trying to explain human interactions on a purely factual level before I finally realized that most of what happens in an interaction is spiritual stuff that cannot be spelled out as “Student did X so I did Y.” Instead of trying to define it on a purely physical level that was pretty much impossible, I started just saying things more like “Student X had a rebellious attitude.” I was also a pretty lousy teacher when I started due to the same problems I’d had as a student myself, of only ascribing motives when there was clear factual evidence. In both situations, trying to define everything on a purely factual level was not functional, and just set me up for failure. Middle schoolers in particular are masters of deception and themselves intuitively know how to read your spirit; if you don’t read theirs, you will lose virtually every battle.

On the first, Christians don't all agree on doctrine. Consider for yourself why God might allow that.

I have been personally taught by God on how to deal with demons, and have thus interacted with them quite a bit on a limited (training-level) basis.

You have to consider in full recognition that God is wiser and of better character than anyone you have ever met, yet in other ways he is very much like us. He doesn't go for the low-hanging fruit. When he says he is after something, he wants it in truth not just in word or action. He isn’t black-and white in His thinking (because reality isn’t black and white and God is perfectly capable of navigating complexity). He can also speak in different literary styles (prose, poetry, hyperbole/exaggeration, etc.). He isn’t a manmade idle that plays by the rules of manmade attempts to control things by good behavior, but rather is a real being that is after healthy relationship. If you are too prideful to honestly consider this viewpoint, you won’t get there.

Consider what is accomplished by things being clearly evident or not. What effects does each scenario produce in the character of the people and His relationship with them. What truly matters to God? Are some things more important to understand than others? I'll give you a hint: He isn't interested in numbers, quick and easy paths, or intellect.

You may find help in 1 Corinthians, however, I predict that 1 Corinthians 1:10-17 will confuse you further. The better you know and respect who God really is (ex. good, true) the better you will understand what is being gotten at, but Titus 3:9-10 might be some useful context. (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+1&version=NIV)
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Titus+3%3A9-10&version=NIV

(Part 2) With my niece I was observing the physical but also probably reading the spiritual. God has seen to it that I have much training on dealing with the enemy (Satan, the devil, demons). The fact that she was reacting in a way that was beyond her developmental level was a big physical clue that there was a demon messing with her, and I had seen similar things dealt with in other kids, but the quickness with which I recognized it suggests that I may have been picking up on the spirit of what was going on.
The spirit does manifest in reality, and is knowable, but it just doesn’t come through your physical senses, it comes through your spiritual ones. The fact that these are subtler, however, makes them easy to ignore or dismiss. For example, have you ever been somewhere that felt creepy? If you did, it likely wasn’t just your imagination but it can be hard to tell. When there was a shooting in our town, my friend could tell just by opening the door that something was off in the area, though we didn’t know at the time what it was. I have much more to share on that, but I don’t feel comfortable sharing it here.
The bottom line is that the faith God talks about in the Bible isn’t blind faith, but it likely won’t come on the terms you want. Its not that God never does such things, but they aren’t his preferred methodology for reasons of character and relationship, hence the story of so-called Doubting Thomas, who would only believe if he saw with his own eyes. (John 20:24-29)

You actually have some very good questions about something even many Christians (both real and otherwise) don't fully understand. Like learning to talk, taking the steps necessary to become a Christian often end up being something you end up doing proficiently before you really understand what it means to do them proficiently.

I hope we have sufficiently answered your question. If not, I'm happy to answer honest and respectful questions the best that I can. I suspect others in this conversation are as well.

There is a time for justice and a time for grace. Much, but certainly not all of the differences between people's' behavior has to do with things external to their real intentions. For example, I have never taken an illegal drug in large part because of the environment I was raised in. I have struggled with issues like pride and disrespect because that was what was modeled to me in my formative years to the point that that was what was recorded in my brain. I have heard a changed man terrified of what others would think of him because as a kid he escaped an abusive home with one parent only to be thrown out of his home with the other because he would find himself repeating the abuse on his younger siblings. The truth is that anyone who thinks themself altogether better than people who do 'X' likely lacks the insight to realize the real reasons why anyone does 'X.'

Umm... identifies as Christian, caused newsworthy tragedy including property damage and possibly death... I think that qualifies as Christian Terrorist.

Well until the day comes that DNA tests on Maury can accurately determine who's cool enough for the Roman cult of killing Jesus, we'll have to go by the old standby:

If it walks like a duck,
And it quacks like a duck,

Then it isn't a Christian.

Technically, you're right.

But increasingly, the name of the game is "identity politics."

And Bowers, who is a terrorist, identifies himself as a Christian.

The situation recalls Trump...

"Deplorable Donald" is antipodally opposed to most tenets of The Party Of Lincoln..

But it's still appropriate to call him a Republican - even in his sunken state.

Indeed, if we were to measure professed Christians against Jesus' standards, there wouldn't be any.

"Terror And The Other Religions"
How Do Christians Rank As Terrorists
Juan Cole
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/04/terrorism-and-other-religions-juan-cole.html

"Pope Innocent III's Albigensian Crusade And Genocide"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-catholic-churchs-albigensian.html

I disagree that there wouldn't be any, but there are certainly a lot fewer than people think. The verse I quote above from Matthew 7 suggests as much. In words of prophecy to my church, God has Himself called those who compromise "semi-Christians." He also has connected these to the lukewarm of Revelation of Revelation 3:16, that He says He will spew out of His mouth. Sadly I have been horrified to witness how watered-down some churches have become, not teaching the need to repent, even though Jesus emphasized it repeatedly, even telling the disciples, in Luke 13:5, "unless you repent, you too will all perish.”

There is not a single God in any religion ever to have used the term "Christian" let alone, "semi-Christian." Even the bogeyman from the future that never was, the "Anti-Christ," is not so named in the Bible.

The Book of 'Matthew' was written at least a century after Jesus. Whomever he was (not the Apostle nor any other person name Matthew), that puts him in a position to not be the best reference of what 'Jesus' supposedly said.

You are mistaken and confused in your assessments here. "Semi-Christian" was given in a word of prophecy. I clearly stated that it came "In words of prophecy to my church". Antichrist is clearly named in the Bible, though some translations may possibly word it slightly differently. For examples see: https://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?quicksearch=antichrist&qs_version=NKJV%3BNIV%3BNASB%3BWE

There is much to the study of biblical history. You represent one viewpoint to the exclusion of others, and don't even cite your source.

Going forward, I am happy to answer questions of those who truly want answers. I'm not as willing to answer challenges given by close-minded individuals, because, well, what will it accomplish of value? A person who doesn't want the truth will not find it even if it could somehow be presented on a golden platter.