Believe the Bible - bend the Bible - deny the Bible... pick one

[tickingclocker]

You seem to have fallen for the failed idea that one cannot 'contend earnestly for the faith" as Jude 1 insists - and still be a Christian that wins souls to Christ. You also seem to assume you know what I do when not on this board.

I am curious as to how this idea came to you.

IN any case - do you have a response to the subject of this thread that is "not" ad hominem?

A. You seem to have fallen for the failed idea...
Answer: Huh?

B. ...and still be a Christian that wins souls to Christ.
Answer: People who insist their ideas/concepts of God are the only truth seldom witness effectively. Bob, such people tend to turn others off. I don't know how else to say it without offending you further, so I will remain silently praying for you.

C. Ad hominem.
Answer: Huh? Just joking. Lighten up, my friend. God is in HIS heavens. All is right with the world. I believe the bible as it stands, but my faith rests in God alone. That answer your original question sufficiently? If it doesn't? Nothing I can--or will--do about that.

 

[BobRyan]

B. ...and still be a Christian that wins souls to Christ.
Answer: People who insist their ideas/concepts of God are the only truth seldom witness effectively. Bob, such people tend to turn others off. I don't know how else to say it without offending you further, so I will remain silently praying for you.

.. Just joking. Lighten up, my friend.

how "instructive" -- for the unbiased objective reader.

Mark 7:6-13 -- is this a case where you see Christ in "error"??

Christ's doctrine on "sola scriptura testing" - resulted in hammering the traditions of the Jewish magisterium of His day and promoting the authority of the Word of God - yes even as found in the Ten Commandments.


Mark 7

7 Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.
8 For laying aside the Commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men, as the washing of pots and cups: and many other such like things ye do.
9 And he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition.
10 For Moses said, Honour thy father and thy mother; and, Whoso curseth father or mother, let him die the death:
11 But ye say, If a man shall say to his father or mother, It is Corban, that is to say, a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; he shall be free.
12 And ye suffer him no more to do ought for his father or his mother;
13 Making the Word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye.

That is a case of Christ demonstrating the way that the magisterium is hammered "sola scriptura" in the cases where it's traditions and "doctrines of men" are at odds with scripture.

 

[BobRyan]

I believe the Bible was written by holly men, some more holy than others. The 6 day creation narrative came from the ancient story of Adam and Eve spending their first 6 days in the garden.

And the virgin birth "story" came from ?? "An Egyptian Virgin Birth story, told about 2,000 years before" ???

Oh no wait! -- you want to use the "pick and choose" model -- slice-and-dice as per "whim"??

 

[Extraneous]

A. You seem to have fallen for the failed idea...
Answer: Huh?

B. ...and still be a Christian that wins souls to Christ.
Answer: People who insist their ideas/concepts of God are the only truth seldom witness effectively. Bob, such people tend to turn others off. I don't know how else to say it without offending you further, so I will remain silently praying for you.

C. Ad hominem.
Answer: Huh? Just joking. Lighten up, my friend. God is in HIS heavens. All is right with the world. I believe the bible as it stands, but my faith rests in God alone. That answer your original question sufficiently? If it doesn't? Nothing I can--or will--do about that.

The best witness i can think of is a Church that doesnt just love in word but in deed. Its not possible to love each other when we are divided over politics and religion, we can say we love each other but the greatest love is to lay down our life for each other, and for God. To lay down our politics and religion, and to follow Christ in the simple path.

The best witness i can think of is a Church that lives like the one in Acts 4 lived, where they all spoke with one voice, and one mind, shared all hings and didn't consider anything as their own. Who wouldn't want to join a Church like that? No one struggling and everyone equal. Surely thats a better witness than this mess we have created.

We however dont like that idea, so we instead follow politicians and denominations. We follow teachers and men, because we have itching ears.

 

[Extraneous]

All this religious and political division is unnecessary. The apostles teach us the commands of God, and they are not about saying certain prayers, or fasting on certain days, or observing any holy days either. They are quite simply to sow to the spirit and not the flesh. The carnal mind cannot obey this law however, because its focused on things of the flesh, things such as nations, politics, scientific theories, denominations.

Some people say my arguments are untested. However, scripture backs them fully.

 

[sculleywr]

I'll tell you point blank that you are doing the same thing. You divide yourself against SDA for example, and would never join their Church because you don't agree with their doctrine. I dont agree with any church today and so i dont need to join any of them. Im doing no different than everyone else is doing, only somehow you convince yourself that you are doing better than me.

And so you cut yourself off from the true means of meeting Christ. Christ called us to be a gathering. Whether or not I ally myself with every single church, and thus be a relativist, is not what is important. What is important is finding that Church which was handed the baton by the Apostles and never dropped it. If it doesn't exist, then Christ is naught but a false prophet. In other words, if there is no Church teaching all that is true and necessary for salvation, then I have no reason whatsoever to follow Christ.

 

[sculleywr]

A circular statement - "the canon of scripture determines the content of scripture" like saying "this book on Chemistry determines what is in this book on chemistry"

Did you mean that the Jews determined the content of the Canon of their own OT text and the first century saints determined theirs?

If so - then many centuries later when the RCC came along -- there is nothing for them to do.



how informative.

as we all know - the Jews determined the content of the Canon of their own OT text. The RCC did not write that text and the Jews were not going to wait 700 years for the RCC to come along and tell them what to read.

Thus in Luke 24:27 Christ was teaching from "all of scripture"

No, the Jews did not wait for the RCC to tell them what to read, but they did not stick to their guns, because 700 years after Christ, the Masoretes CHANGED the Jewish canon of the OT. Why? Because the CHURCH (not RCC, because there was no schism at that time and nobody in the world believed as you believe) was using the Old Testament they had been using to prove Christ. And so they cut books out of their canon.

And that manmade tradition, based on the desire to reject Jesus, is what defined the Masoretic text, the foundation of your OT canon was founded on "how do we take Jesus out of our texts?"

And that does change your doctrine, because if you had the Old Testament as the early Christians and Jews had it, you would have had the story of not only the history of Hannukah, which Christ celebrated in the New Testament, but also multiple prophecies about Christ's life that were not written in your shortened canon, the doctrine of the intercession of the saints, and several other things which are absent from your doctrines now.

Canon determines the Scripture, which effects doctrine. It is not circular because it does not come back around. You fail to understand the concept of circular logic in this instance. IT is not circular because you claim it to be. Circular logic is "the canon determines the scripture which determines the canon", but the canon is not determined by Scripture, but by Tradition.

 

[sculleywr]

All this religious and political division is unnecessary. The apostles teach us the commands of God, and they are not about saying certain prayers, or fasting on certain days, or observing any holy days either. They are quite simply to sow to the spirit and not the flesh. The carnal mind cannot obey this law however, because its focused on things of the flesh, things such as nations, politics, scientific theories, denominations.

Some people say my arguments are untested. However, scripture backs them fully.

Your arguments are brand spanking new and were not what the people who received Scripture directly understood Scripture to mean. Scripture has been used to "back" Arianism, Monophysitism, Monophylitism, Gnosticism, and any number of heretical teachings. The mere use of Scripture to back your arguments does not make them true, because I could use Scripture to prove whatever I want, if I so desired.

What makes something true is "has it always been true?" It has not ever been true that we can be part of the Church by separating ourselves fully from the Church. We must be part of a gathering to be part of the Ekklessia, because it is, by its very definition, gathering. The question is not whether or not to be in a gathering, it is which gathering teaches the Truth as it was delivered, and that answer narrows it down, in the end, to only one which is teaching the fullness of the Truth.

 

[BobRyan]

No, the Jews did not wait for the RCC to tell them what to read, but they did not stick to their guns, because 700 years after Christ, the Masoretes CHANGED the Jewish canon of the OT.

Turns out we have the same OT 39 books today that the Jews had in the form of 22 books in Christ's day.

The current Hebrew Bible remains the same - in content - differing only in the division and order of the books.

"The Christian Old Testament and the Jewish Tanakh are also distinct from each other in terms of punctuation, canonical order, and emphases." http://www.bibleodyssey.org/tools/b...estament-the-tanakh-and-the-hebrew-bible.aspx

As Josephus notes - they had NO CHANGES in the 400 years prior to Christ - it was canon and still is to this very day. The Protestant OT and the Hebrew Bible have the same text.

And that does change your doctrine, because if you had the Old Testament as the early Christians and Jews had it, you would have had the story of not only the history of Hannukah, which Christ celebrated in the New Testament, but also multiple prophecies about Christ's life that were not written in your shortened canon, the doctrine of the intercession of the saints, and several other things which are absent from your doctrines now.

Just not in "real life"

"It is understandable if Christians think the Old Testament and the Tanakh are one and the same thing, but a closer look reveals important distinctions. For example, Catholic, Anglican, and Orthodox Christian Old Testament canons include additional books, either written or preserved in Greek (Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Maccabees, etc.), that are not in the Jewish canon"
http://www.bibleodyssey.org/tools/b...estament-the-tanakh-and-the-hebrew-bible.aspx

Canon determines the Scripture, which effects doctrine. It is not circular because it does not come back around.

It is circular because it says "the scripture determines scripture" -- "the canon of scripture determines the canon of scripture".

The point remains.

You fail to understand the concept of circular logic in this instance.

The dead-end argument over the Hebrew Bible goes nowhere because the Hebrew Bible text is not authored by Catholics and no Jew was waiting for Catholics to tell them what it is - and it is the same today as it was in Christ's day -- the same text content as what we find in the Protestant Bible.

The dead-end argument over the NT text also goes nowhere since both Catholics and Protestants have the same text.

That only leaves the dead-end argument over the Jewish Apocrypha which the Jews do not include in their Canon - and which even the Catholic Jerome rejected when translating the text to create the Vulgate Bible.

How many ways are there to circle back to a dead-end??

Notice that the title does not include the subject "claim you determine what is in the Bible, claim you wrote the Bible, claim people must come to you if they want to know what the Bible is" -- all that sort is off topic.

Now back to the actual content of the first two posts of this thread.

in Christ,

Bob

 

[Colter]

And the virgin birth "story" came from ?? "An Egyptian Virgin Birth story, told about 2,000 years before" ???

Oh no wait! -- you want to use the "pick and choose" model -- slice-and-dice as per "whim"??

I don't know where the virgin birth story came from, Jesus never said anything like that. But the Pagan world dud have a virgin birth and human sacrifice religion.'

 

[BobRyan]

I don't know where the virgin birth story came from, Jesus never said anything like that. But the Pagan world dud have a virgin birth and human sacrifice religion.'

So then you don't believe either the OT or the NT text?

Or you use "stories" to "pick and choose" to "slice and dice" in both OT and NT??

When Christ was found at the age of 12 in the temple - and then corrected by his mother - he said "did you not know I must be about my FATHER's business" claiming to be the Son of God - and not Joseph's biological son.

In John 6 Jesus said HE IS the bread that "came down out of heaven"
In John 17 Jesus prays for the glory "he had WITH the Father before " the world was.

In John 1 Jesus was "With the God and WAS God" before the creation of the World.

Joseph is determined to cancel the marriage when he finds out about the pregnancy - but an angel informs him that God has caused it.

Matt 1
18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: when His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. 19 And Joseph her husband, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly.

This then is what Christ's own disciples were given to understand as the case.

As Darwin, Darwinists, evolutionists, atheists and Christians have noted -- once you shred the Bible you no longer have Christianity.

No longer any basis for the fall of mankind.
No longer any basis for condemning all mankind - dooming them to the Lake of Fire.
No longer any basis for God the Son coming to earth to SAVE mankind by dying for our sins - paying our debt of sin.
No longer any basis for going to a church that teaches those doctrines.
No longer any basis for claiming that the Bible is the Word of God.

See the second post and 3 minute video that is there.

 

[Colter]

So then you don't believe either the OT or the NT text?

Or you use "stories" to "pick and choose" to "slice and dice" in both OT and NT??

When Christ was found at the age of 12 in the temple - and then corrected by his mother - he said "did you not know I must be about my FATHER's business" claiming to be the Son of God - and not Joseph's biological son.

In John 6 Jesus said HE IS the bread that "came down out of heaven"
In John 17 Jesus prays for the glory "he had WITH the Father before " the world was.

In John 1 Jesus was "With the God and WAS God" before the creation of the World.

Joseph is determined to cancel the marriage when he finds out about the pregnancy - but an angel informs him that God has caused it.

Matt 1
18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: when His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. 19 And Joseph her husband, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly.

This then is what Christ's own disciples were given to understand as the case.

As Darwin, Darwinists, evolutionists, atheists and Christians have noted -- once you shred the Bible you no longer have Christianity.

No longer any basis for the fall of mankind.
No longer any basis for condemning all mankind - dooming them to the Lake of Fire.
No longer any basis for God the Son coming to earth to SAVE mankind by dying for our sins - paying our debt of sin.
No longer any basis for going to a church that teaches those doctrines.
No longer any basis for claiming that the Bible is the Word of God.

See the second post and 3 minute video that is there.

Jesus did come down from Heaven, the miracle is how he became the baby conceived in Mary.

Jesus at 12 years old did say he is the Son of God, he was the Son of God in heaven, while on earth, and now back in heaven. Jesus preexisted before he became the baby in Mary. We are all sons of God.

That's Christianity's problem, it contains a lot of human speculation that is contradictory.

Christianity is dyeing under he weight of it's own stubbornness. Eventually we will return to the original gospel Jesus had hoped the Jews would adopt, before killing Jesus as a sacrifice became the new gospel.

 

[BobRyan]

Jesus did come down from Heaven, the miracle is how he became the baby conceived in Mary.

Jesus at 12 years old did say he is the Son of God, he was the Son of God in heaven, while on earth, and now back in heaven. Jesus preexisted before he became the baby in Mary.

And did you get that from the Bible?

If so - how did you know not to disbelieve the Bible as you do in other cases?

Christianity is dyeing under he weight of it's own stubbornness. Eventually we will return to the original gospel Jesus had hoped the Jews would adopt, before killing Jesus as a sacrifice became the new gospel.

Peter took your option and when the mob came he went on the offensive -- Christ told him that this was not the plan - Christ said if the plan was to fight - then he had 12 legions of Angels at his command.

John 18 -- it is the Father's plan
10 Simon Peter then, having a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s slave, and cut off his right ear; and the slave’s name was Malchus. 11 So Jesus said to Peter, “Put the sword into the sheath; the cup which the Father has given Me, shall I not drink it?”

Matt 26
51 And behold, one of those who were with Jesus reached and drew out his sword, and struck the slave of the high priest and cut off his ear. 52 Then Jesus *said to him, “Put your sword back into its place; for all those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword. 53 Or do you think that I cannot appeal to My Father, and He will at once put at My disposal more than twelve legions of angels? 54 How then will the Scriptures be fulfilled, which say that it must happen this way?”

John 6
48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50 This is the bread which comes down out of heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.”

=================================

It "appears" that your belief stems more from what others have told you is in the Bible - then from your own reading of it. Possibly this is because you have so much distrust of the Bible from the many stories that have been told to you about it.

 

[BobRyan]

A few of the many problems that Christians would face if they chose the religion of blind-faith-evolutionism over Christianity.

within the religion of evolutionism - we have this:

¨Gender is a “fluke” – one of many outcomes.
¨The Sabbath has no foundation in fact. “For in six days…” nothing happened.
¨ Marriage is just a cultural preference – it is “whatever you make of it”.
¨The Law of God appeals to myth – and is void.
¨The Fall of man is without fact
¨The Gospel has no basis for existing without a real fall of mankind into sin.

The Bible describes God as kind, all-knowing, all-powerful Creator of a perfect sinless deathless environment for Adam and Eve. Once they willingly sin against the clear statement of God - death enters, sin is the norm, separation from God - mankind doomed to the lake of fire of Rev 20.

The Gospel solves all those problems.

But in evolutionism - all the problems "do not exist". So the solution "is not needed"

 

[Extraneous]

And so you cut yourself off from the true means of meeting Christ. Christ called us to be a gathering. Whether or not I ally myself with every single church, and thus be a relativist, is not what is important. What is important is finding that Church which was handed the baton by the Apostles and never dropped it. If it doesn't exist, then Christ is naught but a false prophet. In other words, if there is no Church teaching all that is true and necessary for salvation, then I have no reason whatsoever to follow Christ.

Your baton assertion is wrong. You claim that RC and EO are the baton holders that never dropped the baton, yet Rc and Eo cant even agree with each other which shows you dropped something. Your assertions falls apart. Not to mention, its not hard to read scripture and see how your churches look more like carnal Corinthian and Galatia Churches rather than apostles. Asking dead people to pray for you is not something the apostles did, and you have many other things they wouldn't have done either. We have the word of Christ and faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word. Your problem is that you need to see an unbroken chain of Church authority in order to have faith. Perhaps your faith is not in the right things then. Maybe you should try putting faith in Christ and in his word instead of your church.

 

[Extraneous]

Your arguments are brand spanking new and were not what the people who received Scripture directly understood Scripture to mean. Scripture has been used to "back" Arianism, Monophysitism, Monophylitism, Gnosticism, and any number of heretical teachings. The mere use of Scripture to back your arguments does not make them true, because I could use Scripture to prove whatever I want, if I so desired.

What makes something true is "has it always been true?" It has not ever been true that we can be part of the Church by separating ourselves fully from the Church. We must be part of a gathering to be part of the Ekklessia, because it is, by its very definition, gathering. The question is not whether or not to be in a gathering, it is which gathering teaches the Truth as it was delivered, and that answer narrows it down, in the end, to only one which is teaching the fullness of the Truth.

I am part of the true Church, it however is not what you think it is. My arguments are not new. You would have us believe that if we dont attend Church that we are unsaved, but i believe most rational people would reject such a works based salvation argument however. Scriptures say if we believe in our heart that Christ rose from the dead that we will be saved. Are you now saying this is a new argument? YOu are arguing a works based salvation.

 

[Extraneous]

Paul teaches that we should avoid those who don't follow sound doctrine, and Christ teaches that we should cut off any member of our self that causes us to offend. That alone is justification for not attending Church. Why should i attend a Church when its leaders are not leading by example? They follow politics and other carnal things that cause division. They follow denominations as well, which causes division. The truth is that if you can justify your divisions then i can justify mine. If you are going to judge someone, judge yourself first.

 

[sculleywr]

Turns out we have the same OT 39 books today that the Jews had in the form of 22 books in Christ's day.

The current Hebrew Bible remains the same - in content - differing only in the division and order of the books.

"The Christian Old Testament and the Jewish Tanakh are also distinct from each other in terms of punctuation, canonical order, and emphases." http://www.bibleodyssey.org/tools/b...estament-the-tanakh-and-the-hebrew-bible.aspx

As Josephus notes - they had NO CHANGES in the 400 years prior to Christ - it was canon and still is to this very day. The Protestant OT and the Hebrew Bible have the same text.



Just not in "real life"

"It is understandable if Christians think the Old Testament and the Tanakh are one and the same thing, but a closer look reveals important distinctions. For example, Catholic, Anglican, and Orthodox Christian Old Testament canons include additional books, either written or preserved in Greek (Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Maccabees, etc.), that are not in the Jewish canon"
http://www.bibleodyssey.org/tools/b...estament-the-tanakh-and-the-hebrew-bible.aspx



It is circular because it says "the scripture determines scripture" -- "the canon of scripture determines the canon of scripture".

The point remains.

You fail to understand the concept of circular logic in this instance.

The dead-end argument over the Hebrew Bible goes nowhere because the Hebrew Bible text is not authored by Catholics and no Jew was waiting for Catholics to tell them what it is - and it is the same today as it was in Christ's day -- the same text content as what we find in the Protestant Bible.

The dead-end argument over the NT text also goes nowhere since both Catholics and Protestants have the same text.

That only leaves the dead-end argument over the Jewish Apocrypha which the Jews do not include in their Canon - and which even the Catholic Jerome rejected when translating the text to create the Vulgate Bible.

How many ways are there to circle back to a dead-end??

Notice that the title does not include the subject "claim you determine what is in the Bible, claim you wrote the Bible, claim people must come to you if they want to know what the Bible is" -- all that sort is off topic.

Now back to the actual content of the first two posts of this thread.

in Christ,

Bob

Good to know that the canon of Josephus, which contains Baruch, is somehow the same as the canon you use. Where did Baruch go? Baruch is in both the canon of Josephus and Pliny the Elder, as is the second letter of Ezra.

No, the canon you use is not the same as Josephus, who was a Romanized Jew that was not the only canon, of FIVE canons of the Old Testament, NONE of which match yours. The Septuagint was what Josephus argued against, but his argument was not accepted in the majority of Jews, who followed the Greek text, as did the Christians of the era.

Finally, saying that the canon determines Scripture is NOT saying Scripture determines Scripture, because the Canon is the table of contents, not the Scripture. The Canon of Scripture takes up one page, usually in the front of your Bible. It is not the whole Bible, but a LIST of the books within it.

So yes, in REAL LIFE, that Canon is in charge of Scripture. That Table of Contents page has more authority than the rest of the Bible.

 

[sculleywr]

Paul teaches that we should avoid those who don't follow sound doctrine, and Christ teaches that we should cut off any member of our self that causes us to offend. That alone is justification for not attending Church. Why should i attend a Church when its leaders are not leading by example? They follow politics and other carnal things that cause division. They follow denominations as well, which causes division. The truth is that if you can justify your divisions then i can justify mine. If you are going to judge someone, judge yourself first.

So are you cutting yourself off as you are one who does not follow sound doctrine?

You can scream politics into the wind for all I care. It does not change the order of Paul. If you wouldn't follow someone who is imperfect, then don't follow anyone, including that person you find in the mirror. Don't be a Christian.

The fact is you will NEVER find a Church where there are perfect leaders and perfect people. It wasn't true in the time of the Apostles, much less now. Your argument carries exactly the same weight now that the dissenters and people who forsook the gathering of the brethren in the time of Paul carried: none.

Division of your own accord is not justified. Division from something which endangers the doctrine given to the Church by the Apostles is not division enacted by the Church, but by the schismatics and heretics who enact it for themselves.

 

[sculleywr]

I am part of the true Church, it however is not what you think it is. My arguments are not new. You would have us believe that if we dont attend Church that we are unsaved, but i believe most rational people would reject such a works based salvation argument however. Scriptures say if we believe in our heart that Christ rose from the dead that we will be saved. Are you now saying this is a new argument? YOu are arguing a works based salvation.

The Church is the Pillar and Ground of the Truth, one Body with one Faith. It is not schismatic. You are schismatic. You believe in things which are new and you are a division unto yourself. You reject the gathering together of the brethren, which means that you reject the Body of Christ. You reject the Body, and so you have a bodiless Head?

Tell me how you can have a head without the body, and I will tell you of my Communion with the Head in His Body.