Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Christianity could possibly become a minority religion in US as early as 2045…

Wake up...already, see way below...

You all good with just about wiping out your Aussie indigenous people?

After 75 pages, are you guys any closer to convincing each other of anything? I’ll check back in a week or so to see if there’s been a breakthrough.

So what? You implying that the OT can be discounted? The "fall from grace" story is in the OT.

No, and neither does emotional outbursts.

You don't like the OT?

So quit doing it....

The snippets you pointed out are OT...and NT...but you do not include the context....for example, the one you despise the most....

“Happy is the one who seizes your infants / and dashes them against the rocks.” To “imprecate” means to “pray evil against,” and the imprecatory prayers in the Bible strike people today as strange or wrong. It is important to understand the context of this verse and others like it. The background is the Jewish people calling upon God to exact revenge upon their military enemies.

Of course not. Immoral acts have occured throughout history. I'm just saying that many have been "justifed" by faith - there's a plethora of historical information to back this up.

75 pages of discussion. On a discussion forum. I learn quite a bit on these type of threads.

Your reply was meant for Ribka. I'll pass it on, thanks.

No offense, but what is the going pay rate for Aussie atheist trolls?

No idea.

Thoughts of others:

Christ forgave sins, but only God can forgive sins (Mark 2:10). Moreover, these great powers He gave to His disciples to exercise in His name (John 20: 22-23); Mark 16:17; Matthew 28: 19-20).

There is no text in Messianic literature that shows the Messiah pardoning sins, yet Christ does so in His own name. His claims thus become explicit. Here are some examples:

"And entering into a boat, he passed over the water and came into his own city. And behold they brought to him one sick of the palsy lying in a bed. And Jesus, seeing their faith, said to the man sick of the palsy: Be of good heart, son, thy sins are forgiven thee. And behold some of the scribes said within themselves: He blasphemeth." (Matthew 9: 1-3).

(Would that not, by extension make Him God? -me)

Jesus refers to himself with the divine name—I am —in several places. This “I am” formula is a reference back to the Divine Name revealed to Moses in Ex. 3:14. Not only does Jesus refer to himself as “I am” four times in John’s Gospel (see John 8:24; 58; 13:19 and 18:5-6), but when he does so in John 8:58, the Jews to whom he was speaking understood his meaning because they immediately wanted to stone him for blasphemy!

Jesus places his word on the same level as the word of God—the Old Testament. “You have heard it said . . . but I say to you . . .” (see Matt. 5:21-28). This is in sharp contrast to the prophets of old who always made clear the word they were speaking was not their own: “The word of the Lord came unto me, saying . . . ” (cf. Jer. 1:11; Ezek. 1:3, etc.). Only God possesses this kind of authority.

Jesus is referred to as “equal” with God by both John and Paul. In John 5:18, the author comments on why the Jews wanted to kill Jesus: “Because he called God his Father, making himself equal with God.” Paul refers to Jesus when he was “in the form (Gk. morphe; in Greek usage this word means the set of characteristics that makes a thing what it is) of God” thinking “his equality with God” not something to be grasped onto, but emptying himself and becoming man (cf. Phil. 2:6-10). Paul assumes his readers already knew Jesus to be equal with God, the Father.

Jesus is referred to in the New Testament with the title Lord as it is uniquely applied to Yahweh in the Old Testament. Jesus calls himself “the Lord of the Sabbath” in Mark 2:28. The Sabbath is referred to as the “Sabbath of Yahweh” in the Old Testament (cf. Ex. 20:10; see also Is. 8:13, referred to in 1 Peter 3:15; and Joel 2:31-32, quoted both in Acts 2:20-21 and in Rom. 10:13).

That's your only means of defense. Not that you should be defensive, yet you are.

Context doesn't alter what is said. When the bible tells us that God is responsible for the existence of evil, that is precisely what is meant and intended,

When the bible tells us that God creates evil and the evildoer for the day of evil, that is precisely what is meant and intended.

When the bible tells us that God as the 'Potter' creates vessels 'fitted for destruction,' that is precisely what is meant and intended.

Context does not alter what is written, meant and intended.

Context does not transform what is written, meant and intended into something more palatable for the believer. .

Again, If I had no other source of information than the OT and the gospel of Matthew would I have enough information to achieve salvation? Say I didn't know anything about early Christianity or Paul or Luke or the Acts or anything else? Put me on an island and those writings delivered to me.

At the very beginning of his Gospel, Luke said that “many” have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among them. What he’s about to tell us, he's not the first person to try to get this documentation of historical events out saint people. He says tgat “many” people have endeavored to draw up an account of the things that have literally happened or been fulfilled right here among them.

How many will undertake to draw up an account of our lives…? NOT many. That’s how many. Luke tells us that he, and “many” others, have endeavored to write this all down in such a way that people can understand and experience , through what's being written by them, what has actually happened right here among them all.

But not many people even undertook to draw up the accounts of the lives of famous people from ancient times, especially during the first century. Tiberius Caesar was Caesar during the life of Jesus. The emperor of the Roman Empire. But there’s hardly anything about him, especially from the first century. You gotta piece it together to come up with much information about him at all. Same can be said for Pilate, there's practically nothing. Josephus does give us a storyline of the life of Herod the Great. But other than Josephus, that's it. And Herod the Great did extraordinary things, but there's just one account. One, not “many.”

And how many detailed narrative accounts do we have of the lives of ancient peasants who were crucified as criminals…? And how many detailed narrative accounts do we have of the lives of famous first century rabbis…? That’d be NONE. Other than Jesus, who “many” endeavored to document His history, that’d be a big fat NONE. There is nothing that even comes close to what we find in just Luke's presentation of the life of Jesus.

I think your propensity to twist and contort what was said, not only by Jesus Himself, but also by His handpicked Apostles…so that it jives with your own already decided upon theology…would enable ‘you’ to assert your salvation regardless of the fact that you twisted and contorted not only what Jesus Himself said, but also what His handpicked Apostles said.

Hastings makes a good point that goes unanswered - before Jesus came along was the default condition that people went to hell automatically when they died? Was this an oversight of god, and did he only realise when he was no longer recieving fresh imports into heaven? In fact it would've lasted for centuries AD while canonisation took place.

Another rather untidy loose end in the Christian story I'd say.

More homework for Raspy.

(Sorry Hastings, I took the liberty to expand with my thoughts onto your concerns.)