Posted on 07/22/2014 2:22:53 PM PDT by Faith Presses On
Jesus certainly was not a “Bible believer,” as we use that term in the post Billy Graham era of American fundamentalist religiosity that’s used as a trade-marked product to sell religion. Jesus didn’t take the Jewish scriptures at face value. In fundamentalist terms, Jesus was a rule-breaking relativist who wasn’t even “saved,” according to evangelical standards. Evangelicals insist that you have to believe very specific interpretations of the Bible to be saved. Jesus didn’t. He undercut the scriptures.
A leper came to Jesus and said, “Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.” If Jesus had been a good religious Jew, he would have said, “Be healed,” and just walked away. Instead, he stretched out his hand and touched the leper, saying, “I do choose. Be made clean,” even though he was breaking the specific rules of Leviticus. Two chapters teach that anyone touching a person with leprosy is contaminated.
The stories about Jesus that survived the bigots, opportunists and delusional fanatics who wrote the New Testament contain powerful and enlightened truths that would someday prove the undoing of the Church built in his name. Like a futurist vindicated by events as yet undreamed, Jesus’ message of love was far more powerful than the magical thinking of the writers of the book he’s trapped in. In Jesus’ day the institutions of religion, state, misogyny and myth were so deeply ingrained that the ultimate dangerousness of his life example could not be imagined. For example his feminism, probably viewed as an eccentricity in his day, would prove transformational.
Jesus believed in God rather than in a book about God. The message of Jesus’ life is an intervention in and an acceleration of the evolution of empathy...
(Excerpt) Read more at patheos.com ...
The bible says there is no legitimate private interpretation... But heh, what would you guys care what the bible says...
Where?
Error heaped on error.
The teaching now is not consistent with what it was.
You said Catholics pray to people in hell. Offer evidence to support the assertion.
Colossians 2:13-14
When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins,
14having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.
the words, "having canceled" in the Greek means to wipe away, obliterate. the idea is He has completely rubbed out/completely removed all of our sins.
He has nailed them to the cross. There is nothing we can do to "earn" our salvation nor is there anything we can do to "unearn" our salvation.
I really fail to see how anyone could think they are not completely forgiven for all their sins based on this verse.
OH NO, you are saying that Jesus wasn't God ????????
To me it has always made sense that because of our free will we can choose good or evil....even after being “born again” with an altar call or a similar emotional experience.
Was Paul saved? Based on your line of thinking....NO!
If Paul isn't saved...then none of us ever will be.
Romans 7:14-24
14For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin.
15For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate.
16But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good.
17So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.
18For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not.
19For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want.
20But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.
21I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good.
22For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man,
23but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members.
24Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?
25Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.
I believe I said Catholics pray to people when they don't know whether the people are in heaven or hell...
Sometimes I think that if I said the sun would come up in the morning here, someone would disagree :)
Pretty sad. Even the Angels said do not pray to us.
Do you know where in the bible where Jesus said, "only the Father knows....?
The bible means nothing to them...They made up their own religion...Then (recently) stole our name...
This, however, does not in the least undermine my respect for, and reliance on, the Bible as what it truly is, God's word. His message gets through, regardless, Deo gratias.
That may be scripture all should read and remeber. would you like me to post it or can you find it in your Bible ?
The Dead Sea scrolls were almost identical to current scrolls. There were few differences mainly change in shape of the same letter. The Scribes would add up the values of the letters in all the lines and columns to look for errors. Temple scrolls were perfect. I don’t believe that all the scrolls are in error.
Here is an interesting article about scribes and texts.
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/bibleorg.html
“the gift of Free Will that God gives to all mankind.”
Not arguing this issue one way or another, but you pulled that statement out of thin air. No where in bible does the gospel or the “Good News” is free will described as a gift.
There are reportedly 3,536,489 letters in the Bible. (I didn't count them, I looked it up!) If the text is 99.5% error free, that makes 17,687 errors. And there are indeed thousands of scribal errors in the various mss of scripture.
However, I do not derive a skeptical attitude about the Bible from those calculations. The truth is that the Bible is rather astoundingly error-free, compared to any other ancient text. Even more important, most of these scribal errors make no difference whatsoever. For instance, one text says "he had sheep and goats," another says "he had goats and sheep", and the Aramaic is over there saying "he had herds and flocks."
Lots of variants, makes no difference at all.
People who play up scribal errors to encourage agnosticism (like Bart Ehrman) are, in my view, pedantic fools. They turn "perfect text" into a kind of an idol, and then when they find a half-penny variant, they say "There is no god!"
I just go by what the Bible says and this is good enough for me.
From that, I see that salvation is... “... that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”
Romans 10:9-10
If you have an argument with the Bible, take it up with God ... :-) ...
I think the greatest errors in the Bible come form translators. The King James Bible was translated by the best at the time but thy had little knowledge of ancient Hebrew customs and such and could not fully understand the Hebrew text. They did their best. Lots of our Founding Fathers could read Hebrew, Greek, Latin and other ancient texts which gave them a greater understanding. We can find much information on ancient texts but we can find more garbage than any other generation also.
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