Replies

Nicodemus' encounter with Jesus shows that without the intervention of the Holy Spirit, we can miss out on the fullness of truth. We can be good people with good intentions, but our relationship with Jesus will be determined more by how well we obey the commandments and love others than it will simply by our intentions. But when we seek the transforming power of the Spirit, we become partakers of the very nature of God, empowered by the Spirit not only to obey God, but to become like God.

This is so bogus! It's watered down and weak and leaves you not knowing much of anything.

Re 48827

How can you say this? Peter, and the others, definitely were commissioned to do so.

Matthew 10:
[5] These twelve Jesus sent out, charging them, "Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans,
[6] but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

Wow. Another completely unexpected deviation from the meaning I thought was common.

This command was given before the Resurrection. During Jesus' earthly ministry He sent His Disciples out in the Judean land to speak repentence and the Kingdom's inninence to the Jews.

After His Resurrection, He expanded the ministry to all nations. We see this when He tells them to make disciples of all the nations. The earlier, pre-Resurrection, ministry to the Jews was expanded.

To read this text as Jesus prohibiting the Apostles from ever, ever, going out to the nations is contrary not only to the later charge Jesus gives, but also to history, which is replete with far flung Churches established by Apostles.

Is it your belief that the Lost Tribes and the lost sheep of the house of Israel are not one and the same?

The Lost Tribes are not the "lost sheep." The lost sheep are the ones in Israel at the time, the Jews who had fallen away, the ones that Jesus came to call to repent.

The Lost Tribes are in faraway lands, if known at all. Certainly the Apostles did not go to visit them while JEsus was on earth.

So, the entire argument that Peter coudl not have been in Rome because of this verse is preposterous.

Re 48836

Twas the Catholic church, which sprung from a mixture of Messianic belief and paganism, insofar as they dictated we should celebrate Easter (the pagan goddess of Ishtar). I can't help it if you can't shake all of the Romanism off. :-)

Of coruse, the fact that "Easter" is a peculiar word in the English language, and not used by the Church in other tongues, does nto give you pause.

The Church refers to the "Easter" time as the "paschal" season. Which refers right back to passover.