And if the HS, which so many of you claim to be indwelling you..., "will teach you everything" you need to know, how does that explain 33,000 denominations and different beliefs?
Kosta: A story you read can be true but incomplete. If you hear there is a forest fire, but you are not told where, that doesn't make the story untrue. :)
FK: But Kosta, that is not the approach you take. Especially regarding the OT, you say that when there is a story of a forest fire that it is patently FALSE and a lie and that it never happened. You say there was never a forest fire and that the story was made up as myth in order to make some point. That makes the story untrue, and it also makes Jesus complicit in the untruth since He referred to these stories matter-of-factly, as though they were literally true
But I have already told you that Jesus chose to work within the framework of Judaism, or else He could have just as easily confederated everyone's hearts and be done with the whole thing, no blood, no suffering...and within that framework He spoke what the Jews believed and have believed for centuries. He did not come to discredit their faith.
Instead He came to reveal that God is not the Zeus-like God of the OT, but just the opposite. He also came to show us that the OT, depsite its perception of God, actually foreshaddows God's true revealtion in many ways.
We can ask, why did He even bother coming into this world as a Jew, since He must have known that, despite being sent ONLY for the lost sheep of Israel, the faith in Him was rejected by the very people He came for.
So, what difference does it make if He had challenged their beliefs or not, except that they would have rejected Him sooner!
But from what is written about His ministry, it is clear that God is not the cause of death, but is the source of life, and that passages in the OT that contradict Christ are not understood correctly.
Did a Great Flood occur? Very possibly. The Mediterranean was flooded by the Atlantic when the Atlas mountains broke, and the Black Sea was formed when the straight of Bosphorus was formed. And, imagine, many peoples indigenous to the Black Sea speak of the Flood too!
But did it involve the whole world, and did it drown everyone but Noah and a few people and animals with him, I seriously doubt it. The Jews adopted the Flood for their religious proposes and made a religious myth based probably on some factual event.
Did God kill all the Egyptian firstborn? If that is the same God we know in Christ, He didn't. And I think the Church would be hard pressed to show otherwise.
But did the story of Exodus fit the Jewish myth of having lived in Egypt for 450 years (and leaving no trace), or over one million Hebrew living in Sinai for 40 years (mostly in ONE place) and leaving no trace? Yes, by all means, it fits Jewish mythology and is, indeed, part of it.
All evidence shows that the Jews never left Canaan and that when the son of Rhamses II conquered it, he did not take special revenge against the Hebrews in the land of Canaan.
And Moses' birth is also part of the Babylonian legend, almost verbatim. So, did something like that ever happen? Quite possibly, FK, but was it part of God's revelation, I doubt it very, very seriously.
FK: That would appear to confirm a belief that the scriptures are not from God, but are only from men. That's what I thought you thought.
Kosta: How so?
Because I thought you hold that the words of scriptures are men's words and not God's words, that God's inspiration only means that He nudged them to write at all, etc. Here you say that God's truth is not imperfect. That must be because He never gave it to the writers of the scriptures. I mean, consider how much of the Bible you accept. :)
So you claim that your faith and worship are perfect?
Of course not, else I would be God. The faith and worship are there in the scriptures and I continue to find more of it as I am sanctified in my Christian walk for the rest of my life.
You also must claim, then, that every version of the Bible, and every translation of it, is equally perfect because it contains the truth of God in it.
I can't possibly speak for every version since I haven't come close to reading all of them. I am familiar enough with the NIV, KJV, and ESV to know that all of them convey the true and complete faith in accordance with 2 Tim. 3:16-17.
And if the HS, which so many of you claim to be indwelling you..., "will teach you everything" you need to know, how does that explain 33,000 denominations and different beliefs?
Well, the question blows itself out of the water since it includes a false claim. The core beliefs of Bible-believing Christians are very similar, AND the teaching of the HS is a lifelong process.
But I have already told you that Jesus chose to work within the framework of Judaism, or else He could have just as easily confederated everyone's hearts and be done with the whole thing, no blood, no suffering...and within that framework He spoke what the Jews believed and have believed for centuries. He did not come to discredit their faith.
So Jesus played the hand He was dealt by man? Since you give these as the only two options it really seems like this is what you are saying. Besides, He certainly DID discredit the false faiths of many Jews.
Instead He came to reveal that God is not the Zeus-like God of the OT, but just the opposite.
God did not come to trash His own revelation. :) He showed many how they were misinterpreting the truth that was always there and is still there today.
We can ask, why did He even bother coming into this world as a Jew, since He must have known that, despite being sent ONLY for the lost sheep of Israel, the faith in Him was rejected by the very people He came for.
He came into the world as a Jew because the Jews were God's people. The lost sheep of Israel are all of the elect who do or did not yet believe, including Gentiles, as Paul tells us. Jews and Gentiles alike both rejected Him and accepted Him.
So, what difference does it make if He had challenged their beliefs or not, except that they would have rejected Him sooner!
Christ was not a salesman. The predestined elect were always going to be saved, and the lost will always be lost. Christ completed the revelation God wanted us to have.
But from what is written about His ministry, it is clear that God is not the cause of death, but is the source of life, and that passages in the OT that contradict Christ are not understood correctly.
That is the mono-faceted, smaller, limited God and starts with the incorrect presupposition that the Gospels are the complete message and the rest of the Bible is fluff. Christ had a specific mission for His time here on earth. For some reason you have converted that to the sum total of the entity we know as God. IOW, you have invented a rule of some kind that Christ's mission on earth was to show us everything that God wanted us to know. If that was really so, then He would have had no desire to tell others to know their OT scriptures. If the revelation of Jesus was absolutely everything, then Jesus would have had the same opinion of the OT as you do. He clearly did not.
Did God kill all the Egyptian firstborn? If that is the same God we know in Christ, He didn't. And I think the Church would be hard pressed to show otherwise.
That's because you see Christ's singular mission on earth to be the sum of His being. I don't know why you believe that, but to believe it WOULD require throwing out the vast majority of scriptures.