Posted on 10/31/2010 11:59:22 AM PDT by RnMomof7
Another Protestant confabulation. Its right up there with rapture and Sola Scriptura. Paul was blind for three days and then waited three years before going to Jerusalem.
Jesus spent three years in His ministry on earth and never met Saul of Tarsus. Any attempt to forcefully connect those dots into some special uber-apostle status of St. Paul to justify the heretical contentions of the Reformation is insanity. The attempts to explain the gospel to illiterate Africans with no cultural or linguistic perspectives pales in comparison to the deliberate corruption of the Gospel.
BB-“He used men inspired by him and they wrote down what he gave them even when it could not have made any sense to them.”
Kolo-That’s a very Islamic understanding of the origins of scripture, bb.
I was thinking the same thing.
Why would anyone believe God inspired mindless men to write things that made no sense to them,bb?
“...you should be very careful to not cause another to stumble by causing doubts about God’s word.”
Can I cause doubts about the part where it says that bats are birds? How about recommending that the Johannine Comma or the Marcan Appendix be disregarded as fabrications or forgeries?
God gave us minds to us, bb. We are, after all, the “rational flock” of Christ as +John Chrysostomos calls us.
I am not going to argue with your beliefs, boatbums. You stated what you believe and that's where it ends. You believe literally what is in the Bible, at least your version and translation of it and that is certainly your prerogative.
But then you move past that and try to attach logic to this a priori belief. And that's when things become contentious. I will mention only one example. You write
Now, granted those things happened a long time ago, yet the record of it has persisted, which tells me that it is this intelligent creator who sees to it that this information has been preserved
If that is your "proof" then consider that the Hindu scriptures, which are the oldest holy books in the world, were preserved for much longer than yours. Are you ready to admit, then, that Brahman is the true God?
Read what is says, not what you think it says.
You are projecting.
You also deleted the "firstborn" from the passage, and your Greek rendering of the improper genitive preposition 'έως' is wrong - it should be rendered "until". But I already went over this with you weeks ago and you didn't refute it then. Heck, your interpretation is even in conflict with the Douray-Rheims translation and the RSV (along with scores of Protestant English translations).
You: That’s a very Islamic understanding of the origins of scripture, bb.
Okay, how so?
Thank you. Nothing but crickets from the “other side”, though. I pray you and yours have a wonderful Thanksgiving as well and that our Lord continues to bless you.
And God is STILL love. Why is it so difficult to grasp the idea that there can be a Godly hate of something evil that in no way compromises his eternal nature?
“Okay, how so?”
The Mohammedans hold that God dictated the Koran to Mohammad through the voice of the Angel Gabriel. It is actually the word of Allah. So far as I can see, that is precisely the position of many Protestants ( and only Protestants so far as I know) vis a vis the bible, but without the intermediary assistance of the Archangel.
I'm really surprised that I have to explain this at all. But I will try. When God revealed the meaning of the dream of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon to Daniel, I'm pretty sure he did not understand it was speaking of the five world ruling powers AFTER Babylon. When John received his revelation about the end times he could not have understood how things could occur such as "the mark of the beast" or the ability to control the buying and selling of all things. When God took Abraham outside and said look at the heavens, "I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed", he probably did not grasp the magnitude of it but he trusted God anyway. God revealed future events, scientific facts and historical events that mankind had not seen or understood or discovered. That's what I am speaking about. Do you understand my statement any better?
Simply ask yourself, “What are my motives?”. If it is not to edify your brethren in Christ, it is worng.
Simply ask yourself, “What are my motives?”. If it is not to edify your brethren in Christ, it is wrong.
Sorry, I never saw the original post. I concur with my brother in Christ and the Law, bd (no great surprise there I am sure). As an Orthodox Christian, I know that theosis is found within the liturgical community of The Church. I have no idea what happens, in fact, outside it's visible bounds as I have no idea whither the Spirit goes. I choose, with every fiber of my being, to believe that the man or woman you describe will fulfill our created purpose as being in both the image and likeness of God.
Actually Vishnu is the deity of Hinduism, right? Do you believe that there is an evil being in the world named Satan? Could this being also strive to continue to confuse and supersede the true God? There is only one God, and he revealed himself this I believe. He says his name is "I am". Satan, on the other hand thinks he's God and he really doesn't care what name you use for him.
No, the real thing that God provided to His chosen, the Jewish people...Are they white???
Get your mind out of the PC racist gutter
I don't think you have a very good grasp of "Protestant" beliefs at all though your disdain IS NOT hard to miss. Do not the Jews believe that God wrote the Ten Commandments on the stone tablets and gave them to Moses on the mountain? Do they not also believe that God dictated the first five books of the Old Testament (the Torah) to Moses?
The Holy Spirit of God worked through men he inspired and they wrote down the words he intended them to. God himself has seen fit to also preserve these scriptures through the ages so that their truths are still available to us today. It does not matter to me at all what "Mohammedans" think about their scriptures. I have read many parts of it and I am not impressed at all. I see it for the sham it is.
I am sorry you have such little faith in the Scriptures from the only, true God. Without it, all else is shifting sands.
And what did that Catholic fabrication get your religion??? 400 years and hundreds of millions, if not billions of non-Catholic, bible believing Christians and countless numbers of Gods words in Bibles thru out the world...And we thank you for that...
“If it is not to edify your brethren in Christ, it is wrong.”
I agree 100%. One of the greatest gifts of the Holy Spirit is the gift of Discernment. Here is a teaching by +John Cassian (4th-5th century and educated at a monastery in Jerusalem) to his monks at a monastery in Marseilles. It is part of a collection called “The Conferences” about the wisdom of the Desert Fathers of Egypt.
“So, then, the four kinds of discernment to which I have been referring will be necessary to us. First, as to material, is it true gold or spurious? Second, we must reject as fake and counterfeit coinage those thoughts which have the deceptive appearance of piety. They bear a false and not the genuine image of the king. Then we must be able to detect and to abhor those which impose a viciously heretical stamp on the precious gold of Scripture. This is not the effigy of the true king but of a tyrant. Finally, we must drive away thoughts which are like underweight coins, dangerous and inadequate, thoughts which have lost weight and value because of the rust of vanity, thoughts which do not measure up to the standard of the ancients.”
The more we know about scripture, the more we are able to grow in discernment. If we really believe that bats are birds, how easy will it be for the Evil One to fool us into believing what will bring about our spiritual downfall?
Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. And for that we thank you.
I wish you a blessed Thanksgiving and hope your family and friends are brought closer to each other and the Lord.
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