[hosepipe]

[ If we were stranded on a desert island or in a Communist country, with no Christian fellowship at all and not a scrap of Scripture - or if we were deaf and mute and had no way to communicate - or if we were mentally retarded ---- still, the indwelling Spirit of God would teach us what we Christians must know. ]

Exactely... The Holy Spirit IS the package.. Without him you have the dead letter.. Merely consonants and grunts.. Like a ceremony, tradition or Amulet/Talisman/Totem masked as rote prayer..

[Alamo-Girl]

Indeed, without the Holy Spirit the Scriptures may as well be any other ancient manuscript.

Also - in reply to the exchange between wagglebee, Quix and Petronski on a related matter - we should not be concerned with the percentage who believe a certain doctrine or tradition of men.

Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide [is] the gate, and broad [is] the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait [is] the gate, and narrow [is] the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. - Matthew 7:13-14

Rather, we should concentrate on loving God surpassingly above all else - and as a distant second, loving our neighbor as ourselves. Because all of the law and the prophets hang on those two Commandments.

Then one of them, [which was] a lawyer, asked [him a question], tempting him, and saying, Master, which [is] the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment.

And the second [is] like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. – Matthew 22:35-40

Or to put it another way, if we don't get that right nothing else we do will matter. (Revelation 2, Church of Ephesus, etc.)

To God be the glory, not man, never man.

[Quix]

Exactely... The Holy Spirit IS the package.. Without him you have the dead letter.. Merely consonants and grunts.. Like a ceremony, tradition or Amulet/Talisman/Totem masked as rote prayer..

= = =

INDEED!