My Beliefs- GDR

I don't want to participate much on this thread but you did ask to be corrected if you are wrong about the language and you are. Because of the conquests of Alexander the Great some three hundred years earlier that whole part of the world spoke koine Greek, the language in which the New Testament was written. The Jewish apostles of Christ who wrote most of it wrote it in koine Greek, so the idea that Jesus did not speak that common language of the day is highly unlikely.The common Greek made it possible for the Romans and Jews and sundry other nationalities to communicate with each other. Jesus may have been brought up speaking Aramaic as well, since that was the language of the region of Nazareth and He is quoted using some Aramaic phrases in the gospels. But that would not have been the language He taught in.Some think that Hebrew was still the language of the temple but that is also highly unlikely at that time. They had the Greek translation of the Old Testament scriptures known as the Septuagint, made some two hundred or so years earlier, because the people had lost touch with Hebrew due to speaking Greek. It was a Greek speaking world, the NT was written in Greek and they would have had the OT in Greek as well. Jesus would not have spoken anything else in normal communications.===============================================================================Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Have you addressed the view that Jesus' death on the cross paid for the sins of those who believe in Him? I've missed it if so. What do you do with that idea?

Doesn't really answer my question, GDR, whether Jesus' death on the cross paid for our sins against God, sins that damn us since we can't pay for them ourselves. Did His death pay for our sins? I don't see an answer to that in your post.

There are many places in scripture that are very clear what it means, but i've decided not to post them here. If anyone would like to know what they are I may quote them in a private message or email. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Two posts? I only saw one.I could spell it out GDR, but you have fundamentalist relatives who could spell it out for you just as well, and I don't want to subject God's word to more of the abuse that is directed against it here.

"Belief in Christ" is something even nonChristians sometimes espouse these days, it's a New Age belief in particular -- the "Cosmic Christ" which isn't the true Christ -- so it has to be clarified what the Christian belief is. The Protestant belief is that we are to believe in Christ's death on the cross for our sins, and that our works (being decent human beings for starters) can't do a thing to save us, it's all by God's grace through Christ's sacrifice. The Catholic belief, which of course I don't regard as Christian at all, is that faith in Christ plus good works will save you (by which they mean, along with being a decent human being, performing the rituals of Roman Catholicism). GDR's beliefs are really just a version of salvation by works, as are the beliefs of most religions, and one could even say paradoxically it's the belief of nonbelievers too, who all think being a good and decent person ought to merit some kind of reward. That's not Christianity, which, to say it again, is all by grace, the gift of salvation through the death of Christ. Works are also the product of grace, that is built on salvation. There is no other "belief in Christ" that means anything.
. You are quite right, but they are still anathema because so far from true Christianity. In that you ARE in accord with GDR and with most of humanity for that matter, because the idea that we should be rewarded for being good and decent people, according to our own ability to judge such things, is pretty much built into our fallen character. Unfortunately it's false by God's standards, which show us that we're "sinners," i.e., at odds with God, and need to be saved from His just punishment for that. Which is why He sent His Son to die in our place. Absolutely true. However, it IS enshrined in most religions so you aren't quite right about that part. But otherwise you're right that behaving decently is the credo of most human beings and it would be redundant if that's all Christianity had to offer as well, but fortunately it offers something quite different. GDR has merely managed to invent a rather convoluted version of the universal religion of fallen humanity which is salvation by works, or pharisaical self-righteousness, which he thinks is humility but is quite the opposite.ABE: I think I'll add some comments on your next post as well: You're right, it has nothing to do with Christ. Behaving decently is the moral standard of normal fallen humanity, enshrined and elaborated in most of the natural religions of fallen humanity. Quite true. Christians ARE motivated by their salvation to do good works, and those of us who were not such good and decent people before we were saved may out of gratitude do them with even more zeal than the average Christian, but that doesn't make Christianity about being a good and decent person who does good works; some unbelievers manage to be better than all of us at that.============================================================Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : keep thinking of ways to clarify this or thatEdited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

There is something very confused about this, GDR. You keep imputing pride and self centeredness to the very tenets of salvation, saying it's just "all about me," which is one reason I don't see the point of answering you, it's just too strange and the reverse of the truth.Personal salvation if experienced rightly is a humbling experience because it is based on the recognition that I have absolutely nothing to offer in myself, I'm a useless worthless sinner no matter how "good and decent" my life may be in an outward way. As Christ said, He came not to save the righteous, but sinners. You have to be a sinner, know you are a sinner, to receive salvation. That can be very humbling indeed, whereas thinking we are good and decent people, or that we can do anything at all to serve God on our own, is a source of pride.The salvation itself is a free gift to us lousy sinners, a gift He paid for with His own blood on the cross. It's a gift that both saves us and equips us to do the good works He requires of us.When we are saved then we are also given the means to do the good works that will fulfill God's purposes for the whole Creation. You make it sound as if somehow "we" could do such works, but no, God works all His own purposes THROUGH us, we can't do anything on our own, and He does it through His saved and redeemed people, nobody else can receive His influence, you MUST be born again. This is a theme throughout the New Testament. HE does it all, and if we are saved we are eager participants in His work, but none of it comes from us. Our whole Christian life is intended to be a humbling and self-emptying -- yes, often we fight God as He tries to accomplish this in us -- an emptying of all our "good works" for instance, so that He can do HIS works through us. As long as we're full of our own notions of good works we interfere with Him.ABE: Here, let me try to say this a different way, answering your notion that personal salvation is somehow "all about me" and unrelated to fulfilling God's Kingdom purposes:As I say above, fulfilling God's Kingdom purposes is what we aim to do when we are saved, but what I didn't say is that's the whole purpose of salvation. That is, we can't do a thing for God's Kingdom UNLESS we are saved, and the point of salvation is that God is making a New Creation of each of us individually, for the purpose of creating a people who are ABLE to do the work of establishing His Kingdom, which is "not of this world" although we are looking forward to a Millennium of His rule of this world nevertheless. The Kingdom will not come except through His saved, redeemed and recreated people. "We are HIS workmanship," says scripture.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

My point is that we cannot do that unless we are saved, which means we know we are sinners for whom Christ died, and we have put all our trust in His death in our place, in His blood shed for us, knowing we are forgiven, that the charges against us have been paid in full. That's salvation and there is no entry to the Kingdom of God without it. God has to remake our hearts but we have to be set free of the sentence for sin first. In our fallen nature we are selfish, we have to be born again, recreated, and even then it's a daily struggle to continue to walk by the Spirit and not by the old fallen flesh.Having a truly unselfish heart is the aim of salvation. Without salvation we can be outwardly "good and decent" people, we can do good works, we can support charities and work to improve the world, but to be truly Christ's we have to be saved so that He can transform our inner being.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Well, that isn't what scripture says, and it isn't what the Church for 2000 years understood sripture to say, which got partiularly elaborated by the Reformation, but I can see your mind is made up.

Oh no my mind IS made up, of course. All I mean is that there is no point in arguing further when it's clear there's no hope of persuading each other.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

When you believe that the Bible is God's word you don't "refine" what you believe, you simply learn deeper and deeper implications of what you believe. In a certain sense I simply "knew" it was God's word, all of it, early on, when I was born again, having partly to do with understanding something of the nature of God who inspired it, and once you believe that the Bible is the word of God you are continually finding out just how all thise books by all those different writers confirm and build upon one another, which continually confirms your belief that it is all the word of God. Also, I haven't checked this out myself but it is commonly said that Jesus quotes from every book in the Old Testament. If HE treated it all as inspired scripture shouldn't we? As Jesus told the disciples on the Road to Emmaus in Luke 24, the Old Testament is all about HIM, and I've heard some great Reformed hermeneutics teaching tht elucidates this fact in ways we might normally overlook. What I said above. The Holy Spirit. The fact that generations before me, led by Holy Spirit, affirmed the same.Also, over the years I've read a ton of books and heard a ton of sermons on radio, tapes etc., by the best Bible inerrancy teachers, who bring out different facets of Biblical truth, all of them agreeing on the basics but sometimes disagreeing on minor secondary points. If you confine yourself to only one or a few teachers like your favorite guy Wright you can't possibly know anything about these things. That would be reasonable if you had the right view of Jesus, but when you throw out any of the Old Testament revelation you can't have the right view of Jesus, He becomes just your own idea of Him rather than who He really was. But what others have believed in the past is a HUGE reason to believe it. Plus everything I said above: Jesus quoted it all; it only gets deeper with experience and study and hearing many teachers; and it all works together in ways one might even describe as miraculous considering that it was written over about 1500 years by forty or so different men of God in many different eras and cultural settings. Etc.GDR, you are relying on your fallen mind to judge things that can only be judged through the Holy Spirit.=====================================================================================Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I'm just going to answer your post as answers occur to me, which may be out of order:============
I don't get your emphasis on "son of man" in Daniel. That phrase is only used twice in that book whereas it is used 39 times in Ezekiel.==============
And the prophecy in Zechariah of Jesus' riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, does that include in your mind "the messianic statement" of His being the long awaited Messiah who would be God Himself incarnate who would take away the sins of His people? You seem to separate the messianic message from the message of peace but they're identical in my mind.=============
The distinction between "inspired" and "inerrant" as you make it rests on a superficial idea of what "inspired" means, as you compared it to the "inspiration" of a Beethoven. To a Bible believer in relation to the Bible it means "God breathed," so if it's inspired it must also be inerrant.==================
What Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount is not understood by Bible believers to be "correcting" the OT, but revealing its true meaning, its deeper meaning, and you might notice, its far more strict meaning: Now we aren't merely guilty of outward acts, such as adultery or murder, we're guilty of those acts by merely having thoughts of lust or hatred that may not even lead to those acts. God always looks on the heart but in the OT because the people were fleshly He didn't hold them as strictly accountable, but after the Messiah came, now He does because now the Holy Spirit has been give to those who believe.Jesus also spoke of Hell more than anyone else in scripture, something those who think of Jesus as prescribing love over the OT's supposed severity might ponder as a revelation of a love quite beyond the ordinary, and yours always sounds like something you think could be done easily.Moses allowed the Israelites to divorce despite divorce's being hateful to God, because of the'hardness of the Israelites' hearts (who would divorce their wives for trivial reasons, because they didn't like their cooking or because they found someone else they liked better), but Jesus now requires the stricter true understanding of God's attitude toward divorce.Also, they were allowed the usual natural attitude of hating one's enemy, but now Jesus demands something that is very hard for us in our flesh, to actually love those who persecute us and seek to do us harm. You ever tried that? You think it's easy? IF the police came and herded you and your family outside where they beat you all and kept you from sleep for days demanding that you give up your beliefs if you want to be set free, could you hold out and love them while they abused your family? Chinese Christians under Mao were put in that position.Loving the thief who steals something you value, and giving him other things you value? Pastor Tson of Rumania was put in that position as Ceaucescu's goon squad came and confiscated his valuable rare library. He forced himself to offer them coffee and treat them as his guests. This may be more like turning the other cheek than the giving him your cloak also example but it's all about defining what Jesus means by love. Has that been part of your picture of love?Watching a Nazi abuse your sister who was sick and weak and couldn't keep up with the work load laid on her in the concentration camp, and died within days? Could you love him? Corrie Ten Boom was put in that position and it was quite a struggle for her, when the Nazi came up to her after a speech she'd given after the war and offered his hand to her, telling her he'd become a Christian. She had to pray for the forgiveness to shake his hand.What if someone asked of you your very last money you were going to use to feed yourself, knowing you wouldn't have any more money coming in for some time? Could you give it with love? The well known missionary to China, Hudson Taylor, was put in that position, and he had a struggle before he was able to do it. This of course would probably not be as much of a problem in today's America if you have family and friends as it would have been for a single young man in 19th century England so put yourself in Taylor's position.I suspect your usual idea of Jesus' commands to love your enemy etc hasn't had these kinds of situation in mind, but if you have, kudos to you.========================
I disagree with C. S. Lewis in the quote you give. Sometimes he's very good at elucidating Christian principles, but oftentimes he's as bad as any "liberal" Christian.======================
Yes, sorry, I've probably glossed over your affirmations that Jesus was prophesied in the OT because even when you say true things they are falsified by the general context of your beliefs. But anyway, does your recognition of Jesus in the OT include such things as His being foreshadowed in the commanded sacrifice of Isaac, in the specifics of the Passover event, in the Exodus itself, in the plan of the tabernacle, in the vestments and rituals of the priests, especially the High Priest, in the sprinkling of the people with the blood on the hyssop branch, in the conquest of Canaan, in Joshua himself, in King David, in Solomon, in all the Prophets etc etc etc?======================
Yes, some would agree with you about the Bible. I'm with the millions who regarded it as God-breathed, millions of whom died for that belief too.==================== You don't seem to have a concept of the Fall, which includes the fallenness and therefore the untrustworthiness of human reason. Reason must be placed under the authority of God's word and serve God's word if it is to be at all trustworthy.You put salvation low on your list of priorities, even denigrating it as selfishness of all things, but the Messiah was specifically to "save His people from their sins," you don't have much if anything to say about sin, just as you don't about fallenness, sin as the violation of God's Law which is spelled out over and over in the OT and the consquences of which are demonstrated in the punishments you denigrate and dismiss as genocide by an evil God of all the blasphemout things rather than the picture of His just punishment for sin it is meant to be. So you also don't give much place if any to the idea of the cross, of Jesus' death to pay for our sins in our place, salvation by His blood, which is the center of Bible Christianity. This is the gospel, the good news to a Bible believer. You seem to have found a completely different sort of gospel, a worldly gospel, something entirely related to this world instead of to His Kingdom which He said is "not of this world." Apparently there is nothing I could say to convince you of this. You'd have to experience it yourself, and holding on to your false ideas the way you do is only going to make it impossible for that to happen.=========================================================================Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : Finding ways to say it more clearly

OK I get your point about son of man in Daniel. That is simply not true, and your understanding of it shows quite clearly that you have no idea how the OT applies to the NT. There are many ways the Messiah is identified as Jehovah Himself in both OT and NT. Just two in the OT are Jeremiah 23:6 and 33:16 identifying Him as "The LORD Our Righteousness" (in which LORD translates the Hebrew for Jehovah) and Isaiah 9:6 "Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, Prince of Peace." Those are the most obvious ones, understood by orthodox theologians to identify Him as God. I know you have this odd idea about Jesus addressing the Roman occupation but I can assure you that no orthodox theologian has any such idea. Some of the Jews of Jesus' time had that expectation but Jesus was always correcting them, but those who really knew the scripture were able to grasp that His Kingdom is not of this world. That's quite an odd distinction, but as far as taking away sins goes, that is what the Messiah's mission was, as the angel told Joseph: Mat 1:21 And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins. (The name Jesus means Jehovah the Savior)About Moses and divorce, Moses taught nothing he wasn't instructed to do by God, and I've already explained the orthodox understanding of the Sermon on the Mount, no need to repeat it.Hell is for sinners, though bad theology can be implied in some sorts of sins. But Hell is for sinners, those who violate God's Law, adulterers, murderers and so on and so forth. My only point was that the loving Jesus spoke of Hell more than anyone else in scripture. He died to save us from it.

I didn't say who it was CREATED for, Phat, I said it IS FOR SINNERS, and that is its purpose. But somehow in all that you never say WHY humans are punished. It's because of SIN, Phat. Yes we can choose to be saved through Jesus (who came to save His people from their sins as the angel said to Joseph) and if we deny Him we will certainly end up in Hell, but for our sins, which He died to pay for. We're all Hell-bound from birth, though because of the degree of sin some are bound for deeper Hell than others, but nevertheless we're all Hell-bound because we're all sinners. Denying Jesus isn't the reason, but denying Jesus is going to mean we forfeit His offer of salvation from Hell. (Of course denying Jesus IS a sin too....)Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

And I'm saying it does, and I gave you verses in Jeremiah and Isaiah to demonstrate that the Messiah was prophesied to be God Himself. God the Father can anoint God the Son, however, and the Trinity can anoint the incarnate Jesus.Yes, there were many wannabe Messiahs around that time, as some did know the scripture well enough to know that was when the true one would come. Your secular history weblink isn't very helpful to a Christian, however.If His Kingdom is not of this world, it is also not FOR this world. This world is passing away, says scripture, and some day it will be gone altogether, replaced by a completely new Creation. In John 17 Jesus specifically says He's praying for His own, not for those of this world. Your focus on the Roman occupation is extremely strange to me. That was the concern of the unregenerate Jews, but it was certainly not the focus of Christ or His followers.We ARE called to be "salt and light" to the world, however, to keep the word of God as much the standard as we are able, to prevent the world's falling too deeply into the corruptions and evils of the sin nature. Looks like we're now in the time of the last of the last days, however, when evil is finally going to win, have its last hurrah before Jesus returns. Did you mean "BY showing them a better way?" If so, that's wrong. He saved us from our sins by taking our just punishment for our sins upon Himself on the cross and dying in our place. He's called our "propitiation" many places in the scripture. Oh, One did, and made that claim many times during His life as recorded in the New Testament. It's up to God how to treat individuals. Some believe infants are saved, some believe at least the infants of believers are saved. Scripture does at least indicate the latter, but otherwise I don't have a judgment about these things. And I don't worry about it. God will do the just thing.Same with the other categories. There is, however, Romans 1 which claims that even those who haven't heard the gospel have enough light from nature to obey the natural law and to be "without excuse" for not obeying it, but that too is not spelled out with enough distinctness for me to make my own judgment about individuals in certain categories such as you list, and again, I leave such decisions to God, they aren't mine to make. What I DO know for sure is that those who have heard the gospel and rejected it are utterly without excuse. I don't miss out on that at all, it's what we do WHEN we are saved, and nobody can do it who isn't saved although they may deceive themselves about that. You cannot have that without being born again, i.e., saved. And the idea that salvation is a work is absurd in the extreme. "It is by GRACE ye are saved..." Note "created in Christ Jesus UNTO GOOD WORKS" -- there's your serving of the Kingdom of God, which is the RESULT of salvation by His death on the cross in our place.====================================================================Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.