Continued from Message ID: 1578860

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>>Men choose to shut others out unnecessarily and bring
>>condemnation upon themselves. They are empire building
>>rather than people / community building.
>
>What about my specific example of Bill Gates? Are you
>suggesting that he has not also done of lot of people / community
>building? As matter of fact, so much that it has required an empire
>to pull it off?

Yes. Bill Gates has done things with his empire. God teaches us that we are stronger individually as a whole, meaning the entirety of the community, than of any individual strong members within. We are a body, and the body together is able to move in right, powerful ways. Individuals with great strength in the various areas (physical, mental), these are a blessing unto the body and are to be used to raise up those members of the body around them so that they too might prosper.

There is a part you leave out in your conclusions about actions such as those of Bill Gates. You leave out God. You presume that man does it alone, and that it is the result of man's actions that things happen. This is not true. God allows that to happen in cases, but when men turn toward God and seek after Him it is God Himself who guides and directs their life, and the lives of those around them. God really is in control.


>>How many software developers did God create to augment
>>Windows who were shut out by closed policies? How many
>>users today would like to buy ARM based devices and dual-
>>boot Windows and Linux? Microsoft tried to kill that
>>ability.
>So what? That's not what happened, that's not how the world works.
>You can't sit here and say what if what if what if.

There have been artificially deployed barriers to what otherwise could've been. It's not a matter of saying "what if what if," but rather a recognition that these barriers prevented something from happening.

We must work for the benefit of others, and not for empires. We are working to raise up the entirety of man, and not through personal empires doing this, but by our unique, individual, and special talents operating to lift those who are around us, those to whom God has brought us to -- our family, friends, co-workers, church members, and the people we encounter while in line at a gas station. Everyone is our focus, the ones we're supposed to be uplifting, helping, aiding, allowing them to be better, to have better, to feel better, after they encounter us than they did before.

Ours is a life of service unto others.


>We don't know and can't know. Maybe if it would of gone down that
>way a bunch of wack jobs would of made a bunch of nukes and
>eradicated all of humanity.

Again, you're leaving out God. When men turn to God, trusting in Him, doing as He says, for Him, then God guides and brings everything into proper form because He is life. He knows everything, created everything, and when men voluntarily choose to pursue Him ... He moves.


>>We'll never know what was possible because closed,
>>proprietary models and mindsets kept people out.
>Well that is a rather negative way of looking at things- how about instead
>of being fragmented, everyone ended up working together.

No, that's not what happened. I cannot work on Windows source code right now. I cannot work on improving Office. I cannot work on modifying SQL Server to allow a subset of xbase commands.

We don't have what is possible because there are artificial barriers. We have one company's vision (Win8/RT, .NET, Azure, "the Microsoft way") rather than the community God assembled providing unto the community. We have a personal empire being built, and as we read in Revelation, all those empires will be utterly cast down. And as we read in I Corinthians 3:13-15, only man's work built upon the foundation God provided (the rock, the bedrock, the chief cornerstone, His Son Jesus Christ) will carry forward into eternity, and is indeed preceding him now.


>>Hoarding is quite simply evil.
>>It's personal empire building when we are part of a
>>community.
>Depends upon which side of the street your standing on.

It doesn't. We are commanded by God to lift those around us, to seek to increase their wealth, not our own. The man who does not do this is in rebellion against God.

Consider the beatitudes (the "attitudes that ought to be") and all the things Jesus said in Matthew 5-7: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%205-7&version=KJV

There is guidance there for Life (eternal, as well as mortal).


>Lastly - is it actually possible for you to respond to anything I say without the first words
>being along the lines of "God blah blah blah". Look I see your logic behind write once,
>sell once from a good-for-society standpoint. Hey I can even agree that if everyone thought
>this way the world would be a better place.

Satan is in the world, Victor. He commands people through whispering thoughts, feelings, emotions, and teachings in others, through that influence that things do not need to flow from God, or to consider God. But that is a false teaching. It is a lie designed to give someone a "reasonable position" a "comfortable position" from which to operate, while not following in this world as they should.

Christians are commanded to go out into all the world and teach the nations, baptizing (immersing) them in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost, teaching them to obey every commandment God gave, reminding them that He (Jesus) is with us, even until the end.

God is in everything, Victor. He is not isolated from anything. Man separates himself from God through sin, but God is always there ready to forgive. God has setup a system which is perfect, and it is ONLY sin, and man's willingness to follow falseness, that has caused every angst and pain we have in this world.

You admit that if everybody did these things the world would be a better place.
It starts with me doing it. Then you doing it. Then others doing it. It starts at home.

God calls out to people. People hear Him, and then respond or not. If you hear His voice, do not harden your heart, but listen to Him. He is calling out to save you in eternity, that you might forever be with Him, that you might forever be in peace, love, and in the presence of His glory, enjoying the fullness of His creation.

He's literally offering you (and all of us) eternal paradise. It's who He is and how He operates. It is ONLY sin that causes anything to be otherwise. Yet even through our sin, our rebellion, the terrible things we've done to Him, ourselves, and others, He is still ready to forgive. It's why Jesus came. The name Jesus literally has that meaning "Yeshua, God who Saves".

God cannot be removed from things. Man can try, but every man who does so will be forever cast down. And no man will be cast down without full knowledge of what they are doing, even in this world. When alone, at peace, just you and the silence, no distractions, God is there talking continuously to get your attention, to get you back on the right path. People "turn up the radio" and squelch that sound by filling their lives with anything else because they don't want God. But for those who hear ... they follow.

It's a rebirth to hear God. I pray it comes to ALL MEN EVERYWHERE.