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Like Alma said, if you can only desire to believe let that work in you.

You will never discover the reality of God until a good time after you desire that God be true and seek him with all your heart.

Imagine falling in love never believing in it?? Impossible. You desire it and then look for the tells that can lead and reinforce your thrill of discovery. God blesses us according to our desires. If we desire that there is no God then we will believe all the false tells that reinforce that. Of course.

I took my latest apocalrock discover with me into the barber shop. A woman who cuts hair with here cousin were there waiting for customers so I had their complete attention. The barber has seen my book way back when I finished it in February. She was patient and kind as I excited showed the drama and excellent art depicting a most remarkable scene from the New Testament.

The cousin did not budge. She was not slightly interested to even look. She did not WANT it to be true. Probably my barber lady did not either but the cousin heard what I was saying and was not the slightest bit curious enough to get up and come over an look. Imagine that!

She might not want God to be true. She might just want me to be a kook. If you were pointing out a crocodile in the clouds people might get up and look for themselves. Nothing threatening about that.

Why do you think people just do not WANT to believe? Is it the age we live in or the people living in this age? You can understand why it is God proves us in this regard. He upholds all things by the might of his power and will not suffer but that he is glorified and worshiped for the greatness of his works. Think about it from his end. He causes by his own great desire all things to live move and have their being, that is love. And he will be honored for all of it. It is for our own good that he so insists. So WHY?

All eternity will be a fascinating revival of faith for those who force starvation of their faith in this life.

Why do you think people just do not WANT to believe?

Have you met Old Testament god?

Nightlion wrote:Why do you think people just do not WANT to believe?

Personally, Night, I have no desire to believe in something that is not true. My greatest desire is to know the truth. The world is filled with people that have different faiths. Which is the true one?

Faith is a method of pretending to know the truth instead of seeking the real truth. The more faith you have, the further away from God you really are.

Lots of people have fallen in love without previously believing it was possible.

just me wrote:

Why do you think people just do not WANT to believe?

Have you met Old Testament god?

That is only a 'tell' that you accepted to reinforce your DESIRE not to believe.

Most of what passes around here for why people do not believe are the reinforcements of their prime choice NOT to believe. They would not believe without reinforcements but these are put up before everyone to not go to the very heart of the matter. Why do people not want to believe?

My own children were put off belief when they witnessed an extremely dramatic confrontation between people they love when one betrayed the other over religion. It was a very deep seated emotional trauma that has doomed their faith until this day. That situation was tailor made to annul faith. Did not see it manifest until many years later. But that was where a decision was made in the hearts of my children to want to NOT believe. That way there was no real conflict and no pain in their hearts. Do you think that they know that they gave up faith at that moment? I doubt it. How would they know it? They never matured in faith to know anything about it. I was always talking with them about faith and the gospel and getting it right. They had already rejected it for cause. I did not see it until the evidence became apparent.

Quasimodo wrote:

Nightlion wrote:Why do you think people just do not WANT to believe?

Personally, Night, I have no desire to believe in something that is not true. My greatest desire is to know the truth. The world is filled with people that have different faiths. Which is the true one?

Faith is a method of pretending to know the truth instead of seeking the real truth. The more faith you have, the further away from God you really are.

Imagine if you will that you are telling this wisdom of yours to a man who has been there, and found God and knows all about it. You are guessing wildly. What is truth? Science is not static and therefore cannot be truth. Science can never be more true than only one piece of a huge jig saw puzzle. One piece. Think about it. And then they realize that that one piece never was a real piece after all.

Here is another way to look at it. If you were to comb through all that is written in the Judeo Christian scripture including LDS about certain TELLS that were always consistently present each time a real gospel experience was affirmed and then took those few tells and sought to find them in all the Judeo-Christian religions on earth, guess what? You could not find them at all. But if you were to look at the body of work I have produced over a forty plus year of CLAIMING to know the real gospel, you would find that I repeatedly teach all those tells over and over and over again. I lived that. It makes me the very most certain man upon the earth at the moment for knowing by exacting and precise experience and time tested and proven what perfectly aligns with all the tells of Christian truth. And during all this time I advanced through greater and greater degrees of spiritual gifts and enlightenment.

Man, 12 years ago I survived a forty-three day fast while working full time at a robust pace eight hours a day. You do not do that while shown the door of death for three days just a little over half way through and not KNOW that God is with you and keeping you and upholding you moment to moment while you learn to trust and rely upon him. I know--and excuse me for not commanding airs of awesomeness but instead horse around on this board to dull the pain of knowing so much and enjoy some sort of pretense of friendship. Its a whole lot cheaper than visiting a casino to pretend to fellowship with the excited crowd like you were finally invited to party. I would say truth makes for strange bedfellows but after mentioning a casino that could easily be imagined poorly in my behalf. So just forget that I said that.

Equality wrote:Lots of people have fallen in love without previously believing it was possible.

No, I doubt that very seriously. Not without some hope. And that is enough. How could they see it if hope never raise up their heart to the level of their eyes? (Attribution to Phantom of the Opera)

Believe in what?

There are a lot of things in which I would love to believe... the Gods men create are not on the list. :-)

Further, I have no evidence that the God in which I would love to believe exists, in fact their is an enormous amount of evidence that this entity does NOT exist.

Why do you not have faith in Zeus? Athena? Isvara? Allah? The Great Spirit? Etc. etc. etc.?

Why do you not believe all the thousands of people who claim to have revelations from God?

Is it better for one to trust their personal intuition, inspiration, revelation, world experience, knowledge, and understanding, etc., or to have faith in another who claims their personal knowledge is more true, or more correct, or just plain better?

I think NL, you could answer all your questions if you think of your own experience and how you relate or interact with another who may claim they know the truth more than you.

Hope that helps.

~td~

I did believe. I wanted to continue believing. The facts, however, got in the way.

truth dancer wrote:Believe in what?

For example..... I am wondering why people refuse to believe God prepared and unfolded The Apocalrock in the eyes of all nations to convince them of the salvation of their God. In my OP the cousin barber could not have cared less:

THAT EVIDENCE PROVING THE EXISTENCE OF GOD HAS BEEN FOUND
THAT IS TEACHES THE GOSPEL OF Jesus Christ IN ICONIC ART
THAT IT PROVES JEWISH, CHRISTIAN AND LDS SCRIPTURE TRUE
THAT IS FULFILLS MANY OLD TESTAMENT PROPHECIES
THAT IS IS A WONDERFULLY CRAFTED MASTER WORK OF ART
THAT THE CHALLENGE OF ITS EXISTENCE TEACHES FAITH
THAT GOD HAS TAKEN THE INITIATIVE TO UNFOLD THIS IN THE EYES OF ALL NATIONS
THAT GOD BROUGHT A PEOPLE HERE TO STAND AS A WITNESS AGAINST A DAY OF JUDGMENT
THAT THIS REVELATION UNFOLDED UP TO DATE INSIGHTS FOR THIS DAY AND AGE

Its the WANT that is lacking in people. Why do they not want to believe?

You can't say it does not exist
You can't say it does not represent God
You can't say it fails to fulfill scripture
You can't say that it does not teach anything
You can't say a people were not brought here and planted squarely in front of this Ensign
You can't say God has not taken the initiative to unfold it or deny that a man has declared it

None of the old school denials can be applied. This is in your face. So why do people refuse to consider it? I think it is remarkably interesting that people choose to deny it and more interesting that they do not WANT it to be anything.

I have been through all the pooh poohs on these pages for three years now. If there were a shadow by day over The Apocalrock Visitor Center and a pillar of fire by night, indicating Zion I imagine people will refuse to consider even that! WHY?