Well duh!
An aside to xzins: It seems, dear Padre, that kosta has got us there! LOLOL! What a splendid exhibition of "bean-counter" mentality!
I mean, does kosta really suppose that "love thy neighbor as thyself" is an immediately executable programmed command? Something fitting for God's "wind-up toys" — that would be those pesky, brainwashed, superstitious Christians — to execute, automaton-like? Thus to repress "the rest of us" (whomever that may be)?
Okay. What do you say we bring back the ducking stool, just to prove these guys are right about us evil Christians? LOL! :^)
Or maybe we should take up the practice of shunning again.... :^)
But I'm not going to get into "dogs and pigs" here [Mat.7:6].
May God's blessings abide with you, dear Padre, and all your dear ones!
Dear kosta, you are in my prayers.
Well, duh, you could have answered the question. :)
What a splendid exhibition of "bean-counter" mentality!
Is that worse than someone who avoids answering questions?
I mean, does kosta really suppose that "love thy neighbor as thyself" is an immediately executable programmed command?
It is a commandment. What does that mean to you, in your private word-meaning world? Let me help you with some synonyms so there is no confusion: commandment—rule, mandate, precept, edict, order...hmmmm.
[not an]...immediately executable programmed command
How "immediate" is immediate to you, bb? Today, tomorrow, next week, when you feel like it, when you can walk on water, in heaven, on Greek Calends, eventually, in eternity...?
I would imagine that for someone who truly believes in Christ, obedience to his commandments would be the way of life even if one doesn't (yet) find it in his or her heart, just knowing that it was your God who tells you the truth and what he wishes—a sacred obligation and deep-felt desire to please him? Or is it just lip service?
Do you not live with the desire to please God? Do you not say "thy will be done," and know that it is his will that you love your neighbor as yourself?
Do you see what I am getting at? It's all talk, self-edification, but words and actions speak differently. You know what that means...even in your private vocabulary, I don't have to define it.
Who preached to Abraham and Moses?
Those are interesting questions that do have answers, despite the assumption I hear in your comment that no one preached to them. There is a long tradition that Moses heard both the preaching of his Jewish countrymen, whether he understood them to be so at any given time. There’s also no doubt that his father-in-law preached to him, seeing that Jethro was a believer.
So far as the preaching to Abraham, it must be remembered that the ages of the children of Noah and the age of Abraham gives him contact with that era as one just a few generations removed. Additionally, we know this to be a literate age, and we know that it was an age that included a Melchizadek, priest of the most high God.
Abraham’s call, of course, was from God Himself, but that is not evidence that it is the first time Abraham had heard of the most high God.
There are a variety of reasons why I have been called. One of them is not to spend inordinate amounts of time with those who reject the Holy Spirit. Stephen’s indictment of the leaders of the Jews was that “they always resist the Holy Spirit.” God eventually opened the heart of one of them that day, Paul, and others remained closed.
Stephen finished his message to all of those folks and spoke to them no more. God provided the increase.
There are exceptions?