Posted on 11/15/2012 8:27:56 AM PST by DaveMSmith
The core topic is whether we are expected to understand Scripture or not, and how each of us is affected by the particular lens through which we view Scripture.
Belonging to one, being baptized into one, attending one every Sunday without fail, does nothing to procure salvation.
What God calls the church is the body of believers, where ever they are in space or time.
What's right is Scripture, the Bible.
And what each denomination believes is usually stated in their statement of faith and are not so wildly divergent as all that."
Great points.
If the PLAIN TEXT can be understood by a 10 year old, then we had better NOT be 'interpreting it' to mean something else!
ALL 'lens' have some type of bias, distortion and/or preconceived destination.
Not ANOTHER DMS thread!
Yep, even Pharaoh's magicians were able to mimic some of the miracles that Moses and Aaron performed through God's power. They still could not "out perform" God.
They were able to turn their staffs into serpents too but we all know what happened to their serpents.
it's as if, in "sending strong delusion" as it is written, He only need lift His hand of protection though even in this "lifting" or unprotecting as it were, particular selected delusion can be aimed at specific recipients, at specific times, too.
It's either something along those admittedly vague lines or else (not meaning to contradict what you brought from II Thess) He is in no way precluded for using such, even for demonstration of His glory & might.
Interesting in the passage you bring is the second part of the first sentence "...only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way."
Even then "he who restrains" is still capable of asserting control even AFTER "taken out of the way"
now one here could launch into much of what the "taken out of the way" may mean, yet to cut it short, what do we see in the world today but a general increase in lawlessness (compared to what is much written about in the Word concerning the Laws, both in physical realm, but more importantly spiritual realm application? Ok, I realize there are strong ties between the two "realms" yet the spirit of the law comes before and outweighs the letter).
Nebuchadnezzar comes to mind here also, in regards to "sending strong delusion"...when that king came out of THAT strong delusion, said to have been sent by the Lord to him, what did he do but acknowledge & give praise to the Lord (God of the Hebrews)?
Through Daniel, the Lord termed Nebuchadnezzar "His" servant, also. Food for thought if such hasn't already been mentioned. And if it has, I must confess I'm late to the party, having not closely followed this particular conversation I'm barging into presently. (though I did review #16 and skimmed much of the rest) <8^)
I'll admit my comments here are imperfect, spur-of-the-moment hasty as they are, yet events as outlined in Daniel do much support what can be seen in II Thessalonians, AFAIKT.
Yep.
and if you can’t actually quote what the Master said don’t try and reinterpret it.....that is the problem with too many. Get a good Concordance. If you can’t or won’t learn the languages (or at least familiarize your self with them) at least read those who have.....
Thanks
And we should notice why some of those teachings are hard to understand - the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.
The remedy is to rely upon the Holy Spirit, to study so we are not ignorant of God's word and to be single-minded - instead of double-minded - which would make us stable in all our ways. By following these guidelines, we can then understand the teachings God has revealed to us in Scripture. Contrary to some people's ideas, the Bible is NOT a code book requiring an infallible interpreter to tell us what God wants us to know. Those who have the Holy Spirit within are able to learn and understand even the deepest things of the knowledge written in the Bible. It is "foolishness" to those without the Spirit, but we HAVE been given the Spirit to illuminate the truths of God within our hearts.
He makes it sound as if they must both be on to something considering how similar they are to each other. Rather than taking that similarity to be a sign of truth, I think it points to several possibilities unrelated at all to truth:
- It could be that Joseph Smith incorporated Swedenborg's teachings into his own. Swedenborg came first so he didn't get it from JS.
or
- They BOTH could be influenced by the same spirit of delusion. There's not an infinite number of lies even Satan can think up.
I do not believe for a second that either one of them is right. Neither receive the Bible as Divinely-inspired truth, though they may claim they do. Because if they did they would not contradict it in so many ways. That's why I am so thankful for the Bible. It is the one infallible and objective authority we can turn to and trust to tell the difference between truth and "falsity".
That is a good question, and surly deserves an answer. I have not one clue as to the necessity of so many religions, except to keep a bunch of dead beats off of the welfare rolls. I believe your idea is correct. All we need do is study the bible and follow it’s teachings, another thing I believe is necessary is to fellowship with like believers.
Sadly, the answer is, yes. There are a few who have stated many times that it is beneath them to have to dialog with those they consider "apostate". All they can bear to do is insult and degrade every chance they have - all for our own good, of course. ;o)
Swedenborg was similar in some ways, like his claimed meetings with so many principle persons in the Bible: http://peacebyjesus.witnesstoday.org/Swedenborg.html
I have a family member who suffers from delusions of grandeur, paranoid schizophrenia and other mental health problems. He is and has been convinced for years that he is Elijah the prophet and that he will replace "God the Father Almighty" and be the new god. He said "people" have told him this through a "transceiver" implanted in his brain as well as the "voices" he hears. There is nothing I can say that helps him. When I show him in Scripture what the Bible says about Elijah and Almighty God, his response is, "You can't believe everything you read in the Bible.". I don't see whole lot of difference between him and some of these self-proclaimed prophets and saviors. It's just like Jesus warned us - MANY would come in his name and try to deceive people away from the truth. Some of it is because of pure evil from the Devil and some are just people seriously mentally ill who really believe what they say. Thank God we have the Scriptures to lead and guide us! Those who ignore the Bible are sometimes sitting ducks for the craziness out there.
Yes, that is sad, but let God be true and every man a liar.
Okay, time to put up or shut up. I'm weary of attacks from those that do not proclaim their faith on their profile pages, like terrorists with covered faces.
Dave Smith on Facebook has all my friends, family and affiliations. Find one that is deluding or else I assume you are talking about yourselves by projection.
BibleGateway.com
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ESV
John 17:17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.
John 3:14-18 14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. 16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
John 14:6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Ephesians 2:4-10 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Salvation is found only in Jesus, who is the word and the truth, the ONLY Truth.
Anything which disagrees with Him is a lie.
Follow your visions and visitations and feely good experiences and reject the truth of and in Scripture, and you are on the board and easy path to hell. Those occultic experiences you've been having are NOT of God, they are parlor tricks by Satan intended to deceive you and apparently succeeding.
Not having something on our homepage does NOT invalidate anything we have to say on FR. Nor does putting something up ON your homepage validate anything.
Anyone who posts that kind of personal information on the internet these days is a fool
I like the cut of your jib bb!
“I’m weary of attacks from those that do not proclaim their faith on their profile pages...”
My profile page isn’t where I’m going to witness. However, I have participated on the religion forum here often enough for a lot of folks to know my belief. And my comment on this thread was to use Panetta as an example of a deluding influence.
However, based on post #1, I’d say you are BEGGING to be deluded, because you seem to care more about coincidences or odd bits of trivia than you do the revealed word of God:
“Last night before seeing this live stream, I went to Church to take Holy Supper to coincide with our Cathedral’s last Sunday. It’s an informal service and was very intimate to me, my wife, one other and Mother Betty. I explained to her that I was ready to launch my healing and teaching lay ministry and talked about offering our Path To Integrity journey program locally using Church facilities - they have the workbook for review. (Joy To The World is now playing on TV).
The story was about the first Episcopal Bishop of CT. The names William and Smith were mentioned. William is my father in law’s name. Concord was mentioned... grapes. I was smiling the whole time (which I don’t do often in Church). We took turns discussing how we related to the story. We took Communion and I received a prayer and Anointing for my path.
Ten minuted after I got home, Rev Rose began speaking on the stream... I had forgotten. I settled in and the Lord showed me such miracles, joys and delights! When ‘let him hear!’ was read, my cell phone rang and there was music playing on the other end! Then as soon I heard about sowing seed in good ground from the parable of the sower, my computer started playing Glenn Miller’s AAF Band’s radio intro - the Air Force theme - Off we go into the wild blue yonder - BY ITSELF! Never happened before. (My computer’s name is Arcana) And the house phone started to ring the same second! Needless to say, this is a very important message for all of us here on the RF.”
Don’t build your life on stuff like that!
“Swedenborg held that God is one person revealed in Jesus Christ, which was later independently expressed by modern day Oneness Pentecostalism. He stated that the doctrine of a trinity of three persons originated in the fourth century with the adoption of the Nicene Creed to combat the heresy of Arianism, but this was unknown to the early Apostolic Church, as shown by the Apostles’ Creed which preceded the Nicene Creed.”
You can preach that garbage, but you cannot expect to preach it unchallenged. And a lot of us will challenge it based on scripture, which is a lot more authoritative than “When ‘let him hear!’ was read, my cell phone rang and there was music playing on the other end!”
There is perhaps only one group around here that claims their comments are perfect...and they harbor the greatest errors. Your remarks are interesting and germaine.
I will add to your statements that when the Holy Spirit is taken out of the way there is no question that He still will wield influence. You note this correctly. Paul's comment there is largely symbolic. He means that whatever restraint the Holy Spirit has exercised upon the earth, will be significantly reduced to cause every terrible thing to run wild.
After all, the universe lives, moves, and has its existence owed to the continual sustaining word of the Triune God. If He were fully/completely absent, the universe would slip into non-existence.
But, good points.
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