My Beliefs- GDR

Oh come on, I very seldom think of anyone as lying, far from "throwing the term around." I doubt it, it reads like a parable, and in the whole context of Jesus' teaching it would be hard to miss that it's a parable, so it would be hard for anyone preaching a sermon on it to make anything else out of it. Huh? I avoid the word "literal" for this very reason, that people have the crazy idea that I must think the parables are reality, which is utter nonsense. One is to read the Bible as it is written and there are many parts that are not historical but parables, teachings, illustrations, etc etc etc. Obviously. Trusting in your own narrow idea of Jesus based only on the particular words you ascribe to Him and the descriptions of His life in this world, is where you go wrong. Jesus is God, He is Jehovah God, the entire Bible refers to Him AND was inspired by Him as well. He Himself validated all the books of the OT as scripture by quoting from them.My point was that better readers of the Bible than you or I for the last twenty centuries have known that we are not under the Law of the Old Testament as you keep insisting we are. You even make US liars for claiming we take the Bible as inerrant since we deny that we are called to "commit genocide" and stone lawbreakers, which you impose on us anyway no matter what we say about it. You don't have to use the term "liar" to call us liars.Again, we read the Bible in its proper context, and we have the humility to take into account the writings of all the better exegetes of scripture down the centuries instead of relying on our own uneducated impressions. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I have NEVER read anything that could lead me not to recognize the Prodigal Son as anything but a parable. Whether yesterday or 2000 years ago there is usually no problem telling the difference between what is being presented as history versus hypothetical situation or story. The idea just seems trumped up to me. Many here have explained this many times to deaf ears, including myself, although to spell it out in proper detail would require a book.God had dealings with ancient Israel that were unique to that relationship. He gave them commands to execute His judgments that applied only to them. He never addressed any of that to anyone beyond His own covenant people ancient Israel. They were His special instruments, and the whole point was to demonstrate the severity of His judgments against sin, how He works in this world and so on. That's what WE are to learn from those events.We believe it was the pre-incarnate Jesus Christ who appeared to Joshua in Person as the Commander of the armies of God. He explicitly did not say He was fighting for Israel but since Israel was to take commands from God obviously those were HIS commands. Yes, those "genocidal" commands.When Jesus came in the flesh everything changed, at least how we are to think about it or interpret it changed. He fulfilled the Law in His own Person, by perfect obedience in His own earthly life, and particularly on our behalf when He died for us, so the Law no longer rules over us.At the very least Israel was a theocracy, Christianity is not, or could only be said to be that in a very different sense, not an earthly sense as we are not a nation of this world but an otherworldly "nation" as it were if that's even the right word.Then there is the fact that a great deal of the ceremonial practices are now revealed to have been foreshadowings or Types or Symbols of the Messiah who has now come. All of it pointed to Christ in one way or another. He FULFILLED it all, He did not abolish any of it.Those commands you call "genocide" were very specific particular singular incidents in the history of Israel, they were not in any way embodied in Law or commandments.The stoning of lawbreakers on the other hand WAS embodied in Law, demonstrating again the severity of punishment God judges certain sins to deserve. Nations today SHOULD take those commands seriously as reflecting God's judgments of those sins, and that would mean they'd be incorporated into the laws of the nation in the cultural setting of the time, certainly not something individuals should enact. I imagine Blackstone's Commentary on English law as based on the Bible might be illuminating about how that should be applied, and it's possible that it should all be tempered by a Christian mercy since Christ came but I haven't studied any of that. But the bizarre idea that we'd all just willy-nilly spontaneously take up stones against sinners is nonsense. Not getting your point. Not getting your point. Fine, I'll take your word for it. But my understanding of scripture IS consistent, as I've been arguing. It is your own lack of understanding of how it all fits together that creates the problems. I don't remember that but I read Lewis as a very new believer and had no real critical perspective on him. I have more recently run across discussions of him and quotes from him that make it clear that he should not be embraced by a Bible believer. He had many good things to say, but unfortunately on some essentials he misled Christians. In fact I've wanted to make him the subject of a post on my blog for some time now, warning against his influence; I just don't get around to my various projects as soon as I'd like to.So if I dismissed quotes you gave from him it was because I recognized that they contradict the truth, though apparently at that time I didn't know how to put it all together. I read whatever came to hand as I was learning the faith as a new Christian and that included all kinds of heretics, apostates and cults. It took time to develop the discrimination to know the true from the false but I believe God led me to a pretty good discernment over time. I'm still learning of course. In the last year in fact I've been staggered by revelations of errors I'd been accepting as truth. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Just thought I'd add some New Testament references that contradict your view of Jesus:From Paul, Jesus in flaming fire taking vengeance: From John, the wrath of the Lamb: From Jesus: How can you escape Hell? Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I guess I'm still not getting your point because this still makes no sense to me. No, GDR, that is not the right conclusion. I explained it at some length in that post, I don't feel up to repeating it here. Didn't I say a foreshadowing of the coming of the Messiah, not something vague like "foreshadowing of what it was that God wanted?" As I said, the so-called "genocides" were one-time special commands by God to the Israelites, they were never general commands to anybody; and again I already explained why we no longer have stonings. Well I don't see it that way. The Sermon on the Mount means just as much to me as it possibly could to you. I think it's obvious from just reading the scripture, but since it isn't to you this is no doubt where the point comes in that you refuse to take seriously the Biblical exegeses of orthodox teachers down the centuries. You seem to be completely unfamiliar with how the OT is to be read in light of the NT -- or you just reject it so you can't learn from it. Huh? It was never about the particular situation of the Jews, it was always about God's execution of judgment on idolatrous peoples who sacrificed babies and other human beings to their gods and made sexual sins part of their "worship" and other abominations that had been accumulating for hundreds of years to that point. God used the Israelites as the instruments of His judgments, but He could have used anything and anybody and these days He uses other means. First, again, it never had anything to do with the problems of His people -- except in specific cases where His people had been done a great injustice -- but was completely God's sovereign judgment of evil nations, and Second, God still judges nations according to His own sovereign will, which may involve all kinds of calamitous events (it's all spelled out in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 9) but He doesn't do it by commanding His people as He did then. That had a specific purpose for teaching us how His judgments work in this world. Supposedly we've learned it. His judgments haven't stopped, He merely uses different means. He may use an army, but not by commanding them as He did the Israelites, He may use terrorists, He may use economic collapse, famine etc., He may use destructive violent weather, or many other methods. He accomplishes the same purpose by different means -- although of course He also used all these other means in those days as well. I see no contradictions and have no problem putting it all together. Yes, the evils people suffer for our sins can be pretty horrifying, no doubt about that, and I think we all feel horrified at that, but we are to learn that such punishment is God's justice AND THE REASON WE NEED A SAVIOR FROM OUR SINS, while you instead prefer to judge God as the evil one because He punishes sin.His commandments to us have not changed though, that's what you don't see. Loving our enemies and forgiving and so on were ALWAYS God's commandments. The sum total of the Law and the Prophets is to love God and neighbor -- by OBEYING all the Commandments He's given us. If we all obeyed them, and if those people who were punished had obeyed them, they would not have been punished as they were and as we still are when we disobey.There is no contradiction at all. You simply refuse to accept the severity of God's judgments for sin, for our violations of those very commandments you like so much. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This is well known. I don't make these things up. YOU with your snarky nastiness accuse me of such things all the time but you are never right, you just get away with it because nobody else here knows anything either.

You know I've forgotten this incident in which you are accusing me of lying because I don't take your stuff seriously, so again you are playing your little childish game of cryptic communication for the purpose of obfuscation and namecalling. Grow up and tell me what you are talking about.

I am not going to look this up right now but Blackstone is famous for saying that law must be based on the Bible. Whether he said it in his Commentary or not, or used the word "Bible" there or not, IS IRRELEVANT to whether or not his conception of law was based on the Bible.Thank you for reminding me of your assertion. It's irrelevant to the point.

My point is that Bible believers who believe in the Bible as entirely God's word go back 2000 years. While you will find heretics of many sorts here and there in that history, and the entire apostate RCC system as well, the "Biblical scholars" you are talking about who deny the inerrancy of the Bible are all modernists and liberals whose traditions are no more than a couple hundred years old. Even the RCC up until recently regarded the Bible as God's inerrant word, although they put their traditions on the same level of authority with it.

Interesting that the views you impute to him do demonstrate that his view of law was thoroughly Biblical although you try to denigrate that as a mere cultural artifact of no importance, despite the fact that the whole Biblical context of law at least in the US has since been overturned since Blackstone's time. It WAS Biblical, it no longer is. Since it was a commentary he must have found Biblical principles already well established in English law. Since the US has abandoned the Biblical roots of law I'd suppose the UK has too but that's just a guess. Here's a page that includes some quotes from his Commentary. It all sounds pretty Bible-based to me. Which you haven't really denied, you just ... in fact I'm not at all sure what you think you're saying. It's either Biblical or it's not. Clearly it is. Here's the view of him I'm most familiar with: Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

There are many elements of the law conceived from a Biblical perspective that also would be acceptable in a purely secular context, as well as particular laws needed by a particular Christian society that perhaps don't have a clearcut Biblical basis, and it still appears to me that Blackstone was commenting on English law as the Biblical conception it apparently originally was. Since he was writing a commentary it would make no sense that he was imposing his own biblical perspective on a nonbiblical legal system. And again, at least with respect to US law, which was originally based on Blackstone, it is no longer Biblical and Blackstone no longer applies.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

So you've got your secular law, hooray, and so do we in the US and everybody's really happy Blackstone is out. Except some of us like me but we don't count. Blackstone's views were once admired in both countries I think, not regarded as imposing Biblical concepts without warrant, but oh well.Anyway this all started with my comment that Blackstone could probably illuminate how the Old Testament stoning laws might apply in a modern nation, which I still suppose is the case.

Funny I thought the Bible said we need government because of lawbreakers.

Sorry, jar, I don't know what it has to do with what you said. I have no idea what I meant or you meant. I'm tired, back to bed.

No, the fact is that the pagan stories mimic Jesus. The Messiah was prophesied all the way back in Eden and everybody knew the prophecy. All the pagan religions produced their own version of the Messiah that was prophesied either hoping to fulfill the prophecy or hoping to derail it one or the other. Jesus is the only one who actually met the requirements, who was God in the flesh, whose death did actually pay for sin, who did miracles only God could do.Also the canon was chosen by men guided by the Holy Spirit, who were capable of weeding out the false writings from the true. And the writings were not merely chosen by the Councils -- and not a single Council -- every Council drew up their own list of canonical writings -- but the usage of the writings in the many churches as chosen by Holy Spirit led people was the basis for the ultimate choice.I gotta add here: Really, you'd think that the illustrious history of Christianity which at least since the Protestant Reformation built the civilized and prosperous west, which produced great men and thinkers, you'd think they deserve a little respect and just the tiniest suspicion that maybe the religion they accepted was what they said it is and not what the latest debunker says it is.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You're not going by evidence, you're going by deep deep prejudice.