Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Yet another opinion about the Shroud of Turin

Yes! The English translation butchers this scripture. The word translated rock that Jesus called Simon Peter was the Greek word Petra....meaning piece of rock or little rock. The rock on what the church would be built was Petros meaning a GIGANTIC rock. What was the gigantic rock? Knowledge that Jesus is the Christ the Son of the living God which comes by revelation! This same man, Peter, later would write calling followers of Christ "living stones built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood"....(1 Peter 2:5).

It works the same today as it did for Peter. Anyone who gets a revelation of Jesus Christ as the Son of the living God at a deep level becomes solid.....a living stone that the gates of hell will not prevail over.

So how many generations do you believe were skipped?
A few dozen, a few hundred, a few thousand?

Did God create Adam and even as the first people, or is the story allegory?

And what point when you are deciding what is literal and what is allegory are you just picking the parts you like, and re-categorizing the rest?

Doesn't this very exercise involve the use of your reason, the reason you reject, but the same reason required to develop your interpretation of the Bible?

As for you bearing any resemblance to a dog riding in a car, I find your metaphor unconvincing. You are a thinking being, capable is contemplating his own existence and what may, or may not happen after words, where the dog can only enjoy the breeze upon his face as he hangs his head out the window.

IMO the real reason you choose not to use too much of your reason is you are afraid of where it may lead.

RickyD,



Fantastic sentence[/b]! Just fantastic[b]!

curdog4570,



Should we believe the above or a quote from the Bible: "The Law of the Lord is Perfect converting the soul."

antelope_sniper,



The Bible is like the laws of logic. You have to believe in them in order to prove they exist.

A couple posts ago, I said this:

"There is a hell of a jump from believing in the Jesus of the bible and believing EVERYTHING in the bible."

If you can't pay attention, I'm done with you.

Oh, I can my own opinions about things based on my reason and understanding, I just don't see a reason to be dogmatic about something that ISN'T specifically stated. Why be dogmatic about what is admittedly nothing more than an opinion...an interpretation?

As for my reason, as Paul said we see through a glass...dimly. What we understand, we may not because we in are current states are unable to do so.

And reason and evidence and all that, it really is puny in the face of God. God makes the rules we don't. And he doesn't consult us or ask our permission.

You know there was a recent study by some German outfit in the last few years where they concluded that there was something like an 80 percent possibility that reality was a computer simulation. It was based on some research that I don't even understand that there is no randomness in reality and so on and so forth. It was really cutting edge stuff. They hypothesized that everything we know might simply be someone's computer game or whatever.

Think of that. That is a pretty good allegory for God and it might be exactly what creation is with instead of a program designer, God. Does not the designer control the rules? Does he not do as he wishes? Is a simulated world created piece by piece, or is it usually created complete with a backstory? Are the things in the world real or merely the creations of the designer? Is the designer bound by the same rules as the players, or can he do things that seem miraculous by the rules of the simulation? And so on and so forth.

The point is, we don't know. The best we can do is use the tools we are given, but like the gamer in the simulation, we simply might not have the tools or the ability to understand everything within the simulation.

antelope_sniper,



Documentation from any place in Corinthians, please.

Yes....

TF

antelope_sniper,



Good response.

No one should read that without knowing what the differences were in the way Peter and Paul were viewing Christianity. Peter wanted gentile converts to be circumcised. Peter wanted gentile converts to refrain from eating meat offered to idols. These and other differences revolved around one thing. Peter was stuck on the idea that gentiles needed to become Jews in order to be Christians. Paul insisted that salvation did not come through the work of keeping the Jewish law, but was through God's free and undeserved grace, whether Jew or gentile, slave or free, male or female. If Peter's view had prevailed, it would have destroyed Christianity in its infancy, turning it into a Jewish sect by judaizing all gentile converts.

What people need to know is that Peter and Paul worked through their differences until Peter saw Paul was right, even to the point where he viewed Paul's writings as Scripture -- a very big deal if you think about it. See 2 Peter 3:14-16 where he closes out his letter with these words:


In saying some of the things Paul wrote "are hard to understand," he is saying what we still say today. But in going on to say, "the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures," he is both warning against heretical views that disagree with Paul AND he is identifying Paul's writing as Scripture.

Lots of people dwell in the Petrine/Pauline debate, but you have to read to the end to see it was resolved in Peter's mind. I don't know how it can be any clearer that Peter and Paul ended up in agreement.

Steve.

So you are dogmatic about those things that are stated?

Does your dogma include Adam and Eve, and does that mean humans did not evolve?

I believe what the Bible says and no, humans did not evolve.

I am just a player in a simulation game. I am incapable of understanding reality because I cannot place myself out of the simulation. And everything I think I know about the simulation is subject to the whims of the designer.

Everything you said that I quoted above, is precisely correct. Where you went astray was quoting Second Peter which modern textual critics accept as Forged, and written 20 to 90 years after Peters death.

I've never thought of it in percentages. Actually, I don't approach it as a question of belief as much as a question of "importance".

I read the obvious myths in the O.T. as myths that point to an actuality beyond human conception. The whole "Creation Myth", for example, tells me that God/Jesus "thought the Universe into existence". When and why are not important. I can see it.

The idea that the Power that created the universe is interested in having a relationship with me, one of His critters, is the heart of the message Jesus, in His humanity, brought to the world. Everything else pales in comparison to that idea.

Once that relationship was established, fine theological points I once thought so important, evaporated. As far as questioning the accuracy of the Bible...............

Until you meet the Risen Jesus, no answers will suffice. Once you meet Him, no questions remain.

Like He told Peter;"What is that to you.... follow thou me."

Ringman, it's easy for me to prove the Bible exists. I have the KJ, NIV, and Amplified on my shelf. I can pick them up, turn the page, hear the crinkle of pages, and smell the fine paper.

As for the laws of logic, I do not have to believe in them to prove they exist. I use them because they work. It wouldn't matter if I believed in the rules of logic if they did not work.

Perfectly said.

THAT is some of the best stuff that I've seen posted anywhere...ever. Well said Gene.

When you're 7 years old it's OK to believe that Noah's Ark was filled with reproducing pairs of all of the animals on earth. It's also OK to realize the physical impossibility of 'that' when you become an adult, and change your mind about it...but you can 'still' continue to have faith in that story because the 'real' knowledge of Noah's Ark isn't found in the logistics of it or the zoological arrangements of it. The 'real' knowledge of it is the message that, even in the midst of a storm, God cares for and watches over His creation.

These are the kinds of truths that are conveyed in the Bible that are sometimes missed by people.

Curdog, I appreciate your response.

I find it interesting to take the nuanced understandings such as your and TF49's and juxtapose them with my friend Ringman and JoeBob, and tonight you gentlemen were kind enough to oblige. We have a nice spectrum, RM, the true literalist, JoeBob the "mostly" literalist, RYH who did a nice decomposition of the Greek, and EDH with his fine explanation of early Church debates. It's interesting to notice that those who appear to have the deepest understanding of what's behind, and what went into the text place the least emphasis on their literal truth, and much greater emphasis on their perception of the Spiritual Truth.

"This is the obvious meaning of the passage; and had it not been that the Church of Rome has abused it, and applied it to what was never intended, no other interpretation would have been sought for".

Taking the whole passage in context, I sort of think that the Father's ability to "bless" Peter with the revelation of Jesus as the Christ is what the Church is founded on. That "ability" fits quite a few other passages of scripture as well.

And Jesus, "a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek", would replace all the priests, and deal with His critters directly.

It sure didn't take long for the "middlemen" to make an appearance, though.