Tribute Thread For the Recently Raptured Faith

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Because it isn't a punishable wrong

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Why isn’t it ?

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And since they had a right to dispose of their possessions as they pleased, which Peter very very clearly spells out, there is no wrong at all in holding back some of it.

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And there you go repeating the same misrepresentation again. Peter clearly says that holding the money back WAS wrong. He says that they had control of the land and the money from its sale to emphasise that they COULD have given all the money to him.

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And you certainly can't think God would take their lives for such a withholding, but lying to the Holy Spirit is a great sin.

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From the actual text the lying to the Holy Spirit seems to mean Ananias holding back money (it doesn’t mention Ananias saying anything) and Sapphira telling Peter that they had given all the money.

The description of Judas death in Acts looks pretty suspicious, too. And Peter is the one reporting it. Interesting.

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Luke and Peter are separate individuals, both referred to in other books of the New Testament.

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Which would matter if you had a direct report from Peter. You don’t. You have one source the Book of Acts.

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I don't need to have Ananias tell a lie, it is quite enough that Luke reports it and Peter chides him for it.

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You seem to have forgotten that the fact that the Book of Acts does not report Ananias telling a lie, only Peter chiding him for it.

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You've never heard of One and Two Peter? You've never noticed him being quoted in the gospels?

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None of those mention the story of Ananias or Sapphira, do they ?
Not that quotes in the Gospels can be counted as coming direct from Peter (Mark may be based on material derived from Peter but it is still not direct). Nor can 1 and 2 Peter be safely accounted to be actually written by the disciple.If you want to claim Peter as a source you certainly need something that came direct from him - not a story that came from an unknown source.

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And do you really need me to reword this to say that I don't need the Book of Acts to REPORT Ananias telling a lie etc etc etc.

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I certainly think that if you simply failed to understand how evidence was assessed you should at the least have a direct statement that Ananias lied in the Book of Acts to claim Luke as a source independent of the statement attributed to Peter. To imply that you did have such a statement when the fact that there is none had been an important point in the recent discussion seems suspect at best.If you were honest you would admit that you only have the Book of Acts as a source for the story, and that only has Peter saying that Ananias lied. Even the absurd rules of Biblical Inerrancy allow that Peter could be wrong. So you have neither the Book of Acts reporting that Ananias has lied, nor do you have any report from Peter concerning the matter.So, yes, I think you should reword both parts of your claim. You have neither Peter nor the Book of Acts reporting that Ananias lied. Only that the Book of Acts says that Peter accused Ananias of lying - without any mention of what Ananias is supposed to have said.

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Interesting how adamant you can be about a biased opinion of your own against the whole history of Christianity.

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The part you quoted isn’t a biased opinion, it is a fact. You have the Book of Acts claiming that Peter accused Ananias of lying. You do not have any statement from Peter on the matter.I hardly believe that the whole history of Christianity has been lying about that, but even if it were true it would only condemn Christianity.

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Again, Luke says they lied,

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Luke does not say that Ananias lied. Percy kept asking you about that remember ? And it wasn’t there, was it ?

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Peter asks Ananias why he lied since he didn't have to since he had the right to dispense of his property however he wanted

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No he doesn’t. Try reading in context. The words attributed to Peter condemn Ananias for not giving all of the money to Peter. Since Ananias had control of the land and the money he had no excuse for holding any back.
If you disagree quote the part where Peter says that it would have been alright to hold back part of the money.. Or admit that you can’t because there is no such statement.

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Don't be silly, I have Luke's account of what he said to Ananias, and that is all that is needed or nobody could ever believe anything written about what someone said ever.

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You have an account written by someone who wasn’t there, based on unknown sources, written at a time when historians routinely invented the words they attributed to their subjects. That may be all you need but rational people are aware of the limits of the evidence.No matter how much you pretend to have Peter’s statement you don’t.

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The idea that Ananias' having control of his property could have anything to do with giving an excuse to hold any of it back or not is too absurd to even consider. Get real

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If Ananias had not had control of the land or the money he would not have had the right to unilaterally hand over all the money to Peter. He would have had to have the agreement of the other interested parties. Maybe you consider that absurd but very few other people would. Including the courts.

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Peter's mentioning it is to point out that he had lied to no purpose at all except his own pride.

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Except that there is absolutely nothing to support that claim. Which makes more sense if Peter is emphasising that Ananias had no excuse for not handing over all the money.

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I just want to point out that a book was written some years ago by a self-described skeptic, titled "Who Moved the Stone?" (the link is to a review which is also a summary) in which the author reports on his research into the reported incidents surrounding the death and resurrection of Christ. The title suggests that for his resurrection to have been a hoax you have to account for such things as why nobody could produce the body, which would presumably have been stolen from the tomb. There were plenty of people among the Jews who would have wanted to prove He wasn't alive

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Obviously he wasn’t much of a skeptic. A real skeptic would have noticed that the Biblical accounts are hardly reliable sources.A missing body is just a missing body. But, more than that, we have no real evidence that anyone was interested in contradicting the story - even in the Bible. There is no crackdown on the people spreading the story. The authorities never see any real evidence that Jesus is alive - which they might well have been interested in. It is not at all clear that the authorities would have heard anything before the body would have decayed beyond recognition- and why tamper with a grave to counter vague rumours if it won’t even work ?

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Not necessarily. The problem could be the typical one of modern readers imposing an interpretation on the word from their point of view that misses other meanings it had in the original context.

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Given the fact that ancient readers seem to have taken it the same way - Paul and the John who wrote Revelation both expect the end to happen in the near future - it hardly seems that the problem is with modern readers.

Selwyn wrote the review. The book was written by Frank Morison (not his real name). As I commented above Morison was not very sceptical at all - or he would have realised that the Biblical accounts are not trustworthy.

Which is not much more believable than the dead bodies walking around - which nobody else happened to notice. In case you haven’t noticed, the Gospel of Matthew is not a reliable or trustworthy source.If your evidence is likely fiction you don’t have much of a case. In fact the evidence against the resurrection - if rationally examined - I’d pretty convincing.

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those who don't want to believe will find all sorts of reasons not to, but believers will just believe what is written, and that is really all there is to it in the end.

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Then the problem is clearly with those irrational people who want to believe.(Cue the usual false accusation)

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This is a case of scripture, Jesus Himself in this instance, blurring together two separate prophecies. The abomination of desolation you are talking about was set up in the temple in the time of the Maccabees by Antiochus Epiphanes, whom the Maccabees defeated, rescuing the temple. Since Jesus is now speaking prophetically a few hundred years after that time there is clearly another abomination of desolation yet to come, and so far it has not appeared in world history, so we look forward to it still, which brings us to the end of time.

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About two hundred years, not a few hundred. And since the Abomination is associated with the destruction of the Herodian Temple it can hardly be in our future.

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Jesus is referring to the fall of the temple and the city in 70 AD but the language puts yet another destruction far into the future.

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No, it really doesn’t. If you read it in context it is all about the destruction of the Herodian Temple and the events surrounding it.

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There's no problem.

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I’d say that you have plenty of problems.

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And I didn't say anything about wanting to believe.

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Sure you did. You started by talking about those who didn’t want to believe so those who are left must be the ones who did want to believe.

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Believers believe what is written, and that is what opens the door to realms of glory unbelievers will never know.

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You Bible-twisting idolators may enjoy your egotistic delusions, and your sins. Fortunately for you, you are wrong - or you would be doomed to Hell.

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There was no abomination of desolation involved in 70 AD.

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But - according to Mark, copied by Matthew - Jesus said that there would be. Reading in context is a fine thing.

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The unbelievers may not want to believe, but that says nothing about the believers, who simply believe. Sorry.

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If they didn’t want to believe they would find reasons not to - you said it. And there are good reasons not to believe - as is clear from your failure to answer them. Sorry, but you are wrong, as usual.

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You used this quote. "There was no abomination of desolation involved in 70 AD." What is that from.

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The message I was replying to, of course. Message 906

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Aside from that it is wrong in terms of what was meant by the phrase as taken from Daniel 7.

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In Daniel 7 it refers to Antiochus’ pagan altar in the Temple. There was nothing like that in 70AD.