How do you test if something is from God or the Devil?  Can you apply it to the Bible?
156600
First of all you CANNOT rely on feelings.  Feelings are temporary and based on how much sleep you got or what you ate or what you are dealing with at work or home or any number of other circumstances. Emotions are not reliable.\n\nTrue "joy" for example is totaly different from happiness.  Joy is not related to circumstance but is based on the facts of the gospel.  Paul said that he has "learned" (phil 4:10)to be content. Joy is based on information, not temporary circumstance(imprisonment for Paul) or hormone levels, etc.\n \nSo then for a test regarding the Lord's will see Isaiah 8:20. The context of this passage is false prophets vs. true prophets (man's will vs. God's will).  Isaiah states that if a thing is in opposition to the law of God (which is the revealed will of God) and the testimony (or the message of a true prophet), then it is evil.  Isaiah directs people to the word, not philosophers. \n\nIf any man speaks contrary to the Word, there is NO light in them.    The devil mixes truth with error.  99% true and 1% false = 100% false. Jesus is light and in Him is no darkness at all.  (1john 1:5)  see also 1John 2:3-6 to determine whether or not you are following Him. ><> \n\nMay the Lord bless you & keep you.
408682
Second question: Just reading Genesis and Exodus (for starters) should send you running for the exit -- the judeo-christian god would appear to be a sadistic psychopath.\n\nFirst question: We know there's no evidence for the existence of a god or gods.  We know there are mountains of evidence -- actually, a cosmos-full of it -- about how the cosmos came into being and how it works; and none of that evidence indicates the existence of a creator or prime mover.\n\nTherefore, those who assert that yes there is a god, are proceeding not from knowledge, but from belief.\n\nSo if you want to KNOW the truth about god's existence and his/her/its nature, the answer is, you can't. But if you wish or choose to BELIEVE in god's existence, why then you can have any god(s) you care to dream up.  \n\nWhich, come to think of it, is exactly what people have done down through the ages.  But such creations have an expiry date; after all, nobody attends the Church of Odin these days.
6705
First of all, I don’t think there is a God or a Devil. But I guess just like some people believe that God made everything he must have made the Devil, or the bad things in life, too. I guess the Devil would be everything bad we do so we could blame someone other than ourselves or, in the religious perspective, God. I really depends what your concept of the Devil and God is to you. It also depends on what religion you practice and believe in too because if your religion descends from Christianity then The Devil is a liar and wants to make you doubt your religion. \n\nThis is what I think. If you have any other questions, if you want to enlighten me, or if you want to just want to say how stupid I am you can email me to \n\ngbrl_question@yahoo.com
81613
Search the Scripture to find God's will.\n\nRead & study the Scripture with faith, guided by the Holy Spirit. If one reads Scripture looking for errors or contradictions, etc, it is worthless superficial reading which even Satan will help you with.\n\nRely on God's Wisdom to understand Scripture; man's ~wisdom~ is folly.\n\nTrue Faith requires a spiritual relationship; it is not religion or denominationalism or non-denominationalism.
785053
And how are you any different from us? Do you have access to information that did not come from mortal men? And what might that information be?\n\nTry this hypothesis on for size: the Bible is just a book, written by mortal men, who lived at a time when written language was only recently acquired. Their culture was still based in oral tradition. The books they wrote that became the books of the Bible were just those oral traditions. The God of Abraham is just a very successful camp fire story. The Bible is a collection of myths.\n\nNow consider your theistic hypothesis. The God of the Hebrew Bible is the real God who created the universe, as described in Genesis. Every word of the Bible is his word.\n\nFinally, consider the evidence you have directly available to you, aided by all knowledge that mankind has been able to accumulate by working together, making observations about the natural world, creating hypotheses to explain those observations, creating experiments to test those hypotheses, and publishing their results so that other people can independently verify their results.\n\nYour task is to take the two hypotheses above (the Bible is myth vs. the Bible is the true word of a real God) and see which hypothesis makes more sense.\n\nI was raised Christian. I've studied religion, and I've studied many branches of science.  To me, the Bible is myth hypothesis is much more consistent with the evidence.
835491
I believe that human beings wrote the bible and since they are fallable and capable of everything from blind opinionism to predudice to ourright cruelty and disregard for others, there may be some messed up untrue things in the bible.  I think that Jesus was an amazing being but the desciples that wrote the new testement were just normal human beings for bad or good depending on their personalities and quirks.  I'm not so sure there is such a thing as "the devil".
1117796
God created the devil.
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if you come to terms with the non-existenance of god, then you realize that there is no sin.  there is no good or bad, there are only consequences that affect people.  \n\nknowledge is not from a devil, but something that liberates man from superstitious religious nonsense.
1121311
Well first you should be sure that it is a false doctrine.  Anybody can quote scripture to mean whatever they want it to mean.  This is the first tool of the devil, to quote scripture and appear as an angel of light.\n\nHere is how you check doctrine when people sling verses at each other:\n\n1.  Go to the Father's of the Christian Faith.  All the way back and preferably pre-300 being sure to check a Father that was taught by the Apostles or one in the 2nd generation.  Check to see if the Father's address this issue directly or a seed of this doctrine is present.  \n\n2.  Now check the Father's 300-800 AD and see how they developed the issue.\n\n3.  Now check the Fathers 800-1200 AD and see how they developed the issue.\n\n4.  Now check the Fathers and medieval scholastics 1200 AD -1500 AD and see how they develop the issue\n\n5.  STOP DO NOT CHECK POST 1500 YET!!!\n\n6.  Started back from the beginning check to see how Official Christian Teaching has dealt with the issue.  Check the councils that come out of the Churches of the East and West paying attention to the great councils.  Also be sure to check each Churches catechism, including the early Didache.\n\n7.  You now have a core understanding of how the Christian Faith has dealt with the doctrine throughout history.  Use this to determine where to look post 1500.  Ignore any Christian group that DIRECTLY contradicts this 1500 years of teaching and explanation of scripture.\n\n8.  Now check those group(s) that you have determined in step \n7 according to the writings of acclaimed Christians and official positions within that group in the following periods.  1500-1800AD, 1800-1945 AD, 1945-present AD. \n\n9.  You now have a complex and well developed understanding of what the TRUE Christian doctrine is.\n\n10.  Take this and discuss this with your friend.\n\n11.  Pray that the individual who is not in line with 2000 years of Christian Faith change their ways and accept the Faith.\n\nHope that helps.  If you need sources of where to look (great big book and net sites) message me.  Also include the specific doctrine and I will help you more.\n\nBlessing of Christ to you!
425096
God definitely!!! The devil represents total 100% evil and wickedness. The devil is God's enemy. I'm in spiritual warfare every day trying to fight him.
376493
it is you should buy the satanic bible. i just got it and it has opened me up to so much more you don't have to believe in every thing that is in it you can kinda just mix and much your own religion.\ngood luck
1105401
Before answering that question -- you do realize that Satan was and is, to Judaism -- the progenitor faith of Christianity "the Advesary"  NOT the advesary of humans, no, the advesary of G-d -- and his position is actually within the heavenly court.  He's SUPPOSED to challenge G-d.\n\nThe title Devil came later, and actually means "little god" or something like that -- its been almost 20 years since I took that course.\n\nNow that said.  Your question is really primarily theological.  What you are really asking is how can God allow anyone to be born gay.  You make a presumption that very few Christians would -- that the Devil can effect a preborn infant.  You are welcome to your diverse theological construct however.  I'm going to answer the question you actually asked, rather than the one you meant to ask, I think, then I'll speak briefly to your theology.\n\nHow can someone be born gay?\n\nIn a word, genetics.  there is a great deal of scientific evidence that it is inborn.  Beyond scientific evidence there is anectodal evidence.\n\nThe fruit fly study is actually fairly conclusive.  But the pheremonal and eye blink studies are also compelling.  I've included links below for those that are interested.  Beyond that, research increasingly suggests that at least for males, X28 is the crucial gene.  I am saddened by this, because I believe that once it is proven, gay people will be wiped out -- and I think that is sad, because given the number of species in which homosexuality exists (see Dr. Bruce Bagemihl's book "Biological Exuberance" from St. Martin's Press) I think it serves a purpose.\n\nNow as to the theology behind your question:  The Bible speaks out directly about a lot of things.  It says that the world has corners (Isaiah 11:12) and that it sets on pillars (I Samuel 2:8).  It says that God accepted a human sacrifice -- he may have prevented Isaacs, but he allowed a general to sacrifice his own daughter without even a murmer, the text  giving tacit support to the idea that having given his word, the man had to kill his child. (Judges 11:30-39).  The Bible  clearly maintains that genocide is often commanded by God (Joshua 10:40-42 and I Samuel 15: 2, 3 and 8) and that, after killing all the adults in a race, taking the female children as sex slaves is permissable (Numbers 31: 17-18).\n\nThe God revealed by the Bible is not only both a liar who doesn't know the natural laws of his own world, and a monster, as shown above -- but he has no real regard, even for his own people, whom he forces into cannibalism (Leviticus 26: 27-29) when he is mad at them; or his priests, whose faces he wipes with dung (Malachi 2:1-3).\n\nIt is not only gays and lesbians that are hated by biblegod.  This monstrocity also suggests killing kids who eat or drink too much (Deutoronomy 21: 18-21), and says that  if he is angry with parents he will kill their children (Leviticus 26:22) and he blames things upon children whose great-great-great grandfather committed the things being blamed on the kids (Exodus 20: 5)\n\nPutting it in a word, biblegod is a monstrocity, a horrific demiurge of evil.  Something that even he admits ( Isaiah 45:7 ) [Furthermore, the word used in Hebrew for evil, the word ra' is widely conceded to mean a number of different things:  It can mean "wickedness," "mischief," "bad," "trouble," "hurt," "sore," "affliction," "ill," "adversity," "harm," "grievous," and "sad."  So no matter what particular interpretation is given of this word -- it has profoundly negative implications.  The idea that god is sovereign over the affairs of man makes this even worse, because no matter what interpretation it has, it indicates that biblegod deliberately does harm.]; evil about which he sometimes changes his mind (Exodus 32:14).  What a font of unchanging moral
218085
There is no concrete way to test for proof of God.\n\nPeople who say they know that there is a God, simply BELIEVE there is a God. To say that the world around you is proof of His existence is not true proof. God could have made everything, but science has proven otherwise.\n\nSo unfortunately, each one of us will not be sure of God's existence until our own individual existence comes to an end.
1016786
not true, read the Bible especially Revelation. God made Hell and Dante
1121885
The devil doesn't need to read the Bible.  The devil knows God firsthand, and has rejected him.  Now he's busy leading others to reject God as well.\n\nBesides, the devil hates the Bible -- if you skip to the end, you'll find out that at the end of the final battle, he LOSES !
651155
No, actually you misunderstand as do most. 666 is the Mark of the Beast. The "Anti-Christ," The False Prophet and the Beast are all three different things. The Devil will eventually take the body of the "Anti-Christ" but that is another story. Anyway if you take the mark 666 or if it appears on you then you CHOSE the devil. That doesn't mean it is the Devil's number it means you rejected God.
1101568
Go count up the number of humans the "God" of the Bible caused the death of then count up the number "Satan" killed. Methinks they got the labels mixed up ; )