you can prove anything from the bible

lutherangerman said:

So how do you read the bible so you have one good and honest and merciful theology?

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I try and read as many of the better contemporary peer-reviewed commentaries and books that I can; this helps me to understand what the better commentators of our day are thinking which more than helps me to keep a check on my own understanding of things.

lutherangerman said:

Since a while I am at unrest with bible and biblical theology. It seems to me you can prove anything from the bible, there are verses for everything in it. You want to go trinitarian? It's in the New Testament, much of it. You want to go Oneness? The OT is full of it. You want to prove Universal Salvation? Many verses speak about it. You want to believe in Eternal Torment? There are also verses that can be read in a way to prove it.

It's like the book allows everything really. From the most conservative to the most liberal. And if you want to find the God the bible speaks about, it's not so easy and He is rather silent on everything, it's hard to get him to talk.

So how do you read the bible so you have one good and honest and merciful theology?

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Just keep asking questions. Question everything. Never settle until you are fully convinced. And if something comes along that seems to contradict you prior beliefs, question both positions until there is nothing left to question. If you find that your prior beliefs are inconsistent, then throw them out and start all over.

Do not quench the Spirit. This is very important. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. The deep things of God are VERY deep. They are magnificent and beautiful. Only Good things come from the Most High. And He gives to all who ask.

What else do we have to do in this life of vanity? If we die in complete ignorance, how are we any different than 99.9 percent of every human that has ever lived? God will teach all, all things, at the proper time. Thank you my friend and God bless.

lutherangerman said:

Since a while I am at unrest with bible and biblical theology. It seems to me you can prove anything from the bible, there are verses for everything in it. You want to go trinitarian? It's in the New Testament, much of it. You want to go Oneness? The OT is full of it. You want to prove Universal Salvation? Many verses speak about it. You want to believe in Eternal Torment? There are also verses that can be read in a way to prove it.

It's like the book allows everything really. From the most conservative to the most liberal. And if you want to find the God the bible speaks about, it's not so easy and He is rather silent on everything, it's hard to get him to talk.

So how do you read the bible so you have one good and honest and merciful theology?

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Sure, you can prove anything from the Bible...if you take the verses you like out of the whole of it, put your own spin on them, and rely heavily on your audience not to read or study for themselves. That's how false doctrines are concocted.
I once did it myself...just to show how it's done...
I "proved" that God favors prostitutes above all human beings...I took various stories of women who used their sex...Rahab, Tamar, Esther, Ruth, etc...and put my own spin on those verses. I called it "The Church of the Holy Hooker"...the point was, of course, that we need to read ALL of the Bible if we want to know the truth.

And that is the answer to your question. God does speak to us in His Word...you just have to quit trying to pick and choose which verses you like, and read the entire Bible, especially when you come to the New Testament....take your time, and actually read it, and you will hear God speaking to you through it's pages...

(P.S. "The Church of the Holy Hooker" is a false doctrine, concocted "on the run" to prove a point. Please do not take it seriously. God loves us all...just wanted to be sure to clear that up.)

lutherangerman said:

Since a while I am at unrest with bible and biblical theology. It seems to me you can prove anything from the bible, there are verses for everything in it. You want to go trinitarian? It's in the New Testament, much of it. You want to go Oneness? The OT is full of it. You want to prove Universal Salvation? Many verses speak about it. You want to believe in Eternal Torment? There are also verses that can be read in a way to prove it.

It's like the book allows everything really. From the most conservative to the most liberal. And if you want to find the God the bible speaks about, it's not so easy and He is rather silent on everything, it's hard to get him to talk.

So how do you read the bible so you have one good and honest and merciful theology?

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For myself, I find looking at what Jesus said was the core of the teachings helps prioritize matters and then when interpreting pay attention to what the "character" or "fruit" expected is or when you're asked to do something because "god is like that too" and take note .. so when looking at and interpretation consider it an "application" of scripture, does this application conform to the character of God? is it is congruence with what the bible says is love? does this application display the fruit that is the desired end result? or does it sound like the usual pattern of the world that you might see at work?

When presented with two images of God through different interpretations, remember since God judges with mercy, judge God with mercy in your perception of him when choosing which image to closely identify with as the creator of the universe.

lutherangerman said:

You want to go trinitarian? It's in the New Testament, much of it. You want to go Oneness? The OT is full of it. You want to prove Universal Salvation? Many verses speak about it. You want to believe in Eternal Torment? There are also verses that can be read in a way to prove it.

It's like the book allows everything really. From the most conservative to the most liberal.

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It looks like the Bible does EXACTLY as Jesus said would do to Earth! :o :o

Matt 10:34-36
"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.
For I have come to turn "'a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law--. a man's enemies will be the members of his own household.'

I’m seeing the bible as more of a mirror; whether
it's that way by design or not I have no clue.

As Karl Barth once wrote, “I have read many books,
but the Bible reads me.”

Therefore, one's understanding of the passages in
question ultimately says more about them than it
does about the passages.


-

lutherangerman said:

Since a while I am at unrest with bible and biblical theology. It seems to me you can prove anything from the bible, there are verses for everything in it. You want to go trinitarian? It's in the New Testament, much of it. You want to go Oneness? The OT is full of it. You want to prove Universal Salvation? Many verses speak about it. You want to believe in Eternal Torment? There are also verses that can be read in a way to prove it.

It's like the book allows everything really. From the most conservative to the most liberal. And if you want to find the God the bible speaks about, it's not so easy and He is rather silent on everything, it's hard to get him to talk.

So how do you read the bible so you have one good and honest and merciful theology?

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Through the Finished Work of Jesus Christ. Seeing Him in every line whether old or new test. makes everything flow like honey. And the only way to See Him like that, is to be circumcised in heart. But again, that is not something we choose, it's all according to God's mercy upon us.

If we take any understanding and use that first understanding as our foundation of truth, everything else has to line up with the first belief.
for me He narrowed it down to only three possibilities when it comes to salvation:

1. That none would be saved (atheist)
2. That some will be saved (ET)
3. That all would be saved (UR)

since we believe in God and believe that He does save, this automatically eliminates the first possibility leaving only the other two.

Upon which foundation is our belief system based upon, Eternal Torment or Universal Reconciliation? Have we completely investigated both points of view without bias?

One of the first things He showed me was my perception of Him, my perception of Him was a God of punishment, but I now have come to understand that He is a God of discipline (of correction), even when our earthly father disciplined us, his love for us was hidden because as a child we did not yet understand that his motive was "discipline out of love", not "discipline to inflict pain".

A child can easily be misled to believe his father hates him because he is constantly being punished, but coming to understand that his father loves "HIM" but does not love the things that he does. The child has a hard time separating the two.

jugghead said:

A child can easily be misled to believe his father hates him because he is constantly being punished, but coming to understand that his father loves "HIM" but does not love the things that he does. The child has a hard time separating the two.

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So true, my brother once ask me...hey sis, have you ever noticed that the older we get the smarter mom and dad is? LOL
The same can be said of our Heavenly Father too, the more we grow, The more Wise He becomes to us, and the more we see His Plan for All.

When I was a child I spoke as a child, and played as a child, but when I grew up I put away childish things.
The Church for the most part is still in this place where they see Punishment instead of Correction unto Godliness.

Also, if we do not believe that everything the Father does has a redemptive purpose we can miss the mark, and that is because the finished work of Christ "IS" the redemptive process "IN" us.

lutherangerman said:

Hi Michael,

I am always looking for the gracious and merciful God, that is my spiritual quest so to speak. But the bible has great love and great wrath in it, examples being Christ's cross or, conversely, Noah's Flood. To escape this conundrum of what is what and what to decide for, I often have to go to science for a testing of what I have read. And basically science disproves the bible on the account of Noah's Flood. But if I go to science it does not last long until I come again to the conflict between different and contrary arguments that espouse the same validity. There should be only one truth but there does not seem to be one truth in reality. Noah's Flood was disproven, alright, but there are other things which science sometimes believes in which cannot be proven or disproven, the existence of aliens, the Bermuda Triangle, Atlantis, etc.

Blessings,

Daniel

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God's Word is Spirit and life....If what you say is true, then you're gonna love this when it comes to Noah's Flood.

When seen through the Finished work of Christ, It's Beautiful...

The Dove, The Branch and The Baptism

I love seeing Christ in the old testament,......I'm sure everyone is familiar with the story of Noah, the ark, and the Dove, etc......

There's a point where Noah is in the Ark, surrounded by water, and he releases The Dove, and she comes back because it says she found no rest for the sole of her foot.


Gen 8:9 But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth: then he put forth his hand, and took her, and pulled her in unto him into the ark.

Then, he stays another 7 days and sends her forth again.


Gen 8:11 And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth.

Now we have an Olive leaf, from a tree I would suppose, right?
So she must have found rest on a Branch in order to have plucked it off.

The question is where do we see this same picture in the New testament?

The Ark, surrounded by water, and the Dove finding Rest for the sole
of her foot, on a Branch.

Isa 11:1 And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots:
Isa 11:2 And the spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD;

Mat 3:16 And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him:


Jesus, The Ark, surrounded by Water, and The Dove, finding Rest for the sole of her foot on HIM. The Branch

lutherangerman said:

how do you read the bible so you have one good and honest and merciful theology?

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I just realized I didn't address this aspect of the post.

And this probably ties into what I posted previously, but anyway:

Any verses in the bible that make God seem just a bit too similar to
an angry, petty, vengeful human being—or even to a dark, fallen
angel who is given to tantrums—I disregard those as being
inaccurate portrayals of what He is really like. Since I do believe His
ways are higher than our ways, I take such passages with a huge
grain of salt.

This leaves plenty of room for the foundations of a good, honest,
and merciful theology to develop, and this, in turn, has helped me
to more effectively manifest the fruit of the Spirit in everyday life. I
still have a long way to go on that, though. Baby steps.

-

Perception is everything.

If I were to be incomprehensible to the very finite of what this means, how would I cause a man to understand that it was me who he was born of; this is the story of the Bible as it relates to us.

The Bible is not the truth we are.

lutherangerman said:

Since a while I am at unrest with bible and biblical theology. It seems to me you can prove anything from the bible, there are verses for everything in it.

Click to expand...

Maybe it can be twisted to many things. But if you take it as whole, there remains one truth. And one truth is for example that God is greater than all, according to OT and NT.

You heard how I told you, 'I go away, and I come to you.' If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I said 'I am going to my Father;' for the Father is greater than I.
John 14:28