Conclusion from Peru and Mexico

email from Randall Easter | 25 January 2008 | Randall Easter

[kosta50]

Sure one can be honest and sincere and be wrong. However, look at what the Biblical authors taught. They didn't teach murder, etc., as the jihadists do.

Dear Lord! Have you read the  Bible?!? You must be joking, FK! :) Time simply doesn't permit me to list all of them.

I see. And as for your opinion of the weakness and fleetingness of God's word, God obviously disagrees: Isa 40:8 : The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever."

Truth will remain truth. Nothing new there. It doesn't mean that what we believe is all truth and nothing but the truth.

[kosta50]

Well, I think your response goes to prove the truth of what the author says. Certainly among other Christians, almost NO ONE agrees with you. :) And among the atheists, etc., who make these types of arguments, their views have not seemed to have had any effect on how true believers view the Bible. Now, certainly they and liberals in general have done some damage in fooling SOME people (those who have never believed), but I am unaware of very many who called themselves true believers, but then became atheists because the "lies" of the Bible had somehow been revealed to them by science or logic or the arguments that we have been discussing.

So, what Christians believe or agree with is the absolute rule? I have found that if you dig deep enough every Christians disagrees with another Christian while on the surface pretending to be of the same and equal faith. We are not talking about the faith, FK, we are talking about the Bible. Two different things. One can believe in God and give thanks to God without quoting or even knowing the Bible!

As for the views of those who call it the way it is, whether atheist or not,  you use the same failed argument as before: they didn't change "true believers." No, there were "true" (I would say fanatical) believers who fought to the last moment in the Reichstag defending Hitler. Does their tenacity prove them "right?" 

If the truths about the Bible make anyone an atheist it's because they believed in the Bible and not in God. Because the Bible is/was their God. God does not exist because of the Bible, nor does God "cease" to exist because the Bible is not as perfect as someone once believed.  It is idolatry, once exposed, that leads to demise of the idols  but not the faith in God. Only pride and arrogance, not archeology, can deny that something much bigger than we are created all this.

[kosta50]

If it was possible to know, I would be interested in knowing if the average Apostolic spent more time following the extra-Biblical commands of the Church or the Biblical commands of God. A hunch says I would be disappointed in the answer.

The OT lists 613 God's commands in the Torah. If they are in the Bible then they are from God, right? Do you follow them? Do you fast? Oh, wait, Paul says we don't have to, because it doesn't apply to us? Right? So, what's left? The Ten Commandments, which we say (for some reason) apply to us but other OT Commandments don't (even though I am reminded that everything in the Bible, every dot in it, is the word of God!), and of course the Two Commandments of our Lord Jesus Christ, to love God with everything we have and our neighbor as ourselves (both of which are found in separate places in the OT). 

Am I to assume that, unlike some of us, you follow God's commandments (and we don't)? While I am sure you love God with everything you have (especially when things are going well), do you really want me to believe that you love your neighbor as you love yourself? Do you pray for your friends? I am sure you do. Do you fervently pray for your enemies too?  I don't, just as I don't love my neighbor as I love myself. I am simply not there (yet, if ever).

I think the disappointment should begin from us before we proclaim disappointment with the world. Religious pride (which is still pride) is alive and well, FK. At times it seems it has never been better, especially after the Reformation.

[PeterPrinciple]

If, according to the Bible, hundreds of thousands of Hebrews lived in Egypt for 460 years and there is no trace of them archeologically, it is difficult to say archeology is wrong and the Bible is right.

---

You raise a good question. What would one expect to find that would indicate a Hebrew culture from that time period? As I read the Bible, they looked a lot like the rest of the cultures at that time.

In my limited thinking, the Hebrew culture began to be differentiated beginning with the Exodus, not before.

Willing to be enlightened.

[Cvengr]

The Islamic world doesn’t recognize Israel exists today.

I still think otherwise.

[Forest Keeper]

FK: Obviously, in strong contradiction to the Scriptures. The Church you say was established by Christ feels free to contradict Christ whenever it wants. In this case, for example: Rom 9:14-16 : 14 What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! 15 For he says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." 16 It does not, therefore, depend on man's desire or effort, but on God's mercy.

Why don't you quote Christ instead of quoting Paul quoting the OT and saying it's "Christ?" Christ is quoted as saying God causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. [Mat 5:45]

I quote from wherever the facts and issues take me, or even better, from wherever the Holy Spirit leads me. :) In this case, even if you don't believe that Christ was speaking in the OT per my quote, then you still are alleging that "God" contradicts Christ. That doesn't make your case any better. :) Certainly God gives SOME blessings to all people so that they might exist, but the gift of salvational grace is only given to a few.

In your book, Paul and Moses trump Christ.

No, and that is because there is NEVER a need for that. What Moses and Paul wrote was completely true, and does not conflict with Christ. ("Moses wrote about ME!") By my own stated beliefs you have me saying that God trumps God because I say that all scripture is God-breathed. That's impossible. :)

True Christians put Christ first, Paul and Moses second.

In terms of their PERSONS, yes of course. But we are talking about scripture here. God-breathed does not trump God-breathed as to truth.

[Forest Keeper]

If this is sufficient "proof" for you, then you only prove what I have been saying all along: one must believe in order to find the Bible believable. In other words, a predisposition to accept everything in the Bible as true must pre-exist. That's the a priori (what you call "baseless") or blind faith (which you profess, but vehemently deny!).

Ah, this has a little different look to it. I take you to be saying that our belief is that the Holy Spirit zaps us with Biblical KNOWLEDGE and then when we later go read the scriptures we say "Yup, I already knew that". If so, then I disagree. When the Holy Spirit "zaps" what He does is to open our capacity to understanding the logical, reasonable, and common sense Biblical truths that were there all along. In our lost state we are unable to see these truths. They were foolishness to us because we were born fools. :) So, when the Holy Spirit touched me as a teenager, I was not instantly transformed into a believer. I was sent to the scriptures and then BECAME a believer because God's truth was showed to me as it was intended. THEN, it made sense.

Now, when you talk about a predisposition to accept everything (or at least many things, since there are always questions) in the Bible as true, I can live with that. That represents the real change that the Holy Spirit effected in us (heart of stone to flesh). Belief, though, has to be IN something. The word of God tells us what that something is.

So, I see your two statements as being very different. I think a priori, or baseless, faith cannot be true since there is nothing behind it. One would have to legitimize faith in anything else by the same criterion, nothing. I do not legitimize faith in anything else because I think Christianity is very different from other faiths. It makes different claims, its Holy Book is unlike any other, and its effect on the world is unmatched. The Holy Spirit changes a man's heart and leads him to true faith IN something real that is BASED on something real.

Let's face it, one day you woke up and were "touched" by the Holy Spirit, as you conveyed in a previous post, and He immediately "directed" you to the scriptures.

Close enough, yes, but at that moment I did not have faith. The Spirit LED me to faith, so it wasn't baseless. The Bible tells us that we should always be ready to give a REASON for our hope (faith), and also that we should confess our faith. That's not credibly possible is there is nothing behind it, if it is blind.

[getoffmylawn]

...do you really want me to believe that you love your neighbor as you love yourself? Do you pray for your friends? I am sure you do. Do you fervently pray for your enemies too?

Occasionally I feel myself approach this. It's kind of hard to explain the feelings, but I'll try:

I'll feel my entire being filled up with what I can only describe as a love that seems to have no beginning or end. It saturates every corner of my physical being and I feel like water balloon that's been overfilled, but not with water - with love.

Every part of me feels a little bit heavier, and my breathing begins to change. My breathing seems to begin to get deeper and slower. Just when feel like I might burst, tears begin to flow like a river from my eyes, but they aren't tears of happiness or sadness. The best way I can describe them is - they feel like tears of "awe"(?) - if that makes any sense.

While this is going on I feel noting but love for God, all of my loved ones, everyone I've ever met, everyone I'll EVER meet, and this includes ALL my enemies (even separatist Albanians! :-D) Time seems to stop and all that seems exist is Love.

The strangest little things will set this state off in me. Sometimes just witnessing 2 strangers come together to make someone's life a little better will trigger this response in me. I try not to make too much out of it, but it sure feels good. It feels like my entire being is a prayer when I get like this.

[Quix]

Agreed. I resonate with that.

[Forest Keeper]

It was what Abraham didn't do (kill his son) that was credited to his righteousness, or it was rather what he did do (trust and obey God) that was credited to him as righteousness, but it all involved doing something that expressed harmony with God's will.

Kosta, Abraham was credited with righteousness because of faith here:

Gen 15:6 : Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.

Now, this was before Isaac was even born, as the context makes absolutely clear. The story of what Abraham DID that you are referring to happened in Genesis 22, many years later. Therefore, your correlation doesn't match at all. It WASN'T action at the place "The Lord Will Provide" that made Abraham righteous, it was faith well before that.

The Jews believe (and I think Orthodox and Catholic believers can understand this) that by obeying God's commandments listed in the OT (and another seven rabbinical ones), they are credited righteousness in God's eyes (i.e. made acceptable to God), just as it was credited to Abraham, hence the Abrahamic faith.

Well, the Jews REJECT CHRIST!!! :) I will leave it to the Catholics and the Orthodox as to whether they can understand THAT! :) Christ does NOT teach that righteousness is earned by works. Instead, He says:

John 6:28-29 : 28 Then they asked him, "What must we do to do the works God requires?" 29 Jesus answered, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent."

Do the Jews you are apparently following trump Christ here? :) Do you still believe that you are "made acceptable", i.e. saved, to God by the physical works you do?

Of course, God is not obliged to give us credit for anything, so technically speaking there is no contract and there is no wage, but it is obvious that in the Bible God creates conditional covenants with conditional rewards and punishments, and God even obliged Himself to reward us for obeying His commands. (bold added)

AH-HA!, FK exclaimed. :) This is the first admission I can think of wherein an Apostolic acknowledges that God owes a debt to man for performance. We have been screaming this from the mountaintops as being Apostolic error for years, always to denial. But, at least you have the intellectual honesty to admit the belief.

In the Bible, God makes "if then" promises and pledges. If you eat this, you will live, if you believe in Me, you will live...I will not let you go if you believe in Me...etc.

You are right, those are the words in some cases. And, based only on those verses, I can see that a reasonable person COULD think that God was offering a quid pro quo with these. However, to accept that one MUST disregard the TOTALITY of scriptures and only focus in on one interpretation of those verses. The scriptures in toto, including the Gospels, and especially including Christ's own words, preach a faith-based salvation. The verses you refer to are true statements based on the God-promised completion of the good work that He began in each of His children.

So, it's not just credit; it's not just faith. It's the works in harmony with God's will regardless if one believes or not and not just any works that God rewards. Thus, if I water my flowers every day does not warrant rewards, but if I do acts of mercy, even if I don't believe, it is still doing God's will even if I don't realize it, because being merciful is in doing God's will. (bold added)

Well, that is PLAINLY a works-ONLY salvation model. As I warned earlier, this is exactly what can happen if one rejects the historicity of the Bible. The "message" can be deemed anything the person wishes it to be because there are no obstacles, anything goes. So, if one wants to reject all the scriptures requiring faith, then that is fine because they don't meet some sort of test set by the person who already has HIS message picked out. All of those verses are false since the Bible is only a product of fallible men doing the best they can. You have often referred to unicorns on Jupiter, and with all due respect I would have to put this in the same category. If your faith really is works-only, then you truly are a lone wolf Christian.

[Forest Keeper]

I do dismiss [2nd Peter] as a late addition, as most do, for obvious reasons.

You go on to list several reasons why you don't accept it, but do you really think you are in a majority of Christians who reject Peter's epistles? How about within your own Church? Are they dismissed?

We also know from early Apostolic Fathers and early Church Fathers (turn of the century) that the four Gospels were unquestionably considered "sacred writings" (i.e. Scriptures), but not Pauline Epistles.

Even if I put my Apostolic hat on (which I have to borrow :) my answer would be "so what" since we're not talking about an ecumenical Council here. Isn't that the correct way to look at it? :)

But the most compelling reason to dismiss Petrine authorship of 2 Peter is precisely in the paragraph you quote. Peter and Paul died around the same time (64 and 67 AD respectively) and clearly Peter was not in the position to see Paul's collected works, let alone call them "scriptures."

Why is that clear, and why would it be necessary for him to have seen ALL of Paul's works to declare the ones he had seen scriptures?

[Forest Keeper]

FK: Hundreds of millions of Christians around the world know exactly what the author is talking about here. They have lived it. They know it to be true.

Kosta: FK, 1.2 billion Muslims in the world believe the Koran, and know exactly what authors defending Islam are talking about . They have lived it. They also claim to know it to be "true." Get real. That is neither a proof nor an argument worthy of consideration.

Then objectively, you see nothing superior about Christianity over any other claimed faith or religion. Again, as warned, that's what you get when you reject the truth and historicity of scriptures. That's what you get with blind and baseless faith. I imagine Christianity being on a supermarket shelf and you just picked it perhaps because that was the brand your family has always used. Kosta, I'm telling you it's not supposed to work like that. :)

[Quix]

Thanks for the pings.

And for your tireless labors in behalf of Biblical Truth.

[kosta50]

You raise a good question. What would one expect to find that would indicate a Hebrew culture from that time period?

I don't know. Moses seems to have had a pretty good idea they were not Egyptians! I imagine they would be distinguished by names no matter what script was used. One can only wonder in what alphabet were the Ten Commandments written given that the Jews did not adopt the Phoenician alphabet until the 10th century BC. LOL!

[kosta50]

The Islamic world doesn’t recognize Israel exists today. I still think otherwise.

What's that got to do with my post?

[kosta50]

In my limited thinking, the Hebrew culture began to be differentiated beginning with the Exodus, not before.

Archeological evidence suggets very strongly (multiple sources) that Israelites worshiped a goddess consort of the Hebrew God (El in Israel and Yhwh in Judah) as late as the 8th century BC.

Since there is no similar evidence of any Exodus or wanderings, I would say their differentiation took place gradually living next top the Canaanites.

[Forest Keeper]

If the Bible being the word of God by “your case that YOU made”(Pride) attacks the Eucharist as Christ not being FULLY present in Blessed Sacrament(Body ,Blood Soul and Divinity),than “ your case” is influenced by the devil,FK

Oh, well, I'm glad we cleared that up. :) Anyone who disagrees with you on this is led by satan. OK. Thank you for reminding me of this. I will take it then that you are not one of those many Catholics who pussyfoots around what "anathematize" means and you will freely admit that your Church curses to hell all who disagree with your tenets. Yours is a lovely faith, the one that curses other Christians to hell. :)

The Catechism explains this well regarding “remembrance” http://www.vatican.va/archive/catechism/p2s2c1a3.htm#I

I disagree. I took your link to be a reference to CCC 1324-1327. If so, then there is no explanation. All there is says "The Eucharist is everything". That doesn't mean anything specific. You can claim it as an overall philosophy, but you can't say that it explains what "remembrance" means. The word is too specific to dilute it into a vast "everything" as you attempted to do.

We have been down this road before,fk, and the typology of the Eucharist matches along with writings of the early Christians to boot.

And as I have said before I have sympathy for some typology, some of it makes sense. However, it can easily be manipulated to mean whatever the person wants it to mean. There has to be a grounding. My grounding is other scripture, not what men who came later wrote as their personal opinions. I did read all of your examples, and I agree with some of them, but not others. The MAIN problem I see in your examples is the confusion about "physical with physical" and "spiritual with spiritual". In Catholicism, it seems there is no distinction and that they are the same. Jesus says they are very different:

John 3:6 : Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.

John 6:63 : The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.

In Catholicism the emphasis seems to be on the flesh, on rituals, and on men.

On the particular examples from the website, I have a few comments:

Exodus 12:43-45; Ezek. 44:9 - no one outside the “family of God” shall eat the lamb. Non-Catholics should not partake of the Eucharist until they are in full communion with the Church.

Given the salvific nature you place on the Eucharist, doesn't this statement make it pretty tough for a Catholic to say that Protestants might also be saved? This one seems standard issue elitist to me.

Sir. 24:21 - God says those who eat Him will hunger for more, and those who drink Him will thirst for more.

Really??? That is very odd in light of:

John 4:10-14 : 10 Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water ." 11 "Sir," the woman said, "you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water ? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?" 13 Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

But, I guess that's what the Apocrypha will get you, contradiction with REAL scripture. :)

Jesus says, this IS my body and blood. Jesus does not say, this is a symbol of my body and blood.

It would have been stupid of Him to say so. The assembled disciples could see well enough that Jesus was not offering His literal flesh or blood. He was symbolizing them with bread and wine. At the Last Supper, His blood and flesh WERE technically available, if that's what He wanted, but of course He didn't. So, He said do this in remembrance of me. That is: "It wasn't literal this time, and I don't mean it to be literal in the future." Unfortunately, this simple thing escapes so many.

1 Cor. 10:16 - Paul asks the question, “the cup of blessing and the bread of which we partake, is it not an actual participation in Christ's body and blood?” Is Paul really asking because He, the divinely inspired writer, does not understand?

Well, it seems to me that Catholics accuse Paul of being confused all the time. For example, on whether we are saved by grace through faith, or on how many humans have sinned. When convenient, Catholics have nothing to do with Paul. He is an outcast. But here, apparently he is a divinely inspired writer. I suppose that's nice. :)

1 Cor. 11:27-30 - thus, if we partake of the Eucharist unworthily, we are guilty of literally murdering the body of Christ, and risking physical consequences to our bodies. This is overwhelming evidence for the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. These are unjust penalties if the Eucharist is just a symbol. (bold added)

How many times does our Savior have to die for you folks? :) If you really believe that you have the power to murder Christ's body then I don't know what to say to you. Can you think of any evidence of other Christians' beliefs that Christ is actually in Heaven, OUT of your reach for murdering purposes, and is right now next to the Father? Anything in the Bible perhaps? :)

Heb. 9:12 – Jesus enters into heaven, the Holy Place, taking His own blood. How can this be? He wasn’t bleeding after the resurrection. This is because He enters into the heavenly sanctuary to mediate the covenant of His body and blood by eternally offering it to the Father. This offering is made present to us in the same manner as Melchizedek’s offering, under the appearance of bread and wine. (bold added)

And what of this:

Rom 6:8-10 : 8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10 The death he died , he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.

1 Peter 3:18 : 18 For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit, ...

I would say these are pretty incompatible with your author. How can Jesus die once and for all, yet be eternally offering His blood and body to the Father for you folks to "re-present"? That makes no sense. It sounds like you are slow bleeding our Savior over and over again. Why was His singular sacrifice simply not good enough for you all? What did it lack? What was its flaw to you? I don't understand your thinking, other than to suppose it is another example of God needing to be lessened in order for man to be raised.

I could go on and on, but I think it would be best to keep this to one post. Overall, I criticize this author for overreaching. He draws conclusions out of thin air all over the place. I think he would have done a much better job on behalf of Catholicism if he had simply chosen 10% of his examples and made at least an arguable case, even though I still would have disagreed with him. :) He was grasping at so many straws he lost a lot of credibility with me. I couldn't take him seriously.

Again, the theme I got was that Catholics believe that physical sacrifices are the way to Heaven. Despite the faith examples of people like Abraham, Moses, and David, and many others, why do you think that physical sacrifice is the way to Heaven as so many Jews believed WHOM Jesus criticized? The physical is of the flesh. The spiritual is of the spiritual. Why is that so hard for you all to accept?

Give it up,Dear Brother and stop misleading others who think you should write a book.

Well, I can assure you that if I am ever so led into writing a book, it will look NOTHING like the exposition you have presented me with here. Praise GOD!!! :)

[kosta50]

Despite the faith examples of people like Abraham, Moses, and David, and many others, why do you think that physical sacrifice is the way to Heaven as so many Jews believed WHOM Jesus criticized?

I don't want to jump ahead in my order of responses, but just want to comment on these two points you make.

Jesus didn't criticize Abraham or Moses, yet they both made sacrifices, and the Law, which Christians reject, was written by Moses (even though Christ never criticized him). Was Moses wrong?

The physical is of the flesh. The spiritual is of the spiritual

This seems to be the newly discovered "aha" phrase. God created man—body and soul. A human being is not human, as created, without one or the other. So, while the spirit (life) and the body (dirt) are separate, a human being needs both to be human, just as any living thing needs both to be what God intended it to be. A dead dog is not a pet.

If, as your example of John says (talk about basing everything on one verse in the Bible!), flesh counts for nothing, then why don't we just dump the bodies of the deceased like they are "nothing," instead of treating them as if they were still "something," or better yet, somebody?

[kosta50]

I am making a logical inference from what Jesus said, that man does not live by bread alone but on every word from God

He didn't say that in your Bible. He said it according to the Septuagint, which your side rejects. You have got to make up your mind.  I showed you that the Hebrew Bible doesn't have the word "word" and the mouth means source. God's word is creative power, not literal words. In that sense, allegorically, everything came to be through God's "word."

I believe the words of God have actual power, and so I want to avail myself of that power by knowing them

Might as well start a burning bush and worship it, FK.

If everything that comes from God is divine in essence then everything in the world is divine in essence. So, your argument falls apart since no one goes around or believes that anyone should worship everything in God's creation.

So, then, what God makes is not perfect??? God makes imperfect things? What a sloppy "God" you believe in! No wonder people have no respect for environment.

We would say that God made everything good but, because he gave us freedom, we chose to make it corrupt, and that  includes  the scriptures. Were we not created in God's image and likeness, or did God create us as depraved, decrepit, evil sinners? Wait, the Reformed God would do that, of course! It all makes sense now! :)

My devotion is to God's word, not the pages in the Book.

Except that they "are" God's words because you choose to believe they are. You have no proof whatsoever that they are.

Kosta: The Bible says the HS will "illuminate the scriptures" to us?!?

FK: Well sure. That's what John 14 means: John 14:25-26 :...the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you

Just as I thought, you added the word "scriptures" to this! See how things get corrupt? It says nothing of scriptures. It doesn't specify how the HS will illuminate us.

The Holy Spirit does not teach new doctrine but shows us what Jesus has already saiThe Holy Spirit does not teach new doctrine but shows us what Jesus has already said

Except when it comes to Paul, of course. He tells us things Jesus never told others.

No, he obviously learned about God and how to worship from those who came before him. That was not made up by men but given by God.

Abraham was a paganuntil God called him. You are saying that we have pagans worshiping according to God's will? It wasn't "offensive" in those days to God to have people worship idols?  This "God" of yours sure misled a lot of people for a long time!

No, He criticized the Jews who did believe in a works-based model.

The Torah contains 613 mitzvot, obligatory God's commandments, which according to you are God's very words. The Law, according to the OT, dictated to Moses by God, whom Jesus credits for writing about Him, and whom Jesus never criticizes as being wrong, instituted warks-based worship. Of  course, Paul "liberated" us from such obligations instituted in the Law by God.

How could Jesus, an observant Jew, criticize the faith He did not come (or want) to change? In fact, in order to be a perfect observant Jew, He swould have had to observe all 613 commandments given in the Law. His "opposition" was to some of the people for their misinterpretation (too literal) of the Law. He never said works-based worship was wrong and pointless and unnecessary. Paul does.

What did Jesus say the work of God was???

Doing the commandments, FK. The Jews take all 613 in account. We cherry-pick only the Ten. The rest of God's commandments to Moses don't count. LOL!

Faith and the Bible BOTH come from God. Paul knowing Christ also came from God. There is no contradiction.

Faith comes from realizing that something had to create, or at least cause all this to exist, FK. It's pure reason. Scriptures and religion are a human "explanation" of this observation. But no one quotes God as saying "take this book and read it so that you may have life."

First comes grace. Then one learns what to have faith in. Then one has faith. The overall point is that if one prays from "nothing" then it is not going to be heard by God.

What is grace? And why would you want to learn what to have faith in? So, it's basically this scenario: Grace, God zapps you and you are no "like new." Then you say "I gotta believe in something but I don't know what!" LOL!   :)

Kosta: But, let's say you receive grace without the word. In other words you believe, right?

FK: No, because what do you believe IN?

Love. Isn't grace unmerited love received from God? Through grace, we recognize God through love, not in some rumbling volcano or in a burning bush.

Kosta: Where does it say in the Bible that, in addition to grace (grace is not sufficient!) we need to read the Bible in order to know what to believe in?

FK: I am not talking about literacy. I am talking about having enough information to know and CONFESS what it is that one believes. That information is contained in God's word, however it is transmitted

What is it that you confess? The law and the prophets. Why, the Bible tells us it's love. Well, then, describe what Love is.

[kosta50]

I know [sic] it was the Holy Spirit because I believe that satan will not lead people directly toward Christ, to His word, to His faith, to His love.

And the Bible reminds you that even Satan can appear as the Angel of Light. Sure, he can lead you to Christ, because Satan does not deny God; he simply distorts God by deceptive impressions we wish to believe.

And since the Bible says that I couldn't have been leading myself (as there is no good in me to search for the one true God), and we eliminated satan, then all that leaves is Holy Spirit.

I don't see how you "eliminated satan."  All you did was accept whatever was presented to you, and the Bible reminds us that what you see is not necessarily what you get.

Remember that the Antichrist will appear as someone Christ-like. That's the whole purpose of deception. The devil doesn't deny, he distorts, even ever so slightly, but sufficiently to make us miss the mark.