The C.C.O.I. (Christian Cult Of Ignorance) and Willful Ignorance

Message 466 and Matthew 4:17

The kingdom of God had come because the Messiah had come; he was announcing himself.

[Msg=463] was a partial list of what must be believed in the Bible, and I think many promises and prophecies could be added to it; I hadn't mentioned what Jesus said there. He didn't give all the things we are to believe in, but his message was to repent and believe.ABE: to believe in Him is the main thing and He many times tells them all to believe in Him. The Kingdom has come because the King has come, not in complete fullness, but it has arrived, the Messiah they'd been waiting for, who is its spearhead as it were, and will usher it in fully when He returns. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Jesus is talking about believing in Himself.But I'm talking about belief as such being what the Christian life is largely about. Read it and believe it. Instead of subjecting it to a million doubts, just read it and believe it. There will be parts you don't understand, don't try to understand them without help. That's what the "simple honest heart" I'm talking about does. Reads and believes and doesn't go beyond his own limits.Belief is the main thing we are called to do, and I think it relevant that Jesus began His preaching with the message to repent and believe in Him.The list of things I gave in Message 463 are things we are to believe or have faith in, which we can only learn about from the Bible. Of course we are to believe the Bible is the word of God for starters.It is considered to be well understood that nobody can really obey the commandments of God in our fallen state, we must be born again to be able to obey and then we do it in God's power, not our own.

How very odd. Obviously by your reasoning we aren't supposed to help people in need either, because those words are in the Bible. And we can forget about "judge not..."

Oh, but most important of all, Jesus Who?Still can't get around the fact that Jesus is said to have said, but of course He doesn't exist and never said anything by your lights, but anyway, He's said to have said to Believe the gospel, meaning believe in Me, which He repeats in other parts of the gospels, oh sorry, but of course they don't exist. Jesus Who?Repent and believe it, or Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand, which is really the same message, Repent for the messiah is finally here. That was His first message to the world.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I had Mark 1:14 and 15. Something wrong with that?

Even odder. No, but you made much of the fact that Jesus said them and that this is the whole point of His ministry, to teach us such things, while at the same time telling me I put too much trust in the Bible; and my answer is that if you are going to keep objecting to my pointing to the Bible as the source of truth then you are eliminating your own source of what Jesus said, so that we don't have to obey any of His commands, to help people in need or whatever. Eliminate the Bible and you eliminate Jesus and everything He said. And my answer, which you seem to find so hard to grasp, is that if you keep dismissing the Bible as the inerrant source of truth it is, then you also dismiss Jesus and everything He said.I haven't discounted that He has given us commands to act, but you are discounting that His main and first command was to believe, believe the gospel, believe in Him.You seem to think you can pick and choose whatever you like from the Bible. But you can't call Him "the Son of God" without the Bible to tell you that's who He is. And if we can all just pick and choose, then somebody else is going to eliminate that term too. Thomas Jefferson eliminated all the supernatural stuff, so he would have eliminated the supernatural implications of "Son of God" as well. But then, maybe you do too. I'm talking about the first message of his ministry, when He began preaching. He began it with an announcement that the Kingdom of God had come, which of course means He the Messiah had come.His very very very first message was probably something like "mama" or "dada."He said quite a bit about believing. It's all in the Bible along with the commandments such as "Love your neighbor as yourself" but by your lights I don't have to take that commandment seriously at all anyway because believing the Bible is stupid. Here's a list of all the verses in the New Testament that have the word "believe" in them. Most are Jesus' own words.Do you particularly dislike the Gospel of John perhaps? Seems to have the most references to belief.John 5:47 is particularly interesting: Isn't He saying basically "Believe the Bible" by saying this? "Believe the Torah" for starters. And if you don't then you can't believe anything He says either.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

No you haven't, but my point is that if it isn't all then it's nothing because there is no other source of the information in the Bible. You are reduced to subjectively choosing what you think is true or not true whether you know it or not, and that leaves it open for others to subjectively choose parts you wouldn't choose. But that's impossible with the Bible. There is no "message of Jesus" without believing in the words on the page. You are arbitrarily subjectively preferring some of the words ascribed to Jesus out of all the other words on the page and you have no valid standard for such a choice. His words were transmitted by others, He didn't write them Himself, and why accept those particular words as true while ignoring all the others written by the same authors? You are really making no sense at all. You are only fooling yourself if you think that. Most of the information in the Bible is unique to the Bible, what "reality" are you going to compare it with? It can only be judged by other parts of the Bible, not by external "reality." But two plus two equals five is not in the Bible. You've already destroyed your own claim. But then you've pretty much reduced him to just a philosopher. It's true you can't compute the age of the creation from anything He said, but He does refer to the Creation, as well as to the Flood of Noah. And the reason He had to die for our sins is that death is the consequence of sin, which you are obliged to disbelieve if you think evolution preceded Adam and Eve. The Bible really does hold together as a coherent whole if you truly understand it, which you can only do by believing it. Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. That's the first great commandment, which you ignore in favor of the second.But anyway, repent and believe in the gospel IS the first thing he said; if you want to subordinate it to your favorite second greatest commandment, it is still the first thing He said and you are ignoring it completely. Repent and believe the gospel of the Kingdom, that the King has come. HE HIMSELF is the centerpiece of Christianity: He Himself is the bread that feeds US. This is the gospel, not our duties to help others. Where's the "good news" in that duty? The good news is that the Kingdom has come and our sins are forgiven when we put all our trust in the King who died for us. No, that is an inference from the fact that we have no other source of knowledge of Him or anything He said except the Bible. Do away with the Bible and you do away with Jesus Christ and everything He said. See above. You fool yourself if you think this. You can only subjectively assess it because there is no reality outside it that can be used to assess it. Sure is. See above. Uhhhhhh. Groan. But you, we, couldn't know this without the Bible. We need some written testimony and the Bible is it. Come ON! Who on earth are you talking about and how would you know about it without the Bible? Oh that's priceless logic there. Wow. People manage to dismiss this fantastic written testimony we have and yet you think we could make do with mere verbal testimony that was never written down but somehow got transmitted intact for two millennia from mouth to mouth? You think that would be a superior method of communication of the truths about Jesus? Are you thinking at all? And again, there would be no message of Jesus to follow without believing the words of the Bible. Sheesh. Well, again, just as a point of fact, it isn't the greatest, it's the second of the two great commandments, the first being love God with all your heart, which you keep ignoring. And besides the commandment is love your neighbor as yourself, not the way you've put it. And just as another tiresome point of fact do you know that He said absolutely nothing about feeding the hungry? I looked up "hungry" and found Mark 11:12 where He Himself is said to be hungry, and Luke 1:53 where it says HE has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away. For "hunger" we have references to Himself as the bread of life, and hungering for righteousness and that sort of thing.However, of course we are to take care of the poor and hungry, from that second commandment you keep wrongly putting first, "love your neighbor as yourself." It must be a strain to keep ignoring the obvious. Jesus said to believe Moses' "writings" which covers the entire Torah.Really, CS, you are reducing Jesus to a nonentity. We didn't need the Son of God to bring us the two great commandments because they are already in the Old Testament. I think you are missing the whole point here. It is Himself we are to come to, He Himself, the bread of life, the fountain of living water, the way, the truth and the life who is the only way to the Father. Nothing about His "message," it's all about Himself. He is our salvation. "He who believes on Me has eternal life." Amazing how you keep ignoring this central message. Again, CS, it is so plain that He is talking about Himself and not the commandments. He's talking about "receiving" HIM. And also His words, of course, such as when He said "I am the way the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father but by Me; and I am the bread that came down from heaven; and He who believes on Me has everlasting life. But you are confining His "message" to things Moses himself had already said, making Jesus' coming superfluous, and where is the "good news" in taking care of our neighbor? Believing that through Him we have life everlasting, though, that He died for our sins, that He is our bread or sustenance, now THAT is "good news."ABE: Oh and I forgot to repeat that when Jesus says to believe in Moses' writings He is essentially saying to believe the Bible.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

He's alive in the sense that He is actually alive and sitting at the right hand of the Father in heaven; and He's alive in the sense that He is aware of everything that goes on with all of us and intercedes/prays for His church; and He's alive in the sense that sometimes we are blessed enough to experience His presence and to receive both indirect and direct communications from Him. "He is risen. He is risen indeed." Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Sometimes it is not clear and in that case you should ignore it. But sometimes the message is so biblical and appropriate to the current situation you know it's from Him. It is in great revivals where His presence is most powerfully experienced and those are judged by their biblical quality and by their fruits. In all these situations we are not to make the experience the standard, but it's a lovely accompaniment nevertheless. A bad burrito would give one a stomachache, the presence of God is meltingly beautiful.

Well, I can be sure that YOU will never know because you deny that the Bible is God's inerrant word, and that's the prerequisite for judging any Christian experience or teaching.For instance, if a person gets a message from "God" instructing the person to divorce his or her spouse, which I know has happened in many cases including one I'm personally familiar with, that message was not from God because a message that really came from God can't contradict His word, which clearly says He hates divorce.You are quite right that the devil can quote scripture, and as I said sometimes we don't know for sure the source of such a communication and then we should ignore it.

You really should throw yours away since it's been misleading you for some time by telling you the Bible has lies in it. First prerequisite is to believe the Bible is God's word and you've missed it, probably terminally. I might feel sorry for you except for the fact that you've been aggressively misleading others into your ditch. Perhaps at least you will enjoy the Pope's company for eternity, since the Popes have misled millions into that ditch.

I explained the birds nonsense aeons ago. You wrongly divide the word of truth and you lack the spiritual intuition to know it.OK so your brain invents errors rather than lies.

"Sitting" suggests biological aliveness to me, not sure why it doesn't to you. Scripture says He's sitting next to the Father and praying for us. Sounds like a biological person to me, who is actually doing things persons might do. I always picture Him as a person I'm going to meet some day in bodily form. It could?You experience Shakespeare's presence? Without actually reading something he wrote? What does he say to you?