Zone1 What Church Is and Isn't: Why God Isn't Just a Building

[DennisPTate]

Church is a place. God is everywhere. Church is a start, not the finish. You go there to learn how to be a Christian there and everywhere else. You don't go there to act Chistian there and nowhere else.

Don't confine God to a building. God isn't a deity you can confine against his will. Don't get me wrong, GO TO CHURCH, but don't think Church is the only place God can be, or where you can do his will.

If you could confine God, the master of this universe and universes beyond, to a building, he wouldn't be a master of anything, would he? He wouldn't even be God.

Acting like a church is the only place he'll be and the only place you need to be a Christian is misguided, and minimizes the One True Almighy God, dare I say SINFULLY.

You don't always need a building, you can worship anywhere you please. Jesus preached on a lake! He taught anywhere and everywhere in the ancient world. He didn't need any buildings to preach his father's gospel.

Don't believe me? Go read your nearest Bible.

I believe that you are absolutely correct. I've been studying near death experience accounts rather obsessively since 1990. They got me kicked out of two churches that had a dogmatic "Soul Sleep" doctrine. Those churches got me out of Atheism when I was a teenager during the 1970's but once I began to research near death experience accounts I could no longer fit in with that particular church or any of its offshoots.

Since that time I have been church hopping but for several years now I simply attend with any church that my wife and daughter enjoy.

 

[ChristisKing]

If mankind didn't have flaws/sin, we wouldn't need Christ.

Somebody claimed that I consider myself a good Christian. HECK NO!! I'm not even close. I try to be but that doesn't mean that I am as without Jesus I would be one lost puppy. Anyways, as for the whole entire church thing, my guy comes over every week and we discuss the Bible a LOT. We want to find a good Bible believing church but we don't need one any more than we need a restaurant to eat.

 

[ChristisKing]

Oh and btw I actually didn't receive the true gospel in a church. I grew up believing that God damn people to Hell who don't believe in Him. Okay so that might be true, but they left out the other part of what He did so we don't have to go to Hell and the fact that He did it out of love for us because He doesn't want us to go to Hell either.


None of us are good except Jesus Christ which is why He was the perfect sacrifice for our sins. It's amazing that it took me half my life to realize what a bad person I am and that I suck even though I try to be good.


I was just told half of the story as a child and the other half,... Well you guys don't have to believe me about this but God told me Himself as an adult because I asked Him about it and He led me to John 3:17. "For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him."


So yeah I never learned that verse in a church either. I learned it directly from God Himself. I know His voice and I have heard it verbally, telepathically, and have felt it spiritually. Then again that's biblical too. John 10:27 "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:"


Plus there's John 10:28 that explains why once I've woken up to the truth that I can't unsee it. "And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand."