Posted on 09/22/2016 10:45:55 AM PDT by fishtank
Pastor Andy Stanley says the Bible is too hard to defend
Evangelical pastor preaches that the Bible isn’t the foundation for the Christian faith
by Lita Cosner and Scott Gillis
Published: 22 September 2016 (GMT+10)
Andy Stanley has a church network of over 30,000 people in the Atlanta area, and his church was rated the fastest-growing in America in 2014 and 2015.1 Recently, he has been criticized by many evangelicals for saying that we need to take the focus off the Bible and put it on the Resurrection, because he claims that gives us a firmer foundation for our faith. As Stanley put it: “We believe Jesus rose from the dead not because the Bible says so. It is way better than that! Christianity does not hang by the thread of ‘The Bible told me so’.”2 And: “The original version [of Christianity], the pre-Bible version, was defensible, it was endurable, it was persecutable, it was fearless, it was compassionate, and it was compelling,” but he claims “it is next to impossible to defend the entire Bible”.2
(Excerpt) Read more at creation.com ...
Easy to defend if you have the intellectual honesty and imagination to try to look at the context of human existance when the various parts of scripture were written. People who try to judge history through 2016 lenses are dishonest mental midgets.
Here is a message for anyone involved with his church network in Atlanta. “Come out of her, my people”
Mr D, you left out the “God breathed” part of the “useful for teaching” scripture...
Related article:
Is the Bible Foundational to Christianity? Engaging with Andy Stanley
What is the cure that Stanley has offered? In brief, Christians need to stop basing their faith on the Bible.
http://theaquilareport.com/is-the-bible-foundational-to-christianity-engaging-with-andy-stanley/
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”
Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know Him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. -- 1 Corinthians 1:18-25
We send missionaries to foreign lands. Send some to his church
“Prayer and a relationship with Him through the spirit is most important. The bible is a nice teaching tool. One can be a Christian without ever seeing a bible. One can not be a Christian without a relationship with Him.”
And that is exactly Andy’s point. He is our pastor and his comments have been taken out of context. His aim in this series was to encourage millennials who have stepped away from the church to find Christ again. For three hundreds years after the resurrection of Christ, the Church grew exponentially without the benefit of a compiled New Testament.
“The earth is 6,000 years old”
The date of the earth’s creation is not at all mentioned in the Bible.
Mr D, you left out the “God breathed” part of the “useful for teaching” scripture...
I have come to the impression that I now say the bible contains the word of God rather than the bible “is” the word of God. One reason is that there is one place where Paul actually says it is his words and not God’s.
I have watched some of this series, and I think the title of this article is a little misleading.
Andy points to the fact that the Bible, as it now exists, did, IN FACT, not exist for hundreds of years AFTER Jesus’ resurrection. He is asking for new believers or for believers who have fallen out of the faith to look at HOW Christianity survived for those years on the teachings of those who witnessed the Risen Christ. Christianity survived because people saw him after his death, and were willing to die for that belief.
His biggest takeaway from this is that people need to believe in the resurrection of Christ. If they are presented with that fact, and BELIEVE it, they can be saved.
Also, in later episodes, he DOES point to Scripture to make points.
You’re either:
(A) a liberal
(B) misinformed
(C) member of a cult
(D) all the above
Yes,
which is why James White describes this as
“epistemological chaos”.
“We believe Jesus rose from the dead not because the Bible says so’
We believe it because the scriptures tell us he did! (1Cor.15:3-5)
‘according to the scriptures’.
I am in a southern gospel band that visits a lot of small baptist churches in KY. The “Bible worship” I see makes me really nervous. It’s actually kind of creepy. My focus is on Christ. I see the bible as an “owners manual for the Christian human.” I don’t worship any more than I worship the owner’s manual for my car.
Nearly the same logic that is used to “interpret” the Constitution as a living document ....because we can’t know what people meant 200+ years ago (/Sarc).
James White is an enemy of the Bible and his views are responsible for this result.
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:
That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. 2 Timothy 3:16-17
It is not merely a good teaching tool. It is the very word of God.
Opinions certainly vary on that. ;-)
I’ve been listening to the bible for 90 minutes to 3 hours on my commute to work every day (round trip is 3 hours) for several years now. This verbal immersion has drastically modified my take on the bible, in a lot of good ways. I’ve been studying it since 1983.
If that were true then there'd be no Hoover Dam. No Orbiter/Shuttle. No Cure for polio. No...well, you get the picture.
Oh...and this post would be in German. Unless I lived on the West coast. Then it would be in Japanese.
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