What califlady says is right. There are many blind leading the blind today. Another thing is that Christianity is a matter of the heart and not of the intellect. I do not mean that Christians are not intelligent, but that the utmost importance comes from the heart.

Also, being humble, and seeing yourself as being a sinner in need of forgiveness is right. Pride and envy, impatience, proudness, setting poor examples are things Christians need to strive against. Human nature is such that it is a daily struggle for each and everyone, Christians included. That is why we need forgiveness on a daily basis. We are not perfect and never will be, and should not give the impression that we are, can or will be. That is the reason Jesus came here to forgive us our sins. Satan works hard to try to convince us otherwise. Satan is always working in each persons life continually. And that is why it is such a battle to keep Christianity in our hearts.

Also, trouble comes when we want to take our own opinions, thoughts and ideas and think that it is the only right way and others are wrong. If we rely on and lean on Jesus for help, He will lead us to rightousness and help us to see what is right and wrong. Prayer is needed to find the truth. God will reveal it if it is heartfelt and earnest.

First and foremost, King Solomon built the first Holy Temple in Jerusalem between the years 965 and 928 BCE.

The Holy Temple was reserved for the priests (cohanim) who were descendants of Aaron. But in the year 586 the Babylonian monarch Nebuchadnezzer invaded Jerusalem, destroyed the Holy Temple carried off its implements made of precious metals.

When Nehemiah returned from Babylon around 536 with the first group of exiles the city was rebuilt, and the Holy Temple and Jerusalem were again the principle focus of national religious life until the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in the year 70 CE. Following the suppression of Bar Kochva's revolt, the Roman Legions burned all of Jerusalem to ashes and in its place built a pagan city they called Aelia Capitolina.

It is a tradition with all that the place in which David and Solomon built the sacrificial altar and which held the Holy Ark on its floor is the place in which Abraham built an altar and bound Isaac on it, and it is the place on which Noah built when he came out of the ark, and it is the altar on which Cain and Abel sacrificed, and on which Adam sacrificed when he was created and on which he was created. As the sages say: "He was created from his place of atonement." In other words, as the passage from the Rambam illustrates, the reason Jerusalem is the holiest city in Judaism is that in the 5000 year span of Jewish religious life the nation's devotion to God has intersected more with this city and more intensely than with any other.

Various factors make Jerusalem holy to Muslims At first glance, the holiness of Jerusalem in the Muslim tradition is also religious at heart, and stems from the belief that Muhammad the prophet founder of Islam rose to heaven from the site of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. But it seems other factors beside religion played a role too.

After the prophet died in June 632 a series of successors, or caliphs, assumed authority as Islam's leaders. Between 661 and 750 the Umayyad Dynasty held the Caliphate and ruled from Damascus. During the time they ruled, on account of various internal and external pressures the Umayyads exerted enormous effort to elevate Jerusalem's status, perhaps even to the level of Mecca.

Daniel Pipes wrote in the Middle East Quarterly: "The first Umayyad ruler, Mu'awiya, chose Jerusalem as the place where he ascended to the caliphate; he and his successors engaged in a construction program - religious edifices, a palace, and roads - in the city. The Umayyads possibly had plans to make Jerusalem their political and administrative capital...But Jerusalem is primarily a city of faith, and, as the Israeli scholar Izhak Hasson explains, the "Umayyad regime was interested in ascribing an Islamic aura to its stronghold and center."

Toward this end (as well as to assert Islam's presence in its competition with Christianity), the Umayyad caliph built Islam's first grand structure, the Dome of the Rock, right on the spot of the Jewish Temple, in 688-91. This remarkable building is not just the first monumental sacred building of Islam but also the only one that still stands today in roughly its original form."

The next step the Umayyads took to make Jerusalem holy to Islam relates to a passage in the Quran (17:1) that describes Muhammad's Night Journey to heaven: "Glory to He who took His servant by night from the Sacred Mosque to the furthest mosque (al masjidi al aqsa)."

Pipes explains that when this Quranic passage was first revealed, in about 621, a place called the "Sacred Mosque" already existed in Mecca. "In contrast," he goes on, "the 'furthest mosque' was a turn of phrase, not a place. Some early Muslims understood it as metaphorical or as a place in heaven."

In other words, the line about the furthest mosque in the Quran is just a figure of speech. Which means there is no basis for associating the furthest mosque - the Quranic location of the start of Muhammad's Night Journey - with the city of Jerusalem.

In 715, Pipes writes, the Umayyads did something very clever. To build up the prestige of their domain, they built a second mosque in Jerusalem, again on the Temple Mount, and named this one the "Furthest Mosque" (i.e. al-masjidi al-aqsa) the exact same name written in the holy Quran. And in so doing, the Umayyads forced the city of Jerusalem to assume a role in the life of the prophet Muhammad. A role which it never had. This is how the Muslim belief in the holiness of Jerusalem, which persists to this day, originated.

It's impossible to escape the conclusion, as the Palestinian historian A.L. Tibawi writes, that building an actual Al Aqsa Mosque "gave reality to the figurative name used in the Quran..." As Pipes points out, moreover, "it had the hugely important effect of giving Jerusalem a place in the Quran post hoc which naturally imbued the city with a higher status in Islam". Which is another way of saying, before the Umayyads built Dome of the Rock and Al Aksa, Jerusalem had no status at all in Islam.

Israeli scholar Izhak Hasson says: "construction of the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosque, the rituals instituted by the Umayyads on the Temple Mount and the dissemination of Islamic-oriented Traditions regarding sanctity of the site, all point to the political motives which underlay the glorification of Jerusalem among the Muslims." In other words the sanctification of Jerusalem in Islam is based on the Umayyad building program. And their cleverness in bringing about a (baseless) association between the al-masjid al-aqsa mentioned in the holy Quran and the mosque they built on the Temple Mount and purposely named Al Aqsa, precisely so that it would assume a measure of Quranic holiness it did not have.

Perhaps the most convincing evidence of Islam's very loose and insignificant bond with Jerusalem is how the Muslims related to the city after the Caliphate passed from the Umayyads to the Abbisid's in 750. Daniel Pipes writes: "Jerusalem fell into near-obscurity. For the next three and a half centuries, books praising this city lost favor and the construction of glorious buildings not only came to an end but existing ones fell apart (the dome over the rock collapsed in 1016.)

These days, the never-ending cry for a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital surely contains a trace of the claim that the city is holy in Islam. But essentially the historic record shows that the actions and circumstances on which the claim is based aren't very holy at all. In fact, by any standard of religious values in any society in the world, artificially imbuing a place with holiness, through wordplay and administrative sleight of hand, constitute the very opposite of holiness.

Hi darkgatherer,

If an individual or group's real purpose for attending the Christianity Debate Forum is to disprove Christianity. I think their expectations will be a disappointment to them.
What is your real purpose darkgatherer?

I read this comment you made.


And I would like to add my own comment here after reading all of Mccarty's and Thorn's messages, as a result of reading your comment.
Personally, I feel that Mccarty used great restraint and patience in responding to Thorn's messages, and great pains to explain each subject Thorn presented. And some of thorn's messages were so slanderous they had to be removed.

After reading you and Thorn's pro islamic views on the islam forum, I can not understand why you and Thorn prefer to attack Christianity rather than discuss Christianity.

Is this the way you "darkgatherer" and Thorn prefer to debate Christianity?

This is only a few of Thorn's messages. (not including some of the messages that were deleted!)
After reading these messages. I think Thorn has deeper issues than discussing Christianity.

by Thorn:
mccarty you lil biotch i should have known you where a schill for the new world order! you bring establishment medical mafia propaganda to curezone and to try to interupt the good being done here! I should have known you'd be a christian zionist thug! Well you found a home here in this forum of hate they will suck your ass here with words like you just spoke ,they will love your genocidal messages here! Myself I dont have time to read the garble you spew!
//www.curezone.org/forums/m.asp?f=290&i=15055

by Thorn:
What do you mean where is our proof! Thats lunacy you have no proof that there is a god or the even more rediculous notion that jesus is god yet you insist on others excepting your beleifs and the atrocities commited in its name! We ask you if you want to install your beliefs in our government and want to be taught in out schools that you come up with some rational proof! You evangelize and make laws according to your beliefs that make others criminals for not beleiving! You are the oppressor you are the invader you are the ones causing harm in your cause, because of some revised archaic book!
You expect others to throw out common sense Science and convert to a myth! You ask us to devolve to to be entrenched in your dogma ! With out any poof just a bunch of old language! Come on cultists!
//www.curezone.org/forums/m.asp?f=290&i=15043

by Thorn:
right you christians are ubiquitits, as a soon as one of you is done attacking the other one digs in with your myths and lies ! You dont debate you ask stupid questions that make no sense in the real world , you cant draw me into a debate about scripture I think is filled with lies to fit someones agenda! This little tit for tat you guys play amongst each is only for stroking your own egos! Because you have memorized a book and know where different scripture is does not prove of anything ! The only thing it proves is that even you guys cant agree on what the hell the book says!
If you have a question ask it ! Just because i dont read everysingle post by every jesus freak having a fit doesnt mean anything! And if i dont live up to your standards lol do you think I care! Im not here to win a popularity!
Or to try and have a come back to every one in your gang!
My original post exposed the nazi controlled right wing extreme of your religion a group of people out to destroy anybody who is not part of thier cult, I didnt think you would be supportive of this kind of thing and would have thought you would support exposing this kind of corruption in the name of your religion!
//www.curezone.org/forums/m.asp?f=290&i=15039

by Thorn:
no health issues no advice just chicken dung scripture and the opposite of a healer and actually probably make people around you sick with your hell fire and brimstone dogma! You support the murder of women and children and laugh at the those who died in bahgdad and you think people respect that! I bet hitler would love a guy like you! Or his grankids Jerry Falwell satans new a$$hole or Pat the Rat Robertson, you could go to africa and join the apartied movement they'll give you a machete!
//www.curezone.org/forums/m.asp?f=290&i=15032

by Thorn:
And once again in your unwillingness to absorb new knowledge you assume to know if I have read a particular book in the ubiquitis bible! A book in every motel and whorehouse in america! Has it ever accured to you that many who oppose the insanity of religion where not themselves indoctrinated with its dogma? How foolish the egoists mind!
//www.curezone.org/forums/m.asp?f=290&i=14988

 

 

Read my messges on this board   Read my messges anywhere

 

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I noticed CL is was enough for discussion without hiding behind numbers. :)