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States the Mormon who uses other texts, and a witness from the Holy Spirit Try reading the context of those verses.
Matt 18:16...in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.
Nothing wrong with looking for another witness outside of the Bible
1 Cor 12:3.... no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.
The final authority is personal revelation from the Holy Ghost, not the Bible...
humdedumdedum................o hi!
I wus babtised at age 10. it wus by my choice too. this is the verse that i use every time i see a thread like this:Ephesians 2:8-10,"For it is by grace that ye are saved through faith and that not yourself;it is a gift from God, not by good works lest any man should bost. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God has prepared for us in advance." Memorize that verse. I believe, as it says, that we are saved through our faith in the lord, but only by the grace of God. I remember when i wus a lot younger, my friend told me she had been babtised and that i wusnt a Christian bcus i hadnt been. She wus BOSTING! She had performed a good work that God prepared a long time b4 4 her to do. but she wus not saved by her good works, she wus saved thru her faith, by gods grace. I think that may be a perfect example of how we can only come to the Father thru accepting Jesus...not being babtised. But since god says we are to do good works, being babtised is in obedience to that command. Everyone sins, and all sins are looked upon equally forgivable by God. so if u arent babtised, u have sinned and will be forgiven. Some ppl r babtised just becus. many dont even understand wut they're doing and end up not geting anything out of babtism except wet hair! I knew wut i wus doing, i loved God and understood that being babtised was being obedient and it wus cleansing. So, NO, u dont have to be babtised to be a Christian, or to go to heaven.
Once again just words from your thoughts and not 1 SINGLE verse from GOD'S WORD.
Citation needed.Not at all
Round and round and round we go. So now we end up back where KCDAD started us: Jesus and Joshua had the same name (as did many many others), so why is one the Messiah? The only reason you can give is to cite the interpretation of one of the gospel writers ("because He will save His people from their sin"). Fine and good, but it doesn't prove anything. If Jesus had been called Martin instead, the gospel could have said "and the angel of the Lord said unto Mary, He shall be called Martin, for he will bring a sword unto the nations, bringing down the mighty and confounding the powerful". Unless you can provide independent evidence of what the angel actually said, you've proved nothing except what a 1st-century writer believed. Or you can solve all these problems by proving that the Bible is the perfect and inerrant Word of God in all aspects. But we're still waiting for that proof. So all your arguments so far come down to "what it says in the Bible is true because it says so in the Bible and the Bible is true".
Actually, I don't recall you ever saying that in this thread, but no matter... because, wow, that's an admission if I ever saw one. I don't think I need make much further comment, really
No, you think you do. And maybe you're right, but you haven't proven this. How can you not see this: saying "X is true because God told me so" is not a worthwhile line of argument because it is unverifiable to anyone else. Therefore, if I say "no, actually, ~X is true and I know that because God told me so" we end up at an impasse. Eliminating the possibility that God is devious or illogical or infirm of purpose, we end up concluding that at least one of us got the message wrong. But how can we tell who? Why should I just believe you when you say that you have God's truth from reading the Bible and listening to God when I've also read the Bible and listened to God (or, at least, genuinely believed that I did) and come to a different conclusion? The only way we can test the claims we make is with logic, scholarship, independent sources, and so on. We can't use the Bible when that's the object in question. We can't use an appeal to God when it's the nature of God we're considering.
That the gospel writers had an agenda? Er, citation please. And I'd also like an explanation of how anyone would go to the effort of writing several thousand words without a reason to do so. Read the first few verses of Luke, where Luke says why he's writing his gospel. Furthermore, you yourself admitted that they had an agenda: when KCDAD said the apostles were too busy preaching to write, you said that they could preach by writing; preaching has to have an agenda -- to make new converts, to instruct new converts, to exhort the faithful to an action, etc etc. If there's no reason behind it, it's just noise.
Actually, that's a piece of cake: you write a book in which Jesus agrees with you. What's not so easy is proving that that book is the truth (or the Word of God or whathaveyou). Once again you keep missing the point.
No he did not. The Bible did not exist until a few hundred years later; what became canon was decided by a council of men. But I know you won't accept that -- you've never let reason or history get in your way before.
No, the difficult part is getting you to understand a line of argument. The very point I was making is that I can claim what I want, including the nature of scripture. I can claim that, say, Ezekiel 5:17 supports my point. I can twist words, do semantic tapdances, change the meanings of words, claim that you have to look at the "context" (which I'll fudge however I like), etc etc etc. And, if worst comes to worst, I'll just claim that I'm right because God told me what to believe and God told me how to interpret scripture.Yes, it is easy. Now to the difficult part: Quote the Word of God about what you just said
Have done, thanks.
And how does this pile of meaningless waffle actually refute any argument, let alone the one I was making...?
Really? I was going to claim that you shouldn't stick a metal fork into a power outlet with your mouth. But I guess I can't now, since that's not in the Bible. So, no doubt, to prove your point you'll go do that to show that my claim, not being Biblically grounded, is false, right? Let me know how you get on...
Yes, I understand the concept of irony. And enjoy it, even. So? That doesn't actually answer my point: there any number of ways to dismiss an opposing view if everything is predicated on the foundations of sand "God says X. I know because Gold told me so."And, interestingly, you just used a truth from the Bible to prove your point...
Oh that's ironic coming from the person who insists we read things in context. It's pretty clear in the context of my argument that what I meant was that you claim that your position/argument/claim/viewpoint/etc is right because God said so. You state ad nauseum that you're "preaching the Word of God"; whenever anyone challenges your views, your fallback position is to claim -- totally by fiat, with no justification whatsoever -- that what you say is correct because it's God's Word.
Ah, the Might Is Right argument. Doesn't hold up too well, I'm afraid. If (for example) "God is Love" has any actual meaning then "love" in that context has to mean what we usually mean by "love". Therefore "God is Love" means that God acts in a way that we would consider loving by human standards (except that God will do it much better, of course). CS Lewis has a good line about this that I can't remember exactly, but essentially that you will not have to reverse your understanding of "love" (or whatever concept) just because you're dealing with God now. Now, there still remains the chicken/egg issue of whether Love is a concept that exists independent of God or whether God's actions define Love, but that doesn't really matter: the key issue is that we humans should be able to recognize the Love of God just as we would recognize the love of another person.
Exactly. Which is why I should be able to test any of your claims logically. If they're not logically consistent, then I will dismiss them as not being God's.
Suddenly logic has gone out the window. Now it's all about quoting the Bible. (The implication of these two statements together being that quoting the Bible doesn't necessarily lead to logical conclusions, but that's just fine and dandy -- eek!)
Messiah means God's Anointed. So what? You've cleverly (and I use the word loosely) avoided the real issue: whether being called the Messiah makes you one.
So we're back to the old problem: you have to prove that God, rather than men, called Jesus of Nazareth the Messiah. But you already believe that you've done that, so there's no point in me continuing with this.
Again, so what? He was called the Christ (by men), so historians said so. Why can't you understand that, Boston Strangler?
Stuff happened! Amazing! Well, obviously that's proof that Jesus is the Messiah.
Yes, and before Judas Maccabeus was hailed as the Messiah. And others. Pity the OT writers (which, I guess, is God, right?) couldn't have been a bit clearer about the Messiah's defining characteristics. Could have saved some pointless bloodshed.
False dichotomy. Both. In order to write a gospel one must wait for things to happen. Then one must work out what it all meant. Then one writes. Why does that disturb you?
Yes, and your dream is that the Bible is the perfect and inerrant Word of God. We can sit here and give each other's arguments puerile names if you like, or we can debate the point at hand logically. So please demonstrate how we know that the Bible is the literal Word of God. And no begging the question, please. And since you're likely to claim that you've already given such a proof numerous times, let's try a different tact: do you deny the fact that multiple manuscripts (of Biblical texts) exist that differ from each other? If so, how exactly do you refute the physical evidence? If not, how do you claim that the Bible is inerrant?
Blah blah blah, same old fallacies... skipping...
So clear that I guess the only reason that people followed all those other "Messiahs" (Judas M, for example) was... um... they were the Jews that didn't read the OT, perhaps?
Again, I have already done so. Several times (although, technically, I may not have read every single verse multiple times -- there are bits of Leviticus, for example, that probably didn't get a careful re-read). Just because I don't believe what you do, or that I have a different interpretation of what the Bible says, doesn't mean that I haven't read it.
Yes, I find this dream called reality quite important.
him the truth of the Holy Spirit. Do you mind that? That question was not addressed to you, so don't worry.
KCDAD: And that is the "name" you were baptized in. I was baptized in a church
Y: You can't be in a church before you are baptized.
K: The Greek word for church means gathering... what are you talking about?
Y: You can't be a member of a Gathering (
So? Can you show that all of those who were gathered at KCDAD's baptism were not really part of the Church? You've just admitted that they "may be" Christians, so what's wrong with KCDAD's claim that he was baptized in a church (gathering of believers)? You've denied that claim, so the burden of proof is on you to disprove it. Prove or concede the point.
Yep, there's the semantic soft-shoe shuffle we've come to know and "love". What does "visible" have to do with it? What is a gathering of Christians if not, um, a gathering of Christians? (You accepted that, and used it, as your definition of church.) To be a member of a gathering of Christians, then, you need to be one of the gathered Christians. Ergo, the requirements are: (1) to be there and (2) to be a Christian. You said you can't be a member until you are baptized, so that implies that you can't be a Christian until baptized. (Unless you want to claim that lack of baptism physically restrains you from being there....?) OK, now this is where you redefine the word "gathering", presumably. Or perhaps "member".
Silly me. I should have realized that you're not directly contradicting someone when you directly contradict them.
They don't tremble at your nonsense. (You are not the Word of God.)
HUH? Does that mean you aren't born again? You certainly do not see something that you aren't looking for.
cf above
and Christians wonder why non-christians look at us and shake our heads...we have no idea what we sound like to others.
Et cum spiritu tuo.
The funny thing is that I've never needed proof of God's existence or any other such thing -- I've only asked for proof of what you claim to be able to prove. There is no proof that the Bible is the Word of God, and I don't really care; what I care about is that you keep insisting that there is but are unable to furnish it.
Ah, proof by Blatant Assertion. You do realize, right?, that, by that "reasoning", anything you say about the Bible can just as well be said of One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish.
I don't doubt it. I just doubt that it's you doing so.
Exactly! Amen and amen. I hate how that verse is used as an intellectual escape hatch. I find it an incredible blasphemy to ascribe such rational weakness to God.
Bingo! Yaqubos, please try to follow this, it's quite simple: either our faith in God is logical or it is not. If it is logical, then we can discuss it logically; if it is not, we cannot. Therefore:
