Should I keep or change my religion?

Dear Friend,

Being a Christian isn't about being born into a family of believers. Christianity is a real personal relationship with Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit is the One who draws people to Himself. Either people accept Jesus by surrendering their life to Him, or they don't.

God is very real. He has a wonderful plan for your life. Read Jeremiah 29:11-13 and 'personalize' it. God's Word is His Instruction Manual for man to have a 'real' relationship with Him and live an abundant life.

Lets personalize Jeremiah 29:11-13, okay?

11 For I know the plans I have for you (fill in your name),” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 12 Then (fill in your name) you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

God's Word is the "living" Word, because the Holy Spirit will ...teach you absolute "spiritual" truth.

Psalm 139:1-18 will tell you how SPECIAL and PRECIOUS you are to God. Personalize it for yourself. Focus on verses 13-18. Awesome!

1 You have searched me, LORD,

and you know me.

2 You know when I sit and when I rise;

you perceive my thoughts from afar.

3 You discern my going out and my lying down;

you are familiar with all my ways.

4 Before a word is on my tongue

you, LORD, know it completely.

5 You hem me in behind and before,

and you lay your hand upon me.

6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,

too lofty for me to attain.

7 Where can I go from your Spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence?

8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;

if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,

if I settle on the far side of the sea,

10 even there your hand will guide me,

your right hand will hold me fast.

11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me

and the light become night around me,”

12 even the darkness will not be dark to you;

the night will shine like the day,

for darkness is as light to you.

13 For you created my inmost being;

you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

your works are wonderful,

I know that full well.

15 My frame was not hidden from you

when I was made in the secret place,

when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.

16 Your eyes saw my unformed body;

all the days ordained for me were written in your book

before one of them came to be.

17 How precious to me are your thoughts,[a] God!

How vast is the sum of them!

18 Were I to count them,

they would outnumber the grains of sand—

when I awake, I am still with you.

Necklaces, bracelet's and the like, with a cross, etc. do not make you a Christian. Neither does your family, nor going to church, etc.; any more than going to MacDonald's makes you a hamburger. God...Who is Holy, Just and Righteous...examines our "hearts." Does that make sense?

I strongly recommend that you get yourself a New Living Translation Bible, one that will be easy for you to read. Start by reading Galatians chapter 5. Then, go to Genesis and start at the Beginning. I also encourage you to get yourself a Strong's Concordance. Should you read from the King James Bible, you may want to do word searches to find out the correct meanings of words from the Old Testament (Hebrew) and the New Testament (Greek).

God is a BIG God!! He loves you more than life itself. He loved you when He molded you in your mother's womb. He has great things for you dear one. Don't allow the Enemy (Satan) to STEAL what belongs to God...your soul. With his...LIES! You are God's child. An Heir to the Throne.

Hang in there. The BEST still to come. :)

My prayers are with you...today and always,

Most religious people only believe in it because they're scared of what they don't know, or because they have to. Once you realize there's nothing to be afraid of, there's no reason to believe in anything. No religions are real, but if a god actually existed he wouldn't punish anyone for not believing. Religious people must be paranoid all the time thinking like that.

I have to second JJ's suggestion. The world is rich with religious answers. Look at Christianity objectively, particularly the words of Christ. Do the same for Islam. Read the words of Buddha and Baha'u'llah, who said 'Immerse yourselves in the ocean of My [God's] words.'

The words of the Prophet's (founders of the world's religions) are an ocean rich with pearls. Study what they've said and you'll know what to do.

There's an old saying "Don't jump out of the frying pan into the fire." literally.

It's perfectly normal for you to start questioning what you have been taught.

Everyone has to do that, sooner or later, to make their religion their own.

At your age, Catholics have Confirmation, where they learn about their faith.

Your church probably has an equivalent, even a Bible study or youth group.

It's OK to ask questions about what you've been taught, & get some answers.

But you cannot change religion without taking instruction anyway.

Use some punctuation. I didn't read a word of that.

No. Don't keep or change your religion.

Instead, look into critical thinking. Learn to be a skeptic!

Yes, change to Seventh-day Adventist.

Please give yourself a chance to make an informed choice; learn what the Bible really says. That's the way to true Christianity.

For example, since it frightens you so much, here's a secret most religions don't want you to know about hell:

"Hell" is only an anachronistic word for "grave". The wage that sin pays is death, not torment:

"For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." - Romans 6:23 (KJV)

The living experience life. What do the dead experience?

"For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten." - Ecclesiastes 9:5 (KJV)

People have been misreading Revelation 20 for centuries:

"13 And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. 14 And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death." (KJV)

Regardless whether your translation says that it was hell or hades that was cast into the lake of fire, this only happens when all the dead are resurrected from it! It's empty; no one is in it!

Would Jesus punish someone he hasn't judged yet? At the end of Revelation 20, only when the truly wicked among the dead are judged, do they get the same treatment that death and hell, (or hades) receive: "And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire." (KJV)

What treatment do they receive? Don't you wonder what fire could do to death and hell, (or hades), since they are not people? Does torture make sense? Jesus tells us what fire does:

"And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." - Matthew 10:28 (KJV)

However, many people are confuse by inconsistent Bible translations. In the Greek, the last word in Matthew 10:28, (and 5:22) is not ᾅδης, (hades), but γεέννῃ, (gehenna). In Strong's Exhaustive Concordance the first definition of either Sheol or Hades is "grave", and the second is "hell". Therefore, we should understand that sheol, hades, grave, and hell all mean the same thing.

However, Gehenna is the name of the valley where idolaters sacrificed children; later, people of Jerusalem burnt corpses of executed criminals and other refuse there. Considering they were corpses, was that to torment them, or destroy them? This fire is prophetic of the lake of fire in Revelation 20, not of hell, which is thrown into the fire!

Some try to equate the burning alive of child sacrifices with torture in hell. However, the true God forbade these sacrifices as an abomination: "21And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through [the fire] to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I [am] the LORD." - Leviticus 18 (KJV)

Further, when Jews sacrificed children there any way, it angered God; tormenting people with fire had never even occurred to him:

"35And they built the high places of Baal, which [are] in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through [the fire] unto Molech; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin." - Jeremiah 32

If any abomination could possibly be worse than burning people alive, it would have to be accusing God of doing it!

Neither is the Devil doing it; he is the god of this world, not of hell: "In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them." - 2 Corinthians 4:4 (KJV)

The closest Satan ever gets to hell is in Revelation 20, long after Armageddon, and even then, he will be cast into the Lake of Fire before hell is, but all the dead will be resurrected from hell before it is cast there: "10 And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever." (KJV)

Remember that the dead are in the grave, but also remember the gift of God!

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Unless you want your question deleted, please don't allow your Best Answer to be chosen by votes. There are sock puppets (trolls who each have several Y!A accounts), who follow me around, voting No Best Answer if they think I have a chance of getting Best Answer on votes.

Read the New Testament. I found answers there.

hes real believe in him

lets say by some reason we were wrong that he was real and you believed in him nothing happens ok

but if he was real and you didnt believe in him you go to hell

Do what you feel is best.