People ARE Mixing the Gospels Together!

Bob, you seem to have a worked-out theology you got from somewhere, though not the Bible, and I'm wondering where. Where did you get the idea that the earth was ever in "the first heaven" for instance? And the idea that Lucifer had the power to force God to light the earth? Or that it was Lucifer who "flooded out" the earth? And why do you keep saying "Lucifer's creator" instead of God. None of this is Biblical but it has the sound of somebody's worked-out theology. Yours or some writer you like? Are you willing to say what the source of these ideas is?Thanks.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Thanks. What's wrong with just sticking to the Bible to explain all those things?

But the Bible seems to indicate that Lucifer already existed before the earth was created, though I admit I'm fuzzy about all this. All the angels were created before the earth existed. Lucifer was the greatest Archangel. He rebelled against God, being in love with himself and thinking he should be equal to God, and took a third of the angels with him, their evil natures turning them into Satan and his demon hordes. Humanity was then created to be a kind of foil to Lucifer's fall, beings who would ultimately triumph over the rebels, which motivated Satan to deceive us into falling too so he could rule over us and defeat God's plan. I do admit I'm not sure where all this comes from either. The basic history of Lucifer's fall is in Isaiah 28 and Ezekiel 14 but perhaps there is an apocryphal source as well. A quick google doesn't do it, I'll have to spend time on it later."Disabled the source of light when God visited the earth?" NO idea where this would come from. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I can see this would be a lengthy trip into who-knows-what. I'm going to pass for now.

God doesn't need a light source. let alone light provided by Satan, He sees everything perfectly without any form of created or artificial light, even into the workings of the atom. Besides which, He IS a light source. That is why there will be no created light in the New Jerusalem, God Himself will be its light: Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Bob, God IS Spirit, He doesn't have a body, even a body "composed of spirit." And besides, that WASN'T your point about God being a light source since you kept saying the angels sitting in the north were His light source.When people go off into researching the Bible on their own they usually go wrong. God gave us lots of preachers and teachers who are called to that job, people we are to rely on to help us understand His word because He doesn't give us all that gift. What you are coming up with is the usual weird unbiblical stuff that all Lone Rangers come up with who don't trust the teachers God gave us. There is a proverb that says there is safety in many counselors. The more authorized teachers we consult the closer we will come to understanding God's word. Otherwise we'll go off into strange misunderstandings, which is what you clearly have done.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

He couldn't visit the earth because He had to be its light source? That makes no sense. God can visit the Earth any old time He wants with or without light of any kind. God doesn't even need to "visit" the Earth for that matter. God is everywhere at once. The only "visiting" He did that I know of was when He "walked in the garden" with Adam and Eve, and that kind of expression is typical of the Bible's condescension to human inability to comprehend the truths about God, who is so different from us. When we think of God's coming down to us it's just our way of understanding things in physical terms because they make sense to us, whereas God has no need to move in physical space at all. He's already everywhere.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

• This is NONSENSE, Bob.
• Why call God El for starters? I have this awful feeling you are going to treat El as different from Yahweh? I hope not. Anyway, both are names for the same God, El is the generic name used by the peoples of the Middle East, and Yahweh (I prefer Jehovah myself) is the Name God uses in His Covenant with Israel. But they are the same God.
• And why would God have any kind of problem relating to the beings He Himself created? Scripture is clear that Adam had a close relationship with God before the Fall.
• And what on earth does it mean to say "El was the light source of the earth?" El needed no light source. And if He'd already created Adam and Eve He'd also already created the sun, moon and stars.

• As I already said, God does not have a body. He IS Spirit, He is everywhere at once.
• Scripture says Jesus is the light of this world. God is light in Himself. It's not a light we see with our physical eyes, but a spiritual light that will be visible to our spirits when we have left this life. And He in Himself in His totality IS everywhere. Jesus became man so He does have a body and His body isn't everywhere but His Spirit is.
• Why would God need to "use" a particular light source in order to talk to Adam? Adam had a spiritual nature before the Fall that could communicate with God directly.

God often gave His prophets visions of Himself, that I think we are to take as symbolic expressions of His nature. But really I have no idea why you are recounting Ezekiel's vision.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I realize I'm wasting my breath, but it's hard to resist answering heretics.Yahweh "clearly established" is another bit of nonsense. This name (or Jehovah) didn't exist in anybody's knowledge until He gave it to Moses.Earth being in the second heaven is nonsense, or the first heaven or any heaven at all. God created the heavens AND the earth in Genesis 1, as separate things. Yeah, heresies are really good at blowing truth out of the water. But of course how is anyone going to judge between what you are saying and what I am saying anyway, unless they already know the truth of the Bible? I'm trying to accurately convey the historical Protestant Reformation teachings as I've learned them, but if people don't know anything about any of it, why should they take what I say seriously? I guess if anybody REALLY wants to know they can do their own study of the scriptures and historical writings, but not many are likely to do that.Sigh. You've got two Gods here now, inhabiting different heavens, and how you came up with this nonsense I can't fathom. Have you forgotten that scripture says there is only ONE God? Perhaps you should try to gather together a following and start your own religion? This one sure has nothing to do with Biblical Christianity. Now I'm amazed that you seemed to have such a good grasp of salvation by grace rather than works. Maybe that was an illusion.

Bob, you haven't given any of your reasoning at all. You've presented your conclusions without any support whatever. I just figured you are incapable of presenting a reasoned argument so I haven't pushed you. You've not given any reason whatever for accepting your different heavens and the position of the earth in them or two Gods or any of it. I'm not asking you to, the whole scenario you've concocted is absolute rubbish.

Hard to follow most of what you are saying now, but I went back through the thread a ways and thought I should respond to this one: You've said this before and I haven't known how to respond to it, because we'd just had that discussion about salvation by grace and now you are talking as if we hadn't had it.I think now what might clarify things is to say that this is one of the cases in which "Israel" refers not to earthly Israel but to the Church. You insisted way back in the thread that Israel is always earthly Israel but from the New Testament point of view it's not. As Paul said, the "true Israel of God" is the Church, meaning the whole body of believers in Christ.The only way anyone's sins are remitted is through recognizing Christ's death in our place. It's only believers whose sins are remitted. The whole earthly nation of Israel (the Jews as an ethnic group) has both believers and unbelievers. The thing is, the believers in ancient Israel DID have their sins remitted, just as we do, not the unbelievers but the believers, because they had the faith in God that saved them, even a glimmer of the coming Messiah which was part of their faith. The New Testament seems to indicate that the saints/true believers of Old Testament times, had to wait in a holding place for the dead until Jesus came, and when He died He went and preached to them where they were so that now they are with Him just as all believers are when we die. They couldn't be released until the Messiah actually came and died for them. When God tells the people who have just come out of Egypt that they will be to Him a kingdom of priests, this has to be understood to refer to SPIRITUAL Israel, people who believe. God loves sinners, but He doesn't save sinners as sinners, they have to come to believe and put their faith in Him and then they will become part of the kingdom of priests. This was true in the Old Testament nation of Israel just as it is for New Testament believers.You do know that the Church IS a "kingdom of priests" right? We are all the "priesthood of believers" according to Paul. We ARE "the Israel of God," made up of both Jew and Gentile. The Church IS "that holy nation and kingdom of priests." All of us who have had our sins remitted. The Church, the body of believers, not national Israel. We are being formed into a new "nation."What you keep saying you want to happen HAS happened already you see. We ARE that "holy nation and kingdom of priests" you want national Israel to become. There is no need for another such nation, we're it. When people come to believe, including Jews, they become part of THIS "holy nation and kingdom of priests." Not sure what "Israel's rise" means, but Gentiles HAVE come to God in droves since Jesus Christ came, to such an extent that the Church seems to be a Gentile institution although the first believers were Jews and Jews are coming to Christ every day now it seems. Israel doesn't need to become that holy nation and kingdom of priests because the true Israel of God is the Church and it IS that holy nation and kingdom of priests, and hordes of Gentiles HAVE come to God through this true Israel. I just don't get why you don't see that this has already occurred. Jesus is the King of the true Israel, He HAS risen and the true Israel's sins HAVE been remitted, and the Gentiles HAVE come to God through the true Israel and DO have eternal life through Christ. 
 But huge numbers of Jews HAVE accepted the gospel, they accepted it while Jesus was on earth and they've accepted it throughout the centuries since then, more than ever in our own time. You have to make a distinction between believing Israel and unbelieving Israel, the heavenly Israel which is the Church and the earthly national Israel which is part of this world. (By the way, Jesus is risen "from the dead," from death itself, not "from among the dead.")I guess I still don't understand what you are thinking of here, an anointed king who "remained a dead king." Jesus is risen, Jesus is alive, He is not dead, He's not a merely "earthly king," He's the God-Man, the Anointed Messiah, and scripture seems to say when He returns He will in fact reign from Jerusalem on the throne of David on this very earth for what is referred to as "the Millennium" -- a thousand years before this earth is destroyed. But why on earth are you thinking like this when we do have a risen King in Jesus, who is seated at the right hand of the Father? And again, you need to think from the point of view of the New Testament: the earthly kingdom isn't what God's Plan of Redemption was about, it was about the true Israel of God, the heavenly kingdom of kings and priests who are the believers in Christ. The Israel of God is the Church and our sins ARE forgiven, there IS salvation in Christ for all who believe, and there is to be a resurrection of the body which is already demonstrated in the risen Christ and is promised to those who believe in Him.I've written this at horrific length I know, hoping to straighten out a confusion that at first seemed incomprehensible to me.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

As the Letter to the Hebrews says, the blood of animals could never cleanse anything. The animal sacrifices were all intended to foreshadow the One Sacrifice that COULD cleanse, the sacrifice of Christ.

Reviewing this thread I discovered that the OP has some interesting issues I thought I could respond to, that really didn't get addressed in our earlier exchange. Yes, "dispensationalism." That's where you are getting the idea that there are two gospels, which I was trying to answer earlier. I've been trying to represent the view of traditional Christianity to the best of my ability, which sees all of history as focused on the cross of Jesus Christ, including all of the Old Testament. Dispensationalism is actually a very popular theology these days and most of it would agree with this focus on the cross, but there are extreme versions of it, which yours seems to be.Dispensationalism makes a distinction between Old Testament and New Testament religion, as of two different "dispensations" given by God, one extreme of it claiming one form of religion for the Jews and another for believers in Christ. I was arguing earlier that this is a big error. We're ALL saved through Christ's death on the cross, and most of the historical facts of the Old Testament were intended to be types or symbols of this ultimate truth.(One might ask, Why is its meaning so cloaked in symbolism and obscurity? And the answser is to keep Satan from figuring it out. And it worked. If he'd known that Jesus' death was the way to our salvation he wouldn't have worked to make sure He died, he'd have knocked himself out keeping Him alive (can’t find the reference, drat: ABE: Well I did find it, it's in First Corinthians 2:8 but it's talking about the rulers of this world, rather than specifically Satan, and at least one commentary mentions that there has been a longstanding controversy about whether human or demonic rulers are meant, so I won't get into that here/ABE). But the obscuring also works to keep insincere people from understanding it too, as Blaise Pascal said in his "Penses" -- how the Bible contains enough light to guide the believer but enough obscurity to mislead the insincere. (Note: I just found this other quote from him I should make part of my signature: "Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true.")Anyway, you think we are mixing things together that aren’t supposed to be mixed, and taking on Israel’s role from where Israel left off. But what I’ve been trying to say is that this is a fleshly misunderstanding of what the traditional Church has done. The New Testament itself shows that the Old Testament points to Christ as the fulfillment of all of it, as I’ve tried to show. There is certainly a future role to be played by the Jews, but not as the nation of Israel, and not through the literal terms of their ancient religion, because all that was symbolic of the true salvation which was to come through Christ. But Paul tells us in Romans 9 through 11 that great numbers of Jews will join us eventually. Calvin, one of the leaders of the Protestant Reformation, also says that the Jews will have the preeminence in the Church because they were God’s firstborn. There is a glorious future salvation for the Jews but they are going to have to come through faith in Christ as we all do. There’s ONE gospel and it’s salvation through faith in Christ, who is the Messiah promised by God throughout the Hebrew scriptures, promised to come through the Jews, and who did come through the Jews though most of them rejected Him. When they finally recognize Him it’s going to be a glorious day. See above. Now here you’ve switched topics. I don’t think even the most extreme of the dispensationalists think the Jews are saved by works. NOBODY is saved by works. We are simply incapable of the perfection required by the Law of God, to such an extent that our own best, most righteous, works are said to be filthy rags in the eyes of God, and that was said in the Old Testament. The OT also says We like sheep have gone astray and shows the people of God committing one sin after another throughout their history, even to the extent of following the heathen religions into sacrificing their own children to a heathen god. The idea that the Jews could be saved by their works with that kind of history is laughable, or really, pitiable. But even the best of humanity can’t be saved by our works anyway. As the NT says, ONE little sin is a violation of the infinite and perfect law of God to the extent that it might as well be a violation of it all. If Christ hadn’t died on the cross absolutely no one could be saved. And that certainly includes the Jews, the ancient Jews and today’s Jews both. They may be living admirable lives in many ways, but it’s all filthy rags by God’s standards. They need Christ like all the rest of us need Christ.
 Oh dear. No, we don’t study it as a hodge-podge, as I think I've shown to some extent we study it as the unit it was intended to be, through understanding that the Old Testament was given to foreshadow salvation through faith in Christ. The hodge-podge happens with the dispensationalists who make the OT into one religion and the NT into a completely different religion. We're ALL to be saved through faith in Christ and union in Christ, and that's how all the Old Testament saints were saved too. As I already tried to show. This certainly happens a lot these days as there seem to be an awful lot of Lone Ranger theologians who make it all up to suit themselves (and I sometimes think they've all decided to descend on EvC), and you certainly seem to me to be one of then; but this isn't the case with the traditional Reformation Christianity I try to follow, which has a thoroughly unifying theology that very satisfyingly shows the fulfillment of the Old Testament in the New Testament.
 Well, you are wrong about that. The Church IS the true Israel of God, the heavenly Israel, not to be confused with earthly Israel, which is still the earthly home of the Jews until they come to see and love their Redeemer the Lord Jesus Christ. And though they were given the Law, they couldn't have been saved by it because none of us can be. The Law condemns, that's all it can do because we are fallen, we are sinners, ALL of us. And we're ALL "under the Law," Bob, all human beings in our natural fallen flesh, not just the Jews, we're all condemned by the Law, all under the wrath of God, until we are saved through faith in Christ's death in our place.Here's what the Reformer Calvin had to say about the future salvation of the Jews: I quoted him and Jonathan Edwards on this subject at one of my blogs, HERE."Israel," he says here, refers to "all the people of God." Jews AND Gentiles. We are in a dispensation of sorts now, when the Gentiles are still being gathered in to the true Israel of God, but when all Gentiles have been gathered, the Jews will enter in droves, and fill out the "whole Israel of God" as Calvin puts it, and they will come through faith in Christ, whom they will love with a fervor that will probably put ours to shame.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : To add note about whether Satan was fooled by the obscurity of the OT

I've got enough to do keeping my own case together, Bob. Are you asking about other versions of Dispensationalism? I'm just touching on a few things that come to hand, this topic is so wide and deep we'd never get to the limits of it. My own view is that you don't have much of a case at all, because salvation is ONLY through the cross and the Old Testament Jews had to come that way too with whatever degree of light they had. HERE's what the theological website "Got Questions?" has to say about how the Old Testament believers were saved, showing that it's by faith just as NT Christians are saved. I can't imagine where you are getting this. I thought maybe you found it in one of the apocrypha but no googling has turned up anything similar. I did find a pretty thorough discussion about the ark at Got Questions.com, the same site I mention above, which I find to be a pretty reliable source of Christian theology. It's dispensationalist by the way, which I conclude from the fact that it keeps referencing a well-known dispensationalist theologian, Lewis Sperry Chafer. But the doctrine the site teaches is usually in line with what I believe so it's not an extreme version.There are many theories about what happened to the ark discussed at that site, including a theory that Jeremiah buried it under the mountain at Sinai [abe: Correction: Mt. Nebo] before the Babylonian captivity, NOT under the cross where Jesus was crucified. None of the theories suggest it was buried where you suggest in anything like the manner you suggest.This subject did raise the question in my mind, however, if the ark wasn't still in its place in the Holy of Holies, where the priest went yearly to take the blood of an animal to sprinkle on it, why isn't that mentioned, and what did they sprinkle the blood on, or did they just put the bowl of blood down or what? They were still doing this in the year Jesus was born, so they must have continued doing it until the veil was rent at Jesus' death at least. Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, was the priest assigned to that task in the year his child was born. If the ark wasn't there, then what did the priest do? I guess I'll have to research this too.I think your notion about the position of the ark comes from knowing that blood DID need to be sprinkled on the ark, as the priests did, and that only Jesus' blood suffices to atone for our sins, but there is no evidence of your buried ark being sprinkled by His blood, or even being where you say it was. The tearing of the veil when Jesus' died is the sign that believers now have access to God, to the Holy of Holies, through Christ's death. We don't need His literal blood on the ark. And again, OT believers came to Christ through faith by whatever understanding they had from the OT scriptures. Not clear what you are saying here. I don't think Christ's literal blood had to fall on anything in particular, it just needed to be shed for us. I'm aware of the idea that it was a stake rather than a cross that He died on, and I'm not sure why we insist on its being a cross, my guess being that it was an alternative version of it, but that's something else to research. I don't think it matters either way, however, to the point you seem to be trying to make. You use odd language I don't recognize: what do you mean by "Israel's New Covenant?" There's only one New Covenant I know of, and its more common name is the New Testament. Do you mean something different than that?As best I can put together your question about when forgiveness would come to the Old Testament Jews, I think it would have occurred when it occurred for all of us, when Jesus died on the cross, and the veil to the Holy of Holies was torn in two. Believers and unbelievers both went to a sort of holding place at death, Sheol or Hades, Hades being divided into Hell and Paradise according to something I read I think at Got Questions dot com. Since Jesus' death believers are with Him. All this could use some more research too, but even the dispensationalists at that website agree that Old Testament believers were saved the same way we are, through faith in Christ, even with their limited understanding.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Very strange, Bob, that now you seem to be completely agreeing with me, and not with the dispensationalist idea of two gospels that you had before.In fact your way of stating it is very interesting, very good, even original.What's going on here?Edited by Faith, : No reason given.