HIS NAME
when he was a kid, his moma called him baba
dat name stuck all through school days
it was only in college,
he was known as saby
when he got a job
they called him D'Costa
when he became a father
he was called daddy at home
when he started greying
girls called him dada-ji
i hate it!
why cant girls just call me saby?
HIS ATTITUDE
he is 54, but he tinks he is 18 only
like bryan adams
HIS DREAMS
to go round the world
wid a back pack, wid caraff
HIS LOVES
Mature woomen
young woomen can be mature too
like de vile
he also loves annony_mouse_lover_of _saby
and a few other mice
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21 comments:
oh my GOD!Saby
I thot u hate me
but I confess now again dat I love u!
we may not be lovey dovey all the time '
but the love remains, that matters
smiles*.....
your lover
now the next time I gotta be watchful , i'd be on his hate list hahah....
aww I wasnt even mentioned in ur life portrait... :( :(
Keshi.
cuz u dont figure here...keshi
i dont stand up for principles
only for sexy woomen
-saby Jr.
well tink of sebia as a wooman
dat mite help u
saby zindabad!!!
as long as Saby dont disable mice comments , we r here for survival!
love u sabycakes.
muah saby
kissing_mouse
who the fuck said that?
heyy Saby,
I apologize ever If i been rude to you.
my sincere apologies.
u r a great and wise guy and you will remain.
dis has come from my heart.
I m sorry.
sorry_mouse.
pithaly
u r blind.how Saby supports keshi?
"ugly and untalented -suicide"
and this guy is applauding her
what goes around comes around
so shut the Fuck up pity-ullu.
a
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have. This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points" with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems "correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate' (human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there, and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars "trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general, and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption" necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct" understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial" presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations, independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar' I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church. A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation. As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately, owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias. Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing' Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members. Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian) Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say (often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication, GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate. That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in 1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic, presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500 articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE, there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more! Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian. However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus (Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept, Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow. Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE (with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism, etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas. I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages! My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have. This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points" with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems "correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate' (human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there, and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars "trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general, and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption" necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct" understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial" presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations, independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar' I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church. A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation. As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately, owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias. Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing' Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members. Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian) Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say (often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication, GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate. That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in 1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic, presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500 articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE, there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more! Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian. However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus (Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept, Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow. Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE (with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism, etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas. I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages! My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have. This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points" with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems "correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate' (human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there, and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars "trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general, and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption" necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct" understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial" presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations, independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar' I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church. A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation. As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately, owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias. Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing' Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members. Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian) Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say (often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication, GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate. That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in 1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic, presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500 articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE, there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more! Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian. However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus (Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept, Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow. Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE (with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism, etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas. I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages! My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have. This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points" with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems "correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate' (human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there, and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars "trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general, and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption" necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct" understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial" presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations, independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar' I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church. A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation. As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately, owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias. Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing' Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members. Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian) Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say (often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication, GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate. That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in 1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic, presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500 articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE, there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more! Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian. However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus (Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept, Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow. Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE (with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism, etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas. I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages! My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
BELIEVE
Our List of 700 Religious Subjects
E-mail
Editor of BELIEVE
People sometimes ask about me, out of concern for some potential hidden agenda I might have.
This is probably a healthy attitude, considering how deceptive much of the world has become
these days! An editor could exert influence on his readers by his selection of articles to
include in a compilation like BELIEVE. People don't seem to ever do anything for anyone else
without expecting something in return. How sad! Imagine what Jesus would have to say about
that!
There are things we should sometimes do where there is no direct benefit to ourselves. I
feel my efforts at assembling BELIEVE fall in that category. I feel it is irrelevant that I
would somehow personally benefit from the existence of BELIEVE. It was never inspired by
personal quests for wealth or fame or leadership power. Or, even, toward scoring "points"
with God. It is just something that I believe is necessary and important and RIGHT!
In a number of modern Christian books, there is a lead statement, sometimes on the book
cover, such as the following:
"How Could Everybody Be So Wrong About Biblical Prophecy?" Doesn't that seem amazingly
arrogant a statement for anyone to make, about almost any subject? And is that specific
author actually so infinitely insightful and knowledgeable to totally understand the very
same Bible that countless thousands of scholars and Theologians have studied for many
centuries? I suppose it IS possible that somebody could actually be a thousand times smarter
than anyone else who has ever lived, but I have serious doubts about that! Doesn't it seem
far more likely that all of the hundreds of authors who make such incredible claims could
not possibly truly know all they claim to know and understand? (Have you noticed that
virtually none of the authors who make such statements are actually Theologians or who have
general respect in the Christian intellectual community regarding their scholarly abilities
or capabilities? What does THAT say about them?)
I had come to that conclusion some years back, that no one person (including me, by the
way!) can possibly know ALL the answers regarding religion and Christianity. However, if the
combined insights of more than 600 scholars who have each dedicated their lives to their
specialty subject, were all collected together, maybe we'd have something that had
collective value. Well, after around twelve years of more than fulltime effort, the current
BELIEVE Project is my attempt to accomplish that end. In subjects where there are possible
interpretations or conclusions which are somewhat subjective, such as regarding the method
of Baptism, rather than "announcing" a method that we prefer, BELIEVE instead attempts to
present an assortment of articles that describe each of the many approaches. The theory is
that each reader might read the assorted articles and then contemplate the positives and
negatives of each, and then with the Bible in hand, personally assess which method seems
"correct". The next reader of those same articles might easily come to some different
conclusion, as each person is Guided by their Indwelling Holy Spirit in such studies.
The home page of BELIEVE really describes my motivation pretty well. If Jesus was physically
here with us today, how would He present His Teachings? I do NOT think that He would be
evasive or deceptive about ANYTHING! I believe that He would have full confidence that
Christianity can hold its own against any alternative, just by honestly and fully presenting
subjects as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I think He would permit 'alternate'
(human) opinions on a number of subjects, and He would therefore want any presentation of
such subjects to include 'fair' presentations of each viewpoint. In my opinion, such
differences of opinion on some matters is not a reflection on the Lord or the Bible, but
rather on us Christians!
We humans tend not to like "vacuums"! Whenever we come across anything where some piece
seems to be missing or vague, we have a tendency to try to figure out what belongs in there,
and then we sort of "insert" what we think is appropriate! Since virtually no external
information source exists for much of what is in the Bible, we find it necessary to
essentially exclusively rely on the Bible. We Protestants follow Martin Luther's lead on
this, a concept called Sola Scriptura (by the Bible alone). We Protestants have great
skepticism for countless Catholic beliefs that are based on "Tradition". Those many
Traditions are NOT Biblically based, but rather the result of early Christian scholars
"trying to fill in vacuums".
Catholics are not alone in this sort of thing! Since the Bible is often somewhat general,
and occasionally even vague, on some side issues, early Protestant Church leaders made their
own "assumptions" in order to figure out what additional words/ideas need to be added to
Biblical texts, to enable broader understanding. Since that process of "assumption"
necessarily involves human fallibility, it turned out that various Protestant groups came to
different conclusions regarding various matters. This, in my opinion, is the central cause
of the multitude of modern Protestant Denominations. Along the way, many of these various
groups/Churches seem to have forgotten that they are, above all, Christians. Rather, they
tend to infight a lot, each claiming and believing that they alone know the "correct"
understanding of the Lord, His Plan and the Bible.
I don't claim to be in any position to judge that one or another is more correct or more
wrong. One reason for assembling the BELIEVE resource was to provide "impartial"
presentations of all of the generally accepted opinions / assumptions on areas that seem to
cause controversy. It is meant to be left to each visotor to BELIEVE, aided by his/her Holy
Spirit, to Discern whatever seems most "correct". If BELIEVE has been done adequately, it
should NOT provide specific encouragement toward any particular (human) opinion, but only
that SOME method of Worshipping and Praising the Lord should be pursued.
As best as I could, I have tried to follow the Lord's lead in this project. If the
collection of articles assembled in BELIEVE assists some visitors in better understanding
Jesus and our Faith, then it has fulfilled its goal. If it assists anyone in finding
compatibilities between various God-centered religions (our many Protestant Denominations,
independent Protestant Churches, Catholic, Orthodox, as well as Judaism and Islam, which
both also Worship our same God), rather than always arguing about the differences, that
would be nice, too.
BELIEVE can obviously NOT be of a standard that Jesus Himself would do. But that's the 'bar'
I have set for BELIEVE. It will therefore always fall short, but it will hopefully always
continue to improve.
I was saved as a Christian when I was 19. Soon after that I came to realize that my
religious Gifts included the Gift of Encouragement and the Gift of Teaching. I then spent
much of my adult life operating a successful manufacturing company.
In recent years, I have become a Pastor of a very small non-Denominational Christian Church.
A primary function I now have is in maintenance of BELIEVE and in responding to the many
e-mail questions that readers have.
I think our Church wonderfully presents attitudes I try to live and teach. In addition to
all the "standard" Christian beliefs, we always try to consider how Jesus would have handled
any situation. For example, would He have written something just to promote His personal
fame? Not a chance! Would He have ever said or presented something that He knew to be
incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete? Never! Would He have ever said derogatory things
about others or their actions (unless they are directly violating the Will of God)? He
wouldn't do that. He might find it necessary to admonish or correct someone, but He would do
it is some exquisitely classy way!
Well, this is quite a standard to aspire to! Obviously, as humans, we are certain to always
fall far short of His standard! But we continue to TRY, and that's central to what our
Church teaches and what BELIEVE also attempts to accomplish.
With this in mind, I try to have a very open mind on most subjects. Rather than spouting
strict dogma to an individual who is in a difficult situation, I try to consider the unique
aspects about that person's situation. Rather than being automatically critical of other
Denominations and other Faiths, I am usually tempted to think there is some good in nearly
all of them, ESPECIALLY if their goal is to Worship God! (Again, I just try to act and think
similar to the way I think that Jesus would have done.)
As a Protestant, I guess I'm supposed to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. I
certainly disagree with them on some points, but it seems that it would be awfully arrogant
of me to believe that I was always absolutely right and 700,000,000 Catholics were totally
wrong in their beliefs. Such an attitude just wouldn't seem to make sense to me! I can
imagine the look that Jesus would give me if I would ever treat other followers of His
disrespectfully! Somehow, I just see Him appreciating all of our various efforts at
Worshipping God! I don't always understand just how He might be able to do that!
As editor of the BELIEVE compilation of religious articles, I have tried to go to extreme
effort to ensure and maintain the usefulness of each of the presentations. I understand the
term "usefulness" as including being informative, understandable, complete, accurate, and
with minimal bias on the part of the specific author(s).
In order to achieve both the understandability and completeness parts of that, many of the
BELIEVE presentations include at least two separate articles, by different authors, nearly
always world-respected scholars. The first one is usually a overview article, on a General
level. The second is usually a much more technical or comprehensive Advanced presentation.
As to accuracy, I have tried to only select articles that were written by world renowned
authors in their particular field of interest, especially for the Advanced presentations.
Minimizing bias has been the most difficult aspect of the selection process. Fortunately,
owning a successful manufacturing company gave me a lot of flexibility, so (prior to
becoming a Pastor) I was able to take about 2.5 years off to initially assemble the articles
and create the programs for BELIEVE. In selecting the 2,000+ articles now in BELIEVE, I also
considered over 15,000 others, which seemed (to me) to have distortions of fact or bias.
Such bias was not always blatant or obvious, so it was sometimes a judgment matter. This has
been the most common reason why articles have not been included in BELIEVE. It is natural
for an author to have enthusiasm for his or her subject. No problem there. If that
enthusiasm goes beyond certain limits, sometimes an author can exaggerate or distort facts
or include their own personal negative biases regarding competing perspectives. I was
concerned that a reader might misunderstand such personal comments. Rather than taking the
chance of misleading a reader, I have chosen to just not include such articles.
It has long seemed to me that many religious organizations jealously covet their own
Congregation members (something they're NOT supposed to do!). There seem to be aspects of
marketing a product involved! They tend to seldom say positive things about any 'competing'
Church or Denomination or belief, but they're often quick to present negatives. I feel that
this promotes an inaccurate, biased view toward other Denominations and beliefs. I think
that is wrong. Mostly because I believe Jesus would think it wrong. Hey, don't we all claim
to be Christian???
Christianity has enough hurdles to overcome on its own. It is not helpful for Ministry to
give negative impressions for other Denominations. It can clearly tarnish the image of all
of Christianity. In addition, it is not being fair to individual Congregation members.
Certain of them MIGHT benefit more at some other Christian Church, that was more attuned to
their personality. Why would that be bad? If it would ever seem clear that a specific person
could become closer with the Lord in some different Church, that seems like a desirable end!
I am convinced that the Lord would prefer that we communicate on a positive basis, rather
than quickly looking to find causes to disrespect or insult or even kill the believers of
some other group. I am often amazed at the many similarities that exist in groups that hate
each other based on a few prominent differences between them. Imagine if the (Christian)
Catholics and (Christian) Protestants in Northern Ireland could calmly and logically discuss
their various beliefs. After going down a LONG list of areas of agreement, doesn't it seem
that they might see cause to stop killing each other, and possibly even 'get along'? But
both sides there tend to be taught only one perspective on many subjects, and they say
(often inaccurate) terrible things about the other side and THEIR beliefs. If BELIEVE can
someday be an Instrument to assist in such future healthy understanding and communication,
GREAT!!!
In any event, I have long believed that an information source like BELIEVE should exist. I
looked long and hard for such a source of fair and accurate religious information. I was
unable to find one. But, I DID find many individual articles that seemed fair and accurate.
That's why I took the 2.5 years off to assemble and program BELIEVE. (BELIEVE, beginning in
1992, was initially a DOS-based computer diskette, which I created.)
After I spent that extended time creating BELIEVE, my hopes were fairly modest. I hoped that
a single person might renew his/her Christianity or a person might some day become a
Christian, as a result of that effort. Each Soul is independently and individually valuable
to the Lord. My goals are still directed toward the hopes of touching a single person. With
the current heavy traffic in visitors to BELIEVE every day, I'm hoping the odds are good for
this happening!
I intend for BELIEVE to forever maintain its independence from all the organized Churches
and groups. Some of them have already tried to exert a good amount of pressure. I made
several early decisions that are meant to ensure the independence of BELIEVE from all the
forces that might try to tilt it toward their views. BELIEVE gets a LOT of web traffic,
presently at the rate of millions of visitors per year. Apparently, some business people
have some way of learning that! A LOT of organizations have tried to get BELIEVE to include
banner ads that link to their sites (apparently the incentive is supposed to be the money
they would pay for hits from those links!) Many other groups request that BELIEVE include
links to their sites, as sources of additional information. In many cases, these requests
are for admirable intentions, of broadening the information base available to BELIEVE
visitors. I have chosen not to ever include any such outside links. I have attempted to seek
a purity of fact in BELIEVE, with as little bias as possible in the included present 1,500
articles. If BELIEVE would ever allow external links, those sites might some day change
their content, or might now or later contain distortions of fact that would be beyond the
control of BELIEVE's standards. It is a sad statement about humanity that so many of us
bring a soapbox everywhere we go, to publicize our own personal beliefs, to try to convince
others to follow us! My solution is not a good one, but it's the best I can come up with.
I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be an Instrument of the Lord's Work! However, I
feel it is important that knowledge and the Word be the center of BELIEVE. Other than these
brief paragraphs, I prefer to remain in the background to that. For several years, BELIEVE
existed without ANY reference to me! The fact that some people had enquired about the
motivation behind BELIEVE is the only reason that I added these comments regarding myself.
If you are interested in knowing specifically what I believe, I'd suggest that you visit the
page where our Church presents its Statement of Faith. Similar to the format of BELIEVE,
there is a brief presentation, and then an extremely thorough version, with hundreds of
Scriptural references (which are actually even included) to show the Biblical support for
those things we believe, for every individual statement.
We think our Statement of Faith is thorough and comprehensive and extremely Bible-based. We
hope that such beliefs always keep us on a proper Christian path, and that we avoid the
worldly distractions that unfortunately seem to pollute the efforts of some Churches. They
all do wonderful things for the Lord, but we wonder if they might be able to do even more!
Hey! We aim high! Imagine what standards Jesus would set for a Church that He Taught in!
We actually hope that ALL Churches some day present their own Statements of Faith in such a
clear and descriptive manner, and we have offered to give ANY Church the web-site source
code programming so that they might put their own Statement of Faith into such a precise and
informative form. (NOT OUR Statement of Faith, THEIRS, but presented in that clear and
informative manner.)
I attempt to have a broad and tolerant perspective toward all groups that worship God. I
applaud and honor the Work of ALL of God's Churches, including all Protestant Churches, of
course, but also including Catholic and Orthodox.
I even see cause to feel warmth for many Jewish and Islamic religious organizations. In the
process of reading and studying the many thousands of articles I considered for inclusion
into BELIEVE, I learned many new things. For example, I had never before realized that
Islam's Holy Book, the Koran, talks about Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Adam and a
multitude of others I am familiar with as a Christian. I was surprised to see a generalized
presentation of what I call the Ten Commandments in the Koran! (The general story of Moses
and the Tablets is around the middle of Sura 7, al-Aaraf.) Further research has now
absolutely convinced me (and most scholars) that Islam's Allah is one-and-the-same as who I
call the Father. I have long known that the God of the Jews is also the one I call the
Father. Fascinating! (I included a small part of the Koran in BELIEVE and I have highlighted
text that seems especially interesting to Christians.)
Therefore, I have come to have respect for Muslims and Jews, because I now believe that they
actually worship the same God I call the Father. I don't necessarily agree with their
specific beliefs or procedures, but, as long as they are attempting to teach others to
Praise and Honor God, I feel that they are doing Good. Of course, I personally greatly
prefer Churches that recognize that Jesus is our Savior, but I am tempted to think that lack
of that belief is more a result of incomplete religious presentation rather than improper
religion.
Actually, I have a personal 'theory'! In studying Muhammad, I found that as a child, he was
regularly exposed to Christian ideas since an older relative of his was a Devout Christian.
However, at that time (around 600 AD), the Christian Church had many internal arguments
about the validity of the Trinity and regarding the Nature of Jesus
(Divine/mortal/combination). What if Muhammad had become very knowledgeable on Christian and
Jewish beliefs, most specifically, the First Commandment (One God)? What if he also did not
understand the subtleties of the Trinity? He might easily have concluded that Jesus (who was
treated by Christians as if He was God) was a challenge to the One God Commandment. With
that conclusion, Jesus could have seemed to him to be blasphemous in confronting the First
Commandment! As a first consequence, he instituted Islam's First Pillar, of very regularly
stating that "there is One God", (Sura 1) which every Muslim today says many times every
day. As a second consequence, Jesus was/is perceived as a "false God", something even we
Christians would violently rebel against! I find it amazing and wonderful that virtually ALL
of the remainder of Islam and Christianity match up remarkably! Disregarding the violent
extremists, Islam generally Teaches Peacefulness, and the vast majority of the billion of
modern Muslims seem really good at behaving properly. Wouldn't that be interesting, that if
Muhammad had had a more thorough understanding of the Trinity concept, he might have
realized / recognized that Jesus WAS God (Allah), and so Allah had actually spent 30 years
walking the Earth! My premise is that, had Muhammad fully understood the Trinity concept,
Islam might today just be a version of Christianity! (Keep in mind that Christian scholars
at the time were arguing over exactly what the Trinity meant!)
I am convinced that calm, informed dialogue might help individuals and cultures grow.
Hopefully, rather than looking for reasons to kill each other, we might some day recognize
the many parallels that exist in our various beliefs. BELIEVE is meant to try to plant some
seeds in this regard.
As a child, I was taught that Islam was foreign, and therefore automatically bad. When I
eventually came to understand that they believe in the very same God that I do (my Father is
their Allah), I was amazed. When I much later found that they revere Abraham and Moses and
many others of my beliefs, I thought this is too much to just be a coincidence! Even
Archangel Gabriel is Jibril to them, but one and the same. Even if these are just astounding
coincidences, they are still interesting subjects to contemplate!
My Church and I are NOT affiliated with any specific Denomination. I feel it important that
BELIEVE forever maintain this independent attitude.
Even though BELIEVE will not ever include links to external religious sites, we think
BELIEVE could grow from information they have. If a group or organization wishes to offer
some text (NOT a link!) for inclusion within BELIEVE, GREAT!!! If we approve it as adding to
the clarity of a subject, without substantial bias, we would then add that text to BELIEVE
(with proper authorship credit). Since the resultant text would then be within BELIEVE, we
would be able to know that no one could later alter any of it without our knowledge.
You can probably see that our goal is to be like Consumers' Reports for religion, with as
impartial a position as possible, and without any financial dependence on "advertisers" as
such or major contributors that might expect some favors in return.
I have written several Christian and religious articles of my own. I do not feel that my
words are of a level to deserve to be in the company of the scholar-authors that are
included in BELIEVE, so I put my efforts in a different location.
My Essays ( http://mb-soft.com/public/otherrel.html )
I hope each of them has some value. Specifically, I hope that two of them, Compatibility of
Christianity and Science (Parallelism) and the Meaning of Life, might have significant
value, They are each fairly long, and would print out to about 15 pages each. It is not that
they have any new information, but rather suggest some new perspectives on information that
has been long-known.
I like to think that my intentions and contributions always intend to add information or
perspective to a reader. It is virtually NEVER my intention to try to cause anyone to stop
believing something they presently believe. (The exceptions are subjects like satanism,
etc.) I believe that often the actual Truth involves a larger perspective which INCLUDES our
current beliefs AND some new ideas, possibly even including apparently contradictory ideas.
I also believe that each reader has the intelligence to determine for themselves what that
Truth is, given enough accurate background information. The Holy Spirit is always available
to help in such Discernment.
BELIEVE includes the following links to efforts of mine. I believe most of them each to be
totally informational, without any contained opinion:
* Romanized Bible Text. I thought it would be interesting to see a small part of the
Bible (Genesis 1) in as close to its original form as our language allows.
* Bible Literal Translation. Associated with the entry mentioned above, I thought it
would be interesting to see the chore that faced translators of the Bible.
* Genealogy of Jesus, In an earlier stage of my life, I was sometimes, in reading my
Bible, confused as to who lived earlier or later than someone else. I thought it valuable to
better understand the "context" of events and lessons and people in the Bible. Therefore, I
assembled a generational listing to assist in my understanding of such things. In case
anyone else could benefit from this, I have put that information in BELIEVE. The first part
has been re-formatted as a web page. Much of it is still in a text format. Some day, I hope
to format the rest of it more attractively.
* Compatibility between Christianity and Science. Technically, this page is not within
BELIEVE, and might not deserve to be included in the subject listing there. However, even
though the perspectives presented are my own, I believe theymight represent new perspectives
that might be of great enough value to warrant my bending BELIEVE's absolute rules. I think
I personally justify this decision in that this particular page does NOT try to cause anyone
to STOP believing whatever they presently believe, but rather to just consider a larger
perspective on those matters.
* Genesis and Science. This article is actually just a partial version of the
Christianity/Science article above.
My one other contribution to BELIEVE is that I have chosen to sometimes highlight specific
text, particularly in very long articles. When there is a point that I thought particularly
significant, I have highlighted it, even though the original author did not. In my own
experience of reading thousands of VERY long articles, I have discovered that sometimes I
have accidentally glossed over something important. An example is the subject of the
Childhood of Jesus. A truly interesting work from the late 1800s that is THOUSANDS of pages
long! Even the excerpt I have included in BELIEVE would print out to around a hundred pages!
My efforts in highlighting some text is NOT meant to alter the intent of the text, but to
help clarify it. Serious students should ignore such highlighting.
On a personal level, I am generally soft-spoken. I have quite a sense of humor. I respect
the intelligence of people (until proven otherwise!), so that I seldom think it necessary or
appropriate to aggressively try to cause anyone to come to a specific opinion. I believe
that if any person is given sufficient accurate information, that person is capable of
coming to the proper conclusions on his/her own. In this regard, BELIEVE is just a natural
extension of me!
Pastor Carl Johnson
BELIEVE Religious Information Source
If you entered this page from an external link, please visit the
Believe Home Page. ( http://mb-soft.com/believe/index.html )
102 Comments:
At 2:18 PM, Arz000n said...
Hey Sweetie,
How you doing??
*Z0000n was flirting above*
At 2:21 PM, :--Ice.Princess--: said...
grrr zooon.
i wanted to be first to post.. i was so close too.. saw 0 comments on it. got soo happy. wen clicked on it.. booo ur here. n e how. u know kesh. i dunno really wat flirting is. every one flirts in their own unique way. sum get a lil bit nasty, sum stay as genuine as possible. and sum well. well sum just try too hard..
i dunno wat i mean. but i wrote wat cme in my head.
peace out..
oh yaa. .i got this great new idea for a new post. and all cuz of u.. aww ur soo helpful.. hugzyyyyy/muaaaaah kesh
^_^
At 2:22 PM, Arz000n said...
Bad luck...I never had any "rewarding" flirting experience to write about. Offline flirting...hmmm...I never did that...No wonder being a nice-guy always sux :(
Online...Oooohhh..yeaaah...See above commment. Thats the proof lady ;)
Btw, Me beat M0000nie here...Are we still in the competition?? I havent saw her online yesterday...hope her net is not down or something
At 2:22 PM, Keshi said...
I think that's perfectly alright kinda flirting z000nie...cho chweeeeeeeet! :)
~~I'm well hunkster...hows ya?
That was Ms.Sultry in me lol!
Oh I can get better, ooops I mean worse, na I mean hotter?? gosh I'm confused now :)
k000kie.
At 2:24 PM, Keshi said...
Icy/r000nie true, thanks! lol now u n z000nie r in a war to comment! Good to hear u got some ideas for ur next post..cant wait to read it.
Hurry up girl :)
Keshi.
At 2:25 PM, Arz000n said...
@Ice
I too saw 0 comments and I knew someone was eyeing that 1st spot...so I used my Super-glow-in-dark-butt powers to think quickly. No wonder my first comment had only 9 words out of which "Sweetie", "How you doing??" and "Z000n" are customised keys on my keyboard....hehehe
Im fast..........UP, UP and AWAYYYYYY
At 2:25 PM, Keshi said...
z000nie is this how far ur fliritng goes? hmmm...temme ;-)
k000kie with a whip lol!
At 2:31 PM, Arz000n said...
Are you again angry?
Come on...its my b'day tomorw. Dont freak me out with your whip and all..
That's the only thing I can do..I dont wanna scare chicks :)
At 3:08 PM, talldarkman said...
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....you need to ask that to my victims...:P
you may find quite a few of them on IT...and on this blog too...as commentators.
Heyy...keshi.....you have been one too...:)
AND....I have been your victim...at times...on indiatimes....;)
talldarkman
PS : Ado is likely to have more of them than I :)
At 3:16 PM, Keshi said...
z000nie I can neva be angry with such an awesome guy like u...and a brilliant one too :) Yep I cant wait for tomorrow to dawn...woohoo!
Tallllyyyyyyyyy heyyyy wc in after a long time! How u been? lollz yep I rem those good old days on IT :) But I dun think I was eva a victim of ur's hehehe - u prolly have been one of mine lolllz - come to think of it many have been my victim (flirting or fighting) n that gave birth to ITCC likes haha...good job k000kie :)
At 3:19 PM, Keshi said...
And Tally, yep Ado is a hopeless flirt, but I dun think he eva cud do it with me...hence the rataliation lol!
Keshi.
At 4:01 PM, 4u2nvau/Rohit said...
Too many flirting incidents for me to remember, but harmless flirting at work keeps a smile on your face, otherwise i'de be bored to death. lolll.
I reckon there should be a limit, however, it does depend on who you are flirting with. For instance, if your flirting with your girlfriend in my opinion there are no limits whatsoever, but if you flirt non-stop crossing every limit there is to flirting with someone you hardly even know(except when your drunk) then i'de say your a bloody idiot.
Nice post K000kie, finally something humerous.
At 4:10 PM, Keshi said...
hey n000nie good comment there wow! bloody precise :)
o well I hardly flirt at work...I dun have the time dayummm! online, yep I do with all of these wonderful guys hehehe...me harmless n I know mah limits na?lolz!
I think the biggest flirt(not always implying the best) in Aus is Hot Dogs from BB, lol wut say? I just hate that idiot!
k000kie.
At 4:17 PM, Keshi said...
I just went to Tally's blog n realised he has put 'flirting' as his occupation...hmm no wonder we got a visit from the King of Flirtland lollllz!
Keshi.
At 4:21 PM, southpaw said...
Well at work, there is hardly any incidence of flirting, but in the gym, yes...the gals there hardly have anything to do with kick-boxing but still they would come and insist on showing them how to throw punches properly and whether their posture is perfect while doing the spinning heel-kick. The worst quest ever been asked was raj how do u cope up with ur hormunal outrage???
At 4:23 PM, Keshi said...
gosh n000nie u sound like a real flirt-demon lol...ok so who r these work-flirt-mates n how far d u go with em? Is Pearly reading all this? :)
btw I have neva seen u flirting on IT even...I cant imagine u flirting. Maybe when I was ard u neva show it lol!
k000kie.
At 4:24 PM, Keshi said...
hahaha South good one! Did some gal really ask that? omahgoshhhh!!! :):) n wut did u say?
Keshi.
At 4:45 PM, southpaw said...
lols...yes a gal asked me that and i had no other option but to give her the obvious answer...:):):)
At 4:54 PM, julia said...
Guys,
it happened dis way wid me?
she: 'how are you?'
me; 'i am good, but only when i am bed'
many more incidents to tell guys
but i gotta go now
am kinda tied up now
http://imnutsincapsfreud.blogspot.com/2005/07/can-i-touch-my-self-dont-be-silly-of.html
At 4:57 PM, musings (m000nie) said...
k00kieeeeeeeee hello... lol i think i have a new rule for my 00nies...
thou shall flirt flirt n flirt... all 0nies have the right to flirt (harmless) with other 00nies n forget about their boyfriends, partners n husbands... heheh
oh n i think ITimes is the place where all of us get to hone our flirting skills... wat say???
At 5:08 PM, ice princess said...
hee hee m000nie i agree
we shall flirt and flirt
i shall abide by these rules
i promise
flirting courtesy-IT
At 5:24 PM, saby said...
Flirting is good esp. wid married females in ear shot of their hubby
and if she blushes when u do
dat indicates u hit the rite errogeneous spot
then her hubby who tot of her as old cheeez
looks on her wid renewed interest
and she sees the beauty in her which he did not see
, , 'Ghar ki murgi
Dal barobar' , ,is wat most guys feel after 7 years or earlier in some cases
me too
dats why i flirt at 40 too
err sorry make dat 54
At 6:12 PM, saby said...
it happened when i went to visit my shrink
i remember vividly the day
i walked into her office for the first time
she wasnt pretty
but she was beautiful i realized when we gott talking
she was all covered up from rist to neck
and heels to way up
dat made me curious
so i tried to flirt
told her i cudnt talk freely until i new the person i was talking to
so she told me a lott
i asked her does she hate men (she was 40-ish un married)
she said she had wanted to marry but all men wanted to see the goodies first
i laffed
hey Rita i am beginning to like u already
i told her ur beaitiful
i can see dat widout looking at skin ..
and the flirting went on and on getting heavier by the minute
i asked her fav colour said pale pink
i had come prepared
i fished out 4 colours of latex and asked her to choose
she smiled and made her pick
At 7:16 PM, Caraf said...
LOL @ POST JUST ABOVE :)
Wish I could be sure about flirting! All the times I appreciate a guy people think I'm flirting. If I ignore him, Im flirting. If I say only 'Hi and Bye' I'm still flirting.
When I really try to flirt because I'm attracted to someone, I fail MISERABLY. Instead of saying anything witty, some soppy sincere words come out and well, end of game. Because the guy knows EXACTLY how i feel :(
About guys, I just assume he's flirting unless proved otherwise.
- the Miserable Caraf
hehehehe
At 9:22 PM, Puneet said...
Ooohhhhh Keshi……. Ur a sweetheart ;-)
Thanks a million for considering my request….
And I’m not flirting here ;-)
‘He needs to know some magical chantings to contact that Ms.Sultry in me”
Would I be wrong in presuming that I know some ;-)
I guess u have tasted the “starters” of my flirting… he he he he
Whats gonna happen wen “main course” and “desserts” will be served….
ha ha ha ha ha
My close female friends say I’m good at it (I mean flirting)… but most of the time I avoid, as I have faced some situations where girls have gone crazyyyyy…
I carry a good track record of being successful while flirting…
Its about the 2 people involved, their attraction and at times the depth of relationship … all depends on what is the intention of flirting :-) :-)
“ But where do you draw the line before that 'playfully' becomes 'foreplay' ”… again it’s where u wanna draw a line… the ones involved in flirting are very good with words and eyes… so even a soft denial can give the vibes to the other that … “this is my limit”
Like I can presume where I can draw a line after reading your experience ;-)
He he he he he he he…
Thanks dear… I thoroughly enjoyed reading your post…
Some big Smiles back on my face… (Actually they come the moment I see ur name on my blog)….
And I’m flirting here ;-)
(I liked the quote given by Caraf)
Huggggzzzzzz n Smilllzzzzz
At 9:55 PM, Keshi said...
ok wuts the obvious answer btw South? :)
lolllz Juless hahahaha!
m000nie,
lolllllllllllllll @thou shall flirt flirt n flirt... all 0nies have the right to flirt (harmless) with other 00nies n forget about their boyfriends, partners n...
husbands...
btw u dun have to even tell me abt those rules, they existed in me way before I became an 000nie, actually even when I was just an embryo :) Ok abt forgetting husbands ahemmm....ahemmm...d u mean any specific 000nie u fancy here darling? lol!
hahahahaha good one ice_avrilllz @flirting courtesy-IT. I cudnt help cracking up reading u n m000nie!!
lol Saby u flirt with married women? awww so who do their husbands flirt with? Other married women? lol!
Saby ur story abt ur shrink...is that for real? omahgosh lolllz! That wud be a story where just 'playful' flirting ended up in 'foreplay'...lol!
Caraf dear I soooo u'stand ya! Thats the same story with me :( But the best u cud do is just do wut u feel like no matter wut others may say...who gives a damn wut they think :) After all flirting is healthy if done willingly n safely hahaha my own theory :)
Keshi.
At 10:04 PM, strawy said...
even i need to know wat flirting excatly is ??
Keshi do let me know to if u get the right answere ..lolzz
hugzzzzz ,,, nice post babes
At 10:10 PM, Keshi said...
Puneet a reply-comment just for ya ;-) wut d u call this? (shhhhhh flirting of course lol).
>Thanks a million for considering >my request….And I’m not flirting >here ;-)
Mah pleasure :)
>Would I be wrong in presuming >that I know some ;-)
Goshhh u r soooo right! Damnnnnn u know half of the chantings now...n learning the rest so fast lol!
>I guess u have tasted >he “starters” of my flirting… he> >he he he Whats gonna happen >wen “main course” and “desserts” >will be served….
Im sooo enjoying the starters of ur menu Puneet I can imagine how wonderful the rest wud be :) But can we go straight into that yummy dessert? lol!
>I carry a good track record of >being successful while flirting…
no doubt abt that! Here's one more award for Puneet, for excellent, decent n extremely sensual :) flirting - from Keshi.
>the ones involved in flirting are >very good with words and eyes
Worships Puneet as Keshi feels he's the flirt God who knows all the tricks :) Thats true, eyes say alot more than words...
>Like I can presume where I can >draw a line after reading your >experience
hehehe well but ur allowed to stretch the limit lol!
>Some big Smiles back on my face… >>(Actually they come the moment I >see ur name on my blog)….
>And I’m flirting here ;-)
aww wish I cud really see that smile...
And yes Keshi is heavily flirting now ;-)
Thanks n huggggggggggggz muahhhhzzzzz n smilezzzzzzz n kissesssss n wut-nots :)
Keshi.
At 10:12 PM, Keshi said...
aww strawy...if u really really wanna know wut flirting is, just read Puneet's comment above n my reply-comment to him lol...we r flirting in caps there :)
Keshi.
At 10:17 PM, Kroopa Shah (Kr00pz) said...
I think it depends upon both parties involved. What is flirting to one may be something more to another person.
Hmm, I've had one guy flirting with me like there was no tomorrow!! And he wouldn't take no for an answer. Sometimes it was hard to figure out if he was just flirting or.....
At 11:12 PM, --pearl-- said...
lol kesh i din comment earlier coz i wanted to see rohit's reaction :)
hez a big tyme flirt kesh..lol now he hardly does tho..b4 he used to flirt wit each n everyone on IT.i think now he saves MOst of his flirtin skiils fo' me :)
as fo' me,i hardly flirt,lol,but too many guys try to flirt wimmie,n it annoys me most of the times.Obviously like d harmless flirting..but still lol...!! i hate it coz..lol well d last month,most of d guys who i thought were my good frnds ended askin me out..lol it kinda suxx.. !!! u can neva trust guys lol :P :P
At 1:12 AM, Dewdrop said...
Keshiiii, I gotta catch up with your speedy posts. Nice one this.
I think when flirting clashes with ethics it gets bitter. Flirting just for the fun of it is pretty harmless as long as its guilt-free and you know where to draw a line.
My experiences with flirting has been sort of rewarding in the sense that I usually end up becoming great friends with the flirter :)
At 1:52 AM, Paul said...
Keshi, seems like your example was a good one. I don't know how you translate that into any rule, but sounds like you sensed he was trying to take it to another level, and made good use of humor to maintain a positive relationship while drawing the line.
At 3:12 AM, saby said...
i hadnt confessed all dis to padre
but i realize dat confessions is good for the mind and soul too
dis is specisl not many ppl no about dis one, not even Pithaly
it was a pound party at my bachelor's pad
i invited my ex g/f from Byculla
and dis girl who had ben trying to seduce me was also present
so i did the only ting a man cud do in dat situation i got sozzled and was out even b4 the party cud really take off
my pal a Parsi bhava had the hottz for my ex
and he was doing gr8
he had a polio left hand
and u gotta use both hands for ball room
his left hand kept slipping down from waist to butt
my cousin didnt no dat
he kept on getting hard stares
until he told her
then she understood and gott kinda dewdy eyed towards him
from then on they were dancing close
the party went on till wee hours of morning ... but i was dead to the world
Kersi bhava told me all dis
when i was up next morning
a whole lotta irate neighbours was at my door, the men folk
they were kinda mad at me
i tot it was the loud party music
but it was worse
one of my gang cudnt get a date so he picked up one of those ladies
as he didnt want to waste his money
he was getting his money's worth on the stairs
unfortunately my inmmediate neighbour's wife walked up the stairs and he was cot in the act
At 3:56 AM, Chick said...
I flirted with someone who was in a different car on the same train recently. We had two windows between us. He made eyes...I made eyes back...he held up his cell phone...I gave him the ol' what are you trying to say?...look.
I'm guessing he wanted to call me...but unless he was a lip reader...how was he going to get my number?
At 6:30 AM, Psycho said...
Hey Kesh !! thanx for d comment gurl. You right, it only took me a day to get over dat phase. Yeah life is d best teacher u knw ! And i luv ur posts. Gud goin. Peace !!
At 10:26 AM, saby said...
to the wooman dat i love
http://imnutsincapstoo.blogspot.com/2005/08/to-all-woomen-i-expressed-my-undying.html
At 11:32 AM, saby said...
God gave me a gift like dat Midas king, evryting he touched turned to gold
evryone i flirted wid
gott attached to me
there was dis girl who used to stand by her balcony below
and she wud look up
and i gave her the glad look
dis wud go on
i was shocked to learn later dat she was mute
then i gott an invitation to a wedding
she married another mute guy
and they are very happy
the most happily married couple dat i have ever seen
At 12:47 PM, Jay said...
Well, sweety, I am a good "flirter", that is how I see it.
But it only comes when I meet a girl that matches all the criteria I want to be my girlfriend.
My flirt technique used to begin from my eyes movement - the way I stare at her.. follows with a lil pick up lines, body movement and at no time she will end up in my bed. No joking hon!
I always take flirting seriously.
At 1:33 PM, julia said...
dis guy flirts wid cats
HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA
At 1:33 PM, julia said...
I guess we gotta move on, we moving on
Oh yehhhh....
Take it from me (take it from me)
Never gonna let nobody
Bring me down, that's my word (that's my word)
Keep on movin on
Take it from me (And I've moved on)
Never gonna let nobody (Just take it from me)
Bring me down,(take it now ) that's my word (that's my word)
In my life I've had regrets
But I've moved on, moved on
I can't help it if, if you're upset, you're just wasting your life away
move on (wasting your life)
In my life I've had regrets
But I've moved on, moved on
I can't help it if, if you're upset, you're just wasting your life away
move on
I guess we gotta move on, we moving on
Moved on, moved on
Stop wasting your life away, you're just wasting your life away
Just keep movin on, just take away...........(just take it from me) yeh
I can't help it if, if you're upset, you're just wasting your life away
move on
This the end....oh yehhhh
Move On
At 1:43 PM, saby said...
SHIT !
how i hate dat Julia
making funn of poor Jay
i bet she has a pst like dat Julia movie
dumbass Caraf
was referring to the latest Julia movie not dat stoopid movie by dat Kamal Hassan
woomen are like cats
one moment they can be purring all over u
but step on her tail and she becomes a terror
and starts of wid , W T F !,
At 2:24 PM, Keshi said...
lolz nice replies!
hahaha Kroopa @Hmm, I've had one guy flirting with me like there was no tomorrow!!
Well guess he didnt know where to stop..poor chap :)
hmm Pearly u dun even havta say abt n000nie...he's the FLIRT of the YEAR lol!
Dewdy me too...I become friends with these guys in the end...I think u flirt when u really like someone, it doesnt have to be the vulgar way always :)
Thanks Paul :)
Chick lollz join the train-flirting-chicks-club :) I do that too sometimes...especially when a cute guy who catches my eye stares at me lol...cant help it...n it's harmless n wonderful :)
Psycho thanks babezz :) Ur most WC to come here anytime!
Saby whoaaa u have flirted way too much lol! Well I gues that's why ur still young at heart even tho ur 54...way to go mate!
Thanxaton all!
Keshi.
At 3:11 PM, Pithaly said...
Since no one has, might as well: Dictionary meaning of flirting: Some crap, but the key word is "not seriously".
Since Ice Princess has decided to try to be the first to comment, I have decided to be the last to comment. So, Keshi, you cannot put up a new post, till I comment. And I dont want a reply to this, like "Screw you, this is my blog, and I will bloody well post when I want to". It should be more like, "Sure dear, whatever you say".
At 3:13 PM, saby said...
heyyyyy !
i still gott lott more to tell
u and the IT gang just mite figure in one of these
hehehehe ...
At 3:15 PM, Keshi said...
lols Pithaly take a hike hahaha!
Saby oh ok go ahead man...waiting :)
k000kies...z n cream :)
At 3:16 PM, saby said...
atta boy Pithaly!
show her who is boss
females shud get married and restrict their movements to Kitchen and bedroom only
At 3:33 PM, Keshi said...
Saby ahemmm...I guess Pithaly is already taking that hike lol!
k000kie monster :)
At 3:34 PM, Keshi said...
ok Saby u two...take a hike while flying a kyte plzz...
k000kie_on_fire :)
At 3:49 PM, saby said...
the pound party 2
requesting those guys under 19 to leave the room please
on the following saturady
Kersi was at my pad
he found a necklace belonging to dat girl who was trying to seduce me
and did
it happened dis way
his brother told me dat 'i told the girl, i wud be taking her out to dinner today and why havent i gone yet?
dat was too dumbfounding
i never took a girl out b4
anyway mebbe in my drum\nken state i did aske her out
so i went over to her place and asked her out
said i was broke and we got beers and went to my pad
and we got talking
now both of us were hott
i somehow managed to tell her dat it wud be cooler if she and i stripped to basics
and we did
then i made a move for her bra
DAMN ! nebver undid a bra b4
was fumbling at the front
when i shud be unclasping at the back
stoopid designners
imagine me having to take a pee
and having the zipper at the back!
was fumbling for some time and dis girl was giving me a queer look
then she showed me how it is done
and the rest was easy
i new how to remove panty
At 4:10 PM, saby said...
i better finish dis b4 any ypung girls or Pitahly enters
anyway, i didnt do no harm to dat girl
we didnt go all the way
u dont go all the way on the first date
do u?
told her i wud call on her
the next day but i dint
reason: dat damn girl had left her gold chain necklace behind
and dat damn Kersi found it
made me feel uneasy
dis was a hush hush affair
i wanted it dat way
so i tot dis girl is trying to seduce me
its true she was being tooo nice to my mom
she was tinking matrimony
all my alarm geras went off
was glad we didnt go all the way
didnt want a shot gun mariiage or any marriage for dat matter
and dat is why i choose to pay for sexual favoues from then on
why buy the cow
when all u want is milk?
At 4:17 PM, :--Ice.Princess--: said...
"Screw you, this is my blog, and I will bloody well post when I want to". It should be more like, "Sure dear, whatever you say"... hee hee love dat line.. way to go pithaly. well i tried to be the first, but zoonie here beat me to it..hee hee..
peace out
^_^
At 4:33 PM, Vinu said...
Keshi,
Got a topic to blog...but later...
anyways to me flirting is like chatting with ur opposite sex with sexual intentions....in any level...
But i think the meaning of flirting is not properly understud by mass out there. I, being and extrovert, keeps on blabbering..Got a huge groups of friends throughout my life, some of my female counterparts call me flirt...The reason they giv me is i keep on talking to more girls than boys...naahh...one thing i never agree with them...
I got such huge number of friends and i keep talking with them whnever i get chance irrespective of a male or female....ok ..iffi talk to girls also more often wts there to b branded as a flirt...i Dont know..hmmmm...never had i overtured any sexual tone to any of my talks,i dare to say...
Anyways if a person loves to talk,talk and keep on talking is called a flirt...then yes am a flirt...
hehe.../
Cheers for ur post..
At 4:46 PM, saby said...
'talk talk talk and talk
and no further progress
makes Jack a dull boy'
-say all the hott girls
At 4:49 PM, Keshi said...
lolz Saby while we r all flirt graduates, I think u got a Doctorate in flirting.
elllooo Icy :)
Hey Vinu talkin alot cant be called flirting unless ur always talkin to girls n that too in a romantic/sexual way :) U cud be an innocent flirt am I right?
Keshi.
At 5:10 PM, Invincible said...
comment no. 56 !!!!! (miss 1 day n u feel like missing an eon)
luved 2 see so many like minded people around
flirting ke bina
jeevan suna
:)
flirting is the default state of my mind :)
so m free 2 flirt with all 000nies now :)
wow !!
At 5:32 PM, southpaw said...
Lols keshi...the reply i gave her was too crude and its better i don't mention that here...:):):)
At 5:42 PM, Dawn said...
hahaha keshi dear..nice post I must say..as every gal must be going through this..and you are right where to draw the line...for me many times flrting is mere use of words..that too in limits..but when u see the limit is being crossed then u have to mark that and in a smily manner just the way you did..;) I liked the one that actually came in ur mind hehehe whole family in bed hahaha lol...gosh cant stop on that one!!!!
But..yes..flirting healthy if u know the person well and you dont feel the sense of fear :)
Good one...cheers!
At 6:20 PM, saby said...
no fears
i am healthy
i am clean
in my days there was no indian or foren AID(S)
we cud depend on Penicillin
but we used to call it STD then
and theyy had horrible names like Syphyllis and gonnorhea
but all u needed was a shot of pennicilin
but mostly the girls were clean
if u went to Juhu rather than foras road
but even then my doc made me do a test b4 marriage
i was clean
God loved me
coz i didnt fake love to get laid
as many of my pals did
the casanovas
and i dint ever havea shot of pennicillin
POINT is: God judges beyond the act
if your intentions are honest
and u dont hurt another to find yr happiness
GOD LOVES U !
At 6:24 PM, saby said...
i remeber the time
we had a girl over
she was tired
but she was apparently forced to go wid us by her pimp
we let her sleep the whole night
dat act really touched her deep
she loved us guys
as God surely did
At 6:26 PM, Keshi said...
aww v000nie cho cutte - deafult state of mind ha lol!
south I demand u to temme the answer since this post is all abt being bloody flirtish lol!
lollllllllz dawn glad I made u laugh! yep safe flirting is valuable :)
Saby to me ur sounding like one big flirt-o-rama season lol good on ya!
k000kie-the-s000kie bum :)
At 6:55 PM, southpaw said...
Lols...alright keshi there u go...
I just said cope up my hormunal outrage?since i don't gave any gf and i am not married either so i masturbate...lol(It was then, now i do have a gf:) )
At 7:03 PM, saby said...
goody goody guys
or guys who pretend to be
wud call these girls RANDI
the weternrers call dem scum bags
dat is SHOCKING
these girls are of ttwo types
those who are matketed by pimps
and freelancers who are sophicticated and mmarket dem selves
the girls who are marketed by pimpms are just the same as office goers
just like u guys get in office
they too get bonus
office girls and boyz are occassionally called upon to entertain a customer
if she does not please the customer
she will be sacked
it happens wid her boss too
boss has the hottz for u
u gotta please him
or ur thrown out
under trumped up charges
i no, i am a consultant
i no wat happens behind the scenes
besides the height of heights
my couisinn had a real pretty wife
boss wanted to get laid
and u bastards here take the moral stand!
it disgusts me
the girls under pimps are bonded labour
but some pimps are good guys
give dem holidays and incentives too
they call her respectfully as Rita-ji or Rita behn
did uno dat even the top screen stars have to enter through the casting couch door?
dat guiy who was cot by a sting operation almost told all
(shakti kapoor)
but i new it much b4
i lived in Juhu
At 7:10 PM, saby said...
the casting couch is for male stars too
if yr dealing wid a gay
ur lucky
if not u wiud have to surrender yr newly wedded wife to him
take it or leave it
he says
duis was depicted in PAGE 3, the movie
i no
it is true
a gigolo sort of guy, a friend
entered dis way
he made love to ageeing film stars
who had the pull to put him into films
At 7:14 PM, Puneet said...
Wow Keshi… I feel priviliged to have a reply-comment
“Here's one more award for Puneet, for excellent, decent n extremely sensual :) flirting - from Keshi … & for ‘flirt God’…”
Lots of Huggzzzz and kisssssessssss for this Award…
Right now I’m flying in the seventh sky… ;-)
Keshi… by stretching the limit, u have let free my imagination to wander in ur dreams ;-)
“huggggggggggggz muahhhhzzzzz n smilezzzzzzz n kissesssss n wut-nots :)”
That wut-nots… is making the dreams wilder… ;-)>
he he he he
Well u seem to be so eager to rush thru the deserts… sometimes going by rules is fun sometimes breaking the rules is fun… I’m in big dilemma now ;-)
U have ignited that flirt spark in me… and now there is a fire burning inside ;-)
Puneet is Flirting Unlimited ;-)
:-)> Luvzzzz n Hugzzzzz
At 7:17 PM, saby said...
Kesh,
u shud re-title dis post INNOCENCE LOST
i did it to warn the IT Crowd
dis world is not all sugar and candy
At 7:24 PM, saby said...
and dont ever say
u cannot be bought!
see INDECENT PROPOSAL
evry man/wooman has a price
me too
At 7:37 PM, saby said...
even Rajiv Gandhi was bought
but it was done wid class
by the man who rose to the heights
to build a biz empire
dat only recently collapsed and shook the Stock Market
becoz of an idiot son dat married a film star
At 9:33 PM, Pithaly said...
Now you've done it! creemy! Pithaly Never takes a hike! "I'll be back!"
(My damn PC has conked).
Friends, this is now the last comment on this post. Please rerain from further comments.
creemy, you may now kindly post a new post. (post a new post??? duh!)
I could suggest topics, since in about another 3,456 days you are going to run out of them, at this rate. So, here is the first one:
Horniness, 24/7: Is it worth it?
Now, girl, move!
At 9:40 PM, Janice said...
@southie *BLUSH BLUSH* u must have embaressed the poor girl ... n granpa wow looks like sumbody hit a nerve u sure went on an on abt the COMMERCIAL WORKERS as they r now called ... funny things is u seem to side these people more than ur own poor wife an ended up hurting aunty ...now that GOD doesnt FORGIVE ... learn to practise at ur own house then go spread the good word out side
At 9:41 PM, Pithaly said...
Paul, take care. you seem to be tying yourself in knots!
At 10:41 PM, Keshi said...
Puneet hunny ;-)
>Lots of Huggzzzz and >kisssssessssss for this Award…
>Right now I’m flying in the >seventh sky…
ok now Im already at the top of that 7th sky...where's the next stop? :)
>Keshi… by stretching the limit, u >have let free my imagination to >wander in ur dreams ;-)
can u write every single word describing that imagination plzz...hehehe...
>That wut-nots… is making the >dreams wilder
unnamed gestures r the most sensual ones ;-)
>sometimes going by rules is fun >sometimes breaking the rules is >fun… I’m in big dilemma now
u being in a dilemma itslef is dessert for me lol! breaking the rules sometimes can be magical...
>U have ignited that flirt spark >in me… and now there is a fire >burning inside
u too done the same for me :) ui guess this flame isnt something stoppable by the firebrigade even lolllz!
>Puneet is Flirting Unlimited
Keshi doesnt know any word called LIMIT anymore!
Keshi dreamily stares at the dark blue sky wondering if Puneet can see the same stars...
Huggggggz!
Keshi.
At 10:43 PM, Keshi said...
Saby is a big fat love-bug :) goshhh u done so many naughty things mate! did uget grounded by Dad like a zillion times?
Pithaly how r u, especially after that hike I told u to take lol?
Saby new post will follow soon...I was so busy at work n now Im at home reasy to hit the sack...catch ya all tomorrow buddies!
Keshi.
At 12:05 AM, De.vile said...
I seen my dad flirt right in front of my mom. I mean hes no goodlooker but hes smooth. A smile, a wink. You can see those middle aged blushes moistening their middle aged faces.
At 1:18 AM, Zombie said...
I think only a few people know how to flirt without getting into a mess...most don't. In cases of intentional flirting, it becomes very important to know where and how to draw boundaries.
At 2:39 AM, saby said...
JANEEEZZZZ !
At 2:41 AM, saby said...
dumbass mangy!
its not COMMERCIAL WORKERS idiot!
they are called sex workers
watsa matter u still uneasy wid the F-word?
or u just plain dumb ?
At 2:43 AM, saby said...
and heyyyyy Kesh,
i serve u notice
ur not to close dis damn post
until i finish wat i have to say
u made all dis happen
by choosing dis subject
At 2:45 AM, saby said...
good to see u De Vile
do i qualify for yr kingdom?
sorry queen dom
At 3:10 AM, saby said...
and Kesh,
dis saby was born again after he gott ragged in college
it wasnt physical
it was psychological
its worse
u emerge as a new man
or u kill yourself
i was a real baba saby
i hated the sight i saw in the mirror
dat was wat Pithaly saw me as
but i changed
i was born again
i was room mate wid an atheist one year
and another atheist the next year
it was only then i started re-living
i blasted a priest in the third year of college
i was cursed
i spent evry damn summer of Kanpur
completing the courses i failed in
his letter (curse) to me was
'hope u do well in yr exams'
i tot he was blessing me
but my atheist room mate told me it was a curse
my dad died in dis year
third yr of college
so my dad now has seen me from above
as i grew up from a baba into a man
i am sure he approves
coz he took took panga against a parish priest too
but dat is another story
At 3:46 AM, saby said...
i just want tro correct the rong impressions
i mite have conveyed of Shri Rajiv Gandhi
he is Mr Clean
and he died Mr Clean
but the lady Sonia Gandhi
another reluctant guy whom fate propelled in to polly tics
is now master of polly tics
She cud thrash Mr Vajpayee
another guy i respect
i rejoice today
coz today we are ruled by states man not polly ticains
i refer to
Abdul Kalaam
Chidambaran
Montek Singh Ahluwalia
the communists who put the brakes on
and dat sardar Manmohan Singh
tanks to the widow of Shri Rajiv Gandhi
Rajiv Gandhi didnt die in vain
learned the lessons
At 3:47 AM, saby said...
and plese delete 'learned the lesssons'
At 3:50 AM, saby said...
now requesting u to raed
http://imnutsincapstooo.blogspot.com/2005/08/rajiv-gandhi-mr-clean.html
and ADIOS !
At 4:27 AM, Gaurav said...
me : can I have one of your kisses
(She laughs, gives me one)
She: hows it?
me : sweet
me : and chocolaty
me : Do u have the caramel one.
she: don't get geedy.
the above conversation was on Hersheys Kisses.
At 5:47 AM, Cheesy.Termite said...
Hiyo!!
Just a few days back...someone explained me the meaning of 'flirtin'!! i knew it alrdy though....but now am sure!
I dont think being called a flirt is somethin to be ashamed of...i wish i had some gr8 flirtin skills as well!
Last yr...in skool....one of ma classmates...was smsing me silly s*x jokes....i ignored 'em for a while.....but it really got on ma nerves....one evening it happened...i recd. an sms yet again frm him reading...some crap like...'having s*x is betta than having chocolates bla bla....so temme wen to come?' grr i called him back immediately....nd said 'hey chetan...am homealone...mind coming over RIGHT NOW??'
we laughed it off....bt he definitely got me!! nd tht's it!! i cud only think of this stupid incident at this moment.
P.S I hope u doin fine keshi..muuaaaaaaaaaaahhh!! And thnx Rohit...am feelin much better now.
At 6:51 AM, Feathered_Mask said...
Lol ..good post keshi! me wanna flirt tooooo..where's mah next victim *looks around, sees cute lil alien hanging upside down from ceiling* hehehe *rubs hands in glee and grins wickedly* :D
At 7:02 AM, Puneet said...
Keshi….. ur soooooooo sweet
And I’ve a sweet tooth ;-)
“ok now Im already at the top of that 7th sky...where's the next stop? :)”
Do u really wanna stop??? I just feel like flying with u… beyond the sky… in a diff world ;-) he he he he
“can u write every single word describing that imagination”
I wish I could… but imagination is like a bubble… beautiful, soft and flies beyond the boundaries… for me to describe it is like an attempt to touch that bubble, which makes it collapse in my hand… leaving behind only the illusion of possessing it ;-)
“breaking the rules sometimes can be magical”
would love to sense the Keshi’s magic… ;-)
“Keshi dreamily stares at the dark blue sky wondering if Puneet can see the same stars”
Ya Puneet can see the same stars… they are brighter than others coz they convey the glitter of your eyes :-)>
The “flirt” was speeding towards the “desserts”… attempted to divert it thru the “main course”… the more u wait … the more sensual it gets…
Hugggzzzzz n Smilllzzzzzzzzz
At 10:55 AM, Keshi said...
devilllllllllle muahhh WB missed ya heaps!!! Where were ya babeh? :) OH well men r persistent flirts lol irrespective of their marital status...my dad was the same I remember...he appreciated beautiful women (no wonder he fell for my mum - she was one true beauty in her younger days). And even after marriage he would flirt with some of mum's good-looking friends...but it was harmless n I guess it's fine :)
Misty ur absolutely right when u say that...only few know the ART of flirting..others just make one big mess out of it lol!
lollz Saby how dus Rajiv Gandhi link with the flirting topic? He was one handsome dude tho ;-)
aww Gaurav that was such a sweet convo! Thanks so much lol!!
Cheesy lol u dangerous chikkkster :) so did he end up visiting ur place hehehe..?muahhhhhhhhhh babezzz I missed ya!
fm muahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! I missed ya tonzzz! Where were ya dudette?
**rubs hands in glee and grins wickedly...
lolllz so cuttte! I miss those days when u, Ash n I used to chat on IT like there was no tomorrow...:(
Puneet aww that was the sweetest flirting I was eva subjected to! Ur doing me justice than I really deserve...thanks so much!
**Ya Puneet can see the same stars… they are brighter than others coz they convey the glitter of your eye..
This line really made me feel extremely special Puneet...that was such a thoughtful n alluring thing to say to a girl..I must say u know the fine art of flirting n I admire the girls u know over there...n yep Im so jealous of them too lollz! Hugggggggz n yep I'm awaiting that WAIT lol to dig deeper n deeper into the land of sensuality ;-)
Thanks all!
Keshi.
At 11:50 AM, talldarkman said...
:((( waaaaaaaaaaaah...keshi......
Hamaaaare siwaaa....tumhaare aur kitne deewaane hain?? ;)
talldarkman
At 12:33 PM, Keshi said...
ok Tally (or shud I call ya tal000nie? lol) u know I dun get Hindi so plzz translate...thanx!
k000kie
At 4:14 PM, Invincible said...
new post comin soon :))
i have some requirements to meet b4 i bcome a certified 000nie !! workin on tht :)
- v00nie
At 4:41 PM, The Gome said...
The only flirting I do is undressing a hotty with my eyes until she notices me staring at her lol!
At 4:43 PM, Keshi said...
lolz Gomes I can picture ya with those hungry mongrel eyes!
Keshi.
At 4:44 PM, Keshi said...
Southhhhh omahgoshhhhhhhhhhh she cud handle that ans? lol!
Keshi.
At 4:58 PM, southpaw said...
Lols keshi...ya she did handled it pretty well, infact initially i used to feel awkward with her stupid questions but now things r normal coz i have noticed that she always speaks her heart out instead of back-bitching, even recently she took the liberty to ask me whether my current gf was good on bed? though this time i didn't gave any crude answer instead i just laughed it off....
At 5:04 PM, Keshi said...
lolz South okkkaaayyy! But dun u think she's asking for too much of personal info? I think asking if ur GF is good in bed isnt flirting...lol it's like asking can I be better? beware of such gals...lets continue this in my latest post(cheating) as that's where this story is going to fit I think...LOL!
k000kie-with-a-shovel:)
At 11:00 PM, Puneet said...
Thanx a ton Keshi...
You got the best out of me...
(actually no... the best is still yet to come)
but since u feel that u've got more than u deserved... then my best will have to wait further ;-)
ha ha hahaha
kidding... thanks so much for those kind appreciations...
Actually the girls over here will envy you on knowing that I'm flirting so heavily with u...
ha ha ha ha
BTW... ur special... and sweet
cheers... tk cr
At 2:04 AM, Vivhyd said...
oohh so many comments..
Keshi.. Me thinks flirting is fun .. adds up some spice in life.. but as it is .. too much of anything is dangerous.. same goes for this too.. flirting can be harmless and a gr8 stress reliever and cud even bring down some temp.. but to go overboard cud be sick..
Again.. if flirting is in small doses .. thts probably good but if it itself becomes a disease.. then major prob.. esp wht ur frnd said it is bit overboard I thght.. esp if he is ur frnd.. 4 me.. its sounds disgusting.. ok.. a few flirt frm frnd is ok.. but this one really sucks!!
At 2:29 AM, Gaurav said...
Comment#99
At 2:30 AM, Gaurav said...
Century !! U did it ..or I did it
LOL
At 7:25 AM, Dewdrop said...
Wow Keshi, Congrats for crossing the century :) you dont need 101 reasons to celebrate btw :)
At 12:26 PM, Keshi said...
Vivhyd agree with ya totally! Anything in excess is dangerous. So yeah flirting should also have a limit b4 it takes over one's life. Which friend r u talkin abt btw?
lollz Gaurav u ranked 99 n the century ha! Cool! :) :)
heheh d000die thanks! But many comments here r mine too lol...I try to answer each n everyone who comments here...I luv interaction n I respect ppl who find time to comment in my blog...time is precious n it's a huge compliment that they actually make it a point to comment here :) Thanks n hugggz to u too!!
Luv to all..
k000kie.
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saby u r great
i really appreciate u dear
inspite of hurdles u r the winner
saby u r great
i really appreciate u dear
inspite of hurdles u r the winner
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