Are we prisoners of sin

Yes you can.Its a tragic record of mans domination of man.

a christian church that actually practices Christianity is one in a million

you find one that teaches from the bible and not doctrines of men.

perhaps Cedre was thinking that this forum was for discussion on Faith & Belief

If you have the bible and Pauls own writings about the issue of the Gentiles and the law, why dont you use it?

The one that teaches it and practices it.

yes, they all make that claim. But surely you'd have to ask why there are so many conflicting interpretations of the Bible? Its understandable why most people conclude that the Bible is unclear and contradictory.God’s word is not contradictory. Its the interpretations and explanations that are contradictory.

You dont believe that the Apostles were inspired, yet God proved that he was with them by giving them powerful works. Moses was just a man too, but God used him to lead the nation...he used the Apostles to establish christianity. Paul had Gods backing just as Moses did.

How had God changed his mind?Christianity did not develop thru gentiles. The Apostles of Jesus and Jesus himself were Jews. So christianity was developed thru Jews because they did the inviting. Gentiles did not invite jews to christianity.Perhaps you can repeat the 'contradictions' .

They were not against pauls teachings. It was the other Apostles, James, Cephus and John who had sent Paul to preach to the Gentiles. So they certainly were not against it.And if you read Acts 15:1 " And certain men came down from Jude′a and began to teach the brothers: "Unless YOU get circumcised according to the custom of Moses, YOU cannot be saved." 2But when there had occurred no little dissension and disputing by Paul and Bar′nabas with them, they arranged for Paul and Bar′nabas and some others of them to go up to the apostles and older men in Jerusalem regarding this dispute"these men were debating the point with Paul and Barnabas, the men debating were not the Apostles. goodness me, where where does that information come from???This is just not the case at all. Acts 15 shows us the outcome of the issue about the mosaic law...as those men/brothers were teaching that the Gentiles had to practice the Law of Moses and be circumcised. After their dispute about it, they recieved a letter from the Apostles in Jerusalem...

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22Then the apostles and the older men together with the whole congregation favored sending chosen men from among them to Antioch along with Paul and Bar′nabas, namely, Judas who was called Bar′sabbas and Silas, leading men among the brothers; 23and by their hand they wrote:

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"The apostles and the older men, brothers, to those brothers in Antioch and Syria and Cili′cia who are from the nations: Greetings! 24Since we have heard that some from among us have caused YOU trouble with speeches, trying to subvert YOUR souls, although we did not give them any instructions, 25we have come to a unanimous accord... 28For the holy spirit and we ourselves have favored adding no further burden to YOU, except these necessary things, 29to keep abstaining from things sacrificed to idols and from blood and from things strangled and from fornication. If YOU carefully keep yourselves from these things, YOU will prosper. Good health to YOU!"

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Paul also showed in Gal 2 that if they (jews) still needed the Mosiac Law, then the death of the Christ was in vain.

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19As for me, through law I died toward law, that I might become alive toward God. 20I am impaled along with Christ. It is no longer I that live, but it is Christ that is living in union with me. Indeed, the life that I now live in flesh I live by the faith that is toward the Son of God, who loved me and handed himself over for me. 21I do not shove aside the undeserved kindness of God; for if righteousness is through law, Christ actually died for nothing.

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and as you know, Paul was not a Gentile, he was a Jew... a Jew who no longer believed the Mosaic law was the way to salvation. Edited by Peg, : No reason given.

thanks purpledawn for the msg numbers.

Im not denying that there was a dispute, it just wasnt over Pauls teachings... it was over Peter being afraid to associate with the Gentile christians whilst in the company of the Jewish christians.(keep in mind that the culture of the Jews was one that did not even allow walking on the same side of the road as a gentile, so its not unlikely that the new Jewish converts had trouble getting over that deeply ingrained culture)So Paul told Peter to stop putting on such a 'pretense' and explained that righteousness was thru Christ and not works of the Mosaic Law, as it was previously.

that depends on what you understand the purpose of the Mosaic Law to be. The early christians understood it this way...

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Gal 3:19 "It was added [to the Abrahamic covenant] to make transgressions manifest, until the seed should arrive to whom the promise had been made" ... Consequently the Law has become our tutor leading to Christ, that we might be declared righteous due to faith."

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no one can be declared righteous by the Mosaic Law because no man can live by Law perfectly. Therefore, people were declared righteous by their 'faith' as opposed to their attempted obedience to the mosaic lawOf Abraham, it is stated that he exercised faith in God and was "declared righteous"; also, it is written that Rahab of Jericho manifested her faith by her works and so was "declared righteous,"
Abel offered God a sacrifice of greater worth than Cain, "through which [faith] he had witness borne to him that he was righteous"I must ask you, what has the legal system of the government got to do with Gods salvation? Edited by Peg, : No reason given.

i'd like to comment on this but could you please provide scriptural references so I know where you are coming from. I already said several times that the mosaic laws did not give anyone salvation...they gave them a righteous standing before God. Salvation cannot be earned by any of us, it is a free gift. Salvation does not mean obtaining an afterlife. An afterlife was not a biblical teaching. The resurrection was the teaching in the OT

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Eccle 9:10 "All that your hand finds to do, do with your very power, for there is no work nor devising nor knowledge nor wisdom in She'ol, the place to which you are going."

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She'ol is the grave of mankind, the place that we all go to when we die. And God was the one who could save people from the grave...or resurrect them from it. So the salvation was to await for God to bring them back from the dead as is seen from Jobs plea to be put into she'ol and await a resurrection as the next 2 scriptures show...

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Hosea 13:14"From the hand of She′ol I shall redeem them; from death I shall recover them. Where are your stings, O Death? Where is your destructiveness, O She'ol?"

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Job14:13"O that in She'ol you would conceal me, That you would keep me secret until your anger turns back, That you would set a time limit for me and remember me! 14If an able-bodied man dies can he live again? All the days of my compulsory service I shall wait,
Until my relief comes. 15You will call, and I myself shall answer you"

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you are misunderstanding me. I have said, more then once, that the mosaic law was a law that demanded perfection because anyone who failed to abide by it could be put to death for certain things. So if you committed an act that violated the law (eg fornication/adultery/idolatry) you could be put to death.So the law demanded perfection, but God did not because as i've also said, being declared righteous was due to 'faith' and not 'works of law' as in the case of Rahab the prostitute from Jerico. Her faith was counted to her as righteous, not her obedience to the mosaic law.the law simply highlighted sin and imperfection...it showed why the Messiah was needed and made the hebrews eager for the Messiah to come and remove the burden of the law. It was prophesied in the OT that the Mosaic law covenant would come to an end.

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Jerimiah 31:31 "...I will conclude with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah a new covenant; 32not one like the covenant that I concluded with their forefathers in the day of my taking hold of their hand to bring them forth out of the land of Egypt, ‘which covenant of mine they themselves broke..."

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In Hebrews, Paul quotes from Jeremiahs prophecy and shows how this applies to Jesus, for Jesus was the promised Messiah

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6But now [Jesus] has obtained a more excellent public service, so that he is also the mediator of a correspondingly better covenant, which has been legally established upon better promises.
7For if that first covenant had been faultless, no place would have been sought for a second; 8for he does find fault with the people when he says: "‘Look! There are days coming,' says Jehovah, 'and I will conclude with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah a new covenant; 9not according to the covenant that I made with their forefathers 10"‘For this is the covenant that I shall covenant with the house of Israel after those days,' says Jehovah. 'I will put my laws in their mind, and in their hearts I shall write them. And I will become their God, and they themselves will become my people

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there is nothing un-scriptural in Pauls teaching that the Mosaic Law had come to an end...it was supposed to come to an end. God himself said it would. As the OT shows, it was only to be a temporary arrangement until the Messiah arrived. But those who died whilst following the mosaic law such as Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Able...all those who had been declared righteous by their 'faith', will be rewarded with a resurrection to life on this earth. Paul explains this in Acts 24

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Acts 24:14-15 "...I believe all the things set forth in the Law and written in the Prophets; 15and I have hope toward God, which hope these [men] themselves also entertain, that there is going to be a resurrection of both the righteous and the unrighteous..."

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John & Paul both say that heaven is not where 'all' humans go after they die. None of the righteous faithful people of the past had gone there according to them

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John 3:13 "No man has ascended into heaven but he that descended from heaven, the Son of man."

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Acts 2:29 "Brothers, it is allowable to speak with freeness of speech to you concerning the family head David, that he both deceased and was buried and his tomb is among us to this day. Actually David did not ascend to the heavens."

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So when the Resurrection takes place it will be in the place that Jesus said...'the meek shall inherit the earth'Matt 5:5.
He was quoting from the Psalm 37:11 where it reads "The meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace." Edited by Peg, : No reason given.

Im going to try and keep this as simple as possible (not because i think your're simple, but because there are many facets that could be addressed)Simply put, all creation are prisoners of sin because we are born from Adam & Eve. We've inherited it. The proof of sin is that we all die. Gentiles, jews, christians, muslims etc ALL die. That means we have all inherited that trait from Adam.The only means of salvation from the condition of death, is for sin to be done away with. God has made this possible thru the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.Anyone who wants to benefit from that salvation MUST put their faith in Jesus Christ and must follow him. This goes for Gentiles too...they must submit to Christian law and the teaching of Christs Apostles. Gods laws and mans are quite different and just because a gentile follows the laws of their land does not mean that they have a righteous standing with God. They must follow Gods laws in order to obtain that. Remember that it is 'Faith' in God that counts a person as righteous, not works of any law.To show faith in God, one must adopt HIS laws....or better put, live as he directs. Yes, i do mean the resurrection. Most church's teach that the 'afterlife' & 'salvation' has primarily to do with going to heaven as a spirit which is why i did not just say 'resurrection'. Most people are not familiar with that concept. If you read the bible you will see plenty of expamples where the death penalty was enforced. Jesus stopped a group of Jews from stoning a woman in his day, so the practice was alive and well in 33CE. Does your source state what era he is talking about? You're right, its not just one sentence that needs to come about, its not even just 1 prophecy, You need to look at all the prophecies.
I showed you in Jerimiah's prophecy that the law covenant was to come to an end and a new one was to begin.Daniel also spoke of the end of the Mosaic Law...

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Daniel 9:26 "And after the sixty-two weeks Messi′ah will be cut off, with nothing for himself. And the city and the holy place the people of a leader that is coming will bring to their ruin. And the end of it will be by the flood. And until [the] end there will be war; what is decided upon is desolations.
27And he must keep [the] covenant in force for the many for one week; and at the half of the week he will cause sacrifice and gift offering to cease.

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Moses also testified that in the future another prophet would arise and the Hebrews would have to follow him...

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Deuteronomy 18:18 "A prophet I shall raise up for them from the midst of their brothers, like you (Moses); and I shall indeed put my words in his mouth, and he will certainly speak to them all that I shall command him. 19And it must occur that the man who will not listen to my words that he will speak in my name, I shall myself require an account from him."

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"The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet from among your own people, like myself (Moses); him you shall heed."

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The prophet mentioned here is clearly a specific and special individual. He was also said to be a blessing for ALL the nations, not only the jews, but all of mankind would follow this prophet...

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Genesis 22:18"And by means of your seed all nations of the earth will certainly bless themselves due to the fact that you have listened to my voice."

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the Apostles of Christ clearly explained how Jesus was this one. This also explains why the Mosaic law MUST come to an end. Once the Prophet arrived the people would have to listen to him... Moses was not longer the means to reconciliation with God. Reconciliation was now to be thru the Seed that was promised by God. Edited by Peg, : No reason given.