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The Protestant Reformation gave us sola scriptura, because the reformers believed like many today that the scriptures...not the church, and not anything else...are the ultimate authority for mankind. This is why they were so adamant about making copies of the scriptures and getting them into the hands of the people. The church saw it as a threat because if everyone had the scriptures, and no one took the church and its traditions seriously, the church would lose its power. But unfortunately, the scriptures...due to ‘by scripture alone’...became the same thing that papal authority was before. It became a weapon; people were now armed with scriptures and they did exactly what the church had done before. And consequently they split into over a thousand different denominations; they weren’t divided because some loved better than others, or because some loved differently than others; they were divided because of their interpretation of the texts. And they each were telling other people how to live, and what would get them into Heaven. And Protestants have been beating people over the head with the Bible ever since.

Will some of you kind folks that have visited with me, please tell Ed, I don't bite!

Good Morning Wabi.

Hope you're enjoying a nice spring morning.

😄👍

Were the likes of Peter and Paul guilty of beating people over the head with the Bible? True that our sinful nature comes out in our best intentions, but I don’t think we should stop standing for truth as best we can.

Are you 100% certain that you will go to heaven some day?

You mean the opium of the masses? carry on

Actually Paul had a history of beating people over the head BECAUSE of their faith. Then, as Saul of Tarsus, he made that fateful journey towards Damascus. Things kinda changed then, you might say.

I believe that Jesus died for my sin and rose from the dead. I have no doubts whatsoever. And for me, following Jesus has as much or more to do with this life as it does the next.

Peter and Paul didn’t have ‘the Bible’. Somehow many people have gotten the idea that the Bible is Christianity, and as the Bible goes, so goes Christianity. For me, nothing could be further from the truth. Christianity does not rise and fall on the integrity or the verifiability of the Bible. Christianity preceded the Bible; the reason we have the Bible is because of something that happened. There were many thousands of Christians before ‘the Bible’ ever came along in the 4th century.
Jesus told His Jewish followers that their scriptures pointed to Him. He said He was the fulfillment of all in what we call the OT. And some of His followers believed Him, they saw that it lined up with Him and the things they were seeing. They started believing He was the Messiah who was the fulfillment of the Jewish scriptures. And then He was crucified...game over, lights out...clearly He was wrong and they were wrong about Him. And there were no Jesus followers immediately after the Crucifixion. And they no longer believed that Jesus was the son of God when they saw Him die. And then He rose from the dead and the whole thing got started; and suddenly all those Jewish followers went back to those scriptures that Jesus said told of Him and concluded that He was right, they’d lost faith, He was back, they were back, and everything in their scriptures pointed to Him. Christianity preceded the Bible. If you never opened the OT, if you never saw an OT, if suddenly the entire OT vanished from Christianity, it would do nothing to undermine Christianity. Because Christianity began when Jesus rose from the dead, and they recognized He was who He claimed to be. People followed Jesus after the resurrection because of the resurrection. That’s how Christianity got started. It is not near as fragile as many think; it does not hang by a thread of some passage in scripture or by some miracle Jesus performed in the NT, it’s much more sturdier than that. If it was that fragile, Christianity would have never survived the 1st century.

That's awesome!
I know you told others of His resurrection and show confidence in Him.

Where else does that come from if not His Word, the Bible?

I was really headed towards being a believer, but all the believers cramming all their believer crap down my throat, coupled with their very non-Christian forum posts, has really turned me from being a believer. You guys really pissed me off cramming your religious crap on me, so i just decided I'm going to be a nonbeliever instead.

Really. Its all's your fault. You did it. Ain't on me. I tried to warn you. Beg me or I'll do it. Ok. That settles it.

To hell with y'all. I'm a Nonbeliever As of Now.

Actually, some of my post does not reflect my actual thinking, but the point is simply that cramming stuff down people's throats is a two way street. In addition, the self-righteous stuff spouted by a lot of non-righteous people is a big turn off. If the messengers are that messed up, it makes one wonder about the message.

Jesus ‘can’ reveal Himself in any manner He chooses. God doesn’t ‘only’ reveal Himself through the Bible. Jesus isn’t bound by the covers of a book. The fact that none of the apostles, and none of the many early first century followers of Jesus had the Bible clearly didn’t interfere with their salvation, or their ability to have communion with God. Not having a Bible was clearly not an issue with any of em’.
Matthew told of Jesus before there ever was ‘the Bible’, so did Mark, so did Luke, so did John, so did Peter, so did James (the brother of Jesus), and so did Paul...all separate accounts of Jesus, independent from one another...centuries before they were ever bound together and included in ‘the Bible’.
My perspective anchors to the event of the resurrection rather than to the authority of ‘the Bible’. I don’t take what the above men said seriously because their documents are in the Bible; I think their documents were included in the Bible because these men were eyewitnesses and early Jesus followers understood the value of their documents. So where some might choose to cross-examine the Bible, it’d be more appropriate to cross-examine Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, James, and Paul...all separate accounts of Jesus...independent from one another.

I'll agree Antlers, "Something", in a life moves one to The Bible.

Just because one isn't a bible thumper doesn't make them a atheist.
Both can be considered radical nuts.
Most of the founding fathers were agnostic or deist. I consider myself agnostic.

Yup, it's this simple:

Ro 10:9 because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

Remember the thief on The Cross.

I post some raw stuff. I am a Christian but I've never claimed to be perfect or a good one.

I am probably way too laid back to push my religion on somebody. I should probably do it more. When you think about it, using logic, if there really is only one way to heaven (and I believe there is) then are you not doing your fellows a favor by pushing that way as hard as you possibly can since this life is short and finite whereas eternity is long and infinite? If you could push and prod and berate people into Heaven, shouldn't you? I don't believe you can force somebody to believe. I think belief and faith are a gift and no amount of force from a man, short of God Himself, Jesus, can cause a man to believe.

Non-believers many times IMO, see simple presentation of God's side of things as "pushing religion on them". The world pushes all sorts of alternative religion, including the religion of no religion, off on non-believers every day, yet they fail to see this.

"The god of this world has blinded their eyes." I seem to remember reading that somewhere.

Amen.