Woah, easy there big guy. The "I believe that" had nothing to do with Jews, gentiles, or anything else on your thread.
Please go back and read He-man's post again. I was agreeing with Paul, not answering in the affirmative to He-man. I probably should have been clearer.
Ah... my mistake, this thread is getting a bit 'complexified ' with criss-crossing themes ... sorry for the mis-read of context
What I believe about the bible is that it is an anthology of Christian writings compiled by catholics to promote catholicism.
it is interesting that the Catholic church distances itself from the title 'Roman Catholic church' which it acquired in the great schism , and also from the titles 'Christian church' and 'Church of Christ' ... its sole claim to fame in its name and acts is that it is everywhere , accepted by the herd on herd instinct that the many cannot be so bad , despite what God says [that only few will find the way in this life -Matt 7:14]
the earliest [written] reference to the name 'Catholic church' that I can find is 'St. Ignatius of Antioch' in AD 107 so there is no anachronism in what you claim
...and I guess one might date the compilation of the 'bible' to AD 325 ... the so-called 'Council of Nicaea' ...
but Constantine was a pagan all his life , not a Catholic pope as the Catholic church claims , and the council of some 300 was called only because the minor sect of 'Chrstians' had divided on [absurd] arguments about the divinity of Jesus ... the council was not the Catholic church , but a diverse collection of men of widely varying beliefs who had acquired power through asserting those beliefs and convincing others to follow them... Constantine's only interest was in making a state religion on which they all could agree , so that religion would unite the people , not divide them , but he had no intention of changing his own beliefs , let alone following the 'bible' he commissioned as simply those writings which all these 300 diverse power-mongers could agree on as 'holy' ... all he wanted was something to act as least common denominator of the group , and frankly he wasn't prepared to accept that they couldn't ALL agree on any writings as being holy , they were obliged to compromise ...
so I don't think it is a fair comment to claim that catholics compiled the bible , and indeed the 'Christians' were only a small divided sect amongst many at the time ...
Christians [originally all Hebrews, later including the House of Israel because Jesus was sent by God only to find them amongst the gentiles, living as gentiles] had been persecuted by Rome all the time since Jesus' day for the same reason that Jesus was killed , true Christianity of the saints [those who stopped sinning to obey Jesus command] was a menace to authorities because the saints cared for all the people ,notably suffering alongside the poor helping them ...
and people saw it was good, believed because of the loving acts ... that was a challenge to Roman authority and Roman [pagan] beliefs which was met by force of arms of one of the great armies of history ...
not really a fair contest of arms which Rome won, not really a fair contest of what is right in folks being, hearts, minds, spirit, conscience,, which the saints won ...
Constantine saw the problem , DIVISION, and noted the growth of Christianity , so whilst personally he had no interest in what it was, never did change his own beliefs in paganism, he did insist on a STANDARD of what was to become in AD 380 the state religion , and anyone who did not accept it was then persecuted as a 'heretic' ... so there was the birth of catholicism as a 'UNITED' 'faith' but it came about by compromise and so likely no-one in the 'Council' actually believed it , just had to live with it to remain in power under Constantine ...
the effect was to intensify the rationalisation of the differences between the state religion , largely pagan, keeping pagan days and rituals , not the holy memorial days of scripture, and the words of the 'accepted' scripture much written long before Rome was even a great pagan power ...
the birth of 'theologies' then, explaining by every trick in the book why the scripture was different than the religion ... so the myth was born that the scripture was about what became more widelyaccepted , catholicism had a standard by which it could begin eliminating by death and torture anyone who openly disagreed with a singe 'doctrine' , 'dogma', way of phrasing, whatever ... heresy had to be eliminated , the religion was made LAW ... became an excuse for wars...
BUT to say it " promotes catholicism" is untrue if one studies it as a WHOLE to get at the underlying truths behind painfully biased translations , some editing, some uncertainty about the original words [because all copies have variations in some wording ]... the Truth is still there, barely concealed except in the subtle deceptions of 'theology' , private interpretations, etc which indeed would take more than a lifetime to fully unravel ... and the Truth clearly demolishes almost every aspect of catholicism , almost every doctrine, pagan day kept, ritual, priesthood, hierarchy, ... I mean it's not even close to a promotion of catholicism, it demolishes the apostate religion and all its offshoots , 'reformations' , sects, denominations ,cults , etc
NOW, clearly the Nicaean group was never authorised by God although catholics claim that pagan Constantine was a 'pope' , in place of Christ [more than ironically 'antichristos' in Greek] but that is frankly absurd , for his supposed deathbed confession , at least dubious , could not make him a saint anyway, let alone the fact that NO MAN can stand in place of Chriust because Christ stands as head of his 'church' of saints , and made it clear that not even any of his saints would ever take his place as king of kings, high priest of the order of Melchisedec ...
so, much of the bible was written long before Rome or the Catholic church
and the NT [so-called] for example is KEYED to the OT in almost every chapter ...
the Truth of God was recorded and Nicaea
only attempted re-interpretation of it to fit, incredibly badly,
the newly created state religion of Rome ... they simply couldn't
do without the old writings , so they wrote volumes attempting
, unsuccessfully , to paper over the cracks with 'exegesis',
something which thousands of 'bishops' continue doing today
despite that the scripture says it is NOT of ANY private
interpretation... this does not trouble 'Christians' as much as the
obvious proof that the results do not come from God because all
'bishops' hold their own private beliefs [in private] , are not united
in ONE Truth of God in their whole life , which proves they were never
baptised of the spirit [John 16:13] , so cannot enter the kingdom
... worse than this the KNOW of course, they have read the scripture
themselves ... they know that if it were true then they would not be
saved at Jesus return because they know they are sinners because their
job is to teach the masses to believe what they know to be false
to scripture ... that seems bizarre until one realises that in scripture
God and Jesus describe how the masses MUST be deceived in this life
because the kingdom of God si not ready yet [because mankind is not
ready yet] for salvation of the masses , they must die to be 'queued up'
for later salvation ... if they were to read the whole scripture as it is,
take it in , stop sinning, receive spirit baptism , and have their love
trialled likely to the death , as Jesus and the saints, then there would
be no need of the kingdom come to achieve this ... so we see this will not
happen because of the way mankind simply is , few will be saved first
and form the kingdom come so THEY are ready to handle salvation of
billions later -Rev 7:9-10
So to make the point, it matters NOT that many books [at least twenty
named in the bible alone] are missing from scripture as the so-called
'canon' , which thus defeats its own definition , because of several things
-1.- the 'bible' as stands is still enough to explain the true gospel
of the Messiah of Israel and the new covenant with Israel, which must
go out into the whole world , as the bible has done... it matters not
that the ones who take the Truth in writing most do not believe it all even
though they say they do, that MUST happen TOO
-2.- other scriptures can easily be identified by their agreement as one ,
or not, with a whole mass of scripture ... it really does not matter that
the bible is a minimal set of scriptures for a group of 300
of varying beliefs..
-3.- the ONLY authority of God is God, the holy spirit of the TRUTH, whereas even the scripture is mere WORDS OF THIS WORLD ... no-one gets to the kingdom of God without spirit baptism to know the truth FROM GOD [John 16:13] ... so all the hot air of religion is obviously nonsense,
God is not divided like religion, but it is NECESSARY nonsense because of the way mankind simply is
God PROVED it to us ALL , that Israel simply could not OBEY a simple set of rules which God would accept as Love if they obeyed this old covenant ..
He even told them they would not obey them before they agreed to try
... see WHY would God do that ? - simply to show us that it is WE who are not ready to stop sinning, not God who is not ready to accept us once we do stop and choose love instead of sin....
-4.- thus we find the explanation by God in scripture of WHY the Catholic church has to be - and has to be apostate - it serves sinners by sinners, not saints, and even it's self-proclaimed saints only brought about division,
so clearly were not one with the church , maybe not saints at all then , but it matters not ... yet one could tell from scripture whether they were divided by following God, or not
-5.- the scripture exists NOT to teach all truth, which is God's prerogative, but simply to say enough to get the FEW who will be saints in this life to stop sinning so that God CAN teach them and they will accept that teaching by the spirit ... apart from that it has been the inspiration for countless hours of work by sinners to 'prove' that it supports this or that doctrine of men , the work of Satan done by dedicated sincere men working for the power-mongers of this earth without hardly even realising perhaps , or some caught up in it because it is their way of life...
I remember a report by a cardinal in Rome about the room only popes are allowed to enter, and how the pope emerged from his first visit there, white as a sheet ... it is rather easy to see why, from scripture ...
Nothing more, nothing less.
well I believe I have shown it is more than that, and indeed only fulfills that role if one believes the lies said about it in 'exegesis' , diverse exegeses at that [LOL?]
I also believe I have shown it is less than that , much less..
