Posted on 04/08/2016 7:34:38 AM PDT by Salvation
The Gospel proclaimed on Wednesday of this week included the familiar John 3:16. So familiar is this verse, that many hold up signs or have bumper stickers that simply say, “John 3:16.”
For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son,
so that everyone who believes in him might not perish
but might have eternal life (John 3:16).
It is indeed a beautiful verse, but I would argue that many use it inauthentically by pulling it out from its place within a longer passage. The fuller segment is John 3:16-21, which is as much a passage of warning as it is of consolation and assurance.
Here it is again, along with the remainder of that longer passage:
For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son,
so that everyone who believes in him might not perish
but might have eternal life.
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world,
but that the world might be saved through him.
Whoever believes in him will not be condemned,
but whoever does not believe has already been condemned,
because he has not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God.
And this is the verdict,
that the light came into the world,
but people preferred darkness to light,
because their works were evil.
For everyone who does wicked things hates the light
and does not come toward the light,
so that his works might not be exposed.
But whoever lives the truth comes to the light,
so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God (John 3:16-21).
This fuller context has somewhat of a different tone. It sets forth a great drama in which our lives are cast. It amounts to sober assessment of the obtuseness of many human hearts and of the urgent need for us to decide well in life.
Those who merely quote the first verse run the risk of presenting this text as a kind of a freewheeling assurance that all is well and that salvation is largely in the bag, that judgment and condemnation are not a significant factor since “God so loved the world.” And while the concept of faith is included in this first verse, without the larger context the tendency is to soft-pedal the need for repentance and for the obedience of faith. In so doing, the true drama and sober teaching of the fuller text are lost.
The longer passage fleshes the message out and has a balance that the shortened text does not. Here is what Jesus is in effect saying, expressed in more modern language:
As I live, I and my Father do not desire that any should die in their sins or be lost. I have not currently come as your judge but as your savior. I will come one day as the judge of all, but now is a time of grace and mercy extended to you.
But you need to know that you have a decision to make, a decision that will determine where you will spend eternity.
So please listen to me! Open the door to me and let me draw you to the obedience of faith and the beauty of holiness. If you do this, light will dawn for you, for I am the Light and your life will grow ever brighter.
But if you will not repent and come to a lifesaving obedience of faith, your heart will begin to despise me and the light of my glory. You will become accustomed to the darkness and begin to consider the Light (which I am) to be obnoxious, harsh, judgmental, and even cruel. Yes, you will begin to hate me, for I am the Light. You will prefer the darkness because you love your sins more.
Come to your senses and don’t let this happen. You have a decision to make: for the light or for the darkness, for me or for the prince of this world, Satan. Be sober and understand the dramatic choice before you. Your salvation depends on your choice to come to obedient faith in me or to reject me.
And know this: on the day of your judgment, the verdict will not be rendered by me so much as by you. For by then, you will either love the Light or hate it. And I will not force you to live in a light you detest. You will be free to go your own way. It will not be I who reject you. It will be you who reject me.
Be sober. Don’t let this happen. Don’t marginalize or ignore me. Don’t prefer the world and its twisted values and passing pleasures. Your sins will make you hate the light and prefer the darkness. You have a decision to make.
This message is much more complex than that contained in the popular, abbreviated text known as John 3:16. God’s mercy is offered, but the final verdict will center on whether or not we accept it. This message may be less consoling but it is true nonetheless, and only the truth can set us free.
There is a tendency by many to pull out certain verses and isolate them from their context and from the fuller message of the Gospel. The full and authentic Gospel echoes the opening call of the Lord Jesus: “Repent and believe the Good News.”
So yes, John 3:16! But please continue reading. The whole Gospel, please!
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=81943 based on this discussion your statement is incorrect about covering all of the bible.
I reference this post from another thread on FR that captures information in a much cleaner format than I was going to present.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2375781/posts
If there is a woman pastor the church is not in accord with the Word. Problem number one right there.
Talking to each other on this website is not going to change the mind of either of us so I’m not going to do it but if you have someone in the KCMO area who has a service you want me to go to I’ll go. Tell me where you live and I’ll suggest a parish there. Otherwise end of story.
Good chatting with you.
Try the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (Not the ELCA) You might be surprised
Your posts are brilliant ( filled with the Truth). Thank you!
I read the defense he wrote of his decision, his Apologia pro Vita Sua. I read his extraordinary Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. In particular, I read where he wrote, “To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.”
I sat bolt upright as though my chair were on fire. What? To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant? But that was only the beginning of birth pangs. Newman went on to say it is “easy to show” that the Christianity of history was not Protestantism.
In fact, he insisted that if the kind of church I pastored at the time ever existed in the early centuries of the Christian history, there’s no record of it. “So much must the Protestant grant, that if such a system of doctrine as he would now introduce ever existed in early times, it has been clean swept away as if by a deluge, suddenly, silently, and without memorial.”
It was at this point that I decided to take up Newman’s challenge. I would read the Church Fathers straight through, in order and in context. I wanted to know if there was truth to what Newman was saying. And anyway, why not see what these men had to say? After all, these were Christianity’s first bishops, theologians, apologists, saints and martyrs. St Irenaeus, I learned, was the disciple of a man who himself had been a disciple of the apostles.
You can read the whole article here:
How the Early Church Drove Me Toward Catholicism
http://www.catholic.com/blog/ken-hensley/how-the-early-church-drove-me-toward-catholicism
An honest read of the ecfs shows their consistent inconsistency.
Try reading Polycarp's Letter to the Philipians, and keep in mind that the bodies of believers in Asia Minor were celebrating the Lord's Table on Nisan 14, as Jesus established the improved Passover Seder to focus upon a Remembrance of Him. Keep in mind also that Polycarp went to Rome to oppose the heresies arising there in 155 AD. Marcion was having success there then. Subsequently Marcion was tossed out of Rome. But he returned many years later. He bought his way intot he Roman church the frist time.
Polycarp, being a direct student of John the Revelator and possibly met Philip and Andrew, is the ONLY person who could have claimed Apostolic succession, but he did not do that even as he opposed the heresies arising in the body of believers in Rome.
And how does showing me a none Christian getting sucked into the religion of the Vatican tell me anything cogent, other than how brilliant satanic inveigling tends to be?
That is simply not True. Although as i recall, my own research has shown the stats from http://catholic-resources.org/Lectionary/Statistics.htm to be too low (a daily Mass-going Catholic only hear 12.7% of the Bible over the two year reading cycle) yet only a vert very small % of RCs go to Mass daily, and as a former weekly mass-going RC and lector I know that even the verses that are read often are only parts of verses, and or have sections in brackets that may be omitted.
Moreover, while more of the Bible is read at Mass than just the readings, these are most redundant readings, as the readings for Sunday Mass are repeated every three years, while those for for Weekday Mass are repeated every two years. And while the amounts of the Bible that RCs read/hear is likely more than in many Protestant churches - often wrongly broadly defined - most RCs the only reading/hearing of the Bible is likely at Mass:
42.1% of Evangelical Protestants and 7.1% of Catholics read Scripture weekly or more. (http://www.baylor.edu/content/services/document.php/33304.pdf) Bible Reading: the highest was 75%, by those going to a Pentecostal/Foursquare church who reported they had read the Bible during the past week (besides at church), while the lowest was among Catholics at 23%. (http://www.science20.com/print/972444) 25% of Evangelical Christians and 20% of other Protestants and 7% of Catholics said the read the Bible on a daily basis. 44% of Catholics said they rarely or never read the Bible, along with only 7% of Evangelical Christians and 13% of other Protestants. 68% of Evangelical Christians attend a regular Bible Study or participate in some other small-group activity. 47% of other Protestants take part in small groups related to their faith, along with 24% of Catholics. (http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/lifestyle/general_lifestyle/december_2008/catholics_protestants_practice_faith_in_different_ways)
An industrious RC on another forum reports "by my calculations, the 3-year Sunday readings cover about 5%-10% of the Old Testament and about 42% of the New Testament." "I was able to come up with a more precise estimate of the Old Testament covered in the 3-year Sunday readings based on the number of verses read: 5%. The Old Testament contains about 27,524 verses of which about 1362 are read in the 3-year Sunday readings. The New Testament contains about 7954 verses of which about 3372 are read in the 3-year Sunday readings."
"The readings for Sunday Mass are repeated every three years. The reading for Weekday Mass are repeated every two years. The following table, based on my own calculations (and therefore likely not entirely error-free), will give you an idea of about what percentage of the Bible, Testament, or each individual book of the Bible, you might hear read at Mass over the course of any three-year period, based on the number of verses read. (Note: All optional Mass readings were included. Also, a verse was counted even if only part of verse is used.)"
Book(s) (verses) . . . . . . Sundays only . . Sundays & Weekdays
Entire Bible (35478). . . . . . 14% (5035) . . . 30% (10722)
Old Testament (27524) . . . 6% (1663) . . . . 18% (4830)
Genesis (1532) . . . . . . . . . 8% (123) . . . . . 27% (420)
Exodus (1213). . . . . . . . . . 10% (127) . . . . 20% (245)
Leviticus (859). . . . . . . . . . 1% (8). . . . . . . 5% (41)
Numbers (1288. . . . . . . . . 1% (17). . . . . . 6% (82)
Deuteronomy (959). . . . . . 5% (52). . . . . . 13% (123)
Joshua (657). . . . . . . . . . . 2% (10). . . . . . 7% (43)
Judges (618). . . . . . . . . . . 0% (0). . . . . . . 8% (51)
Ruth (85). . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% (0). . . . . . . 25% (21)
1 Samuel (809) . . . . . . . . . 3% (24). . . . . . 19% (153)
2 Samuel (695) . . . . . . . . . 3% (21). . . . . . 15% (107)
1 Kings (816). . . . . . . . . . . 4% (31). . . . . . 19% (158)
2 Kings (719). . . . . . . . . . . 1% (14). . . . . . 16% (118)
1 Chronicles (943) . . . . . . 1% (6). . . . . . . 1% (9)
2 Chronicles (821) . . . . . . 2% (18) . . . . . . 3% (26)
Ezra (280) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% (0) . . . . . . 8% (21)
Nehemiah (405) . . . . . . . . 2% (9) . . . . . . 5% (20)
Tobit (245). . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% (0) . . . . . . 32% (79)
Judith (340). . . . . . . . . . . . 0% (0) . . . . . . 3% (9)
Esther (272) . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% (0). . . . . . 6% (15)
1 Maccabees (921). . . . . . 0% (0) . . . . . . 6% (53)
2 Maccabees (556). . . . . . 2% (12) . . . . . 7% (38)
Job (1060). . . . . . . . . . . . . 2% (17) . . . . . 8% (87)
Psalms (2524) . . . . . . . . . . 26% (648) . . . 50% (1263)
Proverbs (914). . . . . . . . . . 3% (24). . . . . . 6% (56)
Ecclesiastes (222). . . . . . . 2% (4). . . . . . . 15% (34)
Song of Songs (117) . . . . . 0% (0). . . . . . . 11% (13)
Wisdom (436) . . . . . . . . . . 11% (50). . . . . 25% (109)
Sirach (1372). . . . . . . . . . . 4% (54) . . . . . 16% (226)
Isaiah (1281). . . . . . . . . . . 15% (192). . . . 26% (335)
Jeremiah (1364) . . . . . . . . 32% (43). . . . . 12% (165)
Lamentations (154). . . . . . 0% (0). . . . . . . 5% (8)
Baruch (213). . . . . . . . . . . 13% (27). . . . . 22% (46)
Ezekiel (1255) . . . . . . . . . . 4% (48) . . . . . 14% (172)
Daniel (530) . . . . . . . . . . . 1% (7) . . . . . . 38% (204)
Hosea (196) . . . . . . . . . . . 7% (13). . . . . . 19% (38)
Joel (73) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16% (12). . . . . 44% (32)
Amos (146) . . . . . . . . . . . . 9% (13) . . . . . 35% (51)
Obadiah (21) . . . . . . . . . . 0% (0) . . . . . . 0% (0)
Jonah (48) . . . . . . . . . . . . 13% (6) . . . . . . 90% (43)
Micah (105). . . . . . . . . . . . 4% (4) . . . . . . 23% (24)
Nahum (47). . . . . . . . . . . . 0% (0) . . . . . . 15% (7)
Habakkuk (56). . . . . . . . . 9% (5). . . . . . . 18% (10)
Zephaniah (53) . . . . . . . . 15% (8) . . . . . . 25% (13)
Haggai (38) . . . . . . . . . . . 0% (0). . . . . . . 45% (17)
Zechariah (211) . . . . . . . . 2% (4). . . . . . . 12% (25)
Malachi (55). . . . . . . . . . . 22% (12). . . . . 36% (20)
Book(s) (verses) . . . . . . . . . Sundays only . . Sundays & Weekdays
New Testament (7954) . . . . . . 42% (3372) . . . . 74% (5892)
Matthew (1071) . . . . . . . . . . . 58% (623) . . . . . 87% (936)
Mark (678). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61% (412) . . . . . 97% (656)
Luke (1151) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60% (690) . . . . . 89% (1026)
John (878) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62% (545) . . . . . 95% (833)
Acts of the Apostles (1006) . . 18% (182) . . . . . 52% (525)
Romans (433). . . . . . . . . . . . . 26% (114) . . . . . 53% (230)
1 Corinthians (437). . . . . . . . . 40% (173) . . . . . 59% (259)
2 Corinthians (256). . . . . . . . . 21% (53). . . . . . 50% (127)
Galatians (149) . . . . . . . . . . . 28% (41). . . . . . 60% (89)
Ephesians (155) . . . . . . . . . . . 59% (91). . . . . . 91% (141)
Philippians (104) . . . . . . . . . . 47% (49). . . . . . 71% (74)
Colossians (95) . . . . . . . . . . . 37% (35). . . . . . 68% (65)
1 Thessalonians (88) . . . . . . . 44% (39). . . . . . 74% (65)
2 Thessalonians (47) . . . . . . . 36% (17). . . . . . 62% (29)
1 Timothy (113) . . . . . . . . . . . 18% (20). . . . . . 53% (60)
2 Timothy (83) . . . . . . . . . . . . 30% (25). . . . . . 67% (56)
Titus (46) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17% (8). . . . . . . 61% (28)
Philemon (25). . . . . . . . . . . . . 32% (8) . . . . . . 56% (14)
Hebrews (303) . . . . . . . . . . . . 26% (80). . . . . . 62% (188)
James (108). . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29% (31). . . . . . 92% (99)
1 Peter (105). . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37% (39). . . . . . 81% (85)
2 Peter (61) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18% (11). . . . . . 33% (20)
1 John (105). . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30% (31). . . . . . 100% (105)
2 John (13). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% (0) . . . . . . . 46% (6)
3 John (15). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% (0) . . . . . . . 27% (4)
Jude (25). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0% (0) . . . . . . . 28% (7)
Revelation (404) . . . . . . . . . . 14% (55). . . . . . 41% (165) (Todd Easton: http://forums.catholic.com/showpost.php?p=1063633&postcount=9)
Every single verse?
John 1:1 put to bed about the Who and from whence the food for the sheep is contained... Each and every individual is responsible for their own salvation... God is the only judge. And the bad seed planters will be held to account for their seeds of deception in all houses of worship.
“Looks like several hundred of saints, martyrs, scholars, theologians, and historians, to say nothing of the early Church fathers, all got it wrong, “
Which one got everything right??
The answer is always none.
Simply compare them to each other and witness the disagreement.
Simply look at the dates of their writings and see how far removed they were from the Apostles.
Simply try to find Scriptures that teach what they taught at a later date and it isn’t there.
Thankfully, they did keep some truth as the moved toward a syncretic religion. We can witness much good in their writings. That the got things wrong is not unusual in church history.
In contrast, how many things does God’s Word get wrong?
The answer is always none!
Thankfully, God brought along an equally flawed man - Blessed Father Luther - to recover the Gospel of grace from Scripture and launch an examination of Scripture itself. A complete reset to the Gospel, instead of syncrecism.
Blessed be the name of the Lord!
Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!
Amen
A read of the ecfs shows their inconsistency.
An honest read of the ecfs shows their consistent inconsistency.
Can you provide an example where the ecfs were inconsistent on Baptism.
I just finished reading the article by Ken Hensley. He stated the following: “As I began to read the Fathers, one of the first things that struck me was the way they consistently talked about baptism.” He started with the Letter of Barnabas, then The Shepherd of Hermas, Justin Martyr, and Clement of Alexandria. He said he found many other such quotations and indicated that he did not find any ecfs arguing against the quotations. He went on to say: “In fact, this is the way all of the earliest Christian writers speak of baptism. This is how Christians continue to speak of baptism essentially all the way up to when early forms of Protestantism appeared. Whenever baptism is mentioned, these are the sorts of things that are being said.”
So were there any ecfs that Mr. Hensley may have missed?
If you pick up your Bible for yourself, you can get it all.
It’s simply laziness to let someone else do it for you and it’s no sign of super spirituality of a church to use that as the criteria to measure them by especially, if they don’t teach from it and encourage people to live it.
Reading it is good and fine but useless if you don’t let it have any impact on you.
I’d rather hear one verse that ends up doing its work in me than chapters that just bounce off and I don’t let move me.
My spiritual walk with Cherist is not dependent on church attendance.
I'd have to research Ken Hensley first and then the ECFs on baptism.
One thing I've noticed when catholics cite the ECFs is they're very selective in their quotations. Positions favoring catholicism are highly quoted while position against catholicism are often ignored or discounted.
An example of this is found in the catholic encyclopedia online regarding the immaculate conception.
In regard to the sinlessness of Mary the older Fathers are very cautious: some of them even seem to have been in error on this matter.
Origen, although he ascribed to Mary high spiritual prerogatives, thought that, at the time of Christ's passion, the sword of disbelief pierced Mary's soul ; that she was struck by the poniard of doubt ; and that for her sins also Christ died ( Origen, "In Luc. hom. xvii").
In the same manner St. Basil writes in the fourth century: he sees in the sword, of which Simeon speaks, the doubt which pierced Mary's soul (Epistle 259
St. Chrysostom accuses her of ambition, and of putting herself forward unduly when she sought to speak to Jesus at Capharnaum ( Matthew 12:46 ; Chrysostom, Hom. xliv; cf. also "In Matt.", hom. 4).
http://www.catholic.org/encyclopedia/view.php?id=6056
Ultimately, the Fathers are interesting in regards to development of doctrine.
The crucial thing is not what they wrote as they struggled to make sense of, but whether they agree with what God inspired - word-by-word - in the Scriptures.
In Him
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