Jude

Good evening everyone.  I'm not really new, though I'm coming back after a long hiatus.

You can call me Jude. My fursona is a rat.   I'm restarting the Christian Furry Fellowship (though the name could change) within a week or two, so keep a heads up for that.  I love the Lord and it's my hope that I can share His grace and kindness with the Fandom with the skills and interests he's given to me.

I'm generally laid back, sort of cowardly and I hate conflict, but I'm working on that. I don't have many "hot button" topics that get me mad, but I do have high expectations of people, even when they don't of themselves. (A major source of frustration).

I enjoy writing and starting and operating businesses, though my lack of confidence has really kept me from moving forward with those dreams of mine lately.  I'm a gamer (mostly FFXIV nowadays, but I'm trying to put together some single-player game streams).  I'm always looking for friends and encouragement, and I enjoy supporting others too.

I know I have a few things promised to people from way back, but rest assured that I haven't forgotten and I'm still working on them.

Who from CF is doing this organizing by the way?

A thought just occurred to me.  You want a Christian furry RPG right?  Well, how about one where the player is the guardian angel of a character?  You try and steer your guy through right and wrong, nudging him towards good away from bad that sort of thing.  Wouldn't be any monster battles to speak of really, but could create some great puzzle situations.

 

Its also an easy way to make it furry (change the societal needs to suit the characters different senses) and also easy way to slip in scripture, etc....

 

Whatcha think?

Honestly, that would be a bit too hokey and heavy handed.

The best Christian games are those that tell a good story from the worldview of faith, love and holiness that come from the Christian worldview.  People remember and enjoy Myst. People tend to unhappily remember that Noah's Ark game for the SNES years ago.

Tell a great story, make sure the gameplay is innovative and enjoyable and do all things for the glory of God.  (NB: stay away from explicit mentions of Scripture. The people who most need to hear and see them wouldn't want to play a game with those.)

I tried to organize one before.  There's a lot of initial excitement, but no one wants to put any effort into it after it becomes apparent that it's going to take work.

We can try again though.  I have stories, I'm a writer, and have lots of ideas.  And barring that, I can organize.

Welcome Ellie!

I'm glad to see you're still around.

Heyo! If you don't know, the Christian Furry Fellowship is a sister ministry to Christian Furs. It seems we're always doing some transition, but the Lord really does want us to grow to really serve the Fandom in Godly and proper ways.

But we need artists. Our friend Norzman first volunteered but he's been caught up in stuff lately, and we do need others as well. Do you think you'd like to help out a Christian ministry with your art skills? Send me a private message or a FA note and we can talk.

Even if you don't have visual art skills, we are looking for all sorts of creativity - music, game creation, audio mixing, etc etc - for future projects. (Which only are future because we can't do everything for ourselves!)

So let me know!

Who was the person who was in charge of the idea initially? A CFC is fully possible, but it'll take a lot of work but I have some ideas for that too.

Hey! Another TN Fur! I'm in Clarksville, myself. Welcome to the forum. I hope we can encourage you in the Faith and with your creativity as well

Welcome, welcome!

Happy to have you here!

I'm interested in looking it over too. Let's see that gift that God's given you.

Wait, what?

Oh.... carry on.

I think that it makes sense. I did read through the beginning of the chapters and I would agree with you on that. Though now I am curious' date=' why does tradition have Lucifer associated with Satan?

[/quote']

 

The Hebrew has helel ben-shakhar, (“Helel son of Shachar”). Helel was the name they gave to the planet Venus in the sky. When this was translated to Latin years later, they used one of the Latin names for the planet - Light Bringer, Lucifer.

 

The wiki article on Lucifer is surprisingly balanced.

 

A lot of times when we read the Bible, we're hundreds of years and thousands of miles separated from the local contexts that God used to communicate exactly what he wanted. So just looking "plainly" at the text, or importing our modern ideas into the text is a bad idea. This is the Word of God, and with some study, with the legacy of the Church and with the Holy Spirit, we can get to the meaning of the passage.

 

So what is the deal for the imagery in verses here? Well the whole section is directed to the king of Babylon and it's pointed out and displayed that this king is most definitely a human ruler. Other kings talk to him, he is called "the man" and he has a physical body.

 

But the imagery in those three verses have led some to see that more than "meets the eye" here. We may not realize it in the 21st century United States, but this passage draws almost exclusively from Canaanite mythology, and is an example of the "taunt song" of Ancient Middle East cultures.

 

There's a myth of Helel, a demigod at best, who tried to take over Zaphon - the assembly of the gods that took place on their mountain. He failed and instead he was cast down into the Underworld. This king of Babylon is being being taunted for having similar aspirations and frustrations.

 

It's only been tradition and our human desire to "explain" the devil that associated the Isaiah passage with him. But there's nothing immediately here, that says that this is the devils story. (Though given what we do know about him and his future judgment, and also given that associating this passage with the adversary happened very early in church history, something like this probably did happen in a way.)

I was actually talking about the difference between different words used for hell' date=' not eternal versus temporal concepts. Hades and Sheol are both used for hell, Tartarus (or Tartaroo), the Lake of fire, Gehenna etc.[/quote']

 

I understand that, but you'd have to go over again why the differences are relevant. Acknowledging that there are different words that carry different nuances is important for gathering the historical concept, but I'm not seeing how it's crucial to this particular discussion.

 

 

I have no problem with the eternal punishment concept, but I don't think that's the only possible view.

 

Also views on hell have varied throughout church history. It's just that it is an "err on the side of caution" issue.

 

I will agree with you about erring on the side of caution. However, the churches view on hell has not really varied at all. It's only been in the last 200 years or so that views have "varied" but that comes from other cultural movements influencing people, and not necessarily from God bringing things to light.

 

The basics of eternal, conscious punishment has always been held as orthodox, while the other views have been seen as anywhere from heresy to being somewhat in error.

As much as it is important to delineate between the intermediate state and the eternal state, it's just as important to realize that once you're in one place or another, you're "set." If a person dies and ends up in the present heaven, they'll be looking forward to the Eternal Heaven (the New Earth). If a person dies and ends up in the present hell, they'll end up in the Lake of Fire when the eternal state begins.

That being said, I was being as sloppy in order to be brief. Generally whenever I talk about Heaven or Hell, I'm referring to the Eternal states not the intermediate states we have now.

I'm probably late to the party, but Reconciliationism and Annihilationism do not fall into orthodox Christian faith. Since Jesus left the work of the Kingdom to us Christians some 2000 years ago, we've generally only held to the view of conscious, eternal punishment as the destiny of the wicked. People who've believed that everyone gets saved in the end, or that the wicked go out of existence have been in the smallest minority.

The other two views are only "Biblical" if one fails to account for things that God has already showed us.

Hell is a real place that brings tears and celebration to anyone who has God's heart.

Tears because any suffering, especially that which could have been prevented should pierce our hearts with compassion. Celebration because hell is where God's Justice is complete, where sin is rightfully judged and condemned. The devil has spent all of history trying to overturn God's rule and hurt, destroy and pervert everything that God delights. He and everyone else who rebelled, really do fairly deserve hell.

Hell is more than separation from God, as horrible as that state of being would be in itself. But hell is also God's actively punishing and judging people for their sin.

We tell of the Gospel to keep people from going there, and we live our lives in a way to demonstrate that the penalty of hell has no claim over us anymore.

If you can't talk about hell with tears in your eyes, pleading with people not to go there by grabbing hold of God's provision and grace, then it's very likely you don't quite understand heaven.

The California cons tend to be a lot "worse" than the others. (There are horror stories from the Late 90s, Early 2000s that are still going around.)

If you want a more family friendly con, then your very best bet is to either organize a smaller furmeet with some trustworthy blokes, or try to save up for Anthrocon in Pittsburgh.

Pokemon Platinum. I've been trying to figure out how I can get some breeding chains going with a limited pool of pokemon to work with.

Heya, perhaps we can work together?

Victory Cross is an amateur game making company we started some months ago to work on making an RPG for people to enjoy. Momentum is sort of slow right now, as we're currently recruiting, but we have good plans in the works.