Origin of Gods word

While I am by no means a literalist, I do not agree with any of this. "I did not come to change the law, but to fulfill it," is very difficult for an American to understand. Irenaeus, a native Greek speaker, devoted a couple pages to it in his book, Against Heresies, written about AD 185. His interpretation fits the context of Matt 5 so well, I am convinced it has to be right.I address that issue in the thread Do James and Paul Really Contradict on Faith and Works?, so I'll leave it alone here. We don't have to debate it, I just wanted to point out I don't believe Paul and Jesus contradict on the law, nor do I believe it is accurate to say Paul said to abandon Judaic law.What is more certainly inaccurate, however, is the statement that the NT replaces "obey God at any cost" with "believe in Jesus." That may be true of Baptist and some other churches, but I don't believe there's the slightest indication of such a view in the NT. Instead, front to back, the point of the NT is that believing in Jesus is solely for the purpose of enabling humans to obey God at any cost. This depends solely on your view of what the NT says, not the Old. I believe the NT says that Jesus is the Word of God who was in the beginning with God, and that he was the Messenger of God, bearing his name, throughout the history of Israel. Since that is the person the NT writings describe, then it is obvious that person is mentioned repeatedly in the Tanach. He is not mentioned by the name Jesus (Yeshua), but why should he be, since he didn't get that name until NT times? That the Christian church killed any gnostics is highly debatable. The "Gnostic Gospels" were written in the 1st and 2nd century, when the churches had no authority, ability, or desire to kill anyone. There were groups accused of gnosticism many centuries later, when the catholic churches had political power, but it seems very unlikely to me that these so-called gnostic groups had any relation to the producers of the Gnostic Gospels. Perhaps the best example of this is the book of Jeremiah. The Septuagint (the Greek translation made around or just before the time of Christ) differs from the currently popular Masoretic text by no less than seven chapters. When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, there was a Jeremiah scroll that agreed with the Septuagint version.Seven entire chapters. Because the person who spread Christianity all over the part of the world that led to our believing in America said "How shall they hear without a preacher." Christianity is a very ineffective personal religion, and it is not at all about a personal relationship with God. Christ came to establish a church that would prove the power of Christ by their unity and love for one another (said Christ in Jn 13:35 and Jn 17:20-23, confirmed repeatedly, of course, by Paul, who equated the Church and Christ in 1 Cor 12:12).If you are a believer in Christ, then it should follow that you believe that the Gospel is all about God's Word being wrapped up in human flesh. It came first in Christ himself, the Word of God who became flesh and dwelt among us. Then he chose messengers and he told them, "He who receives you receives me, and he who rejects you rejects me." Originally, Christianity was completely about Christ being revealed in a people together, and receiving them was the only way to receive Christ.Notice that when Paul saw Christ on the Damascus road, he did not simply "accept Christ." He was sent by Yeshua to a man in the church, Ananias. If you ever find or see the unity and love that Yeshua spoke of, a love so unusual that it would convince those who saw it of the power of God, there you will also find people who know the reason that even Yeshua himself would send converts to a person or people, not simply allow them to "receive him." Amen, friend.