Gay Marriage as an attack on Christianity

That passage as I said applied only to the Jerusalem church at that time, not all the churches in all times. It is understood by commentators to be partly a result of the knowledge that Jerusalem was going to be destroyed (which happened in 70AD) but also was the natural result of the power of God on them in those early days. It was a spontaneous event, not any kind of formal arrangement, just an outpouring of generosity on the part of those who had the means toward the poor of their church.Marx was no doubt inspired by it, sad result when such a spontaneous spiritual outpouring is systematized and forced on people. There was never any idea of establishing any kind of system in the church, it was completely voluntary, and there is evidence later that people continued to own their own property.You also misattributed my comment about "simple charity" which was meant to explain Acts 11:29 in your Message 874 about believers who were in Antioch sending aid to Jerusalem during the famine that occurred in Claudius' time.All this is clear enough from the text alone.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

They weren't necessary rules because they were a concession to the Jewish conscience and had no standing otherwise, but of course they were necessary in the sense that they would be bound to obey them for that very reason, as a concession.Perhaps you are right about the temple context but that seems rather iirrelevant, the point being only that these were laws the Gentiles were not accustomed to following and now were asked to follow for the sake of the Jews. If this was before the destruction of the Temple and they were strictly tied to the Temple then I guess they would have ceased at that time?I don't mean to include fornication in the ceremonial laws, but I found at least one commentator saying this wasn't just garden-variety fornication but something connected to idolatry, which I'd have to look up again.Then you go on to accuse me of something I don't recognize. I'm just going to have to TRY to bow out of this discussion, it's going nowhere.

Edit: This post is pretty obsolute by now as I see you've said you HAVE read the Bible, and expanded more on the idea of equality, feminism anyway.======================= Interesting! I first took you for a Christian and then after everybody else was treating your post as a put-on I thought maybe they were right, because you didn't come back right away for one thing and your terminology wasn't quite what I'd expect. So I'm sorry about that, I take you as for real now.lIt's interesting that you are a Catholic and haven't read the Bible. But nothing jar said is true about Jesus, just so you know. You'll probably have to read it to find out.Are your thoughts about equality related to your Catholicism or not? A Christian has reasons to object to equality but I don't think it would be put quite that way, but it's interesting so please say more.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Very very true, and now you DO sound more like a Christian. That is very definitely where things are going with homosexuality unless God intervenes -- won't be able to refer to it as sin, have to accept it as a "normal" sexual variation. I have enough trouble getting anyone to notice gay marriage is an attack on Christianity, already proven with a few lawsuits against Christian wedding business owners. The key word here is "discrimination" against gays.(By the way I believe what the Protestant Reformers said about the Pope being the Antichrist, but I'm waiting to see. I think it won't be long before we'll know. I figure there will also be a lot of Catholics who will recognize the Antichrist-Pope if it is him). Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Fraid not because it is not voluntary it is forced on the people. Communism TAKES from people according to what the bosses say is their ability, and gives to others also defined by them as needy, but mostly to themselves as the bosses get very rich while the nation starves. It was done voluntarily all the believers in Jerusalem, and it was not characteristic of the Church after that. Communism is forced on people against their will and they are killed if they don't comply. You really can't read the Bible. You hve no idea what you are talking about. Marx perverted it into a system. There was no such "movement" in the Church. Jesus talked only to His followers for one thing, who obey Him out of love, but Communism forces people who are not Christians to do things against their will. It's an evil perversion.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

WEDDING business, nwr, weddings, not any other kind of service. And just to remind you, some of these Christian wedding businesses were around long before there was any idea of gay marriage. Not that it matters of course. It's a reason to persecute Christians so no doubt it's only going to get worse for Christians.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You say the strangest things. USSR? Communist China? Eh?

Not starting a topic just so you can strut about your invincible ignorance as if it were true.

Here's another case where you impute some statement to me I don't recognize at all, though you don't quote me. That's very underhanded of you, especially since you use it as the basis for some kind of weird accusation. Just for the record I DON'T accept ALL the councils, some were Roman Catholic, but Nicaea spelled out the nature of Christ against a heresy that still exists (Jehovah's Witnesses) and is rejected by Christians, and that's foundational for all Christians. Roman Catholicism didn't even really get underway until the Bishop of Rome was elevated to Pope in 606 A.D.Please try to be clearer about what you are saying because following you is nearly impossible. You treat stuff that is going on only in your own head as something I'm supposed to recognize. NOT fair. Fill in the blanks at the very least, I'm not a mind reader. What? My "support" for having the government OUTLAW same sex marriage? What? What? What?I don't recall "admitting" any such thing, you kept asking me absurd questions about what I think Paul thought about the secular policies of the government of his time and I kept saying he gave no opinion on the subject; he was always and only talking about the Church, who were being persecuted by the Roman government of the day anyway. So NOW what are you accusing me of? I can assure you I know nothing about any of that and have no idea why any of it is relevant in any case. What the Roman Empire did has nothing to do with Christian opposition to gay marriage in America, which is based purely on God's ordinance of marriage as shown in the Bible. Um, two things: 1) It's never existed before in the Western nations of Christendom, called Christendom because it's generally followed Biblical principles; and 2) there is now a law that directly opposes a Biblical principle that requires Christians to refuse to obey it. Haven't I been saying this all along as clearly as possible? That paragraph is like some kind of bizarre foreign language to me, something written by a Martian perhaps. What ARE you talking about? The US has never been a theocracy, but it has been based on Christian principles, and now those principles are being opposed by this supposed "secular government." I'm a Christian, I don't want to see a Christian civilization go under, which it's bound to do under current trends.You could say your piece a lot more simply I think: you're in favor of secular government with no religious influence, as so many others here are; you are in favor of gay marriage, as so many others here are. I'm opposed to gay marriage because of what the Bible says about marriage and about homosexuality and there really doesn't need to be any of this pseudohistorical carrying on that you are doing to explain it. You are making false connections that exist only in your own head. I'm a Protestant, I take nothing from the Roman Empire. And you don't need to argue any of that to make your point anyway. You're for gay marriage, I'm against it based on the Bible, the West is no longer "Christendom" or at least rapidly getting there, and the Bible is no longer of any importance, so Christians are now on the outs and probably very soon to be under serious persecution if nothing happens to prevent it, and you really need no other argument. Can we please get off this confusing and irrelevant treadmill? You keep picking up the wrong end of the stick here. I am not thinking about secular government much if at all. I've been making one simple point all along: The Bible opposes gay marriage and Christians must go with the Bible against anything that requires us to deny it. That could be a secular law and in this case it is. Or it could be a religious force like the Inquisition. It doesn't matter, we have to stand for God's ordinance of marriage and all the rest of this stuff you are carrying on about is some strange pseudohistorical nonsense of your own that has nothing to do with the issues at hand. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Your stuff is so confusing I often miss the obvious: There is no such thing as a "Roman Empire Council" let alone a "church" based on it. The early Councils were strictly a CHURCH MATTER, called to resolve problems within the Church, absolutely nothing whatever to do with the Roman Empire.The Jerusalem council was called to resolve the problems that kept coming up between the strict Law-abiding Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians who were not under the Law because Christ had fulfilled it all. (The Jews weren't either of course but a lifetime of obedience to the Law couldn't be broken overnight, which is why the conflicts kept coming up).Nicaea was called to deal with the heresy of Arius and it dealt with it and its decisions have come down to us as the Church's official resolution of the heresy for all to follow.None of this has anything to do with the Roman Empire as such, it's all in-house decision-making. If you think Constantine's role in calling the council of Nicea and participating in it makes it a Roman Empire thing, it doesn't. He didn't influence the decision of the Council, the Christian leaders did all of that.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Uh huh, thank you for stating the obvious for the zillionth time. We really really needed to hear that.

This is probably the silliest least relevant point that gets made on this subject. Silly straw man, ridiculous.As for abortion, we aren't free to withhold our tax support for the murdering of babies though, are we? We are FORCED to fund this evil "service."And, what this thread IS about, we aren't free to refuse to accept gay marriage by refusing to serve a gay wedding either, we are subject to penalties for acting on our religious belief."Freedom," ha!

Your point is way way too sophisticated for this thread, ICANT. We are back in kindergarten on the subject of American freedoms, and even at that level it's impossible to keep the topic straight. But thanks for the effort.

Sure, well I guess we COULD call a beheading tickling the throat," or violent gang rape "the hokey pokey," or The Rack a medical treatment? Why not, word magic is really very effective at denying freedoms and covering up crimes and the like.And of course we mustn't ever break the law by for instance saving a Jew from the concentration camp? Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

There are simple humanitarian reasons for saving unborn babies from the abortion slaughterhouse.