Tribute Thread For the Recently Raptured Faith

No, the Protestant Reformers traced their conclusions back to the beginning too.

...Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

And I answered you that what Luther meant is disputed.

The disciples were pretty dense about Jesus' mission, still retaining the false idea that the Messiah would liberate them from Rome, but they got it pretty loud and clear after the resurrection while they were praying in the upper room and the Holy Spirit came upon them. That was the beginning of the Church. The Inquisition both official and unofficial which lasted for centuries was the work of the Antichrist papacy and it killed millions of true Christians.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Yes, religion IS mankind's attempt at understanding deity, more or less, sort of, in any case it originates with mankind, yes, EXCEPT Biblical religion, which was given to us by God. He mercifully gave it to us in order to straighten us out since all those other religions are distorted by our fallen minds and often contaminated by demonic influence, some even simply invented by devils. Well yeah, that's what the Fall did to us. Besides subjecting the world and ourselves to disease, death and destruction it put us under the tyranny of Satan and his demons. Yup. I dpn't have to "try" at all, I have no problem whatever reconciling the complexities of God's personality. You can't have any mercy and love worthy of the name without justice.Cheers. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

According to you God's judgments are not just. That's a pretty risky position to take. You get away with it by insisting it can't be really something God did. I guess that way you don't have to worry about putting yourself above God. But of course from my point of view that is exactly what you are doing and then rationalizing it away. I am certainly not comfortable with all that slaughter myself but I don't expect to understand everything God does and I tremble at the thought of making myself His judge. It is justice because He cannot do anything that is unjust, and it is not my place to judge Him, He's the judge, not I, not you, not any human being.His judgments are severe because sin is an abomination to God, it's the very contrary of His own nature, and that is something we need to learn, which His severe judgments could teach us if we have the humility to let them. Instead you make sin into something trivial, although it is the reason anyone goes to Hell and it is the reason Jesus, God the Son, died on the cross though he being sinless did not deserve to die.The Canaanites had hundreds of years to repent and didn't. As for Ananias and Sapphira sometimes it is too late for repentance. They'd supposedly given themselves to Christ, they knew the gospel, they should have known that God can read minds and hearts and yet they lied straight to His face. In a way we don't need to say God killed them, since their guilty consciences were probably judgment enough to kill them. Same thing in a way of course since our moral sense is one of the ways we are God's image, though in us it may be seriously distorted by the Fall.

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. 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.Just a moment...Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

The term "authoritarian" is some sort of pejorative psychobabble. I don't have such a "view of God and the Bible," I believe the Bible is God's own communication to the human race. Known fully and accurately, yes, but the Bible itself says He can be known through Nature. No. I may feel His presence though, which gets stronger the longer I pray. I really don't know what you are trying to say here. For starters I never said that "God only speaks through the book," He speaks to us in many ways, but the Bible is our standard for knowing if other communications are really of God. If they contradict the Bible they aren't of God.Abraham didn't have the Bible, nor his son Isaac, nor Isaac's son Jacob nor any of Jacob's sons either, nor any of the multitude that left Egypt for Canaan. The Bible was only begun under Moses, the first five books called the Torah, and continued to be added to down the centuries by various scribes and prophets, completing the Old Testament four hundred years before the Lord Jesus came. And now of course we have all the New Testament books as well. Now that we have it all though, it is a great treasure that gives us an advantage over people in earlier times, and greater responsibility too since we have more complete knowledge than they did.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Which ignores an awful lot about who Jesus is though you think you are honoring Him by cherry-picking the things He said that you happen to like. Ringo is right: although you have convinced yourself you are following what Jesus taught you are really just writing your own Bible, your own idea of Jesus, and imposing it on the text.So here's just one New Testament writing among many you can pretend are lies while only your chosen passages are the true ones. Just a reminder that it isn't only in the Old Testament but also in the New Testament that there's a lot said about Him that doesn't square with your image of Him. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Don't inow who that is you refer to. The author of "Who Moved the Stone" was a Frank Morrison. Ah well, unbelievers will make up reasons galore to continue not believing and believers will accept what is written and believe.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Might as well repeat what I just wrote to Tangle: 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.

Just FYI: Luke has always been understood to have been a Gentile.

OK so you believe in a Hell of some sort for those who don't live the Christian life as you believe it is supposed to be lived, but the quote is about Jesus' Second Coming "in flaming fire" to take vengeance on those still living who don't know God or obey the gospel. Including those who are persecuting the believers in this case. So you really ought to accept that the judgment of the Amalekites was also just since they had also "troubled" God's people. And the Canaanites also "knew not God" so they too would have deserved their judgment. So there's no basis for the distinction you are making.abe: Well, in a way that's what this world IS like since we're fallen, but since we are also made in the image of God it isn't total and we do have empathy for others. Even in the midst of basic selfishness. The love Jesus wants to make us into, however, is supernatural, there is no way anybody can be that way in this fallen state. It will only be possible in the world to come when we are perfected. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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.The rest is too much for me right now, we'll see what Tangle has to say about it. But you are certainly trusting the wrong theologians. 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. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.