Posted on 10/15/2001 6:54:40 AM PDT by malakhi
| Statesmen may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue. - John Adams |
Once again, I'm wondering if anyone is really paying any attention to these. I know that the one from the other day started of two days of Mary arguments. But the one from yesterday had a question that I posed to all of you that went unanswered. Oh, well ... I guess we're just choosing which battles we want to take on, eh?
| Thursday, December 6, 2001 Saint Nicholas, bishop - Optional Memorial |
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How many times, when you hear of an approaching storm, do you get worried or anxious? How much more anxious would you be if you lived in a coastal town, where the threat of a storm is all the greater? Many people who live by the sea have built their homes according to strict safety standards so that they can withstand an onslaught of hurricane force winds. Then, when news breaks of a coming storm, all they have to do is make minor adjustments.
When Jesus spoke about building on the rock, he was talking about us. He wants us to build our lives on his word - the most solid foundation we can have. And for this to happen, we must work with Jesus, the Master Architect. As we allow Jesus to "build" us according to his standards, we will have less to fear when the storms of the world come up against us.
It's not always easy to let Jesus do the building. We may want him to build according to our standards. But he wants to start at the very foundation, uprooting whatever isn't pleasing to him. Jesus knows that if our foundation is weak we are vulnerable to the devil, the world, and our own fallen nature.
Let's be clear that while Jesus tears down and rebuilds in us, he is with us at every moment. We are never abandoned. He doesn't want us to look at the storms of life as if we're doomed to weather them alone. Jesus wants us to trust in him--to such a degree that we always choose to obey his commands, however difficult they may seem. When the winds come, he wants us to run to the Father and let him strengthen us. He wants to fight the battles we cannot fight on our own. What a blessing to know that we can trust our Savior! All we have to do is trust and obey, and he will build us into a strong and beautiful dwelling for his Spirit.
"Lord Jesus, come and build my heart according to your standards. Make me strong enough to stand fast when the storms come. Your love is enough for me. I trust in your strength to renew me and to help me rise above any situation I may face. I love you, Jesus."
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Have a great day, everybody!
Some of the posts in this thread must really drive you up the wall, eh?
Well, let's just say that the internet and email have gotten people writing again, which is good. Unfortunately, everything is a first draft.
SD
What's the first passage your referring to?
In John 1, the Bible in basic english renders it thus:
Joh 1:1 From the first he was the Word, and the Word was in relation with God and was God.
Joh 1:2 This Word was from the first in relation with God.
Joh 1:3 All things came into existence through him, and without him nothing was.
In no way does this contradict the bible. God and Jesus together make up THEE God.
I don't understand your logic. You accept some doctrines that are from men and others you don't. This is NOT a man made doctrine. This is clearly present in the Bible. Also, when God created man and woman he also gave them a spirit. Now we have 3.
The doctrine of the trinity isn't in the bible. The doctrine of the trinity is an idea formulated over time, by men. I accept that God, Jesus, and a concept called "the holy spirit" exist in the bible, but I don't accept the concept that the holy spirit is a "person" in the godhead, as the trinity doctrine teaches. I believe that the holy spirit is a manifestation of God and/or Jesus power on earth, or in our physical reality.
angelo, I certainly didn’t mean to sadden you, for that I apologize. I don’t rejoice over the “’deliverance’ of such Jews from their covenant with God.” I do rejoice in what I see are Jewish people coming into a full relationship with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, through the Messiah.
Jewish people who accept Yeshua as the Messiah do not cease to be Jews. They may cease being under the Mosaic Covenant, Moses himself said that a Prophet was going to come and you should listen to Him rather than Moses, but they are still a part of the Abrahamic Covenant and the New Covenant mentioned by Jeremiah.
The Christian Church is not a Gentile organization, it may be dominated by Gentiles today, but that is more of a reproach on us than anything else in that we are failing to outreach to the Jewish people with the message of the Messiah. The Christian Church is founded on the Jewish Messiah, and in the early years was completely made up of Jewish people from all walks of life, Pharisees, Priests, etc.
As an aside, what are your thoughts about Messianic Jews. Have they betrayed their Jewish faith? Are they destined for Hell? (I forget if you believe in a literal Hell or not) Are they barred from getting into Heaven?
Again, I want to apologize for saddening you.
-ksen
BTW, if you're trying to become so offensive that I lose my cool, forget about it. You are this close to being sent to Coventry again.)
(This remark gave me a little jolt. My mother died in Coventry.) (Rhode Island).
Oh my. I certainly apologize if I brought back a bad association.
For those unfamiliar, the term "Sending to Coventry" is a British expression used for shunning or ostracising a person. It may have started when prisoners were sent there during the English civil war.
SD
I'm impressed. You were about 5 years old when PC-Dos was developed. (I was in the computer field from the very beginning - long before there was any kind of assembly language). I loved PC-Dos which became MS-Dos. Even back then Microsoft was a tough nut. For a short while there was DR-Dos, as superior to MS-Dos as Apple OS was to Windows 3.0. Microsoft destroyed the DR-Dos competition by making deals with the major PC vendors. The same tactics they use today. There are still things which Dos does better than Windows but its' days are limited. Bye Bye to Dos.
Wait a minute. The PC came out in 1981. I was born in 1968. For me to be five DOS would have had to have been deeloped in 1973. I think that's a little early.
You are right though, that many things Windows does, DOS did better. More to the point, when I first started working here, when Windows 3 was first coming out, I basically taught myself DOS and was a master of the PC. I could make it do what I wanted, edit my CONFIG.SYS, etc. Now with Windows even engineers need to have dedicated technicians at times to set up things properly.
And then you consider the brainpower used by Microsoft. Somewhere out there is some guy who slaved for years just to make the annoying paperclip guy. Talk about being proud of your work!
"Oh, I'm the 2nd assistant in charge of the font italicizing tool in Word"
There aren't many progamming cowboys left.
SD
Mary was never "married" to the Holy Spirit. God in the flesh does not mean God half egg half Spirit. Marriage was not included.
What kind of baloney is this??? That, my friend, is heresy! Joseph was Mary's husband. She was not betrothed to or wed to God. She was betrothed to Joseph, and after Christ was born, married to Joseph. There is absolutely NO scripture that in any way would even hint that Mary was God's "spouse" by any stretch of the imagination. NONE!
My Bible clearly shows Mary and the Holy Spirit having a child together. (And we do believe that the humanity of Jesus is from His mother.) As was pointed out last night, your argument essentially makes Jesus a bastard. It is in this sense only that Mary is considered the "spouse" of the Holy Spirit.
SD
I believe the reason the power was taken away at their death is because if a certain Church or group of people or a person could still perform all the miracles of the apostles today, you would know exactly where Christ Church was, and I don't think Christ wants any one Church to be looked on as the only true Church.
There goes Jesus hiding His light under a bushel basket again. Maybe his propsensity to hide things is where Easter egg hunts came from?
SD
Were does this fit in with the unbroken line of leadership of the popes?
Still there. The "throne" he refers to is that of the Roman Empereor. From the time of Constantine till recent history, the fortunes of the Roman Emperor and the Pope were tied together. Where the Empire spread, there was the Pope. What was in the beginning not associated with a particular state became so, which led to the spread of this new religion.
But as the Empire fell and faded, and as the Papal States were taken to form the new "Italy," the role of the Pope as disassociated from any state re-emerged.
SD
Calvinists believe that nothing that man can choose is ever good, that every instinct is to the bad. I don't believe that.
Dave, you either don't understand the doctrine (which is scriptural) of total depravity or you are deliberately misrepresenting it to those who don't know about it. Here is the actual definition:
I assure you that I am not deliberately misrepresenting it. Perhaps I am not using the most flattering language, but I do try to be accurate.
Total Depravity The doctrine that fallen man is completely touched by sin and that he is completely a sinner. He is not as bad as he could be, but in all areas of his being, body, soul, spirit, mind, emotions, etc., he is touched by sin. In that sense he is totally depraved. Because man is depraved, nothing good can come out of him (Rom. 3:10-12) and God must account the righteousness of Christ to him. This righteousness is obtainable only through faith in Christ and what He did on the cross. Total depravity is generally believed by the Calvinist groups and rejected by the Arminian groups.
(Note: Iowegian highlighted the "He is not as bad" section. I have added the other highlight.)
Notice it doesn't say that everything we think and do is evil, but we are incapable of pleasing God (being righteous) without his working in us first.
Notice that it does say "nothing good can come out of him." How this differs from what I said earlier, "nothing that man can choose is ever good" is beyond me. If there is some technical meaning to these words I am not getting, I am sure you will let me know. But for now, I stand by what I said.
Now if you persist in misrepresenting it we can come up with our own definitions of your doctrines and titles. Oh say like mother of God, for instance. I know how much that would please you. Please try to understand the real meaning of our doctrines before you make yourself look too foolish.
I am open to being instructed the proper way to talk about this Calvinism. But I don't see that I have misrepresented anything yet.
And by the way, we don't just think pagans are totally depraved, all people are born that way. It's all in the Bible, check it out.
I understand that all people are born that way, not just pagans. As for being in the Bible, well, let's just say, to some peoples' readings it is. Actually Catholic and Calvinistic thought is not far apart, but those small differences are huge.
SD
[Probably alteration of Dutch Sinterklaas, from Middle Dutch Sinterclaes, St. Nicholas : sint, saint (from Middle Dutch, from Old French saint. See saint) + heer, lord; see mynheer + claes(short for Niclaes, Nicholas).]
According to legend, which I am doing from memory and surely butchering, he secretly deposited gold coins in the stockings hanging by the fire to dry of some girls who needed money for their dowry. And from this comes a host of traditions.
SD
"That which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost". I understand what you're saying. Before, I have explained my understanding of this whole concept. Jesus is called the Second Adam in scripture. That implies an origin similar to the first Adam. The first Adam was created by God from the dust of the ground, as a mature male. I believe that God created the human body of Jesus in Mary's womb as a complete, new creation of man, without sin. God could have created that body to be genetically identical to one conceived of one of her eggs, but without the taint of original sin. In fact God would have had to do so, because Mary's genetic material was tainted with original sin. This idea that she was somehow sinless just doesn't have any support in scripture. If God could make her sinless by Divine Fiat, then He could do so for any other one of us, or all of us. "God is no respecter of persons". If He could do so, then Jesus did not need to die on the cross, and the whole plan of redemption is rendered rather pointless.
Mary was very blessed by God to have the priviledge of being the mother of Jesus in His humanity, but it is a stretch to say she was truly the Mother of God, except in a very limited way. Mary was a vessel, nothing more. A very Blessed vessel, to be sure, but still, just a vessel.
I would be very hesitant to call Jesus a "bastard" child. A bastard is one with no father. Jesus had a Heavenly Father, and an earthly one, although not by genetic link. You are needlessly complicating and obfuscating this whole subject, and trying to defend an inordinate worship and reverance toward Mary. It's really very simple: Jesus' human body was a new creation of a sinless man, placed by the Holy Spirit inside Mary's womb, so that He could be born as we are, grow up as we do, and then accomplish His mission of redeeming mankind by His sacrificial death on the cross, and then be raised to newness of life, the "first-born" of many brethren.
Are you saying that guys like me and Old Reggie are becoming obsolete?? I am basically a hardware guy, having built, loaded, and configured well over 1000 computers in the last 4 years. I spent 5 years prior to that working solely in DOS. So, I have also learned a lot of neat little tricks for tweaking Win 95 and 98. Little things to do to the underlying DOS to get them to work nicer, with less crashes, and more stability. I've had younger guys tell me that that srtuff doesn't work, but I prove 'em wrong all the time....:o)
Thanks, that was a fairly honest outline. The only problem I have is that the trinity only because the received faith because it was the doctrine decided upon by men.
. But don't forget what Nicaea set out to do: to affirm the apostolic doctrine by denying that of Arius
The purpose of Nicea wasn't to affirm apostolic doctrine, but to stop dissension within Christianity. Emperor Constantine wanted to get the political support of Christians so he forced them to come together to basically settle their differences so that there would be a unified body and so that he could have a stronger empire. He did accomplish this.
There is little or no comprehension of a trinity until Tertullian really fathered the idea nearly 175 years after the death of Christ.
No, a "bastard" is a child born out of wedlock. "Illegitimate," meaning conceived without the benefit of a marital union. This concept is not brought out in order to provide "inordinate" glory to Mary, it is, like most Catholic truths, defined in defense of heresy.
Back in the day, pagans liked to mock Christians by pointing out that they believed that their "god" knoecked up some poor unmarried broad. That their "son of god" was a bastard.
The idea of the conception being a product of a type of marital union of Mary and Holy Spirit is raised to counteract this accusation.
I am well aware of your ideas about Jesus being a whole new creation, but if He is not of the line of Adam, then He can not redeem that line. Since we are of that line, your Jesus is not a hope for me. Rather, the message is that God screwed up with this line of humans so badly even he had to abandon it, start over, rather than trying to save what had been created and fell.
No thank you.
SD
And Old School at that! Where we won't share communion with other folks, the SBC won't even pray with non-Christians. Other followers of the God of Abraham, that is.
SD
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