Posted on 11/22/2012 11:55:39 AM PST by DaveMSmith
Many people read the Bible literally and feel very strongly that there's nothing more to it than that, and yet Jesus Himself says the whole Old Testament is about Him. How could that be?!? We ponder this through a bizarre story in which Caleb pleads with Joshua to be given a mountain inhabited by enemy giants in fortified cities (Joshua 14).
Also see: Spirit And Life Bible Study on Facebook
This is WRITTEN in the Bible; is it NOT sufficient?
This coming from the poster who put a John Lovitz in a Satan suit on a Bible Study thread.
Affirming Truths
AC 3923 [9]
Even the worst people
are able to know truths and goods,
and also to affirm them;
but the quality of the affirmation
is known from the life.
When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind. ― Jiddu Krishnamurti
Don’t you see that 2+2=5? Borg plainly excludes books as being wholly inspired of God like the books that he affirms, but if had you your special esoteric glasses on, then you could “see” that he really was not.
However, the way the Lord opened up the minds of the apostles to the understanding of Scripture is seen by what they wrote, in which they did not engage in the kind of highly metaphysical hermeneutic that basically allows one to see anything he wants as doctrine, but one in which they proved that Jesus was the Christ from the Scriptures based on upon literal fulfillment of texts, and this the atonement was literal.
And which Borg denies, teaching that the passion of the cross was simply the last temptation that was endured before the human was made Divine And that there is no such thing as vicarious atonement, and that passages from scripture that refer to the body and blood of Jesus refer to the Divine Good and Divine Truth which proceeds from his Divine Human.
This is not what Scripture teaches, and was not what the Jews protested in their hardhearted rejection, nor did the apostles require of them the manner of highly metaphysical rendering of Borg, but the lost denied that Christ was the Divine Messiah who made vicarious atonement, and in this they are with Borg.
And under Borg’s libertarian hermeneutic he imagines all sorts of other things, including that angels and demons in heaven and hell originated from the human race, and that the origin of one’s soul comes from the seed of the father, and the external body comes from the mother, and that the Second Coming of the Lord is not a coming in person as the Word incarnate, but is His coming is the “revelation” of the spiritual symbolism in the Bible, and the formation of Borgs New Church as a result of this esoteric revelation.
Note also that the Borg is not only like Joe Smith, but is like the New Thought movement, one of the earliest proponents of which was Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, a healer who said that illnesses in the body originated from false beliefs in the mind, and who “healed” Warren Felt Evans, a Swedenborgian minister, who himself became a healer and published several books promoting New Thought and explaining it in terms of New Church doctrines. Enter Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of so-called “Christian Science,” who is often cited as having used Quimby as inspiration for theology.
And indeed, the metaphysical interpretive means employed by Mary Baker Eddy, who also denied the atonement and freely spiritualized Scripture as needed (see http://peacebyjesus.witnesstoday.org/Bible_versus_S.C.C.S.html), is similar to what we see with Borg, as is the case with such cult movements as “the Course in Miracles.”
Numbers 22:28
And the LORD opened the mouth of the ass, and she said unto Balaam, What have I done unto thee, that thou hast smitten me these three times?
Swedenborgism has been weighed in the balance and found wanting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHX2mvFVQMs
>I honestly don’t understand how a serious seeker of truth could possibly fall for this heresy. I have a hard time believing they even crack open their Bibles for “Bible Study”<
Oh they may, just as the aforementioned CHRISTIAN SCIENCE cult does, but which they need not be really bound by as they hold to a very libertarian hermeneutic.
>I can certainly understand why Swedenborg would want to discount the Epistles - seeing as they are the most clarifying of all the Scriptures concerning the person and work of Christ. <
Indeed, as Walter Martin in The Kingdom of the Cults (640,41), states,
Swedenborg is consistently and energetically refuted by the epistles of Paul, particularly, the book of Romans, chapters 5 through 8, which Swedenborg detested with abject horror. By attempting to circumscribe the New Testament revelation of Christianity to the Gospels and the book of Revelation, Swedenborg revealed the essential weakness of his theological system. He was apparently well aware of the fact that Pauline theology, if accepted at face value, would vitiate almost en toto his own. So he began with the basic. assumption that he was right, and that the apostle Paul was wrong! In some of his visions and dreams, he stated that he actually argued with Paul, Luther, Calvin, and others. And, as ego triumphed, these great thinkers all retreated before Swedenborg’s new revelations. However, one factor must never be forgotten, and that is the statement that the New Testament is the criterion for measuring all subsequent revelations, and whatever is found to be contrary to it, must be and always has been, rejected by the Christian church.
It would be possible to go on at some length in a refutation of Swedenborg’s theology, but the issues, we believe, are clearly discernible, as is the verdict of Scripture. Swedenborg was a rationalist, and paradoxically, a mystic. He was one who absorbed the introspective and subjective philosophy of Rene Descartes, and the empiricism of John Locke, which he combined with the transcendentalism of lmmanuel Kant, thus forming a mold into which Christian theology was poured, and what would not go into the mold (selected Old Testament works, the Pauline epistles, Acts, James, Peter, Jude, etc.), he simply discarded. What emerged was a deeply speculative philosophical system of theology, couched in a redefined Christian terminology, and buttressed with mystical visions, trances, and dreams. These, when apparently confirmed by clairvoyant experiences, such as the Stockholm fire episode previously narrated, gave some credence to his claims and still continue to deceive many so-called intelligent persons today. In his counsel to the church at Colosse, the apostle Paul uttered a warning that the followers of Swedenborg in particular might well take cognizance of: “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. “ (Colossians 2:8-9) The great tragedy of Emanuel Swedenborg is that he would not submit himself and his great mind to the discipline of the Holy Spirit and the Scriptures. Because of this, and because of his deliberated preoccupation with spiritism and the occult, in direct disobedience to the express teachings of God, he was despoiled, even as Paul had warned. He was deceived by dreams and visions and the machinations of him whom the Scriptures describe as the “spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2b).
Jesus said, "The words that I speak to you are spirit and are life." (John 6:63)
Jesus said to the woman by Jacob's well, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is who is saying to you, Give me something to drink, you would ask him and he would give you living water. Those who drink some of the water that I will give will not become thirsty to eternity. The water that I will give will become in them a well of water gushing for eternal life." (John 4:6, 10, 14)
Here as in Deuteronomy 33:28, Jacob's well means the Word. The Lord sat at that location and spoke with the woman because he is the Word. The living water means the truth in the Word.
Jesus said, "If any are thirsty, they must come to me and drink. If any believe in me, as Scripture says, rivers of living water will flow out of their bellies." (John 7:37, 38)
Peter said to Jesus, "You have the words of eternal life." (John 6:68)
Jesus said, "Heaven and earth will pass away; my words will not pass away." (Mark 13:31)
The Lord's words are truth and life because he himself is truth and life, as he teaches in John: "I am the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6). Also in John, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. In it there was life, and that life was the light for humankind" (John 1:1, 4). "The Word" means the Lord in his role as divine truth. He alone has life and light. This is why the Word, which is from the Lord and is the Lord, is called the fountain of living waters (Jeremiah 2:13; 17:13; 31:9); the fountain of salvation (Isaiah 12:3); the fountain (Zechariah 13:1); and a river of water of life (Revelation 22:1). This is why it says that the Lamb who is in the middle of the throne will shepherd people and lead them to living fountains of waters (Revelation 7:17). There are other passages where the Word is also called the sanctuary and the tent where the Lord dwells with humankind [Ezekiel 37:26-28; Revelation 21:3]. ~ True Christianity 191
Rev Dr Rose, who does these Bible Studies, reached the scholarly conclusion about all 66 books after completing the most recent translation of True Christianity. The print version has notes which I assume cover this. I'm just relaying what he mentioned in previous Bible Studies.
Pastor Cornelius Bright (Southern Baptist),
Scott Greene (Cru - I think it used to be Campus Crusade for Christ),
Pastor Jeff Oakes (Christian Fellowship),
Brother Charles Kennedy (Church of God in Christ),
Artie Schultz (Bible Fellowship),
Linda Edwards (Tri-Cities House of Prayer),
Rueben & Vicki Sairs (Mennonite),
several evangelistic publications mailed to my house (Immanuel Bible Church, Grace Fellowship, Christian Church, various flavors of Baptist.)
Some say as early as Constantine, some say even earlier that.
So; what do they base their SAYINGS upon?
a·pos·ta·tize
To abandon one's religious faith, a political party, one's principles, or a cause
And yet; here we are today.
mj
They'd have to explain their basis for their not entirely consistent rejection of the historic Christian Church. I, personally, can't explain it, and I don't think it holds up historically.
Do you have a clue as to the Jewish context of the passage?
Still waiting for documentation from the Borg accepting ALL the bible.
the borg was known by contemporaries as a medium and occultist.
Dave - there is nothing there that remotely indicates that the Borg repudiated his 33 book list of true scripture found in several of his writings. In fact the excerpt you posted maintains that black hole. Try again.
Why don't you put something about your own faith on your profile page along with your guns and ammo?
Hardly Dave
Besides, it is up to the reader if they respond to Scripture
thats right - I don't respond to the Borg's writings - they are not scripture
Why don't you put something about your own faith on your profile page along with your guns and ammo?
Guns and ammo - lol, is the fact that I am a Veteran bother you or a black powder enthusiast. Don't need to use that space for my own faith - spend every day here with it in the open.
They are the Borg - resistance is futile. You have one esoteric interpreting another esoteric and denying what is most plainly taught. Might as well argue with a Harold Camping contortionist or a Roy Masters disciple.
True, true
Moose
Juice?
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