That was a battle. I tried posting fifteen million times without luck until I realized you had this link so here goes.
Hi MrMeaner,
ME: "How do you know you are not the one mislead? "
MrMEANER: "If I am, I doubt I would be held accountable for not believing that God is so whimsical, he would change his promises, and his entire plan for humanity..."
What promises has He changed? Give me some examples.
MrMEANER: "and for not believing that God is so geographically (or linguistically) challenged, he would confuse "all nations", with 1st century Jerusalem."
He is not geographically challenged or confused. You are looking at 1st century writings through 21 century eyes. To the Jews of that time all the world was different in their concept from what it is today in ours.
Some of the apostles believed that the end had come because the gospel had been preached in all the world and the Great Commission of Matthew 28 had been accomplished. This is easily demonstrated. Here is what Jesus said:
"Therefore go and make disciples of ALL nations... And surely I am with you always, to the very END OF THE AGE." (Matt. 28:19, 20b)
In the Olivetti Discourse Jesus had this to say about the coming of the end:
"And this gospel of the kingdom will be PREACHED IN THE WHOLE WORLD as a testimony to ALL NATIONS and THEN THE END WILL COME." (Matt. 24:14)
Here is what Paul said in Romans 10:17-18:
"17 Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ. 18 But I ask: Did they not hear? Of course they did:
“Their voice has gone out into ALL THE EARTH, their words to the ENDS OF THE WORLD.”
Here is what he said in Colossians 1:5; 23 and please notice the context as to who is being addressed:
"1 PAUL, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and TIMOTHY our brother,
2 To God’s holy people IN COLLOSSE, the faithful brothers in Christ... 3 WE always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when WE pray for YOU, 4 because WE have heard of YOUR faith in Christ Jesus and of the love YOU have for all God’s people— 5 the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for YOU in heaven and about which YOU HAVE ALREADY HEARD in the true message of the GOSPEL 6 that has come to YOU. In the same way, the gospel IS bearing fruit and growing throughout the WHOLE WORLD—just as it HAS BEEN doing among YOU since the day YOU HEARD IT and truly understood God’s grace. 7 YOU learned it FROM EPAPHRAS, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf,....23 if YOU continue in YOUR faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that YOU HEARD and that HAS BEEN PROCLAIMED to EVERY CREATURE under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant."
Did you catch who the 'you' was addressed to and the verb tense? The same applies to us today concerning the message and our faith.
Would you care to comment on the primary audience being addressed here by Paul, and if it is not the church of Colosse in the first century show me how you arrived at your conclusion.
Here is what was said by the writer of Acts (Luke) concerning the gospel going out into all the world in Acts 2:1-21:
" 1 When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues[a] as the Spirit enabled them.
5 Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing JEWS FROM EVERY NATION UNDER HEAVEN. 6 When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. 7 Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? 9 Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome 11 (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” 12 Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”
13 Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.” Peter Addresses the Crowd 14 Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: “Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. 15 These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! 16 No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:
17 “‘IN THE LAST DAYS, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on ALL PEOPLE. YOUR sons and daughters will prophesy, YOUR young men will see visions, YOUR old men will dream dreams. 18 Even on my servants, BOTH MEN AND WOMEN, I will pour out my Spirit IN THOSE DAYS, and they will prophesy. 19 I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke. 20 The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious DAY OF THE LORD. 21 And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’"
What does "the last day" and "Day of the Lord" mean in the NT? How many 'last days' and 'Day of the Lord' are there in Scripture, one or many (i.e., Is it a term that can have more than one fulfillment, because it addresses different situations or do all the 'last days' mentioned in the OT have to do with this 'last days' mentioned in the NT?)?
As you can see, these early Christians certainly believed the gospel had been preached to the ends of the world that they knew of at that time and the passages tie in with the end spoken of in Matthew 24:14 and the whole of the discourse, since the term end is mentioned numerous times.
"What promises has He changed? Give me some examples"
Where to start?..How about the whole resurrection of the dead / gathering of all Israel, to be united with Judah thing ?
Ezek. Ch37
[12] Therefore prophesy and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel. [13] And ye shall know that I am the LORD, when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up out of your graves, [14] And shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall live, and I shall place you in your own land: then shall ye know that I the LORD have spoken it, and performed it, saith the LORD. [15] The word of the LORD came again unto me, saying, [16] Moreover, thou son of man, take thee one stick, and write upon it, For Judah, and for the children of Israel his companions: then take another stick, and write upon it, For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and for all the house of Israel his companions: [17] And join them one to another into one stick; and they shall become one in thine hand. [18] And when the children of thy people shall speak unto thee, saying, Wilt thou not shew us what thou meanest by these? [19] Say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will take the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel his fellows, and will put them with him, even with the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, and they shall be one in mine hand. [20] And the sticks whereon thou writest shall be in thine hand before their eyes. [21] And say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the heathen, whither they be gone, and will gather them on every side, and bring them into their own land: [22] And I will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king to them all: and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all:
That's a pretty big promise. Which leads to the promise that despite all of Israels failings, and turning away from him, at some point Israel would stretch from Egypt, all the way to the Euphrates river. That hasn't happened, and won't until Christ's return.
There's a couple.
I'll get to your other points later, but what about the issue related to the image in Nebuchadnezzar's dream, being broken by the "stone cut without hands", representing Christ? Doesn't that imply that there is a global empire involved? The last empire mentioned is the one represented by the feet and toes of the image, which represent the ten kings of Rev 17:12. Those kings receive power for one hour with the beast. That will be the empire broken by our Rock.
"He is not geographically challenged or confused. You are looking at 1st century writings through 21 century eyes. To the Jews of that time all the world was different in their concept from what it is today in ours"
But you have to take in to account that during the 1st century, most Jews, and practically all Israelites were scattered across Europe, Asia, Northern Africa, and other parts of the Middle East.
"Some of the apostles believed that the end had come because the gospel had been preached in all the world and the Great Commission of Matthew 28 had been accomplished."
I believe they thought they would see the end, but I don't think any believed they had seen the end.
"Therefore go and make disciples of ALL nations... And surely I am with you always, to the very END OF THE AGE."
I'm sure they did their best to do just that, although they were limited by a human life-span. And, I would like to think that through the Holy Spirit, he is still with his faithful.
John Ch.14 [1] Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. [2] In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. [3] And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. ...[25] These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you. [26] But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.
As for the rest, are you claiming that the apostles were able to deliver his message to every person on Earth?
Concerning your Ezekiel 37 verse, Don K. Preston had this to say in 'We Shall Meet Him in the Air,' p. 172:
"The gathering of Israel was the time of the resurrection. This is critical, especially in the light of Matthew 24:31. Ezekiel 37:12 foretold the time when God would resurrect Israel, "I will open your graves and cause you to come up from your graves." It is clear from the context of Ezekiel 37 that the resurrection under consideration is not a physical resurrection from biological death. The context is that Israel was in bondage due to her sin. She was in "sin-death" because of her violation of the covenant. In other words, Israel's promise of resurrection was not a promise of physical resurrection from biological death. It was the promise of the restoration of fellowship with God through the forgiveness of sin. (See Paul’s comment in Acts 26:17-18, in light of the fact that all he proclaimed was Israel’s hope of resurrection). The resurrection promised by Ezekiel was to occur when Israel’s Messiah came, established the New Covenant and His temple in their midst (Ezekiel 37:22-27). Significantly, Paul cites Ezekiel’s prophecy in 2 Corinthians 3-6. He specifically says that the body of Christ in Corinth was the fulfillment of God’s promise to build His tabernacle among His people: “You are the temple of the living God, as God has said, ‘I will dwell in them and walk among them. I will be their God and they shall be My people’”. (2 Corinthians 6:16) If the inspired apostle Paul, who preached nothing but the resurrection hope of Israel said that the body of Christ in Corinth was the fulfillment of God’s promise to resurrect Israel then we today have no right to say He was wrong or to look for a different kind of resurrection. Israel was being raised from the dead by coming into the body of Christ and there finding the forgiveness of her sin, the sin that had killed her in the first place. Notice that Paul told the Corinthians, “You are what God promised.” He did not say you are living proof that one day God will keep His promises to Israel. He did not say that the church was a type of the coming fulfillment of His promise to Israel. He did not say that the church was a foretaste of God’s work for Israel in a later time. He said, “You are the temple of the living God, as God has said” (2 Corinthians 6:16). There could hardly be a clearer affirmation that the resurrection promises of God made to Israel were being fulfilled. It is clear that the resurrection in view is not a resuscitation of biologically dead physical bodies. It is the restoration to fellowship, the restoration to relationship. P 172-173.
MrMEANER: “Which leads to the promise that despite all of Israel’s failings, and turning away from him, at some point Israel would stretch from Egypt, all the way to the Euphrates river. That hasn't happened, and won't until Christ's return.”
Yet God says the physical land promises given to Abraham are already fulfilled.
“So the LORD gave Israel ALL the land He had sworn to give their forefathers, and they took possession of it and settled there. The LORD gave them rest on every side, just as He had sworn to their forefathers. Not one of their enemies withstood them; the LORD handed all their enemies over to them. Not one of all the LORD’s good promises to the house of Israel failed; every one was fulfilled” (Joshua 21:43-45).
Besides that, “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ.” (2 Corinthians 1:20).
MrMEANER: “I'll get to your other points later, but what about the issue related to the image in Nebuchadnezzar's dream, being broken by the "stone cut without hands", representing Christ?” MrMEANER: “Doesn't that imply that there is a global empire involved?”
Do you not think that the church is global? Do you not think that those ruled by Christ are part of His kingdom?
“Jesus replied, ‘….And I tell you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church, and the gates of hell will not overcome it.” (Matthew 16:18)
The gates of hell overcame every other kingdom, but not the eternal one! Jesus has crushed Satan’s head. Greater is He that is in the Christian than he who is in the world.
MrMEANER: “The last empire mentioned is the one represented by the feet and toes of the image, which represent the ten kings of Rev 17:12.”
Yes, the fourth, the Roman Empire.
MrMEANER: “Those kings receive power for one hour with the beast.”
Are you taking it as a literal hour? Who are the kings?
MrMEANER: “That will be the empire broken by our Rock.
Yes, the Rock is Christ and He has broken the other empires. Again, the fourth empire is the Roman Empire.
"If the inspired apostle Paul, who preached nothing but the resurrection hope of Israel said that the body of Christ in Corinth was the fulfillment of God’s promise to resurrect Israel then we today have no right to say He was wrong or to look for a different kind of resurrection."
He said no such thing. In fact, he said the opposite, in 5:1-10
[1] For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
We know that when we die, we have a spiritual body. "And as we have borne the image of the earthly, we shall also bear image of the heavenly".. ICor.15:49
[2] For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven:
"So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption; It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body."...ICor.15:42-44
[3] If so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked. [4] For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life.
Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither does corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptable, and we shall be changed. So when this corruptable shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory"...I Cor.15:50-54
[5] Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit.
earnest--a pledge, or portion given in advance, as security for the rest, to be paid later
[6] Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: [7] (For we walk by faith, not by sight:) [8] We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord. [9] Wherefore we labour, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him. [10] For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.
Whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord. We certainly haven't been resurrected, or put away our mortal bodies.
"Yet God says the physical land promises given to Abraham are already fulfilled."
Well, we've ran in to a problem.
There is no question that God promised that the Euphrates would be Israel's coast. Joshua 1:3,4
So, we can deduce that Israel has yet to meet the conditions that will allow the Father to deliver on his unfulfilled promise. or the promise will remain unfulfilled until Christ's return.
Are you saying that "the church" makes up the body of the Harlot who will be the target of Christ's wrath?
If so, I agree
"Do you not think that those ruled by Christ are part of His kingdom?"
Who's being ruled by Christ? We may rule our lives, in accordance to Christ's teachings...but Christ isn't ruling Earth, currently. In fact, the "god of this world" has blinded the minds of them which believe not." II Cor.4:4
I doubt that it's a literal hour. My guess is that it's the same period of time described as the hour of temptation in 3:10.
"Who are the kings?"
My opinion is that these are the leaders of a global order, described in chapter 13. We could go a little deeper, in discussing the significance of the symbolism of the leopard, bear, and lion, but it would require revisiting the issue of separating the identity of that representing Judah, (the lion) from many other Jews(the leopard) The bear symbolizes an ideology, as well as a nation, and is who/what carries, or supports the beast.
Basically, we're talking about the establishment of a world government, (the first beast...13:1-3) ruled by "seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns."
You know the story.. One head is wounded. It's healed when the dragon "gives power to the beast". The dragon himself is identified as a different beast. He is said to have two horns like a lamb (like THE Lamb) but speaks as a dragon (because he IS the dragon) He causes the world to worship this government, and to create a representation of this beast (which I take to mean local representation of the same global system)
This is all the same symbolism used in Daniel, as it relates to the four later kingdoms mentioned as being based from the Greek empire. (which I would add, is said to be the birthplace of "democracy")
Daniel Ch.8 [21] And the rough goat is the king of Grecia: and the great horn that is between his eyes is the first king. [22] Now that being broken, whereas four stood up for it, four kingdoms shall stand up out of the nation, but not in his power. [23] And in the latter time of their kingdom, when the transgressors are come to the full, a king of fierce countenance, and understanding dark sentences, shall stand up. [24] And his power shall be mighty, but not by his own power: and he shall destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper, and practise, and shall destroy the mighty and the holy people. [25] And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace shall destroy many: he shall also stand up against the Prince of princes; but he shall be broken without hand. [26] And the vision of the evening and the morning which was told is true: wherefore shut thou up the vision; for it shall be for many days.
If you want details about the false messiah, and his short-lived kingdom, research the twelfth Imam, the Mahdi.
I'm limited for time during the next four days so I'm going to pick and choose what I answer now. The other posts require more leg work, so to speak.
ME: “"Yet God says the physical land promises given to Abraham are already fulfilled."
MrMEANER: “Well, we've ran in to a problem There is no question that God promised that the Euphrates would be Israel's coast. Joshua 1:3,4”
From those verses where do you get that interpretation? How can the Euphrates be Israel’s coast? It is a river, not a sea. (See Numbers 34:2-12 and Genesis 15:18. See also Joshua 23:14-16 and Nehemiah 9:8).
“I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses. Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the great river, the Euphrates – all the Hittite country – to the Great Sea [i.e., The Mediterranean Sea] on the west. No one will be able to stand up against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you.” (Joshua 1:3-4)
MrMEANER: “So, we can deduce that Israel has yet to meet the conditions that will allow the Father to deliver on his unfulfilled promise. or the promise will remain unfulfilled until Christ's return. Either way, there is an unfulfilled promise “
His word says He has met all the land promises given to Abraham. That is just the point in Joshua 21:45 as one example - the land promises have been met.
MrMEANER: “Are you saying that "the church" makes up the body of the Harlot who will be the target of Christ's wrath?”
No, I’m driving at the point that it is a global kingdom that is present spiritually now. I believe the ‘Harlot’ is Israel and more specifically, Jerusalem. We can get into that if you like and open another can of worms, although I was still working from 2 Peter where there is a lot more to be uncanned.
ME: "Do you not think that those ruled by Christ are part of His kingdom?"
MrMEANER: “Who's being ruled by Christ? We may rule our lives, in accordance to Christ's teachings...but Christ isn't ruling Earth, currently.”
Is Christ King? If so then those who are His are part of His eternal kingdom! If we are Christ’s and ‘in Christ’ then He rules our lives, not us, and Christ is our Ruler even while we are on this earth. We are told not to conform to this world and the patterns of this world but to Christ (Romans 12:1-2).
MrMEANER: “In fact, the "god of this world" has blinded the minds of them which believe not." II Cor.4:4”
But to believers do we not recognize God as being in control? I certainly hope so. Did Christ not crush Satan’s head on the cross? Has the victory not been won? Is it not finished? Has He not fulfilled all the promises of God?
"From those verses where do you get that interpretation? How can the Euphrates be Israel’s coast? It is a river, not a sea."
Because that's exactly what it says. From the Euphrates, through Lebanon, all the way to the Mediterranean (This includes about half of Iraq, all of Syria, all of Lebanon)
" I believe the ‘Harlot’ is Israel and more specifically, Jerusalem"
Inasmuch as dispersed Israel consists of many nations, most of which being Western cultures founded in Christianity, I can agree with the first part of that statement.
Inasmuch as Jerusalem is the major focal point of prophecy dealing with the end of this age, namely being the place where the false messiah will create "peace", I can agree with the second part of that statement.
PeterHuff asks, "Did Christ not crush Satan’s head on the cross?"
Obviously, he did not crush that portion of Satan's head which has you imprisoned in the idea that you can cleanly ignore the Commandments of Christ, and still have salvation.
PeterHuff asks, "Has the victory not been won? Is it not finished?"
Christ won his victory, that is for sure. But your victory is far from being won. Christ gave you several conditions that you must fufill if you are to be saved. You refuse to recognize those conditions. Therefore, you are far from winning your own victory.
PeterHuff asks, "Has He not fulfilled all the promises of God?"
Perhaps it can be said that all the promises of God are fulfilled in Jesus Christ. That he came to show us what it means to have the promises of God fulfilled. But that does not mean the promises of God are fulfilled in you. Again, Jesus Christ gave you a list of several conditions that you must fulfill if you are to receive the fulfillment of the promise of salvation, yet you continue to stubbornly ignore those conditions. Why?
Indeed, why?
I believe I know why, and I have set forth my thoughts on this subject in this post, concerning which you owe me a response -
You could begin by answering the important question set forth therein - Do you personally fear burning in hell forever? And if you do, you need to figure out how to unravel this knot in your psychology, that has you fearing something that the Love of God would NEVER permit.
I was debating whether or not to respond to you. As RCofield has so often explained, with little effect, good works come after salvation, not to earn it or in a cooperative manner with God to merit His favor. Salvation is a gift of God. Gifts are not earned. "No one born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God." (1 John 3:7)
Second, your obsession with demonology and the devil is unhealthy. Here is an article for you to read,
Don Preston brings up a number of salient points. GoldenEagles, did Jesus destroy the works of the devil or not? Here is how the apostle John puts it,
"He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. THE REASON THE SON OF GOD APPEARED WAS TO DESTROY THE DEVIL'S WORK." (1 John 3:8)
A couple of questions for you. When did Jesus appear? Did He destroy the works of the devil?
I'm going to cheat and attempt to answer that question for you.
"Since the children have flesh and blood, He too shared in their humanity so that BY HIS DEATH He might DESTROY him who holds the power of death - that is, THE DEVIL - and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death." (Hebrews 2:14-15)
"Now is the time of judgment on this world; now the prince of this world (or in some translations 'the god of this world') will be driven out." (John 12:31)
Did you get that - now, as Jesus was preparing to go to the cross. The hour had come for the Son of Man to be glorified. (vs. 23, 27)
"The God of peace will SOON crush Satan under your feet." (Romans 16:20)
What does 'soon' mean to you in regards to the Epistle to the Romans?
Are you going to argue like MrMeaner that 'soon' means two thousand or so years later, or that God cannot tell time?
Third, Jesus is not just one of many ways to salvation. He is still the only way. We need His atoning sacrifice as much as the Jews of the first century, or any other century. All religions do not lead to God. Only Christ does.
One thing I will commend you on is your recognition that the love of Christ and that relationship with Him is what really counts. Keep pursuing that love!
Having said that, there is so much of your theology that needs to be brought to light GoldenEagles, so that you can see the light, but I don't have the time or capability at present and unless the Spirit was in it, it would be a hopeless waste of my time. You would just refer to your default premises.
"Yet a time is coming, AND HAS NOW COME when the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is Spirit, and His worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth." (John 4:23-24)
Peter, What event marked the fulfillment of Romans 16:20, and why?
Are you saying that the destruction of the temple was the crushing of Satan?
Why would God give order to have the temple restored, have Cyrus send some of the captive Judeans back to Judea...as a fulfillment of his own prophecy, only to become a representation of Satan?
Are you saying that the destruction of all of that, that God himself commanded be done, constitutes the destroying of Satan?
Peterhuff says, "your obsession with demonology and the devil is unhealthy."
That is certainly a convenient fall back position I must say. The demons who are leaning on your feeling world with the INTENSE FEAR OF ETERNAL DAMNATION (which you did not deny) are certainly the ones who think my “obsession” with THEIR influence in your life is “unhealthly.” It is remarkable how clearly their agenda is reflected in your thoughts and words in terms of their desire and their ability to hide themselves from your awareness.
I am wondering why you can’t make that connection.
Moreover, I am wondering why you cannot understand that you have just labeled the Teaching of Jesus Christ on the subject of demon possession and influence “unhealthy.” During his mission he spent an enormous amount of time on this subject, and taught his disciples at length concerning the need to help people to become free from that influence. I am wondering how you can be comfortable with this contradiction, where you supposedly worship Christ, but crush, with powerful disdain, an essential element of Jesus’ teaching into the dust with the steel-reinforced heel of your over-sized work boots? Please explain that.
Peterhuff says, "One thing I will commend you on is your recognition that the love of Christ and that relationship with Him is what really counts. Keep pursuing that love!"
This statement gives readers the impression that you respect Christ’s teaching on Love, and understand it, yet you will not admit that the LOVE of GOD, which includes the attributes of mercy, forgiveness, and compassion, would not allow billions of people to be condemned to eternal damnation.
Please take a few moments to explain to me your understanding of the principle of God’s Love. Please discuss why there is not, in your compartment of understanding, the realization that true love would not allow the condemning of billions of people to the fate of eternal damnation?
Please take a few moments to speak about the principle of love, as it is central to everything that Christ taught, and explain to me why love would allow for the eternal damnation of billions of good souls, whose only crime is being born into a culture that would never allow them to feel good about the idea of Jesus Christ as the only way to heaven, in as much as they are taught from birth to see, to honor, to respect, and to revere, their own religious tradition as the only way to heaven.
If you do indeed have a relationship with the true Jesus Christ, he will be able to guide your heart and mind on this subject with abundant wisdom, and will give you what you need to carry on a constructive conversation with me on this subject.
You said: "Please take a few moments to speak about the principle of love, as it is central to everything that Christ taught, and explain to me why love would allow for the eternal damnation of billions of good souls, whose only crime is being born into a culture that would never allow them to feel good about the idea of Jesus Christ as the only way to heaven, in as much as they are taught from birth to see, to honor, to respect, and to revere, their own religious tradition as the only way to heaven."
I've already spoken on this subject of God's love and justice and you started censoring my posts, dictating on what I could and could not say when I criticized your doctrine. This showed me that you could not take criticism well. I want you to respond to my questions, in my last post and hopefully not with yards and yards of information which I just lose interest in.
GE: "If you do indeed have a relationship with the true Jesus Christ, he will be able to guide your heart and mind on this subject with abundant wisdom, and will give you what you need to carry on a constructive conversation with me on this subject."
How is that GoldenEagles, by living up to John 14:12, which you have admitted that you have not even been able to accomplish. You want to tell others what they must do while not being able to do it yourself?
Following Jesus is something that you cannot do on your own effort. It requires a work of God and true repentance.
You keep taunting me to get into a deep theological discussion to do what? You have already shown me that you are deeply embedded in your own private Jesus that contradicts Scripture. Yes, you preach love, love, but you forget the equally important quality of God's character which is holiness, purity, righteousness and justice. You want God to conform to your standards of love and justice, which is not loving or just at all for how can the pure and holy God allow evil in His presence, and even do evil in not punishing what is wrong? He has punished evil in Christ. Those who have the Son have life. He met the standard, you can't. It is knowing the Son and that does not contradict the Scriptures.
You want to meet God's righteous requirements in your own stead. Go ahead, but be aware of numerous passages that warn of just such action.
"For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, GOD DID by sending His Son in the likeness of sinful man to a SIN OFFERING. And so He condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the RIGHTEOUS REQUIREMENTS OF THE LAW might be FULLY MET IN US, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit." (Romans 8:3-4)
"Everyone who does evil HATES THE LIGHT, and WILL NOT COME INTO THE LIGHT for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the TRUTH comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has BEEN DONE THROUGH GOD." (John 3:20-21)
The atoning work of Christ is the ground upon which God the just passes over/forgives sin in others, NOT BY WORKS. Works come after salvation, not in order to win salvation or earn merit before God. That is not the grounds of love. Gratefulness and humility are the grounds for true love, knowing that there is nothing we can do to merit God's favor, God has already done it for us in Christ Jesus. It takes faith and faith in the right object of affection, that is Christ, not us.
You said: "What event marked the fulfillment of Romans 16:20, and why?"
I would say the triumph of the cross meant Satan's time was short, but the realization of the new heavens and new earth would bring completion with the destruction of the temple and old way of life. The old and the new were living side by side until the destruction of the temple and worship system. That put an end to the old world and way of life.
Atonement was still being practiced by animal sacrifices. Works instead of grace was the measure of such a system, not Christ. The author of Hebrews shows the contrast between the old and the new. And many who had professed Christ were in danger of turning back to the old way of Judaism.
God's work of redemption was finished on the cross but the realization could not happen until the new heavens and earth was ushered in because the two were living side by side. Don Preston made the point this way,
"In Revelation, inspiration depicts the imminent consummation of God's scheme of Redemption. Satan has attempted to kill Jesus. His last resort is to destroy the church in her infancy before she can grow to maturity (chapter 12). He incorporates the city "where our Lord was crucified," (11:8), which becomes drunken with the blood of the saints (17:6f). But Jesus comes in judgment on that apostate city and destroys her. In chapter 20 judgment is set, Satan is cast into the lake of fire; and Jesus takes his glorious bride unto himself! This all happened in 70 AD with the full destruction of the Theocracy of Israel, the persecuting city of Jerusalem, the Old Heavens and Earth. The New Creation is complete--what Satan had succeeded in getting man to forfeit, communion with God and eternal life, is restored. Satan lost — God finished His work."
MrMEANER: "Are you saying that the destruction of the temple was the crushing of Satan?"
Was it the bringing in of the new heavens and earth? If so yes. This brings us to the question of whether the new heavens and earth were spiritual or literal. What would you say?
MrMEANER: "Why would God give order to have the temple restored, have Cyrus send some of the captive Judeans back to Judea...as a fulfillment of his own prophecy, only to become a representation of Satan?
I'm not following you. Please expand upon this thought.
MrMEANER: "Are you saying that the destruction of all of that, that God himself commanded be done, constitutes the destroying of Satan?"
Again you are going to have to expand on your thoughts. I'm not following you.
MrMEANER: "You may as well say that God is Satan."
Perish that thought. That is blasphemy. How do you arrive at this premise? Because God brings about His purposes through secondary means at times, without violating the creatures will?
Why don't you take a stab at the questions I asked GoldenEagles, "Did Jesus destroy the works of the devil or not? Here is how the apostle John puts it,
"He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. THE REASON THE SON OF GOD APPEARED WAS TO DESTROY THE DEVIL'S WORK." (1 John 3:8)
When did Jesus appear? Did He destroy the works of the devil according to Scripture?
You can refer to the rest of the post to develop the theme further.
Peterhuff says, “I've already spoken on this subject of God's love and justice and you started censoring my posts, dictating on what I could and could not say when I criticized your doctrine. This showed me that you could not take criticism well ....”
What you have said there is not a truthful representation of events.
The truth is, that you included in one of your comments a personally destructive reference to my family, and I asked you to remove that. And that is the only thing that I asked you to remove. When it became clear that you did not know how to remove it on your own, I explained to you how to remove it, and when you finally removed it, you deleted ALL of your posts in that discussion, every one, a sign of an Rcofield style temper tantrum operating in the background.
So even if you did have something to say about love and justice, you deleted it.
Regarding this situation, I would like to point out to you, that the manner in which a person will adhere to the standards of truth in their personal behavior and relationships, has a direct bearing on their capacity to discern truth in the spiritual domain. If a person will play fast and loose with the truth in their personal behavior and relationships then their perception of spiritual truth will be correspondingly corrupted.
The Master Jesus spoke to this when he said, “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” (John 4:24) In other words, your mind and emotions must operate within the domain of truth, if you are to comprehend God in an accurate manner.
In the above statement, Peterhuff, you have expressed the spirit of falsehood, and if you allow the spirit of falsehood to remain in your heart and mind, it will distort your perception of the Reality of God. Your biblical interpretations will continue to be grossly inaccurate.
This is an opportunity for you to ask the Master Jesus Christ to take that spirit of falsehood from you. That is how we apply the principle of repentance. When we find the spirit of rebellion in us, we admit to it, and we repent, and we ask the Master Jesus Christ to remove it. From that point forward, we move on a little bit cleaner.
To initiate this cleansing process, you must admit that your representation of the facts was false, and that my representation of the facts is accurate. Once you admit to the truth in this regard, you must then apologize for telling the falsehood, as this is part of the process of allowing the spirit of repentance (which is the spirit of truth) to flow through you.
This process of incremental cleansing through repentance is important. If it is not accomplished, the soul continues to defile itself by giving voice to the spirit of falsehood that remains in the temple. As the Master said, “Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.” (Matthew 15:11)
As the soul cooperates in the process of incremental cleansing through repentance, the soul walks the path towards the fulfillment of Christ’s commandment, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48)
By participating in the process of repentance in this situation, Peterhuff, you will be taking an important step on the true path that will one day lead to your actual salvation.
Making the effort, day by day, to align one’s behavior, as necessary, to the spirit of truth, this is where the path of salvation begins. And this is where the path of love begins as well, as the soul must love truth first, before it can love anything, or anyone else, including God.
p.s. The people who actually KNOW the Master Jesus Christ, are those who actually participate in this incremental cleansing process through repentance, day by day. They know him through the impact of the spiritual energy he sends into the temple to remove the offending spirit. Those to whom Jesus refers, that he knew not, are those who REFUSE to participate in this incremental cleansing process. What is the force, inside the heart and mind which refuses to participate in this incremental cleansing process? It is pride, which as it is written, goes before the fall.
GE: "What you have said there is not a truthful representation of events."
GE: "The truth is, that you included in one of your comments a personally destructive reference to my family, and I asked you to remove that. And that is the only thing that I asked you to remove. When it became clear that you did not know how to remove it on your own, I explained to you how to remove it, and when you finally removed it, you deleted ALL of your posts in that discussion, every one, a sign of an Rcofield style temper tantrum operating in the background."
That is your perception. No, you are twisting the facts. It is true that I did use a reference to your family in portraying an event to show that wrongful action requires justice and God would not be God to let evil go unpunished. It illustrates that a good and loving God is just in condemning evil and wickedness. I used your family to bring home this point to you. I have no ill-will towards any of them. But you twisted that by my point into a personal attach against them. Why would I want to harm your family? That would be un-Christian. The remark was in poor taste, admitted, but it brought home the point that love requires justice. What kind of a god would let evil go unpunished? Not the one true and living God. You could not grasp this point until I gave this illustration. By your response it showed that your theology was inconsistent. You want love without justice. Without justice how can there be goodness, and without goodness how can there be love? And as such God is not unjust or unloving in condemning billions. They have sinned and done what is evil in His sight.
Each one of us is getting what he/she justly deserves unless God shows His abundant mercy. We do not deserve grace. "There is none righteous, not even one." (Romans 3:10)
What does that statement mean to you. Again you have chosen not to reply to my questions in this series of posts, just as you continued to do with RCofield. Instead, with him you went off on your personal rant about John 14:12 that you are taking out of context. RCofield repeatedly tried to bring you back to the salient topic, but you were bent in spouting off page after page, yard after yard of misinterpretation. It became pointless in responding to you. That is the way I fell too, except that if anyone were to read this, and I remained silent, they could possibly think that your points were valid, in which they are not.
GE: "So even if you did have something to say about love and justice, you deleted it."
I'll say it again; love and justice go hand in hand. For some God gives them their just dessert to show that He is just; for others He gives them His grace in Jesus Christ to show His kindness. He is under no obligation to show a guilty creature mercy, but He does in small ways to both the wicked and those in Christ each and every day, because He is loving and in control of all situations.
Furthermore, as I showed in my post last night,
"Everyone who does evil HATES THE LIGHT, and WILL NOT COME INTO THE LIGHT for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the TRUTH comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has BEEN DONE THROUGH GOD." (John 3:20-21)
Why don't you try to exegete the passage in light of its context for a change instead of doing what the JW's so often do and that is when a passage is presented they dance all over the ballroom by changing the subject or skip all over Scripture to make the passage say what they want it to say through the use of other passages.
God is capable of communicating to His creatures in a way that we can understand Him, just like you and I are capable of communicating with each other. Words in context have meaning so let's look at the meaning of that passage.
Unless God draws a person they will not come to saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ because they don't want to. They have already made their choice (Ephesians 2:1-3).
You are either in Christ or you are in your own works salvation, the same thing the Jews were trying to do so ineffectively. From everything you have revealed you are in your own works righteousness. The Saviour’s sacrifice is of no value unless it is received by faith - not works. The works come AFTER salvation and it is something that God works in the Christian, not something the Christian works of his own accord. This is a point that you fail continually to grasp, as evidenced in your other yards of material, some of which states that Gandhi was a good man in and of himself, or others that suggest that works and obedience to the law are something that we work hand in hand with God to attain salvation, or that we are reincarnated until we get it right. You mix Eastern religion with Christianity and get scriptural teaching confused.
GE: "Regarding this situation, I would like to point out to you, that the manner in which a person will adhere to the standards of truth in their personal behaviour and relationships, has a direct bearing on their capacity to discern truth in the spiritual domain. If a person will play fast and loose with the truth in their personal behaviour and relationships then their perception of spiritual truth will be correspondingly corrupted."
And why do you think that you are the one who is adhering to the standard of truth? You twist and turn God's word at every avenue. You say things that are exactly the opposite of what Scripture reveals and then say also that you trust His word as truth.
GE: "The Master Jesus spoke to this when he said, “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” (John 4:24) In other words, your mind and emotions must operate within the domain of truth, if you are to comprehend God in an accurate manner."
That comes from the Spirit of truth and the Spirit does not contradict Scripture for He is the Revealer of Scripture. Men wrote as carried along by the Spirit of God. His yes is not 'yes' and 'no' for He is not a God of confusion, yet you make Him this way.
GE: "In the above statement, Peterhuff, you have expressed the spirit of falsehood, and if you allow the spirit of falsehood to remain in your heart and mind, it will distort your perception of the Reality of God. Your biblical interpretations will continue to be grossly inaccurate."
I have done no such thing. All I did was quote Scripture - John 4:23-24 that says that true worshipers must come to Him in spirit and in truth. That can only happen if His Spirit is with you. "The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned." (1 Corinthians 2:14) And yet, "The spiritual man makes judgments about all things" for he has the mind of Christ.
GE: "This is an opportunity for you to ask the Master Jesus Christ to take that spirit of falsehood from you. That is how we apply the principle of repentance. When we find the spirit of rebellion in us, we admit to it, and we repent, and we ask the Master Jesus Christ to remove it. From that point forward, we move on a little bit cleaner."
Maybe you should practice what you preach.
GE: "To initiate this cleansing process, you must admit that your representation of the facts was false, and that my representation of the facts is accurate. Once you admit to the truth in this regard, you must then apologize for telling the falsehood, as this is part of the process of allowing the spirit of repentance (which is the spirit of truth) to flow through you."
Your doctrine is very misguided. You seek to place on men the very thing that they can never or ever could live up to outside of Christ and that is their merit working hand in hand with God to achieve salvation. You first need the work of God in order to bring about good works that He prepares for the believer.
Your religion is just like every other man made religion if it is works based instead of Christ based.
"The work of God is this: to believe in the One He has sent." (John 6:29) It is not Moses (who gave the law) who gives you the true bread from heaven, but Jesus Christ. Show me a man who can live up to the works of the law outside of Jesus Christ. Gandhi could not. You want to heap such a burden on others.
MrMEANER: "Why would God give order to have the temple restored, have Cyrus send some of the captive Judeans back to Judea...as a fulfillment of his own prophecy, only to become a representation of Satan?
PH:I'm not following you. Please expand upon this thought
The rebuilding of the temple was a fulfillment of prophecy. It wasn't described as a negative development. In fact, the prophecy dealing with the rebuilding of the temple utilized one of the most obvious typologies ,of Christ in the entire Bible. This typology is completely unrelated to Christ's first advent as God's own sacrificial Lamb. This typology contains fore-shadowing references dealing with Christ's second advent as the right hand of God, to deliver justice, gather his elect to Israel, and to be recognized as God, or (in the case of Cyrus)representing God...even by His enemies.
It should also be noted that these references to Cyrus were written some 140 years before Cyrus was born. Equally of interest is the fact that these prophecies dealing with the rebuilding of the temple, were written long before the temple would be looted and ruined by the Babylonians.
Cyrus (meaning the sun) was named by God, Himself. Cyrus was charged to be a type of savior to Judah. It might help to cover those two prophetic chapters that deal with Cyrus. These chapters also touch on the mind-set of those who will follow those, who will choose to replace God, with a work of their own creation.
I would like to go over the 44th and 45th chapters of Isaiah sometime this week, as soon as I get a chance.
Like you, I'm pretty tied up. I probably won't get to it tonight.
A few more questions for you to solve while I wait for you to develop Isaiah 44-45. I still don't see what you are getting at with Satan after reading through the two chapters. Anyway, in Matthew 5:17-18 Jesus said:
"Do not think that I have come to abolish the LAW or the PROPHETS; I have not come to abolish THEM but TO FULFILL them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappears, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until EVERYTHING IS ACCOMPLISHED."
Who/what is the 'them' that He came to fulfill? Does the everything include fulfillment of everything the prophets spoke of also?
If you think that one jot or tittle is still to be accomplished that means that you, MrMeaner, are still living under the old covenant with its sacrificial system, because it was part and parcel of the Law - part of the old creation, which is not abolished in your view because there remains many 'jots and tittles."
Yet He said that not until heaven and earth disappears will one letter of the law disappear. This is a real problem for your theology.
I'm borrowing the points/illustrations Don Preston uses in "The Elements Shall Melt With Fervent Heat", p.149. The law was a "yoke" around the necks of the disciples that neither they nor the fathers were able to bear (See Acts 15:10). Paul describes life under the law as the body of death (see Romans 7:24 and its context). He said that by the works of the law no one would be justified (see Galatians 2:16). Paul says all those under the law are under the curse and also that the law could not give life and righteousness (see Galatians 3:10; 20-21). All those under the law were in bondage (Gal. 5:1). It was the ministration of death (2 Corinthians 3:7). Because God found fault with the first covenant, since it could not take away sins (Heb. 8:6; 10:1-4) it was soon to disappear (Heb. 8:13)
Now in Acts 3:17-26 we are told:
"Now brothers, I know that YOU acted in ignorance, as did YOUR LEADERS. But this is how God FULFILLED [past tense] what He had foretold through ALL THE PROPHETS, saying that His Christ would suffer. Repent then, and turn to God, so that YOUR sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, and that He may send the Christ, who HAS BEEN APPOINTED FOR YOU - even Jesus. He must remain in heaven UNTIL the time comes for God to RESTORE EVERYTHING, as He promised long ago THROUGH THE HOLY PROPHETS. For Moses said, the Lord YOUR God will raise up FOR YOU a prophet like me from AMONG YOUR OWN PEOPLE; YOU must listen to everything He tells YOU. Anyone who does not listen to Him will be completely cut off from among HIS PEOPLE. Indeed, ALL THE PROPHETS from Samuel on, AS MANY AS HAVE SPOKEN, have foretold THESE DAYS. And YOU are heirs of the prophets and of the covenant God made with YOUR fathers. He said to Abraham, 'Through YOUR offspring all peoples of the earth will be blessed.' When God raised up His servant, He sent Him first to YOU to bless YOU by turning each of YOU from YOUR wicked ways."
1) Since the OT law could not pass away until it was all fulfilled and since in Acts 3:20-21 we are told how God fulfilled what He foretold and that a time was coming in which He would restore all things (i.e., everything would be accomplished/fulfilled that was spoken of through the prophets; you might even say a restoration in the sense of a new heavens and a new earth, the home of righteousness), then what are "these days" referring to in verse 24?
2) Who are the YOU spoken of in this passage from Acts 3:17-26? Are they Jews or are the YOU you and I?
3)Since the old covenant was still in effect until the destruction of the temple in AD70 (see Heb. 9:6-10), because they were still practicing sacrifices, do you now see the possibility that Jesus' coming was in AD 70?
Can you see how every promise of God is yes in Christ Jesus, or how we have received EVERY spiritual blessing in Christ (2 Corinth. 1:20; Eph. 1:3)? It is pretty hard if we are still living under the old covenant, since Jesus said that every jot and tittle would have to be accomplished.
So the OT law could not pass away until it was all fulfilled (Matthew 5:17-18). This becomes a problem that you need to clarify then. Which covenant are we living under? If the new then why is not everything accomplished that has been spoken of through the prophets that Christ said would have to be accomplished?
I can't seem to find any free time this week, so let me just give you the short version of the point I was going to make with Cyrus.
Cyrus was chosen to return many of Judah to Israel, and to order the temple rebuilt. Why would God order Judah to be returned, and the temple to be rebuilt, if that temple's future destruction was (in your mind) representative of the crushing of Satan?
You're saying that God ordered the re-building of the temple, and the return of some of Judah to Israel, then destroyed the product of his own commandment, and cursed the people he ordered to be returned, as a judgment against Satan. You seem to be saying that those conditions that were a product of God's own will, represent the works of Satan. You're at least saying that the destruction of that that God commanded be done, signified the crushing of Satan.
Is Ch.44 [26] That confirmeth the word of his servant, and performeth the counsel of his messengers; that saith to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be inhabited; and to the cities of Judah, Ye shall be built, and I will raise up the decayed places thereof: [27] That saith to the deep, Be dry, and I will dry up thy rivers: [28] That saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure: even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built; and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid. Is Ch.45 [1] Thus saith the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut; [2] I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron: [3] And I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the LORD, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel. [4] For Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel mine elect, I have even called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me.
I don't get the impression that God was returning Jews back to Israel, so he could curse them all, and have another future empire destroy them. (all of which destroyed Satan...how, again?)
I also wanted to cover the references to idolatry in Ch.44, and how they apply on a global scale and, some of the remarkable similarities between what is written about Cyrus, and what is written about Christ.
Maybe I'll get a chance to a bit later.
Also, the Law is the five books of Moses. I've already explained that the only thing that was fulfilled in the law, is the sacrificial ordinances. Without the law, you could just deem whatever act you choose as right or wrong. To sin is to transgress the law. If you have broken one of the laws in the five books of Moses(not sacrificial ordinances, but laws) you have sinned. To do away with the law is to do away with the distinction between right and wrong.
"In Revelation, inspiration depicts the imminent consummation of God's scheme of Redemption. Satan has attempted to kill Jesus."
Well, yes. But, it was written that Christ would be sacrificed in the OT, so while it's true that Satan's bringing the act about, with evil intent, allows God to destroy Satan, in accordance with his written law....it's also true that God intended for it to happen. No reason to curse his own chosen people for being present when he fulfilled his own promise. Satan was the one who sealed his own fate. I think it's interesting that Satan's lack of understanding God's word, caused his defeat, and actually rendered his intended victim "worthy of loosening the seven seals thereof", whereby God can once again, use Satan's ignorance of His word, and his desire to rule the earth...to destroy his works, punish his apostate children, and allow the original victim to set up His rule on earth.
Every time Satan says "check", God makes one move, and says "checkmate", mirroring in a successful fashion, what Satan fails to do.
BTW, what happened to Randy? I haven't been going to WaPo since the commies banned me, but I don't recall having seen any of his posts there in quite a while. I hope all is well with him.
I'm not sure what happened to Randy, or Walter. I felt that Walter's argument was poor and Randy was really cutting the ground out from under him and exposing his underbelly, so when we changed from the Washington Post to here it gave him a chance to jettison out of here.
Have you seen Walter corresponding on the Washington Post? I haven't been back since they changed the formate. I hate the new formate.
I went to the website that Randy gave me and could not find his name under the pastors of the church, although some of his messages are still on You Tube. I thought he was excellent at getting behind the issues and relating them to the Bible. Hope to see him back. GoldenEagles was really trying to egg him on with his posts here.
MrMEANER: "No reason to curse his own chosen people for being present when he fulfilled his own promise. Satan was the one who sealed his own fate."
His own people were the ones who rejected their Messiah, put Him to death and heaped up their sins to the max by killing the prophets that God sent to them. (See Matthew 23:23-38) They were the 'stiff-necked' people. They were receiving all the prophets had foretold of them that was yet to be fulfilled.
"When YOU see Jerusalem being surrounded by armies, YOU will know that its DESOLATION is NEAR....This is the time of punishment IN FULFILLMENT OF ALL THAT HAS BEEN WRITTEN." (Luke 21:20, 22)
As for Satan, what was written in Genesis 3:15 was being fulfilled,
"And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will crush your head, and you will strike His heel."
"The God of peace will SOON crush Satan under your feet." (Romans 16:20a)
Come Let Us Reason Together Sayeth the Lord: Though Your Sins Be as Scarlet They Will Be as Wool - Part 1
Peterhuff, I appreciate you taking the time to set forth your three-part statement above, in response to which, I would like to remind you, that both you and I need to keep our attention focused on your central dilemma, which can be explained simply as the demonic force pressing upon your feeling world the (baseless) fear of eternal damnation, and that this is something you can overcome, once you get your attention properly focused on it.
I would remind all readers, even those who don’t believe in the concept of eternal damnation, that whenever our attention goes in the direction of this diabolical concept, we need to be pro-active, and instantly remind ourselves that the Love of God, that infinite ocean of compassion, mercy, and forgiveness, which defines the whole identify of God, would never allow the eternal damnation of anyone, not even His worst enemies. And that those who harbor this fear (of eternal damnation) are being manipulated into harboring a mental and emotional construct which is in direct conflict with, and in diametrical opposition to, the Love of God. Indeed, we need to realize, that when we have a very strong fear, its takes its place at the center of our attention, and becomes the central reference point for the mind. The fear becomes a counterfeit god.
Now, this fear, which the demonic force presses upon your feeling world (peterhuff) in such a powerful manner, has become a counterfeit wisdom in your spiritual universe. Even a counterfeit center of authority. In other words, it operates within your mind as a reference point for what you believe to be true, and your intellectual machinery, as it churns away, produces streams of ideas which conforms to, supports, and celebrates that fear. In other words, your intellectual machinery is churning out doctrine which honors that fear, respects that fear, and justifies that fear. If you stop and think about it, the fear itself, has become your god, as you give it higher priority over the Real God who is composed purely of LOVE, and in whose presence, we have nothing to fear.
It appears that every thought that you have in the spiritual domain, is part of this process of justifying this fear. This fear has become like a solid gold bar at the center of your mind, which has been deftly switched, under your own nose, for the true Ark of the Covenant.
This is a very interesting dilemma for those who are trapped in it, and a very interesting phenomena for those who are observing it.
We see that the intellectual machinery of the individual trapped in this fear, is actually being used, by the force of fear itself, to make the bars of the prison cell thicker and stronger. In most cases we would expect that the prisoner has smuggled in a saw blade in a loaf of bread, and when the guard isn’t looking, the prisoner will take out the saw blade, and continue to saw away at the iron bars, with the idea of finally escaping from his prison cell. But in this situation, the soul inside of the cell is actually HELPING in the process of making the prison cell more secure! It as if the soul is running an iron foundry and forge in the middle of his prison cell, and works day and night fashioning ever stronger and thicker bars which he is then welding onto the inside surface of his cell. Yes, this is what is happening. The intellectual machinery produces more and more elements of respect, honor, and justification, in relationship to the fear itself.
Come Let Us Reason Together Sayeth the Lord: Though Your Sins Be as Scarlet They Will Be as Wool - Part 2
The main problem here, is that the person inside the prison cell of fear has no way (at present) to SEE where this fear is coming from. The person has no way (at present) to see the demonic entities that stand close by, projecting this powerful fear energy, as a cattlemen would use an electric cattle prod to get the cattle to move in the direction he wants.
The only way (at present) for the prisoner to discern the depth of his dilemma, is to listen to the people around him, who are telling him that his behavior is beginning to contradict the Teachings of Christ in more and egregious ways. Behavior patterns which contradict the Teachings of Christ, are always the sign of demonic manipulation, not necessarily possession, but manipulation at minimum. But when the demonic manipulation situation is not addressed, the possession phase will come soon enough.
As an example, PeterHuff, in your statement above, you make the following statement: We do not deserve grace. This belief is a classic illustration of demonic projection that contradictions the teachings of Jesus Christ, and that fact that you believe it, and speak it, should serve as prima facie evidence for you that you are allowing demonic manipulation to enter into your spiritual belief structures. This projection of demonic condemnation is the central electrode of the fear equation.
All of the following statements made by the Master Jesus Christ, indicate God’s Love for the people of this earth. The testimony is clear.
John 3:16 - ”For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
Luke 12:32 - “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”
Luke 12:32 - ”Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
Matthew 10:31 - ”Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.”
Luke 11:11-13 - ”If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?”
John 14:15-17 - ”If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.
If the comforter is not grace, what is grace?
When you say, Peterhuff, that "We do not deserve grace", you are speaking a belief that contradicts the above teachings given by Jesus Christ. Intellectually you can see clearly that such a belief (“We do not deserve grace”) contradicts these teachings. But the question is, can you escape the dark power of this oppressive sense of worthlessness before God which is being forced upon you, and which you have accepted for far too long? The answer is NO, because it is being forced on you be a demonic presence, and has become so intertwined in your belief structures. This is the central electrode of your fear.
For of a truth, if you knew that God Loved YOU, which Jesus Teaches, then you would have no fear. You would have a shield that would protect you from the demonic projection of fear.
Indeed, if you knew that God Loved YOU, which Jesus Teaches, and which is the TRUTH, then you would have no fear. With that knowledge tou would have a shield that would protect you from the demonic projection of fear. Yes, with that knowledge infused into your mind, your mind would be incapable of even accepting the idea that God could condemn you (or anyone else) to eternal damnation for ANY REASON. Indeed you would understand that LOVE would never allow it.
The first step to take in the direction of freedom from fear, is to realize and understand, that if YOU (Peterhuff) are Loved by God, that he would never condemn you to eternal damnation. You are fully authorized by the Lord Christ, to form in your imagination this scenario, where the One Most High God Loves YOU, because that is what Jesus Christ teaches. You are authorized by Jesus himself to entertain that idea, and to dwell on that idea, and to seek from Him clear and unmistakeable internal affirmation of that idea. Seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you.
"His own people were the ones who rejected their Messiah, put Him to death and heaped up their sins to the max by killing the prophets that God sent to them. (See Matthew 23:23-38) They were the 'stiff-necked' people. They were receiving all the prophets had foretold of them that was yet to be fulfilled"
As Mr.Spock would say, That's not logical. They had already killed the prophets, before they were taken to Babylon. If that would cause God to reneg on his promises, he would have destroyed them in captivity. He certainly wouldn't have brought them back, and ordered the temple to be rebuilt. As I mentioned before, It was well established in the OT, that Christ would be sacrificed. It had to happen. In one of the crucifixion Psalms, this is written concerning Christ;
"For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard."
...(referring to Christ's words on the cross, written in vs.1)
If Christ's crucifixion initiated any curse, it is directed toward those who will stumble due to a lack of understanding God's word.
You can notice the warning signs given to those who could understand the Word, even during Christ's trial and crucifixion.
You have to wonder how many noticed, that the priests were offering them a choice between Jesus, who was being sentenced to die for claiming to be the Son of God...and the murderer Barabbas, whose name means son of god. I'm sure some noticed, and probably removed themselves from the group.
The same was probably true among those hearing Christ's words on the cross. While some mocked him, and thought he was calling for Elijah, (Not realizing that he said "Eli", rather than Elijah) others heard his words, and surely realized that they were just witness to the fufillment of Psalms 22. It certainly convinced the centurian who stood guard.
Have you seen Walter corresponding on the Washington Post?
___________
I have, but it has been a while.
I had hoped that some of the agnostc/ atheists from WaPo would be curious about the discussion here, and might even have questions or comments that we could address. I don't guess that's gonna happen. I do have friends of faith, who are keeping up with the discussion, but so far they are just observing.
You are heaping a lot of your own ideas on me in your attempt to make my beliefs fit your paradigm. And I would like to go through your list of Scriptures, but I'm in a time crunch until Monday so you will have to wait. I might have time for a few tidbits until them.
You said:" As an example, PeterHuff, in your statement above, you make the following statement: We do not deserve grace. This belief is a classic illustration of demonic projection that contradictions the teachings of Jesus Christ, and that fact that you believe it, and speak it, should serve as prima facie evidence for you that you are allowing demonic manipulation to enter into your spiritual belief structures. This projection of demonic condemnation is the central electrode of the fear equation."
No, it is not demonic projection that contradicts the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ.
"the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness." (Romans 1:18)
"What shall we conclude then? Are we any better? Not at all! We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin. As it is written: 'There is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one...." (Romans 3:9-12)
But for those in Christ "He does not treat us as our sins deserve." (Ps. 103:10)
Do you think that anyone with a righteousness of their own rather than that of Christ's deserves God's favor? Part of the cost of disciple is abandoning your own self-righteousness; your own self-sufficiency. If you think that you can work hand in hand with God in producing righteousness then Christ's sacrifice has no merit for you. Remember to seek first His kingdom and HIS righteousness.
"I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing." (Gal. 2:21)
"But now a righteousness from God, apart from the law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus." (Romans 3:21-24)
"God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God." (2 Cor. 5:21)
"and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ - the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith." (Phil. 3:9)
That is the problem with your 'theory' about all those world religions and people outside of Christ like Gandhi; they rely on their own works righteousness. They want to come before the pure, holy, perfectly righteous God on their own merit. Christ's sacrifice has no merit for them. How can a just Judge condone evil? How can He forgive sins outside of Christ?
Adam received a free spirit, without sin, but he chose to sin and contaminated the spirit of all those who would come after him, for they inherited from Him and are represented in him.
On the cross Jesus took all the sins of the world upon Himself and bore the sins of all those in Adam who would believe in Him and His death, even death on a cross, the cursed tree. But Christ, in Himself lived a perfectly righteous life before the Father, something Adam or no one else has never done. God could condemn sin in Him and yet as a Human Being give back His life because of His purity in Spirit. In giving of His Spirit to us, in the rebirth, regeneration, being born from above, being born again, or whatever else you want to call it, He raises us from the dead in Christ and gives us new life. This is through faith also, that God supplies, for all the glory is His, just as all of creation is for His glory and pleasure. Life is not all about us, it is about Him. He is life.
In and of ourselves we have rightly earned condemnation. But Jesus could take our unrighteousness upon Himself and condemn our unrighteousness in dying in our place, the righteous for the unrighteous. He who knew no sin became sin for us. God is justified in raising Him from the dead because He is the spotless Lamb. Outside of Christ we are still in the first Adam. The Law has nothing on Jesus that can condemn Him. Yet He suffered the wrath of God in our place to make us right with God. Jesus took it upon Himself to obtain righteousness for us!
I'll get to your statement later by going through some of the Scriptures you list. You said: "All of the following statements made by the Master Jesus Christ, indicate God’s Love for the people of this earth. The testimony is clear."
GE: "Now, this fear, which the demonic force presses upon your feeling world (peterhuff) in such a powerful manner, has become a counterfeit wisdom in your spiritual universe. Even a counterfeit center of authority. In other words, it operates within your mind as a reference point for what you believe to be true, and your intellectual machinery, as it churns away, produces streams of ideas which conforms to, supports, and celebrates that fear. In other words, your intellectual machinery is churning out doctrine which honors that fear, respects that fear, and justifies that fear. If you stop and think about it, the fear itself, has become your god, as you give it higher priority over the Real God who is composed purely of LOVE, and in whose presence, we have nothing to fear."
GoldenEagles where do you get this stuff from? You are the one who is fixated on demonology, not me. Christ has won the victory over Satan. So far you have shown over and over again that you can't exegete Scripture.
As for your list, that you say my statements contradict the teachings of Christ. These are teachings that you don't even understand.
GE: "All of the following statements made by the Master Jesus Christ, indicate God’s Love for the people of this earth. The testimony is clear."
# 1) John 3:16 - ”For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
What does God mean by the word 'world?' Does He mean the world of men, the physical globe, the world system. There are various meanings. Is God speaking of the 'world' without distinction or the world qualitatively, such as all kinds or all classes of men - young/old, rich/poor, Jews/Gentles, men/women, men from every nation, of every language, etc. (Revelations 5:9). You take it to mean every single individual which is not possible when you compare John 3:16 to other Scriptures on the subject of men and salvation.
Here is a different type of world, the world of ideas, the world of values.
"Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him." (1 John 2:15)
# 2) Luke 12:32 - “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”
Luke 12:32, I'm not familiar with that one. Try Luke 2:14:
"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to MEN ON WHOM HIS FAVOR RESTS."
Did you get that? Men on whom HIS favor rests. That is not everyone as I can show you one zillion passages that express this, only those in Christ.
# 3) Luke 12:32 - ”Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
Yes, little flock. "Enter through the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad ids the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." (Matthew 7:13-14)
# 4) Matthew 10:31 - ”Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.”
Why don't you pay equal attention to the verses that bookmark this verse.
# 5) Luke 11:11-13 - ”If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?”
Yes, to those who ask. But not all are children of the Father. Jesus taught that one must be born again to be part of God's family. In fact, John 1:12 says, "Yet to all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the RIGHT TO BECOME CHILDREN OF GOD-"
To those who don't receive Him, they are lost.
Jesus revealed that the Pharisees were illegitimate children, and called them children of the devil. (John 8:39-44)
# 6) John 14:15-17 - ”If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.
Yes, the world cannot receive the Spirit.
GE: "If the comforter is not grace, what is grace?
The Comforter is the third person of the Trinity, who has the attributes of grace and mercy and love as well as righteousness and justice.
GE: "When you say, Peterhuff, that "We do not deserve grace", you are speaking a belief that contradicts the above teachings given by Jesus Christ."
Here you go again GoldenEagles, taking a Scripture out of context and making it say what you want it to, fitting it to your theological ideas rather than getting from it the Author's intent.
Notice that the Comforter - HE - will abide with them, HE dwells with them and in them. You are trying to make a quality - grace - replace the Person who is the Spirit of truth, God the Spirit.
GE: "Intellectually you can see clearly that such a belief (“We do not deserve grace”) contradicts these teachings."
No I can't because it doesn't. God is perfection and only in the Son on our behalf can we be perfect. Once, just once, you have broken a commandment of God's you stand guilty before Him because He is also the righteous Judge. Have you ever stolen, lied, dishonored your parents, coveted your neighbors wife or goods or anything that belongs to you neighbor, or committed adultery even in your mind, GoldenEagles? If just one of these then your merit won't cut it with God because He is pure and holy and righteous. There is nothing our feeble human attempts can do to merit anything noteworthy outside of Christ; Him in us and His work at work in us. Grace is God's unmerited favor. It cannot be earned. It is a gift. Only those with an ear can hear the word and call of God.
GE: "But the question is, can you escape the dark power of this oppressive sense of worthlessness before God which is being forced upon you, and which you have accepted for far too long?"
Only in Christ and through faith in the grace of God at work in my life. He has nailed every offense of mine to the cross. There is no guilt for those in Christ (Romans 3:26; 8:1). I am justified freely by the Son.
You should actually read your Bible GoldenEagles.
GE: "The answer is NO, because it is being forced on you be a demonic presence, and has become so intertwined in your belief structures. This is the central electrode of your fear."
How can it be? Jesus has crushed Satan.
You make all these statements about me on a faulty understanding of Scripture.
GE: "For of a truth, if you knew that God Loved YOU, which Jesus Teaches, then you would have no fear. You would have a shield that would protect you from the demonic projection of fear."
You are the one projecting all these demonic projections on me. I know God's love for me. He has shown me in His Son!
ME: "His own people were the ones who rejected their Messiah, put Him to death and heaped up their sins to the max by killing the prophets that God sent to them. (See Matthew 23:23-38) They were the 'stiff-necked' people. They were receiving all the prophets had foretold of them that was yet to be fulfilled"
MrMEANER: “As Mr.Spock would say, That's not logical. They had already killed the prophets, before they were taken to Babylon. If that would cause God to reneg on his promises, he would have destroyed them in captivity. He certainly wouldn't have brought them back, and ordered the temple to be rebuilt.”
Not all of them. Christ had come, whom they would also kill.
These people in this generation were heaping the sins upon themselves.
“Therefore I am sending you prophets and wise men and teachers. Some of them you WILL kill and CRUCIFY; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. And so upon you will come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Able to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. I tell you the truth, all this will come upon this generation.” (Matthew 23:34-36)
Why don’t you try to exegete this passage in its context?
Remember the prophets of the past? Well the author of Hebrews makes this point,
“In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in THESE LAST DAYS He has spoken to us by His Son…” (1:1-2)
MrMEANER: “As I mentioned before, It was well established in the OT, that Christ would be sacrificed. It had to happen. In one of the crucifixion Psalms, this is written concerning Christ;
"For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard."
...(referring to Christ's words on the cross, written in vs.1)”
I’m not following your line of thought.
MrMEANER: “If Christ's crucifixion initiated any curse, it is directed toward those who will stumble due to a lack of understanding God's word.”
“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.” We ate of the cursed tree in the Garden in Adam. The curse of Adam was death. The Mosaic law was a school teacher to bring us to Christ. “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.” He took our curse upon Himself. Those in Christ are crucified with Him on the cross. He fulfilled the law on our behalf, took our penalty for breaking the law upon Himself then died in our place. So He suffered the wrath that was due us.
MrMEANER: “You can notice the warning signs given to those who could understand the Word, even during Christ's trial and crucifixion.”
MrMeaner: “You have to wonder how many noticed, that the priests were offering them a choice between Jesus, who was being sentenced to die for claiming to be the Son of God...and the murderer Barabbas, whose name means son of god. I'm sure some noticed, and probably removed themselves from the group.”
I’m not following where you are going here?
MrMEANER: “The same was probably true among those hearing Christ's words on the cross. While some mocked him, and thought he was calling for Elijah, (Not realizing that he said "Eli", rather than Elijah) others heard his words, and surely realized that they were just witness to the fulfillment of Psalms 22. It certainly convinced the centurian who stood guard.”
So what is your point?
PS, I'll wait for you to catch up before I go further.
“Get Out of My Temple, in the Name of Jesus Christ, That which Denies the Truth of God’s Love for Me” - Part 1
Peterhuff, as we proceed along this line of discussion, I would encourage you to adopt the above affirmation, and use it religiously at every opportunity. If you cannot shout it in full voice, at least begin to whisper it. And as you do that, you will gain courage to speak louder.
Regarding your post of June 23, 2011 10:14 PM, I appreciate the fact that you are taking the time to confront my ideas as to what constitutes your central dilemma. As before, if we are to make progress in overcoming this problem, it is important for both you and I to continue to keep our attention focused upon the nature of this central dilemma, which can be explained simply, as I noted before, as the demonic force pressing upon your feeling world the (BASELESS) fear of eternal damnation, which places your mind in opposition to the Truth of God’s Love, and that this is something you can overcome, once you get your attention properly focused on it, and begin the process of looking for solutions.
Because your central reference point is FEAR, rather than LOVE, the machinery of your intellect consistently produces error as its output. (I will present another example below) Where our behavior is based on error, we live in the domain of sin. The solution to this dilemma is to seek the assistance of the Master Jesus Christ in the present moment, to find and anchor the reference point of Love - - - as this Love is the only power that can cast out fear.
(As this Love is Truth, the intellect that uses this Truth as its reference point will produce an output of truth, more often than not.)
Please make note of the fact that as a matter of divine principle, I am affirming that the Master Jesus Christ has all power in the present moment as the sole revelator of God’s Love to embodied mankind (“I AM the Light of the World”) the revelation of which, when called forth, is the only power that can cast out Fear.
Given the fact that fear has become a counterfeit wisdom in your world, to step away from it, in the direction of love, I understand that it is essential that you must become, at some point, sincerely skeptical as to the veracity of the fear-driven output of your own intellect. I will try to be helpful in that regard, i.e. in adopting an appropriate posture of skepticism before the output of your fear-driven intellect. Indeed, you can, and should, become even embarrassed concerning the extent to which the fear-driven intellect can produce ideas that contradict scripture in the most egregious manner.
Don’t get me wrong. Your intellect is churning away the best it can under the circumstances, but it is very much like the operation of a computer. You put garbage in, you get garbage out. The garbage in this case, is the pressure of fear upon the intellect, which pushes the mind mechanisms to adhere to the reference point of fear, rather than the reference point of love.
All you need to do, to get things back in their proper order, is to change your reference point, from that of fear, to that of love, according to the Commandment of Christ.
Now, to further illustrate the nearly uniform propensity of the fear-driven intellect to output error, I would present the following additional example of an egregious error output by your intellect.
“Get Out of My Temple, in the Name of Jesus Christ, That which Denies the Truth of God’s Love for Me” - Part 2
Peterhuff says, “No, it is not demonic projection that contradicts the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
When you wrote that down, I suppose some part of you wanted it to be true, as the objective, at the moment, was simply to deny the truth which I spoke. But another part of you must have known that by asserting this falsehood, that you were engaged in making a dead letter out of a broad swathe of scriptural teaching.
First, we find, in the Book of Genesis, that the power of serpent was behind the original fall.
Second, we see that Jesus Christ himself was tempted of the devil for 40 days.
Third, we find that Jesus Christ warned the Apostle Peter on more than one occasion, that Satan was working to bring Peter over to his side.
Fourth, we see in the Book of Revelation that the fallen angels were cast into the earth. And they are not sitting around just twiddling their thumbs.
Fifth, and we see St. Paul referencing many times the principle that Satan is the source of temptation.
Peterhuff, I hope you can see in this, that in your fear, you allow the spirit of the demonic realm to work through your mouth, pushing you into saying things which benefit their cause, and not the cause of Christ. Certainly denying the link between the demonic realm and temptation and sin, works to the benefit of the demonic realm, which as a result of your efforts, can hide the longer behind such smoke screens of falsehood.
Moreover, you need to come to terms with this truth, that your fear is so clearly expressed in your whole approach to scriptural interpretation, which more often than not will place what most people see as outlandish limitations on the common sense meaning of the words of Christ. What is the source of these outlandish limitations? It is FEAR.
FEAR allows you only the most narrow and literal interpretation of any passage. It is like you are walking along a narrow scaffolding that purportedly leads you across the very fires of eternal damnation, bubbling, hissing, and steaming below your feet. Your scaffolding is so narrow, that if you depart one inch from the literal, you actually FEAR falling into the fires of eternal damnation.
I imagine you are thoroughly stunned on how perfectly on-target my perception is in this regard.
How else could anyone come to the conclusion that the earth is only 5,000 years old? And be comfortable with that interpretation? It is fear. Fear explains it. The demonic projection of fear upon you is so intense, that they keep you on such a narrow path, indeed what you consider to be the “safe” path, so much so, as to make a mockery of Christ’s Teaching, which is of course their agenda.
“Get Out of My Temple, in the Name of Jesus Christ, That which Denies the Truth of God’s Love for Me” - Part 3
Peterhuff, You need to come to closure with this issue, coming to understand to what degree your intellect is driven by an intense fear projected by the demonic hordes, and finally, get up the courage to put your hand in the hand of the Real Jesus Christ, who has every interest in setting you free from that fear in the current moment. Not in some future time. He wants to set you free from your fear NOW. Indeed, He wants you to know the truth regarding God’s Love for you Personally. And once the Light of Truth, in this respect, is ignited in your world, your perceptions will change dramatically.
My goal is not to make you feel bad for being wrong so often. My goal is to help you understand that the source of error is FEAR. A fear that is projected and pressed upon the feeling world by the demonic realm as a means of manipulation and control.
By contrast, the Truth of God’s Love is not simply the essential input for the intellect (if it is to produce truth as its output) it is the very power by which the soul is set free from fear.
However, it should be noted, that every doctrinal distortion which the mind, under the influence of fear, has produced, and to which the soul had heretofore clung with pride, remains as an avenue for the continued introduction of fear into the temple.
This is of course problematic, for those who want to be free from fear. This means that one must sort through the entire belief structure, and remove each black strand of fear-based error, and replace it with a golden stand of wisdom, based on the Truth of God’s INFINITE and ENTHUSIASTIC Love for the Soul.
But this is not such a hard job if one goes at it systematically. Actually it can be a joyous activity, as one need only ask the Master Jesus Christ to amplify the knowledge of love in the temple, as the means by which fear and its error is exposed.
However, it should be noted, that an intellectual understanding of “love” is not the thing that casts out fear. No. It is only the Power of Love that the Master Jesus Christ can ignite within the temple of man in the present moment, only this Love has the power to cast out fear.
And it is worth thinking about this fact, that the prerequisite for receiving the ignition of this Love Knowledge within the temple, is the effort made to be obedient to the Commandments of Christ.
When the soul makes this sincere effort, the Master will always meet the disciple half-way, and deliver this power into the temple, not in some future time, but in the here and now.
This is worth thinking about. What kind of people live in heaven? They are people of pure light. People of darkness are not allowed into heaven. How does one change from being a person in which darkness currently rules, to a person in whom light prevails? This is how it is done. Over time, the Master Jesus will Charge the temple with Light, as the disciple makes the effort to be obedient to the Commandments of Christ. Eventually, if the soul endures unto the end, they will be full of light, and in them will be no darkness at all.
When this task is completed, only then is the soul “saved”, and can be allowed to return to its native heavenly domain, which is ruled solely by God’s Love and Light
"And so upon you will come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Able to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. I tell you the truth, all this will come upon this generation.”
Two things; First, "generation" could just as easily be translated age, as it was in Eph3:5, and other places.
Secondly, does it really make sense that all the blood shed by evil in the world would be what?...atoned for?..."made right"?.. by the destruction of the temple?
I don't get how you can attribute the day of vengeance, with the destruction of the temple. The day of vengeance brings justice to the Earth. There are still people being oppressed, righteous people being murdered, and there are majorities of people who joyously exalt evil.
"I’m not following your line of thought."
According to your interpretation, if Christ's crucifixion was prophesied 1000 years before his birth, then we would have to assume that God knowingly brought part of Judah back to Jerusalem out of captivity, just so he could curse them all, because some apostate priests brought to pass what God himself had promised in 1000BC. What would be the point of that? If this was all part of the plan (and it was) then doesn't it seem more likely that the destruction of the temple was a punishment directed at those particular Jews? That would be more consistent with every other time Israel/Judah has been/will be punished.
And remember, most of Judah, and almost ALL of Israel were scattered throughout the world. If he wanted to punish ALL of Israel, whether today, or two thousand years ago, it would be a nearly global event.
MrMeaner: “You have to wonder how many noticed, that the priests were offering them a choice between Jesus, who was being sentenced to die for claiming to be the Son of God...and the murderer Barabbas, whose name means son of god. I'm sure some noticed, and probably removed themselves from the group.”
I’m not following where you are going here?
MrMEANER: “The same was probably true among those hearing Christ's words on the cross. While some mocked him, and thought he was calling for Elijah, (Not realizing that he said "Eli", rather than Elijah) others heard his words, and surely realized that they were just witness to the fulfillment of Psalms 22. It certainly convinced the centurian who stood guard.”
So what is your point?
If he intended to curse all those Jews, then wipe them all out, why did he leave those blatant clues right there in front of their faces? He must have intended for those who knew God through his word, to understand what was happening, and to realize that they had just witnessed the Messiah's first advent, and it's purpose fulfilled. He obviously wasn't angry with everyone.
You said:“If he intended to curse all those Jews, then wipe them all out, why did he leave those blatant clues right there in front of their faces? He must have intended for those who knew God through his word, to understand what was happening, and to realize that they had just witnessed the Messiah's first advent, and it's purpose fulfilled. He obviously wasn't angry with everyone.”
These were a stiff-necked people who were in rebellion against their God. Christ came in the fullness of time in order to bring that everlasting righteousness spoken of by Daniel the prophet to those waiting and judgment on those who were not.
“But when the time had FULLY COME, God sent His Son, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive the full rights as Sons” (see John 1:12)
Did you notice that? “That ‘we’ might receive the full rights as sons.” Paul is speaking to his contemporaries.
In respect to Daniel 9:24-27 that Jesus spoke of in Matthew 24:15, the decree of seventy weeks that culminated in the destruction of the temple and the abomination (Dan. 9:27) was a “decree for YOUR people – i.e. the Jews. And this time in which sin was to be put an end to by Jesus’ atonement for wickedness and bringing in an everlasting righteousness could not happen until the old sacrificial system – the old heaven and earth that the Jews had known for 1500 years was done away with. With the destruction of the temple it would be done away with. There would be no more animal sacrifices because a better sacrifice had been made – a once for all time sacrifice, or as Hebrews records,
“But NOW He has appeared ONCE FOR ALL at the END OF THE AGES to DO AWAY WITH SIN by the SACRIFICE OF HIMSELF.” (Hebrews 9:26b)
And with the destruction of the temple He appeared a second time, as Hebrews says, “not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who ARE waiting for Him.” (vs. 28b)
So I want you to answer for me whether we have eternal righteousness in Christ, or is this something we are still waiting for? In other words, was the righteousness spoken of by Daniel in Daniel 9:24-27 fulfilled with the destruction of the old covenant in AD 70, or are we still living according to the old covenant by our own righteousness?
“When you see Jerusalem being surrounded by armies, YOU will know that its DESOLATION is NEAR…For THIS is the time of PUNISHMENT in FULFILLMENT of ALL that has been written…There will be GREAT DISTRESS in the land and WRATH against THIS people. They will fall by THE SWORD.” (See Luke 21:20 onwards)
Now for the Jews of Jesus’ time, they were living in the time of the fourth kingdom that Daniel spoke about in Daniel 2. At the time of this fourth kingdom, “the God of heaven WILL SET UP a kingdom that will NEVER BE DESTROYED, nor will it be left to ANOTHER PEOPLE. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever.” (Daniel 2:44)
Seventy weeks would be determined until the end of the nation of Israel – Daniel’s people. And with the seventy weeks and the destruction of the temple and city an everlasting righteousness would be brought in. This righteousness comes from the Messiah, the King of righteousness! The New Covenant is a covenant of righteousness that the old covenant, the old world did not have because man could not live up to that covenant. Now God was establishing the better covenant and at the same time bringing judgment on these people because they had crucified the Lord of glory. Peter knew this (Mark 13:3) and this is what 2 Peter was all about. It was about recalling “the words of the holy prophets” concerning the last days of that covenant (vs. 3). The new heavens and new earth in which righteousness dwells was about to be fulfilled (vs. 13). Notice Peter’s words,
“But in keeping with His promise WE are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.”
THEY were looking forward to it. Peter, inspired by the Holy Spirit, could say such things and know the proximity because, “when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into ALL TRUTH. He will not speak on His own; He will speak only what He hears, and HE WILL TELL YOU WHAT IS YET TO COME… ALL that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit WILL take what is Mine and MAKE IT KNOWN TO YOU…In that day you will no longer ask Me anything. I tell you the truth, My Father WILL GIVE YOU WHATEVER YOU ASK in My name.” (See John 14-16)
Notice also that Jesus said to them, “Are you asking one another what I meant when I said, ‘In a little while you will see Me no more, and then AFTER A LITTLE WHILE you WILL SEE Me?’
He says to them that they would weep and mourn while the world rejoices, but their grief would turn to joy, and that would be in a little while. 2000 years hardly constitutes a 'little while.'
But the point here is that with the Holy Spirit their knowledge increased, as Daniel 12:4 said it would at the time of the end – the end of the old covenant. Daniel’s vision was to be sealed until the time of the end. But at that time YOUR PEOPLE (Daniel’s) – everyone whose name is written in the Book – will be delivered. This was the judgment of Daniel’s people. The angel tells Daniel to “Go your way, Daniel, because the words are closed up and sealed until the time of the end (of his people as a nation living in covenant with God). Many will be purified, made spotless and refined, but the wicked will continue to be wicked. None of the wicked will understand, but those who are wise will understand.” (Daniel 12:9-10)
So back to your original question. It is because of their wickedness that they do not understand. They are getting what they justly deserve for their hardness of heart and wickedness.
"But when the time had FULLY COME, God sent His Son, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive the full rights as Sons” (see John 1:12)
Did you notice what you just wrote? Gal. Ch.4 has it this way. Pay close attention to the 5th verse. [1] Now I say, That the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all; [2] But is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the father. [3] Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world: [4] But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, [5] To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. [6] And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. [7] Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.
Does "redeeming those under the law", mean cursing them and replacing them with Gentiles?
No...just the opposite, in fact
If I have time, I want to make a couple of points about Dan. Ch.9, hopefully today, or this evening
Gal. 4:4: "But when the time had FULLY COME, God sent His Son, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive the full rights as Sons” (see John 1:12)
MrMEANER: “Did you notice what you just wrote?”
Yes, I did. (^8
Did you notice the theme of Galatians? Before Christ came the world was held captive by the law (3:22). The Jews could not live up to it, in fact no one could, and this church in Galatia was in danger of having legalism preached to them too. Paul goes into the history of the old covenant and the curse of the law (3:10-13). The book of Galatians actually compares and contrasts the two covenants (see Gal. 4:21-5:6, which you need to read to get the context in proper perspective, MrMeaner), just like Hebrews does.
“Before this faith came, WE were held prisoners by the law, locked up until this faith should be revealed. So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. NOW that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law. ” (3:23-25)
That is why the old covenant had to disappear. As long as the two lived side by side Jews and even Gentiles were in danger of trying to live by this covenant. That is why Christ came, to put an end to the letter of the law that brings death by fulfilling it on the behalf of those who would believe.
MrMEANER: “Gal. Ch.4 has it this way. Pay close attention to the 5th verse. [1] Now I say, That the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all; [2] But is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the father.
Yes, the time appointed by the Father in which the old covenant would disappear, or as Peter would say in 2 Peter 3, ‘the elements will be destroyed by fire.’ The Old Covenant and the law was a tutor to lead us to Christ.
[3] Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world: Even though the Greek word ‘stoicheia’ is used to signify ‘elements’ you have to understand the Hebrew connotation for element and what it meant to them. We interpret the Bible by the Bible, or another way to put it is the Bible interprets itself.
In Galatians the same word as 2 Peter 3:10 – elements – is used twice, in 4:3 and 4:9. Paul “reminds his readers of how they were once held in bondage to the ‘elements of this world’ when they observed ‘days, weeks, months, and years.’ This refers to observances of the Old Law. The Jews were held in bondage to the Old Law, the fundamental laws and regulations of the Torah that constituted ‘the stoicheia of the world (kosmos).’ Paul’s reference is to the system of the Torah in which his readers had served, not to the material elements of creation. Yet it is called the ‘elements of the world.’” Don K. Preston, The Elements Shall Melt with Fervent Heat, p. 190.
The same word used for ‘elements’ in 2 Peter 3:10 is the word used in Galatians 4:3, 9; Colossians 2:8, 20 and Hebrews 5:12, and means a world system, not the material creation. The elements of the Old Covenant, the old heaven and earth, the old world were in the process of passing away (Hebrews 8:13; 12:25).
RCofield mentioned Beale and his understanding of the temple as signifying heaven and earth to the Jew in the first century. Don K. Preston has cited some of Beale's quotes from Beale’s book Temple. I think I need to provide a few of these references for your benefit when I get some spare time. It would bring the significance of the statement ‘heaven and earth’ more into focus on how the Jews of that period understood the Temple and the words 'heaven and earth passing away.'
[4] But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law,
The law was the Old Covenant. Do you want to get into that?
[5] To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. [6] And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. [7] Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.
MrMEANER: “Does "redeeming those under the law", mean cursing them and replacing them with Gentiles?” No, it means combining the Gentiles with them in a new covenant because the first was no good. It could not bring the righteousness that the holy and pure God required. Yet the Judaizers wanted to earn a works righteousness of their own, in their own filthy merit. They were getting what they deserved. And God, in the fullness of time sent His own Son to redeem those under the Law and yet the received Him not.
PS, you still have not answered my questions from the previous post concerning righteousness and the covenants.
If Christ's crucifixion was promised as early as the time of David, then there is no old or new covenant. You could say that not having to atone through animal sacrifice was a change that affects our end of the covenant. But the covenant remains the same. The promises are the same. The things that God considers good are the same, as are the things God defines as evil. The definition of sin is the same. An unrepentant sinner is in the same spiritual condition as someone depending on a priest and the blood of rams to clean them.
"But the point here is that with the Holy Spirit their knowledge increased, as Daniel 12:4 said it would at the time of the end – the end of the old covenant. Daniel’s vision was to be sealed until the time of the end. But at that time YOUR PEOPLE (Daniel’s) – everyone whose name is written in the Book – will be delivered. This was the judgment of Daniel’s people. The angel tells Daniel to “Go your way, Daniel, because the words are closed up and sealed until the time of the end (of his people as a nation living in covenant with God). Many will be purified, made spotless and refined, but the wicked will continue to be wicked. None of the wicked will understand, but those who are wise will understand.”
To be delivered, means to be SAVED, rescued, or freed.
In another place, it specifically states that at the time of God's wrath, Judah will be the first to be delivered.
Zech Ch.12 [1] The burden of the word of the LORD for Israel, saith the LORD, which stretcheth forth the heavens, and layeth the foundation of the earth, and formeth the spirit of man within him. [2] Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem. [3] And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it. [4] In that day, saith the LORD, I will smite every horse with astonishment, and his rider with madness: and I will open mine eyes upon the house of Judah, and will smite every horse of the people with blindness. [5] And the governors of Judah shall say in their heart, The inhabitants of Jerusalem shall be my strength in the LORD of hosts their God. [6] In that day will I make the governors of Judah like an hearth of fire among the wood, and like a torch of fire in a sheaf; and they shall devour all the people round about, on the right hand and on the left: and Jerusalem shall be inhabited again in her own place, even in Jerusalem. [7] The LORD also shall save the tents of Judah first, that the glory of the house of David and the glory of the inhabitants of Jerusalem do not magnify themselves against Judah. [8] In that day shall the LORD defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and he that is feeble among them at that day shall be as David; and the house of David shall be as God, as the angel of the LORD before them. [9] And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem. [10] And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.
Sounds to me like Christ's return actually rescues Judah, from the other nations.
Would you agree that if the identity of the Harlot of Babylon in Rev. was known for certain, it would identify the targets of Christ's wrath?
Do you want to continue our discussion? We are just touching the tip of the ice berg but things have petered out here. If not, blessings in Christ Jesus!
Any word from RCofield or Walter? I have not been back to the Washington Post since we left.
Sure. I'd love to continue. I sort of figured that everyone abandoned ship after the Golden Eagles fiasco, so I've been joining other discussions on other sites.
I've already been banned again from WAPO. Apparently they're adopting a "no right-wingers allowed" approach....other than a few tokens that have been there forever. I guess we're not going to hear from Randy and Walter, unless they show up here.
I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on Zech. ch. 12. Note that this was written long after both captivities, (Israel to Assyrians..Judah to Babylonians) and that there are no recorded events where any global empires were destroyed in the Holy land.
Let me check out your links, and the UK debate forum.
Sounds interesting.
Believe it or not, I've been offering Biblical explanations in a discussion with a group of ancient astronaut theorists....and it has actually been a productive conversation.
Amazing what you can find on the internet.
I was also banned from a Christian discussion forum, before I ever attempted to contribute.
(I'm guessing that when I registered, the site-owner traced my email address to being the administrator of this blog, and decided I shouldn't be allowed to participate)
So, a forum with open-minded administrators sounds pretty good to me. I'll definitely check out the UK site.
As for Randy, I had a feeling when Golden Eagles started filibustering with new posts, rather than defending his positions in the comment sections, and attacking you and Randy personally, that this site wasn't going to work.
I was stupid for ever making GE an author. I had hoped that everyone wanted to discuss various issues, rather than pushing their own agenda. I guess I was naive.
Yes, the UK Forum is very well thought out. When you opt for 'Write your reply' there is bold, italics and underlined provided, plus quotation aids, a host of other writing aids, then each post pas a number assigned it.
I'm on 'Religious Debates', 'Does lack of evidence undermine God?' at the moment if you should want to check it out. We could open up a discussion on eschatology or any other subject if you want. It actually tells you how long you have logged in for, although that doesn't give a true account on how long you have spent on each post, for I usually leave it open. The other advantage we have is that we can post at 8-9pm uninterrupted, for in the UK most are sleeping at that time. As you can see there are a number of open discussions that seem to go on for as long as there are participants
Hi MrMeaner,
ReplyDeleteThat was a battle. I tried posting fifteen million times without luck until I realized you had this link so here goes.
Hi MrMeaner,
ME: "How do you know you are not the one mislead? "
MrMEANER: "If I am, I doubt I would be held accountable for not believing that God is so whimsical, he would change his promises, and his entire plan for humanity..."
What promises has He changed? Give me some examples.
MrMEANER: "and for not believing that God is so geographically (or linguistically) challenged, he would confuse "all nations", with 1st century Jerusalem."
He is not geographically challenged or confused. You are looking at 1st century writings through 21 century eyes. To the Jews of that time all the world was different in their concept from what it is today in ours.
Some of the apostles believed that the end had come because the gospel had been preached in all the world and the Great Commission of Matthew 28 had been accomplished. This is easily demonstrated. Here is what Jesus said:
"Therefore go and make disciples of ALL nations... And surely I am with you always, to the very END OF THE AGE." (Matt. 28:19, 20b)
In the Olivetti Discourse Jesus had this to say about the coming of the end:
"And this gospel of the kingdom will be PREACHED IN THE WHOLE WORLD as a testimony to ALL NATIONS and THEN THE END WILL COME." (Matt. 24:14)
Here is what Paul said in Romans 10:17-18:
"17 Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ. 18 But I ask: Did they not hear? Of course they did:
“Their voice has gone out into ALL THE EARTH,
their words to the ENDS OF THE WORLD.”
Here is what he said in Colossians 1:5; 23 and please notice the context as to who is being addressed:
"1 PAUL, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and TIMOTHY our brother,
2 To God’s holy people IN COLLOSSE, the faithful brothers in Christ... 3 WE always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when WE pray for YOU, 4 because WE have heard of YOUR faith in Christ Jesus and of the love YOU have for all God’s people— 5 the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for YOU in heaven and about which YOU HAVE ALREADY HEARD in the true message of the GOSPEL 6 that has come to YOU. In the same way, the gospel IS bearing fruit and growing throughout the WHOLE WORLD—just as it HAS BEEN doing among YOU since the day YOU HEARD IT and truly understood God’s grace. 7 YOU learned it FROM EPAPHRAS, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf,....23 if YOU continue in YOUR faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that YOU HEARD and that HAS BEEN PROCLAIMED to EVERY CREATURE under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant."
Did you catch who the 'you' was addressed to and the verb tense? The same applies to us today concerning the message and our faith.
Would you care to comment on the primary audience being addressed here by Paul, and if it is not the church of Colosse in the first century show me how you arrived at your conclusion.
PART 2
ReplyDeleteHere is what was said by the writer of Acts (Luke) concerning the gospel going out into all the world in Acts 2:1-21:
" 1 When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues[a] as the Spirit enabled them.
5 Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing JEWS FROM EVERY NATION UNDER HEAVEN. 6 When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. 7 Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? 9 Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome 11 (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” 12 Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”
13 Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.”
Peter Addresses the Crowd
14 Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: “Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. 15 These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! 16 No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:
17 “‘IN THE LAST DAYS, God says,
I will pour out my Spirit on ALL PEOPLE.
YOUR sons and daughters will prophesy,
YOUR young men will see visions,
YOUR old men will dream dreams.
18 Even on my servants, BOTH MEN AND WOMEN,
I will pour out my Spirit IN THOSE DAYS,
and they will prophesy.
19 I will show wonders in the heavens above
and signs on the earth below,
blood and fire and billows of smoke.
20 The sun will be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood
before the coming of the great and glorious DAY OF THE LORD.
21 And everyone who calls
on the name of the Lord will be saved.’"
What does "the last day" and "Day of the Lord" mean in the NT? How many 'last days' and 'Day of the Lord' are there in Scripture, one or many (i.e., Is it a term that can have more than one fulfillment, because it addresses different situations or do all the 'last days' mentioned in the OT have to do with this 'last days' mentioned in the NT?)?
As you can see, these early Christians certainly believed the gospel had been preached to the ends of the world that they knew of at that time and the passages tie in with the end spoken of in Matthew 24:14 and the whole of the discourse, since the term end is mentioned numerous times.
ReplyDelete"What promises has He changed? Give me some examples"
ReplyDeleteWhere to start?..How about the whole resurrection of the dead / gathering of all Israel, to be united with Judah thing ?
Ezek. Ch37
[12] Therefore prophesy and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel.
[13] And ye shall know that I am the LORD, when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up out of your graves,
[14] And shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall live, and I shall place you in your own land: then shall ye know that I the LORD have spoken it, and performed it, saith the LORD.
[15] The word of the LORD came again unto me, saying,
[16] Moreover, thou son of man, take thee one stick, and write upon it, For Judah, and for the children of Israel his companions: then take another stick, and write upon it, For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and for all the house of Israel his companions:
[17] And join them one to another into one stick; and they shall become one in thine hand.
[18] And when the children of thy people shall speak unto thee, saying, Wilt thou not shew us what thou meanest by these?
[19] Say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will take the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel his fellows, and will put them with him, even with the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, and they shall be one in mine hand.
[20] And the sticks whereon thou writest shall be in thine hand before their eyes.
[21] And say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the heathen, whither they be gone, and will gather them on every side, and bring them into their own land:
[22] And I will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king to them all: and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all:
That's a pretty big promise.
Which leads to the promise that despite all of Israels failings, and turning away from him, at some point Israel would stretch from Egypt, all the way to the Euphrates river.
That hasn't happened, and won't until Christ's return.
There's a couple.
I'll get to your other points later, but what about the issue related to the image in Nebuchadnezzar's dream, being broken by the "stone cut without hands", representing Christ?
Doesn't that imply that there is a global empire involved?
The last empire mentioned is the one represented by the feet and toes of the image, which represent the ten kings of Rev 17:12.
Those kings receive power for one hour with the beast.
That will be the empire broken by our Rock.
"He is not geographically challenged or confused. You are looking at 1st century writings through 21 century eyes. To the Jews of that time all the world was different in their concept from what it is today in ours"
ReplyDeleteBut you have to take in to account that during the 1st century, most Jews, and practically all Israelites were scattered across Europe, Asia, Northern Africa, and other parts of the Middle East.
"Some of the apostles believed that the end had come because the gospel had been preached in all the world and the Great Commission of Matthew 28 had been accomplished."
ReplyDeleteI believe they thought they would see the end, but I don't think any believed they had seen the end.
"Therefore go and make disciples of ALL nations... And surely I am with you always, to the very END OF THE AGE."
I'm sure they did their best to do just that, although they were limited by a human life-span.
And, I would like to think that through the Holy Spirit, he is still with his faithful.
John Ch.14
[1] Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.
[2] In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
[3] And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.
...[25] These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you.
[26] But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.
As for the rest, are you claiming that the apostles were able to deliver his message to every person on Earth?
Hi MrMeaner,
ReplyDeleteConcerning your Ezekiel 37 verse, Don K. Preston had this to say in 'We Shall Meet Him in the Air,' p. 172:
"The gathering of Israel was the time of the resurrection. This is critical, especially in the light of Matthew 24:31. Ezekiel 37:12 foretold the time when God would resurrect Israel, "I will open your graves and cause you to come up from your graves." It is clear from the context of Ezekiel 37 that the resurrection under consideration is not a physical resurrection from biological death. The context is that Israel was in bondage due to her sin. She was in "sin-death" because of her violation of the covenant. In other words, Israel's promise of resurrection was not a promise of physical resurrection from biological death. It was the promise of the restoration of fellowship with God through the forgiveness of sin. (See Paul’s comment in Acts 26:17-18, in light of the fact that all he proclaimed was Israel’s hope of resurrection).
The resurrection promised by Ezekiel was to occur when Israel’s Messiah came, established the New Covenant and His temple in their midst (Ezekiel 37:22-27). Significantly, Paul cites Ezekiel’s prophecy in 2 Corinthians 3-6. He specifically says that the body of Christ in Corinth was the fulfillment of God’s promise to build His tabernacle among His people: “You are the temple of the living God, as God has said, ‘I will dwell in them and walk among them. I will be their God and they shall be My people’”. (2 Corinthians 6:16)
If the inspired apostle Paul, who preached nothing but the resurrection hope of Israel said that the body of Christ in Corinth was the fulfillment of God’s promise to resurrect Israel then we today have no right to say He was wrong or to look for a different kind of resurrection.
Israel was being raised from the dead by coming into the body of Christ and there finding the forgiveness of her sin, the sin that had killed her in the first place. Notice that Paul told the Corinthians, “You are what God promised.” He did not say you are living proof that one day God will keep His promises to Israel. He did not say that the church was a type of the coming fulfillment of His promise to Israel. He did not say that the church was a foretaste of God’s work for Israel in a later time. He said, “You are the temple of the living God, as God has said” (2 Corinthians 6:16). There could hardly be a clearer affirmation that the resurrection promises of God made to Israel were being fulfilled. It is clear that the resurrection in view is not a resuscitation of biologically dead physical bodies. It is the restoration to fellowship, the restoration to relationship. P 172-173.
PART 2
ReplyDeleteMrMEANER: “Which leads to the promise that despite all of Israel’s failings, and turning away from him, at some point Israel would stretch from Egypt, all the way to the Euphrates river.
That hasn't happened, and won't until Christ's return.”
Yet God says the physical land promises given to Abraham are already fulfilled.
“So the LORD gave Israel ALL the land He had sworn to give their forefathers, and they took possession of it and settled there. The LORD gave them rest on every side, just as He had sworn to their forefathers. Not one of their enemies withstood them; the LORD handed all their enemies over to them. Not one of all the LORD’s good promises to the house of Israel failed; every one was fulfilled” (Joshua 21:43-45).
Besides that, “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ.” (2 Corinthians 1:20).
MrMEANER: “I'll get to your other points later, but what about the issue related to the image in Nebuchadnezzar's dream, being broken by the "stone cut without hands", representing Christ?”
MrMEANER: “Doesn't that imply that there is a global empire involved?”
Do you not think that the church is global? Do you not think that those ruled by Christ are part of His kingdom?
“Jesus replied, ‘….And I tell you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church, and the gates of hell will not overcome it.” (Matthew 16:18)
The gates of hell overcame every other kingdom, but not the eternal one! Jesus has crushed Satan’s head. Greater is He that is in the Christian than he who is in the world.
MrMEANER: “The last empire mentioned is the one represented by the feet and toes of the image, which represent the ten kings of Rev 17:12.”
Yes, the fourth, the Roman Empire.
MrMEANER: “Those kings receive power for one hour with the beast.”
Are you taking it as a literal hour?
Who are the kings?
MrMEANER: “That will be the empire broken by our Rock.
Yes, the Rock is Christ and He has broken the other empires. Again, the fourth empire is the Roman Empire.
"If the inspired apostle Paul, who preached nothing but the resurrection hope of Israel said that the body of Christ in Corinth was the fulfillment of God’s promise to resurrect Israel then we today have no right to say He was wrong or to look for a different kind of resurrection."
ReplyDeleteHe said no such thing.
In fact, he said the opposite, in 5:1-10
[1] For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
We know that when we die, we have a spiritual body.
"And as we have borne the image of the earthly, we shall also bear image of the heavenly".. ICor.15:49
[2] For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven:
"So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption; It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body."...ICor.15:42-44
[3] If so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked.
[4] For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life.
Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither does corruption inherit incorruption.
Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptable, and we shall be changed.
So when this corruptable shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory"...I Cor.15:50-54
[5] Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit.
earnest--a pledge, or portion given in advance, as security for the rest, to be paid later
[6] Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord:
[7] (For we walk by faith, not by sight:)
[8] We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.
[9] Wherefore we labour, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him.
[10] For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.
Whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord.
We certainly haven't been resurrected, or put away our mortal bodies.
"Yet God says the physical land promises given to Abraham are already fulfilled."
ReplyDeleteWell, we've ran in to a problem.
There is no question that God promised that the Euphrates would be Israel's coast.
Joshua 1:3,4
So, we can deduce that Israel has yet to meet the conditions that will allow the Father to deliver on his unfulfilled promise.
or
the promise will remain unfulfilled until Christ's return.
Either way, there is an unfulfilled promise
"Do you not think that the church is global?"
ReplyDeleteAre you saying that "the church" makes up the body of the Harlot who will be the target of Christ's wrath?
If so, I agree
"Do you not think that those ruled by Christ are part of His kingdom?"
Who's being ruled by Christ?
We may rule our lives, in accordance to Christ's teachings...but Christ isn't ruling Earth, currently.
In fact, the "god of this world" has blinded the minds of them which believe not." II Cor.4:4
"Are you taking it as a literal hour?"
ReplyDeleteI doubt that it's a literal hour.
My guess is that it's the same period of time described as the hour of temptation in 3:10.
"Who are the kings?"
My opinion is that these are the leaders of a global order, described in chapter 13.
We could go a little deeper, in discussing the significance of the symbolism of the leopard, bear, and lion, but it would require revisiting the issue of separating the identity of that representing Judah, (the lion) from many other Jews(the leopard)
The bear symbolizes an ideology, as well as a nation, and is who/what carries, or supports the beast.
Basically, we're talking about the establishment of a world government, (the first beast...13:1-3) ruled by "seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns."
You know the story..
One head is wounded. It's healed when the dragon "gives power to the beast".
The dragon himself is identified as a different beast. He is said to have two horns like a lamb (like THE Lamb) but speaks as a dragon (because he IS the dragon)
He causes the world to worship this government, and to create a representation of this beast (which I take to mean local representation of the same global system)
This is all the same symbolism used in Daniel, as it relates to the four later kingdoms mentioned as being based from the Greek empire.
(which I would add, is said to be the birthplace of "democracy")
Daniel Ch.8
[21] And the rough goat is the king of Grecia: and the great horn that is between his eyes is the first king.
[22] Now that being broken, whereas four stood up for it, four kingdoms shall stand up out of the nation, but not in his power.
[23] And in the latter time of their kingdom, when the transgressors are come to the full, a king of fierce countenance, and understanding dark sentences, shall stand up.
[24] And his power shall be mighty, but not by his own power: and he shall destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper, and practise, and shall destroy the mighty and the holy people.
[25] And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace shall destroy many: he shall also stand up against the Prince of princes; but he shall be broken without hand.
[26] And the vision of the evening and the morning which was told is true: wherefore shut thou up the vision; for it shall be for many days.
If you want details about the false messiah, and his short-lived kingdom, research the twelfth Imam, the Mahdi.
Hi MrMeaner,
ReplyDeleteI'm limited for time during the next four days so I'm going to pick and choose what I answer now. The other posts require more leg work, so to speak.
ME: “"Yet God says the physical land promises given to Abraham are already fulfilled."
MrMEANER: “Well, we've ran in to a problem There is no question that God promised that the Euphrates would be Israel's coast.
Joshua 1:3,4”
From those verses where do you get that interpretation? How can the Euphrates be Israel’s coast? It is a river, not a sea. (See Numbers 34:2-12 and Genesis 15:18. See also Joshua 23:14-16 and Nehemiah 9:8).
“I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses. Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the great river, the Euphrates – all the Hittite country – to the Great Sea [i.e., The Mediterranean Sea] on the west. No one will be able to stand up against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you.” (Joshua 1:3-4)
MrMEANER: “So, we can deduce that Israel has yet to meet the conditions that will allow the Father to deliver on his unfulfilled promise.
or
the promise will remain unfulfilled until Christ's return.
Either way, there is an unfulfilled promise “
His word says He has met all the land promises given to Abraham. That is just the point in Joshua 21:45 as one example - the land promises have been met.
Hi MrMeaner,
ReplyDeleteME: "Do you not think that the church is global?"
MrMEANER: “Are you saying that "the church" makes up the body of the Harlot who will be the target of Christ's wrath?”
No, I’m driving at the point that it is a global kingdom that is present spiritually now. I believe the ‘Harlot’ is Israel and more specifically, Jerusalem. We can get into that if you like and open another can of worms, although I was still working from 2 Peter where there is a lot more to be uncanned.
ME: "Do you not think that those ruled by Christ are part of His kingdom?"
MrMEANER: “Who's being ruled by Christ?
We may rule our lives, in accordance to Christ's teachings...but Christ isn't ruling Earth, currently.”
Is Christ King? If so then those who are His are part of His eternal kingdom! If we are Christ’s and ‘in Christ’ then He rules our lives, not us, and Christ is our Ruler even while we are on this earth. We are told not to conform to this world and the patterns of this world but to Christ (Romans 12:1-2).
MrMEANER: “In fact, the "god of this world" has blinded the minds of them which believe not." II Cor.4:4”
But to believers do we not recognize God as being in control? I certainly hope so. Did Christ not crush Satan’s head on the cross? Has the victory not been won? Is it not finished? Has He not fulfilled all the promises of God?
"From those verses where do you get that interpretation? How can the Euphrates be Israel’s coast? It is a river, not a sea."
ReplyDeleteBecause that's exactly what it says.
From the Euphrates, through Lebanon, all the way to the Mediterranean
(This includes about half of Iraq, all of Syria, all of Lebanon)
" I believe the ‘Harlot’ is Israel and more specifically, Jerusalem"
ReplyDeleteInasmuch as dispersed Israel consists of many nations, most of which being Western cultures founded in Christianity, I can agree with the first part of that statement.
Inasmuch as Jerusalem is the major focal point of prophecy dealing with the end of this age, namely being the place where the false messiah will create "peace", I can agree with the second part of that statement.
PeterHuff asks, "Did Christ not crush Satan’s head on the cross?"
ReplyDeleteObviously, he did not crush that portion of Satan's head which has you imprisoned in the idea that you can cleanly ignore the Commandments of Christ, and still have salvation.
PeterHuff asks, "Has the victory not been won? Is it not finished?"
Christ won his victory, that is for sure. But your victory is far from being won. Christ gave you several conditions that you must fufill if you are to be saved. You refuse to recognize those conditions. Therefore, you are far from winning your own victory.
PeterHuff asks, "Has He not fulfilled all the promises of God?"
Perhaps it can be said that all the promises of God are fulfilled in Jesus Christ. That he came to show us what it means to have the promises of God fulfilled. But that does not mean the promises of God are fulfilled in you. Again, Jesus Christ gave you a list of several conditions that you must fulfill if you are to receive the fulfillment of the promise of salvation, yet you continue to stubbornly ignore those conditions. Why?
Indeed, why?
I believe I know why, and I have set forth my thoughts on this subject in this post, concerning which you owe me a response -
A Prison of Fear - A Commentary upon PeterHuff’s Egregiously Presumptuous Grasp Upon the Golden Ring of Salvation
You could begin by answering the important question set forth therein - Do you personally fear burning in hell forever? And if you do, you need to figure out how to unravel this knot in your psychology, that has you fearing something that the Love of God would NEVER permit.
Hi GoldenEagles,
ReplyDeleteI was debating whether or not to respond to you. As RCofield has so often explained, with little effect, good works come after salvation, not to earn it or in a cooperative manner with God to merit His favor. Salvation is a gift of God. Gifts are not earned. "No one born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God." (1 John 3:7)
Second, your obsession with demonology and the devil is unhealthy. Here is an article for you to read,
http://www.eschatology.org/all-articles-articles-211/27-dealing-with-satan/29-the-binding-of-satan
Don Preston brings up a number of salient points. GoldenEagles, did Jesus destroy the works of the devil or not? Here is how the apostle John puts it,
"He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. THE REASON THE SON OF GOD APPEARED WAS TO DESTROY THE DEVIL'S WORK." (1 John 3:8)
A couple of questions for you. When did Jesus appear? Did He destroy the works of the devil?
I'm going to cheat and attempt to answer that question for you.
"Since the children have flesh and blood, He too shared in their humanity so that BY HIS DEATH He might DESTROY him who holds the power of death - that is, THE DEVIL - and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death." (Hebrews 2:14-15)
"Now is the time of judgment on this world; now the prince of this world (or in some translations 'the god of this world') will be driven out." (John 12:31)
Did you get that - now, as Jesus was preparing to go to the cross. The hour had come for the Son of Man to be glorified. (vs. 23, 27)
"The God of peace will SOON crush Satan under your feet." (Romans 16:20)
What does 'soon' mean to you in regards to the Epistle to the Romans?
Are you going to argue like MrMeaner that 'soon' means two thousand or so years later, or that God cannot tell time?
Third, Jesus is not just one of many ways to salvation. He is still the only way. We need His atoning sacrifice as much as the Jews of the first century, or any other century. All religions do not lead to God. Only Christ does.
One thing I will commend you on is your recognition that the love of Christ and that relationship with Him is what really counts. Keep pursuing that love!
Having said that, there is so much of your theology that needs to be brought to light GoldenEagles, so that you can see the light, but I don't have the time or capability at present and unless the Spirit was in it, it would be a hopeless waste of my time. You would just refer to your default premises.
"Yet a time is coming, AND HAS NOW COME when the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is Spirit, and His worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth." (John 4:23-24)
Do you think that statement has changed?
Peter,
ReplyDeleteWhat event marked the fulfillment of Romans 16:20, and why?
Are you saying that the destruction of the temple was the crushing of Satan?
Why would God give order to have the temple restored, have Cyrus send some of the captive Judeans back to Judea...as a fulfillment of his own prophecy, only to become a representation of Satan?
Are you saying that the destruction of all of that, that God himself commanded be done, constitutes the destroying of Satan?
That's dangerous business there
You may as well say that God is Satan
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ReplyDelete.
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Peterhuff says, "your obsession with demonology and the devil is unhealthy."
That is certainly a convenient fall back position I must say. The demons who are leaning on your feeling world with the INTENSE FEAR OF ETERNAL DAMNATION (which you did not deny) are certainly the ones who think my “obsession” with THEIR influence in your life is “unhealthly.” It is remarkable how clearly their agenda is reflected in your thoughts and words in terms of their desire and their ability to hide themselves from your awareness.
I am wondering why you can’t make that connection.
Moreover, I am wondering why you cannot understand that you have just labeled the Teaching of Jesus Christ on the subject of demon possession and influence “unhealthy.” During his mission he spent an enormous amount of time on this subject, and taught his disciples at length concerning the need to help people to become free from that influence. I am wondering how you can be comfortable with this contradiction, where you supposedly worship Christ, but crush, with powerful disdain, an essential element of Jesus’ teaching into the dust with the steel-reinforced heel of your over-sized work boots? Please explain that.
Peterhuff says, "One thing I will commend you on is your recognition that the love of Christ and that relationship with Him is what really counts. Keep pursuing that love!"
This statement gives readers the impression that you respect Christ’s teaching on Love, and understand it, yet you will not admit that the LOVE of GOD, which includes the attributes of mercy, forgiveness, and compassion, would not allow billions of people to be condemned to eternal damnation.
Please take a few moments to explain to me your understanding of the principle of God’s Love. Please discuss why there is not, in your compartment of understanding, the realization that true love would not allow the condemning of billions of people to the fate of eternal damnation?
Please take a few moments to speak about the principle of love, as it is central to everything that Christ taught, and explain to me why love would allow for the eternal damnation of billions of good souls, whose only crime is being born into a culture that would never allow them to feel good about the idea of Jesus Christ as the only way to heaven, in as much as they are taught from birth to see, to honor, to respect, and to revere, their own religious tradition as the only way to heaven.
If you do indeed have a relationship with the true Jesus Christ, he will be able to guide your heart and mind on this subject with abundant wisdom, and will give you what you need to carry on a constructive conversation with me on this subject.
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Hi GoldenEagles,
ReplyDeleteYou said: "Please take a few moments to speak about the principle of love, as it is central to everything that Christ taught, and explain to me why love would allow for the eternal damnation of billions of good souls, whose only crime is being born into a culture that would never allow them to feel good about the idea of Jesus Christ as the only way to heaven, in as much as they are taught from birth to see, to honor, to respect, and to revere, their own religious tradition as the only way to heaven."
I've already spoken on this subject of God's love and justice and you started censoring my posts, dictating on what I could and could not say when I criticized your doctrine. This showed me that you could not take criticism well. I want you to respond to my questions, in my last post and hopefully not with yards and yards of information which I just lose interest in.
GE: "If you do indeed have a relationship with the true Jesus Christ, he will be able to guide your heart and mind on this subject with abundant wisdom, and will give you what you need to carry on a constructive conversation with me on this subject."
How is that GoldenEagles, by living up to John 14:12, which you have admitted that you have not even been able to accomplish. You want to tell others what they must do while not being able to do it yourself?
Following Jesus is something that you cannot do on your own effort. It requires a work of God and true repentance.
You keep taunting me to get into a deep theological discussion to do what? You have already shown me that you are deeply embedded in your own private Jesus that contradicts Scripture. Yes, you preach love, love, but you forget the equally important quality of God's character which is holiness, purity, righteousness and justice. You want God to conform to your standards of love and justice, which is not loving or just at all for how can the pure and holy God allow evil in His presence, and even do evil in not punishing what is wrong? He has punished evil in Christ. Those who have the Son have life. He met the standard, you can't. It is knowing the Son and that does not contradict the Scriptures.
You want to meet God's righteous requirements in your own stead. Go ahead, but be aware of numerous passages that warn of just such action.
"For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, GOD DID by sending His Son in the likeness of sinful man to a SIN OFFERING. And so He condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the RIGHTEOUS REQUIREMENTS OF THE LAW might be FULLY MET IN US, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit." (Romans 8:3-4)
"Everyone who does evil HATES THE LIGHT, and WILL NOT COME INTO THE LIGHT for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the TRUTH comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has BEEN DONE THROUGH GOD." (John 3:20-21)
The atoning work of Christ is the ground upon which God the just passes over/forgives sin in others, NOT BY WORKS. Works come after salvation, not in order to win salvation or earn merit before God. That is not the grounds of love. Gratefulness and humility are the grounds for true love, knowing that there is nothing we can do to merit God's favor, God has already done it for us in Christ Jesus. It takes faith and faith in the right object of affection, that is Christ, not us.
Hi MrMeaner,
ReplyDeleteYou said: "What event marked the fulfillment of Romans 16:20, and why?"
I would say the triumph of the cross meant Satan's time was short, but the realization of the new heavens and new earth would bring completion with the destruction of the temple and old way of life. The old and the new were living side by side until the destruction of the temple and worship system. That put an end to the old world and way of life.
Atonement was still being practiced by animal sacrifices. Works instead of grace was the measure of such a system, not Christ. The author of Hebrews shows the contrast between the old and the new. And many who had professed Christ were in danger of turning back to the old way of Judaism.
God's work of redemption was finished on the cross but the realization could not happen until the new heavens and earth was ushered in because the two were living side by side. Don Preston made the point this way,
"In Revelation, inspiration depicts the imminent consummation of God's scheme of Redemption. Satan has attempted to kill Jesus. His last resort is to destroy the church in her infancy before she can grow to maturity (chapter 12). He incorporates the city "where our Lord was crucified," (11:8), which becomes drunken with the blood of the saints (17:6f). But Jesus comes in judgment on that apostate city and destroys her. In chapter 20 judgment is set, Satan is cast into the lake of fire; and Jesus takes his glorious bride unto himself! This all happened in 70 AD with the full destruction of the Theocracy of Israel, the persecuting city of Jerusalem, the Old Heavens and Earth. The New Creation is complete--what Satan had succeeded in getting man to forfeit, communion with God and eternal life, is restored. Satan lost — God finished His work."
MrMEANER: "Are you saying that the destruction of the temple was the crushing of Satan?"
Was it the bringing in of the new heavens and earth? If so yes. This brings us to the question of whether the new heavens and earth were spiritual or literal. What would you say?
MrMEANER: "Why would God give order to have the temple restored, have Cyrus send some of the captive Judeans back to Judea...as a fulfillment of his own prophecy, only to become a representation of Satan?
I'm not following you. Please expand upon this thought.
MrMEANER: "Are you saying that the destruction of all of that, that God himself commanded be done, constitutes the destroying of Satan?"
Again you are going to have to expand on your thoughts. I'm not following you.
MrMEANER: "You may as well say that God is Satan."
Perish that thought. That is blasphemy. How do you arrive at this premise? Because God brings about His purposes through secondary means at times, without violating the creatures will?
Hi MrMeaner,
ReplyDeleteWhy don't you take a stab at the questions I asked GoldenEagles, "Did Jesus destroy the works of the devil or not? Here is how the apostle John puts it,
"He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. THE REASON THE SON OF GOD APPEARED WAS TO DESTROY THE DEVIL'S WORK." (1 John 3:8)
When did Jesus appear? Did He destroy the works of the devil according to Scripture?
You can refer to the rest of the post to develop the theme further.
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ReplyDelete.
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Peterhuff says, “I've already spoken on this subject of God's love and justice and you started censoring my posts, dictating on what I could and could not say when I criticized your doctrine. This showed me that you could not take criticism well ....”
What you have said there is not a truthful representation of events.
The truth is, that you included in one of your comments a personally destructive reference to my family, and I asked you to remove that. And that is the only thing that I asked you to remove. When it became clear that you did not know how to remove it on your own, I explained to you how to remove it, and when you finally removed it, you deleted ALL of your posts in that discussion, every one, a sign of an Rcofield style temper tantrum operating in the background.
So even if you did have something to say about love and justice, you deleted it.
Regarding this situation, I would like to point out to you, that the manner in which a person will adhere to the standards of truth in their personal behavior and relationships, has a direct bearing on their capacity to discern truth in the spiritual domain. If a person will play fast and loose with the truth in their personal behavior and relationships then their perception of spiritual truth will be correspondingly corrupted.
The Master Jesus spoke to this when he said, “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” (John 4:24) In other words, your mind and emotions must operate within the domain of truth, if you are to comprehend God in an accurate manner.
In the above statement, Peterhuff, you have expressed the spirit of falsehood, and if you allow the spirit of falsehood to remain in your heart and mind, it will distort your perception of the Reality of God. Your biblical interpretations will continue to be grossly inaccurate.
This is an opportunity for you to ask the Master Jesus Christ to take that spirit of falsehood from you. That is how we apply the principle of repentance. When we find the spirit of rebellion in us, we admit to it, and we repent, and we ask the Master Jesus Christ to remove it. From that point forward, we move on a little bit cleaner.
To initiate this cleansing process, you must admit that your representation of the facts was false, and that my representation of the facts is accurate. Once you admit to the truth in this regard, you must then apologize for telling the falsehood, as this is part of the process of allowing the spirit of repentance (which is the spirit of truth) to flow through you.
This process of incremental cleansing through repentance is important. If it is not accomplished, the soul continues to defile itself by giving voice to the spirit of falsehood that remains in the temple. As the Master said, “Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.” (Matthew 15:11)
As the soul cooperates in the process of incremental cleansing through repentance, the soul walks the path towards the fulfillment of Christ’s commandment, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48)
By participating in the process of repentance in this situation, Peterhuff, you will be taking an important step on the true path that will one day lead to your actual salvation.
Making the effort, day by day, to align one’s behavior, as necessary, to the spirit of truth, this is where the path of salvation begins. And this is where the path of love begins as well, as the soul must love truth first, before it can love anything, or anyone else, including God.
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p.s. The people who actually KNOW the Master Jesus Christ, are those who actually participate in this incremental cleansing process through repentance, day by day. They know him through the impact of the spiritual energy he sends into the temple to remove the offending spirit. Those to whom Jesus refers, that he knew not, are those who REFUSE to participate in this incremental cleansing process. What is the force, inside the heart and mind which refuses to participate in this incremental cleansing process? It is pride, which as it is written, goes before the fall.
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Hi GoldenEagles,
ReplyDeleteGE: "What you have said there is not a truthful representation of events."
GE: "The truth is, that you included in one of your comments a personally destructive reference to my family, and I asked you to remove that. And that is the only thing that I asked you to remove. When it became clear that you did not know how to remove it on your own, I explained to you how to remove it, and when you finally removed it, you deleted ALL of your posts in that discussion, every one, a sign of an Rcofield style temper tantrum operating in the background."
That is your perception. No, you are twisting the facts. It is true that I did use a reference to your family in portraying an event to show that wrongful action requires justice and God would not be God to let evil go unpunished. It illustrates that a good and loving God is just in condemning evil and wickedness. I used your family to bring home this point to you. I have no ill-will towards any of them. But you twisted that by my point into a personal attach against them. Why would I want to harm your family? That would be un-Christian. The remark was in poor taste, admitted, but it brought home the point that love requires justice. What kind of a god would let evil go unpunished? Not the one true and living God. You could not grasp this point until I gave this illustration. By your response it showed that your theology was inconsistent. You want love without justice. Without justice how can there be goodness, and without goodness how can there be love? And as such God is not unjust or unloving in condemning billions. They have sinned and done what is evil in His sight.
Each one of us is getting what he/she justly deserves unless God shows His abundant mercy. We do not deserve grace. "There is none righteous, not even one." (Romans 3:10)
What does that statement mean to you. Again you have chosen not to reply to my questions in this series of posts, just as you continued to do with RCofield. Instead, with him you went off on your personal rant about John 14:12 that you are taking out of context. RCofield repeatedly tried to bring you back to the salient topic, but you were bent in spouting off page after page, yard after yard of misinterpretation. It became pointless in responding to you. That is the way I fell too, except that if anyone were to read this, and I remained silent, they could possibly think that your points were valid, in which they are not.
PART 2
ReplyDeleteGE: "So even if you did have something to say about love and justice, you deleted it."
I'll say it again; love and justice go hand in hand. For some God gives them their just dessert to show that He is just; for others He gives them His grace in Jesus Christ to show His kindness. He is under no obligation to show a guilty creature mercy, but He does in small ways to both the wicked and those in Christ each and every day, because He is loving and in control of all situations.
Furthermore, as I showed in my post last night,
"Everyone who does evil HATES THE LIGHT, and WILL NOT COME INTO THE LIGHT for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the TRUTH comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has BEEN DONE THROUGH GOD." (John 3:20-21)
Why don't you try to exegete the passage in light of its context for a change instead of doing what the JW's so often do and that is when a passage is presented they dance all over the ballroom by changing the subject or skip all over Scripture to make the passage say what they want it to say through the use of other passages.
God is capable of communicating to His creatures in a way that we can understand Him, just like you and I are capable of communicating with each other. Words in context have meaning so let's look at the meaning of that passage.
Unless God draws a person they will not come to saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ because they don't want to. They have already made their choice (Ephesians 2:1-3).
You are either in Christ or you are in your own works salvation, the same thing the Jews were trying to do so ineffectively. From everything you have revealed you are in your own works righteousness. The Saviour’s sacrifice is of no value unless it is received by faith - not works. The works come AFTER salvation and it is something that God works in the Christian, not something the Christian works of his own accord. This is a point that you fail continually to grasp, as evidenced in your other yards of material, some of which states that Gandhi was a good man in and of himself, or others that suggest that works and obedience to the law are something that we work hand in hand with God to attain salvation, or that we are reincarnated until we get it right. You mix Eastern religion with Christianity and get scriptural teaching confused.
GE: "Regarding this situation, I would like to point out to you, that the manner in which a person will adhere to the standards of truth in their personal behaviour and relationships, has a direct bearing on their capacity to discern truth in the spiritual domain. If a person will play fast and loose with the truth in their personal behaviour and relationships then their perception of spiritual truth will be correspondingly corrupted."
And why do you think that you are the one who is adhering to the standard of truth? You twist and turn God's word at every avenue. You say things that are exactly the opposite of what Scripture reveals and then say also that you trust His word as truth.
PART 3
ReplyDeleteGE: "The Master Jesus spoke to this when he said, “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” (John 4:24) In other words, your mind and emotions must operate within the domain of truth, if you are to comprehend God in an accurate manner."
That comes from the Spirit of truth and the Spirit does not contradict Scripture for He is the Revealer of Scripture. Men wrote as carried along by the Spirit of God. His yes is not 'yes' and 'no' for He is not a God of confusion, yet you make Him this way.
GE: "In the above statement, Peterhuff, you have expressed the spirit of falsehood, and if you allow the spirit of falsehood to remain in your heart and mind, it will distort your perception of the Reality of God. Your biblical interpretations will continue to be grossly inaccurate."
I have done no such thing. All I did was quote Scripture - John 4:23-24 that says that true worshipers must come to Him in spirit and in truth. That can only happen if His Spirit is with you. "The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned." (1 Corinthians 2:14) And yet, "The spiritual man makes judgments about all things" for he has the mind of Christ.
GE: "This is an opportunity for you to ask the Master Jesus Christ to take that spirit of falsehood from you. That is how we apply the principle of repentance. When we find the spirit of rebellion in us, we admit to it, and we repent, and we ask the Master Jesus Christ to remove it. From that point forward, we move on a little bit cleaner."
Maybe you should practice what you preach.
GE: "To initiate this cleansing process, you must admit that your representation of the facts was false, and that my representation of the facts is accurate. Once you admit to the truth in this regard, you must then apologize for telling the falsehood, as this is part of the process of allowing the spirit of repentance (which is the spirit of truth) to flow through you."
Your doctrine is very misguided. You seek to place on men the very thing that they can never or ever could live up to outside of Christ and that is their merit working hand in hand with God to achieve salvation. You first need the work of God in order to bring about good works that He prepares for the believer.
Your religion is just like every other man made religion if it is works based instead of Christ based.
"The work of God is this: to believe in the One He has sent." (John 6:29) It is not Moses (who gave the law) who gives you the true bread from heaven, but Jesus Christ. Show me a man who can live up to the works of the law outside of Jesus Christ. Gandhi could not. You want to heap such a burden on others.
I'm out of time for a few days.
MrMEANER: "Why would God give order to have the temple restored, have Cyrus send some of the captive Judeans back to Judea...as a fulfillment of his own prophecy, only to become a representation of Satan?
ReplyDeletePH:I'm not following you. Please expand upon this thought
The rebuilding of the temple was a fulfillment of prophecy.
It wasn't described as a negative development.
In fact, the prophecy dealing with the rebuilding of the temple utilized one of the most obvious typologies ,of Christ in the entire Bible. This typology is completely unrelated to Christ's first advent as God's own sacrificial Lamb. This typology contains fore-shadowing references dealing with Christ's second advent as the right hand of God, to deliver justice, gather his elect to Israel, and to be recognized as God, or (in the case of Cyrus)representing God...even by His enemies.
It should also be noted that these references to Cyrus were written some 140 years before Cyrus was born. Equally of interest is the fact that these prophecies dealing with the rebuilding of the temple, were written long before the temple would be looted and ruined by the Babylonians.
Cyrus (meaning the sun) was named by God, Himself. Cyrus was charged to be a type of savior to Judah. It might help to cover those two prophetic chapters that deal with Cyrus.
These chapters also touch on the mind-set of those who will follow those, who will choose to replace God, with a work of their own creation.
I would like to go over the 44th and 45th chapters of Isaiah sometime this week, as soon as I get a chance.
Like you, I'm pretty tied up.
I probably won't get to it tonight.
MrMeaner
(I'm having trouble signing in, again)
Hi MrMeaner,
ReplyDeleteA few more questions for you to solve while I wait for you to develop Isaiah 44-45. I still don't see what you are getting at with Satan after reading through the two chapters. Anyway, in Matthew 5:17-18 Jesus said:
"Do not think that I have come to abolish the LAW or the PROPHETS; I have not come to abolish THEM but TO FULFILL them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappears, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until EVERYTHING IS ACCOMPLISHED."
Who/what is the 'them' that He came to fulfill? Does the everything include fulfillment of everything the prophets spoke of also?
If you think that one jot or tittle is still to be accomplished that means that you, MrMeaner, are still living under the old covenant with its sacrificial system, because it was part and parcel of the Law - part of the old creation, which is not abolished in your view because there remains many 'jots and tittles."
Yet He said that not until heaven and earth disappears will one letter of the law disappear. This is a real problem for your theology.
I'm borrowing the points/illustrations Don Preston uses in "The Elements Shall Melt With Fervent Heat", p.149. The law was a "yoke" around the necks of the disciples that neither they nor the fathers were able to bear (See Acts 15:10). Paul describes life under the law as the body of death (see Romans 7:24 and its context). He said that by the works of the law no one would be justified (see Galatians 2:16). Paul says all those under the law are under the curse and also that the law could not give life and righteousness (see Galatians 3:10; 20-21). All those under the law were in bondage (Gal. 5:1). It was the ministration of death (2 Corinthians 3:7). Because God found fault with the first covenant, since it could not take away sins (Heb. 8:6; 10:1-4) it was soon to disappear (Heb. 8:13)
Now in Acts 3:17-26 we are told:
"Now brothers, I know that YOU acted in ignorance, as did YOUR LEADERS. But this is how God FULFILLED [past tense] what He had foretold through ALL THE PROPHETS, saying that His Christ would suffer. Repent then, and turn to God, so that YOUR sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, and that He may send the Christ, who HAS BEEN APPOINTED FOR YOU - even Jesus. He must remain in heaven UNTIL the time comes for God to RESTORE EVERYTHING, as He promised long ago THROUGH THE HOLY PROPHETS. For Moses said, the Lord YOUR God will raise up FOR YOU a prophet like me from AMONG YOUR OWN PEOPLE; YOU must listen to everything He tells YOU. Anyone who does not listen to Him will be completely cut off from among HIS PEOPLE.
Indeed, ALL THE PROPHETS from Samuel on, AS MANY AS HAVE SPOKEN, have foretold THESE DAYS. And YOU are heirs of the prophets and of the covenant God made with YOUR fathers. He said to Abraham, 'Through YOUR offspring all peoples of the earth will be blessed.' When God raised up His servant, He sent Him first to YOU to bless YOU by turning each of YOU from YOUR wicked ways."
PART 2
ReplyDeleteHere are your questions.
1) Since the OT law could not pass away until it was all fulfilled and since in Acts 3:20-21 we are told how God fulfilled what He foretold and that a time was coming in which He would restore all things (i.e., everything would be accomplished/fulfilled that was spoken of through the prophets; you might even say a restoration in the sense of a new heavens and a new earth, the home of righteousness), then what are "these days" referring to in verse 24?
2) Who are the YOU spoken of in this passage from Acts 3:17-26? Are they Jews or are the YOU you and I?
3)Since the old covenant was still in effect until the destruction of the temple in AD70 (see Heb. 9:6-10), because they were still practicing sacrifices, do you now see the possibility that Jesus' coming was in AD 70?
Can you see how every promise of God is yes in Christ Jesus, or how we have received EVERY spiritual blessing in Christ (2 Corinth. 1:20; Eph. 1:3)? It is pretty hard if we are still living under the old covenant, since Jesus said that every jot and tittle would have to be accomplished.
So the OT law could not pass away until it was all fulfilled (Matthew 5:17-18). This becomes a problem that you need to clarify then. Which covenant are we living under? If the new then why is not everything accomplished that has been spoken of through the prophets that Christ said would have to be accomplished?
Hi MrMeaner,
ReplyDeleteAnother question, what was to be restored?
I can't seem to find any free time this week, so let me just give you the short version of the point I was going to make with Cyrus.
ReplyDeleteCyrus was chosen to return many of Judah to Israel, and to order the temple rebuilt.
Why would God order Judah to be returned, and the temple to be rebuilt, if that temple's future destruction was (in your mind) representative of the crushing of Satan?
You're saying that God ordered the re-building of the temple, and the return of some of Judah to Israel, then destroyed the product of his own commandment, and cursed the people he ordered to be returned, as a judgment against Satan.
You seem to be saying that those conditions that were a product of God's own will, represent the works of Satan.
You're at least saying that the destruction of that that God commanded be done, signified the crushing of Satan.
Is Ch.44
[26] That confirmeth the word of his servant, and performeth the counsel of his messengers; that saith to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be inhabited; and to the cities of Judah, Ye shall be built, and I will raise up the decayed places thereof:
[27] That saith to the deep, Be dry, and I will dry up thy rivers:
[28] That saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure: even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built; and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid.
Is Ch.45
[1] Thus saith the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut;
[2] I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron:
[3] And I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the LORD, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel.
[4] For Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel mine elect, I have even called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me.
I don't get the impression that God was returning Jews back to Israel, so he could curse them all, and have another future empire destroy them.
(all of which destroyed Satan...how, again?)
I also wanted to cover the references to idolatry in Ch.44, and how they apply on a global scale
and, some of the remarkable similarities between what is written about Cyrus, and what is written about Christ.
Maybe I'll get a chance to a bit later.
Also, the Law is the five books of Moses.
I've already explained that the only thing that was fulfilled in the law, is the sacrificial ordinances.
Without the law, you could just deem whatever act you choose as right or wrong.
To sin is to transgress the law.
If you have broken one of the laws in the five books of Moses(not sacrificial ordinances, but laws) you have sinned.
To do away with the law is to do away with the distinction between right and wrong.
"In Revelation, inspiration depicts the imminent consummation of God's scheme of Redemption. Satan has attempted to kill Jesus."
ReplyDeleteWell, yes. But, it was written that Christ would be sacrificed in the OT, so while it's true that Satan's bringing the act about, with evil intent, allows God to destroy Satan, in accordance with his written law....it's also true that God intended for it to happen.
No reason to curse his own chosen people for being present when he fulfilled his own promise. Satan was the one who sealed his own fate.
I think it's interesting that Satan's lack of understanding God's word, caused his defeat, and actually rendered his intended victim "worthy of loosening the seven seals thereof", whereby God can once again, use Satan's ignorance of His word, and his desire to rule the earth...to destroy his works, punish his apostate children, and allow the original victim to set up His rule on earth.
Every time Satan says "check", God makes one move, and says "checkmate", mirroring in a successful fashion, what Satan fails to do.
MrMeaner
BTW, what happened to Randy?
ReplyDeleteI haven't been going to WaPo since the commies banned me, but I don't recall having seen any of his posts there in quite a while.
I hope all is well with him.
MrMeaner
http://www.eschatology.org/all-articles-articles-211/28-fall-of-jerusalem/364-eusebius-on-the-destruction-of-jerusalem
ReplyDeletehttp://www.eschatology.org/all-articles-articles-211/28-fall-of-jerusalem/357-the-siege-of-jerusalem
http://www.eschatology.org/all-articles-articles-211/28-fall-of-jerusalem/360-the-destruction-of-jerusalem
http://www.eschatology.org/all-articles-articles-211/28-fall-of-jerusalem/34-more-on-heaven-and-earth
http://www.eschatology.org/all-articles-articles-211/31-last-days/53-are-we-living-in-the-last-days
Hi MrMeaner,
ReplyDeleteRandy, Walter, where are you?
I'm not sure what happened to Randy, or Walter. I felt that Walter's argument was poor and Randy was really cutting the ground out from under him and exposing his underbelly, so when we changed from the Washington Post to here it gave him a chance to jettison out of here.
Have you seen Walter corresponding on the Washington Post? I haven't been back since they changed the formate. I hate the new formate.
I went to the website that Randy gave me and could not find his name under the pastors of the church, although some of his messages are still on You Tube. I thought he was excellent at getting behind the issues and relating them to the Bible. Hope to see him back. GoldenEagles was really trying to egg him on with his posts here.
Hi MrMeaner,
ReplyDeleteI think you are confusing the two issues.
MrMEANER: "No reason to curse his own chosen people for being present when he fulfilled his own promise. Satan was the one who sealed his own fate."
His own people were the ones who rejected their Messiah, put Him to death and heaped up their sins to the max by killing the prophets that God sent to them. (See Matthew 23:23-38) They were the 'stiff-necked' people. They were receiving all the prophets had foretold of them that was yet to be fulfilled.
"When YOU see Jerusalem being surrounded by armies, YOU will know that its DESOLATION is NEAR....This is the time of punishment IN FULFILLMENT OF ALL THAT HAS BEEN WRITTEN." (Luke 21:20, 22)
As for Satan, what was written in Genesis 3:15 was being fulfilled,
"And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will crush your head, and you will strike His heel."
"The God of peace will SOON crush Satan under your feet." (Romans 16:20a)
I have run out of time.
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ReplyDelete.
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Come Let Us Reason Together
Sayeth the Lord: Though Your
Sins Be as Scarlet They Will
Be as Wool - Part 1
Peterhuff, I appreciate you taking the time to set forth your three-part statement above, in response to which, I would like to remind you, that both you and I need to keep our attention focused on your central dilemma, which can be explained simply as the demonic force pressing upon your feeling world the (baseless) fear of eternal damnation, and that this is something you can overcome, once you get your attention properly focused on it.
I would remind all readers, even those who don’t believe in the concept of eternal damnation, that whenever our attention goes in the direction of this diabolical concept, we need to be pro-active, and instantly remind ourselves that the Love of God, that infinite ocean of compassion, mercy, and forgiveness, which defines the whole identify of God, would never allow the eternal damnation of anyone, not even His worst enemies. And that those who harbor this fear (of eternal damnation) are being manipulated into harboring a mental and emotional construct which is in direct conflict with, and in diametrical opposition to, the Love of God. Indeed, we need to realize, that when we have a very strong fear, its takes its place at the center of our attention, and becomes the central reference point for the mind. The fear becomes a counterfeit god.
Now, this fear, which the demonic force presses upon your feeling world (peterhuff) in such a powerful manner, has become a counterfeit wisdom in your spiritual universe. Even a counterfeit center of authority. In other words, it operates within your mind as a reference point for what you believe to be true, and your intellectual machinery, as it churns away, produces streams of ideas which conforms to, supports, and celebrates that fear. In other words, your intellectual machinery is churning out doctrine which honors that fear, respects that fear, and justifies that fear. If you stop and think about it, the fear itself, has become your god, as you give it higher priority over the Real God who is composed purely of LOVE, and in whose presence, we have nothing to fear.
It appears that every thought that you have in the spiritual domain, is part of this process of justifying this fear. This fear has become like a solid gold bar at the center of your mind, which has been deftly switched, under your own nose, for the true Ark of the Covenant.
This is a very interesting dilemma for those who are trapped in it, and a very interesting phenomena for those who are observing it.
We see that the intellectual machinery of the individual trapped in this fear, is actually being used, by the force of fear itself, to make the bars of the prison cell thicker and stronger. In most cases we would expect that the prisoner has smuggled in a saw blade in a loaf of bread, and when the guard isn’t looking, the prisoner will take out the saw blade, and continue to saw away at the iron bars, with the idea of finally escaping from his prison cell. But in this situation, the soul inside of the cell is actually HELPING in the process of making the prison cell more secure! It as if the soul is running an iron foundry and forge in the middle of his prison cell, and works day and night fashioning ever stronger and thicker bars which he is then welding onto the inside surface of his cell. Yes, this is what is happening. The intellectual machinery produces more and more elements of respect, honor, and justification, in relationship to the fear itself.
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ReplyDelete.
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Come Let Us Reason Together
Sayeth the Lord: Though Your
Sins Be as Scarlet They Will
Be as Wool - Part 2
The main problem here, is that the person inside the prison cell of fear has no way (at present) to SEE where this fear is coming from. The person has no way (at present) to see the demonic entities that stand close by, projecting this powerful fear energy, as a cattlemen would use an electric cattle prod to get the cattle to move in the direction he wants.
The only way (at present) for the prisoner to discern the depth of his dilemma, is to listen to the people around him, who are telling him that his behavior is beginning to contradict the Teachings of Christ in more and egregious ways. Behavior patterns which contradict the Teachings of Christ, are always the sign of demonic manipulation, not necessarily possession, but manipulation at minimum. But when the demonic manipulation situation is not addressed, the possession phase will come soon enough.
As an example, PeterHuff, in your statement above, you make the following statement: We do not deserve grace. This belief is a classic illustration of demonic projection that contradictions the teachings of Jesus Christ, and that fact that you believe it, and speak it, should serve as prima facie evidence for you that you are allowing demonic manipulation to enter into your spiritual belief structures. This projection of demonic condemnation is the central electrode of the fear equation.
All of the following statements made by the Master Jesus Christ, indicate God’s Love for the people of this earth. The testimony is clear.
John 3:16 - ”For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
Luke 12:32 - “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”
Luke 12:32 - ”Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
Matthew 10:31 - ”Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.”
Luke 11:11-13 - ”If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?”
John 14:15-17 - ”If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.
If the comforter is not grace, what is grace?
When you say, Peterhuff, that "We do not deserve grace", you are speaking a belief that contradicts the above teachings given by Jesus Christ. Intellectually you can see clearly that such a belief (“We do not deserve grace”) contradicts these teachings. But the question is, can you escape the dark power of this oppressive sense of worthlessness before God which is being forced upon you, and which you have accepted for far too long? The answer is NO, because it is being forced on you be a demonic presence, and has become so intertwined in your belief structures. This is the central electrode of your fear.
For of a truth, if you knew that God Loved YOU, which Jesus Teaches, then you would have no fear. You would have a shield that would protect you from the demonic projection of fear.
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ReplyDelete.
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Indeed, if you knew that God Loved YOU, which Jesus Teaches, and which is the TRUTH, then you would have no fear. With that knowledge tou would have a shield that would protect you from the demonic projection of fear. Yes, with that knowledge infused into your mind, your mind would be incapable of even accepting the idea that God could condemn you (or anyone else) to eternal damnation for ANY REASON. Indeed you would understand that LOVE would never allow it.
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ReplyDelete.
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The first step to take in the direction of freedom from fear, is to realize and understand, that if YOU (Peterhuff) are Loved by God, that he would never condemn you to eternal damnation. You are fully authorized by the Lord Christ, to form in your imagination this scenario, where the One Most High God Loves YOU, because that is what Jesus Christ teaches. You are authorized by Jesus himself to entertain that idea, and to dwell on that idea, and to seek from Him clear and unmistakeable internal affirmation of that idea. Seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you.
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"His own people were the ones who rejected their Messiah, put Him to death and heaped up their sins to the max by killing the prophets that God sent to them. (See Matthew 23:23-38) They were the 'stiff-necked' people. They were receiving all the prophets had foretold of them that was yet to be fulfilled"
ReplyDeleteAs Mr.Spock would say, That's not logical.
They had already killed the prophets, before they were taken to Babylon. If that would cause God to reneg on his promises, he would have destroyed them in captivity. He certainly wouldn't have brought them back, and ordered the temple to be rebuilt.
As I mentioned before, It was well established in the OT, that Christ would be sacrificed.
It had to happen. In one of the crucifixion Psalms, this is written concerning Christ;
"For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard."
...(referring to Christ's words on the cross, written in vs.1)
If Christ's crucifixion initiated any curse, it is directed toward those who will stumble due to a lack of understanding God's word.
You can notice the warning signs given to those who could understand the Word, even during Christ's trial and crucifixion.
You have to wonder how many noticed, that the priests were offering them a choice between Jesus, who was being sentenced to die for claiming to be the Son of God...and the murderer Barabbas, whose name means son of god.
I'm sure some noticed, and probably removed themselves from the group.
The same was probably true among those hearing Christ's words on the cross.
While some mocked him, and thought he was calling for Elijah, (Not realizing that he said "Eli", rather than Elijah) others heard his words, and surely realized that they were just witness to the fufillment of Psalms 22.
It certainly convinced the centurian who stood guard.
Have you seen Walter corresponding on the Washington Post?
ReplyDelete___________
I have, but it has been a while.
I had hoped that some of the agnostc/ atheists from WaPo would be curious about the discussion here, and might even have questions or comments that we could address.
I don't guess that's gonna happen.
I do have friends of faith, who are keeping up with the discussion, but so far they are just observing.
MrMeaner
Hi GoldenEagles,
ReplyDeleteYou are heaping a lot of your own ideas on me in your attempt to make my beliefs fit your paradigm. And I would like to go through your list of Scriptures, but I'm in a time crunch until Monday so you will have to wait. I might have time for a few tidbits until them.
You said:" As an example, PeterHuff, in your statement above, you make the following statement: We do not deserve grace. This belief is a classic illustration of demonic projection that contradictions the teachings of Jesus Christ, and that fact that you believe it, and speak it, should serve as prima facie evidence for you that you are allowing demonic manipulation to enter into your spiritual belief structures. This projection of demonic condemnation is the central electrode of the fear equation."
No, it is not demonic projection that contradicts the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ.
"the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness." (Romans 1:18)
"What shall we conclude then? Are we any better? Not at all! We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin. As it is written:
'There is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one...." (Romans 3:9-12)
But for those in Christ "He does not treat us as our sins deserve." (Ps. 103:10)
Do you think that anyone with a righteousness of their own rather than that of Christ's deserves God's favor? Part of the cost of disciple is abandoning your own self-righteousness; your own self-sufficiency. If you think that you can work hand in hand with God in producing righteousness then Christ's sacrifice has no merit for you. Remember to seek first His kingdom and HIS righteousness.
"I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing." (Gal. 2:21)
"But now a righteousness from God, apart from the law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus." (Romans 3:21-24)
"God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God." (2 Cor. 5:21)
"and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ - the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith." (Phil. 3:9)
That is the problem with your 'theory' about all those world religions and people outside of Christ like Gandhi; they rely on their own works righteousness. They want to come before the pure, holy, perfectly righteous God on their own merit. Christ's sacrifice has no merit for them. How can a just Judge condone evil? How can He forgive sins outside of Christ?
Adam received a free spirit, without sin, but he chose to sin and contaminated the spirit of all those who would come after him, for they inherited from Him and are represented in him.
ReplyDeleteOn the cross Jesus took all the sins of the world upon Himself and bore the sins of all those in Adam who would believe in Him and His death, even death on a cross, the cursed tree. But Christ, in Himself lived a perfectly righteous life before the Father, something Adam or no one else has never done. God could condemn sin in Him and yet as a Human Being give back His life because of His purity in Spirit. In giving of His Spirit to us, in the rebirth, regeneration, being born from above, being born again, or whatever else you want to call it, He raises us from the dead in Christ and gives us new life. This is through faith also, that God supplies, for all the glory is His, just as all of creation is for His glory and pleasure. Life is not all about us, it is about Him. He is life.
In and of ourselves we have rightly earned condemnation. But Jesus could take our unrighteousness upon Himself and condemn our unrighteousness in dying in our place, the righteous for the unrighteous. He who knew no sin became sin for us. God is justified in raising Him from the dead because He is the spotless Lamb. Outside of Christ we are still in the first Adam. The Law has nothing on Jesus that can condemn Him. Yet He suffered the wrath of God in our place to make us right with God. Jesus took it upon Himself to obtain righteousness for us!
I'll get to your statement later by going through some of the Scriptures you list. You said: "All of the following statements made by the Master Jesus Christ, indicate God’s Love for the people of this earth. The testimony is clear."
Hi GoldenEagles,
ReplyDeleteGE: "Now, this fear, which the demonic force presses upon your feeling world (peterhuff) in such a powerful manner, has become a counterfeit wisdom in your spiritual universe. Even a counterfeit center of authority. In other words, it operates within your mind as a reference point for what you believe to be true, and your intellectual machinery, as it churns away, produces streams of ideas which conforms to, supports, and celebrates that fear. In other words, your intellectual machinery is churning out doctrine which honors that fear, respects that fear, and justifies that fear. If you stop and think about it, the fear itself, has become your god, as you give it higher priority over the Real God who is composed purely of LOVE, and in whose presence, we have nothing to fear."
GoldenEagles where do you get this stuff from? You are the one who is fixated on demonology, not me. Christ has won the victory over Satan. So far you have shown over and over again that you can't exegete Scripture.
As for your list, that you say my statements contradict the teachings of Christ. These are teachings that you don't even understand.
GE: "All of the following statements made by the Master Jesus Christ, indicate God’s Love for the people of this earth. The testimony is clear."
# 1) John 3:16 - ”For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
What does God mean by the word 'world?' Does He mean the world of men, the physical globe, the world system. There are various meanings. Is God speaking of the 'world' without distinction or the world qualitatively, such as all kinds or all classes of men - young/old, rich/poor, Jews/Gentles, men/women, men from every nation, of every language, etc. (Revelations 5:9). You take it to mean every single individual which is not possible when you compare John 3:16 to other Scriptures on the subject of men and salvation.
Here is a different type of world, the world of ideas, the world of values.
"Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him." (1 John 2:15)
# 2) Luke 12:32 - “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”
Luke 12:32, I'm not familiar with that one. Try Luke 2:14:
"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to MEN ON WHOM HIS FAVOR RESTS."
Did you get that? Men on whom HIS favor rests. That is not everyone as I can show you one zillion passages that express this, only those in Christ.
# 3) Luke 12:32 - ”Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
Yes, little flock. "Enter through the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad ids the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." (Matthew 7:13-14)
Out of time.
Hi GoldenEagles,
ReplyDeleteTo finish up your list of Scriptures,
# 4) Matthew 10:31 - ”Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.”
Why don't you pay equal attention to the verses that bookmark this verse.
# 5) Luke 11:11-13 - ”If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?”
Yes, to those who ask. But not all are children of the Father. Jesus taught that one must be born again to be part of God's family. In fact, John 1:12 says, "Yet to all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the RIGHT TO BECOME CHILDREN OF GOD-"
To those who don't receive Him, they are lost.
Jesus revealed that the Pharisees were illegitimate children, and called them children of the devil. (John 8:39-44)
# 6) John 14:15-17 - ”If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.
Yes, the world cannot receive the Spirit.
GE: "If the comforter is not grace, what is grace?
The Comforter is the third person of the Trinity, who has the attributes of grace and mercy and love as well as righteousness and justice.
GE: "When you say, Peterhuff, that "We do not deserve grace", you are speaking a belief that contradicts the above teachings given by Jesus Christ."
Here you go again GoldenEagles, taking a Scripture out of context and making it say what you want it to, fitting it to your theological ideas rather than getting from it the Author's intent.
Notice that the Comforter - HE - will abide with them, HE dwells with them and in them. You are trying to make a quality - grace - replace the Person who is the Spirit of truth, God the Spirit.
PART 2
ReplyDeleteGE: "Intellectually you can see clearly that such a belief (“We do not deserve grace”) contradicts these teachings."
No I can't because it doesn't. God is perfection and only in the Son on our behalf can we be perfect. Once, just once, you have broken a commandment of God's you stand guilty before Him because He is also the righteous Judge. Have you ever stolen, lied, dishonored your parents, coveted your neighbors wife or goods or anything that belongs to you neighbor, or committed adultery even in your mind, GoldenEagles? If just one of these then your merit won't cut it with God because He is pure and holy and righteous. There is nothing our feeble human attempts can do to merit anything noteworthy outside of Christ; Him in us and His work at work in us. Grace is God's unmerited favor. It cannot be earned. It is a gift. Only those with an ear can hear the word and call of God.
GE: "But the question is, can you escape the dark power of this oppressive sense of worthlessness before God which is being forced upon you, and which you have accepted for far too long?"
Only in Christ and through faith in the grace of God at work in my life. He has nailed every offense of mine to the cross. There is no guilt for those in Christ (Romans 3:26; 8:1). I am justified freely by the Son.
You should actually read your Bible GoldenEagles.
GE: "The answer is NO, because it is being forced on you be a demonic presence, and has become so intertwined in your belief structures. This is the central electrode of your fear."
How can it be? Jesus has crushed Satan.
You make all these statements about me on a faulty understanding of Scripture.
GE: "For of a truth, if you knew that God Loved YOU, which Jesus Teaches, then you would have no fear. You would have a shield that would protect you from the demonic projection of fear."
You are the one projecting all these demonic projections on me. I know God's love for me. He has shown me in His Son!
Hi MrMeaner,
ReplyDeleteME: "His own people were the ones who rejected their Messiah, put Him to death and heaped up their sins to the max by killing the prophets that God sent to them. (See Matthew 23:23-38) They were the 'stiff-necked' people. They were receiving all the prophets had foretold of them that was yet to be fulfilled"
MrMEANER: “As Mr.Spock would say, That's not logical.
They had already killed the prophets, before they were taken to Babylon. If that would cause God to reneg on his promises, he would have destroyed them in captivity. He certainly wouldn't have brought them back, and ordered the temple to be rebuilt.”
Not all of them. Christ had come, whom they would also kill.
These people in this generation were heaping the sins upon themselves.
“Therefore I am sending you prophets and wise men and teachers. Some of them you WILL kill and CRUCIFY; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. And so upon you will come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Able to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. I tell you the truth, all this will come upon this generation.” (Matthew 23:34-36)
Why don’t you try to exegete this passage in its context?
Remember the prophets of the past? Well the author of Hebrews makes this point,
“In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in THESE LAST DAYS He has spoken to us by His Son…” (1:1-2)
MrMEANER: “As I mentioned before, It was well established in the OT, that Christ would be sacrificed.
It had to happen. In one of the crucifixion Psalms, this is written concerning Christ;
"For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard."
...(referring to Christ's words on the cross, written in vs.1)”
I’m not following your line of thought.
MrMEANER: “If Christ's crucifixion initiated any curse, it is directed toward those who will stumble due to a lack of understanding God's word.”
“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.” We ate of the cursed tree in the Garden in Adam. The curse of Adam was death. The Mosaic law was a school teacher to bring us to Christ. “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.” He took our curse upon Himself. Those in Christ are crucified with Him on the cross. He fulfilled the law on our behalf, took our penalty for breaking the law upon Himself then died in our place. So He suffered the wrath that was due us.
MrMEANER: “You can notice the warning signs given to those who could understand the Word, even during Christ's trial and crucifixion.”
MrMeaner: “You have to wonder how many noticed, that the priests were offering them a choice between Jesus, who was being sentenced to die for claiming to be the Son of God...and the murderer Barabbas, whose name means son of god.
I'm sure some noticed, and probably removed themselves from the group.”
I’m not following where you are going here?
MrMEANER: “The same was probably true among those hearing Christ's words on the cross.
While some mocked him, and thought he was calling for Elijah, (Not realizing that he said "Eli", rather than Elijah) others heard his words, and surely realized that they were just witness to the fulfillment of Psalms 22.
It certainly convinced the centurian who stood guard.”
So what is your point?
PS, I'll wait for you to catch up before I go further.
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ReplyDelete.
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“Get Out of My Temple, in
the Name of Jesus Christ,
That which Denies the Truth
of God’s Love for Me” - Part 1
Peterhuff, as we proceed along this line of discussion, I would encourage you to adopt the above affirmation, and use it religiously at every opportunity. If you cannot shout it in full voice, at least begin to whisper it. And as you do that, you will gain courage to speak louder.
Regarding your post of June 23, 2011 10:14 PM, I appreciate the fact that you are taking the time to confront my ideas as to what constitutes your central dilemma. As before, if we are to make progress in overcoming this problem, it is important for both you and I to continue to keep our attention focused upon the nature of this central dilemma, which can be explained simply, as I noted before, as the demonic force pressing upon your feeling world the (BASELESS) fear of eternal damnation, which places your mind in opposition to the Truth of God’s Love, and that this is something you can overcome, once you get your attention properly focused on it, and begin the process of looking for solutions.
Because your central reference point is FEAR, rather than LOVE, the machinery of your intellect consistently produces error as its output. (I will present another example below) Where our behavior is based on error, we live in the domain of sin. The solution to this dilemma is to seek the assistance of the Master Jesus Christ in the present moment, to find and anchor the reference point of Love - - - as this Love is the only power that can cast out fear.
(As this Love is Truth, the intellect that uses this Truth as its reference point will produce an output of truth, more often than not.)
Please make note of the fact that as a matter of divine principle, I am affirming that the Master Jesus Christ has all power in the present moment as the sole revelator of God’s Love to embodied mankind (“I AM the Light of the World”) the revelation of which, when called forth, is the only power that can cast out Fear.
Given the fact that fear has become a counterfeit wisdom in your world, to step away from it, in the direction of love, I understand that it is essential that you must become, at some point, sincerely skeptical as to the veracity of the fear-driven output of your own intellect. I will try to be helpful in that regard, i.e. in adopting an appropriate posture of skepticism before the output of your fear-driven intellect. Indeed, you can, and should, become even embarrassed concerning the extent to which the fear-driven intellect can produce ideas that contradict scripture in the most egregious manner.
Don’t get me wrong. Your intellect is churning away the best it can under the circumstances, but it is very much like the operation of a computer. You put garbage in, you get garbage out. The garbage in this case, is the pressure of fear upon the intellect, which pushes the mind mechanisms to adhere to the reference point of fear, rather than the reference point of love.
All you need to do, to get things back in their proper order, is to change your reference point, from that of fear, to that of love, according to the Commandment of Christ.
Now, to further illustrate the nearly uniform propensity of the fear-driven intellect to output error, I would present the following additional example of an egregious error output by your intellect.
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ReplyDelete.
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“Get Out of My Temple, in
the Name of Jesus Christ,
That which Denies the Truth
of God’s Love for Me” - Part 2
Peterhuff says, “No, it is not demonic projection that contradicts the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
When you wrote that down, I suppose some part of you wanted it to be true, as the objective, at the moment, was simply to deny the truth which I spoke. But another part of you must have known that by asserting this falsehood, that you were engaged in making a dead letter out of a broad swathe of scriptural teaching.
First, we find, in the Book of Genesis, that the power of serpent was behind the original fall.
Second, we see that Jesus Christ himself was tempted of the devil for 40 days.
Third, we find that Jesus Christ warned the Apostle Peter on more than one occasion, that Satan was working to bring Peter over to his side.
Fourth, we see in the Book of Revelation that the fallen angels were cast into the earth. And they are not sitting around just twiddling their thumbs.
Fifth, and we see St. Paul referencing many times the principle that Satan is the source of temptation.
Peterhuff, I hope you can see in this, that in your fear, you allow the spirit of the demonic realm to work through your mouth, pushing you into saying things which benefit their cause, and not the cause of Christ. Certainly denying the link between the demonic realm and temptation and sin, works to the benefit of the demonic realm, which as a result of your efforts, can hide the longer behind such smoke screens of falsehood.
Moreover, you need to come to terms with this truth, that your fear is so clearly expressed in your whole approach to scriptural interpretation, which more often than not will place what most people see as outlandish limitations on the common sense meaning of the words of Christ. What is the source of these outlandish limitations? It is FEAR.
FEAR allows you only the most narrow and literal interpretation of any passage. It is like you are walking along a narrow scaffolding that purportedly leads you across the very fires of eternal damnation, bubbling, hissing, and steaming below your feet. Your scaffolding is so narrow, that if you depart one inch from the literal, you actually FEAR falling into the fires of eternal damnation.
I imagine you are thoroughly stunned on how perfectly on-target my perception is in this regard.
How else could anyone come to the conclusion that the earth is only 5,000 years old? And be comfortable with that interpretation? It is fear. Fear explains it. The demonic projection of fear upon you is so intense, that they keep you on such a narrow path, indeed what you consider to be the “safe” path, so much so, as to make a mockery of Christ’s Teaching, which is of course their agenda.
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ReplyDelete.
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“Get Out of My Temple, in
the Name of Jesus Christ,
That which Denies the Truth
of God’s Love for Me” - Part 3
Peterhuff, You need to come to closure with this issue, coming to understand to what degree your intellect is driven by an intense fear projected by the demonic hordes, and finally, get up the courage to put your hand in the hand of the Real Jesus Christ, who has every interest in setting you free from that fear in the current moment. Not in some future time. He wants to set you free from your fear NOW. Indeed, He wants you to know the truth regarding God’s Love for you Personally. And once the Light of Truth, in this respect, is ignited in your world, your perceptions will change dramatically.
My goal is not to make you feel bad for being wrong so often. My goal is to help you understand that the source of error is FEAR. A fear that is projected and pressed upon the feeling world by the demonic realm as a means of manipulation and control.
By contrast, the Truth of God’s Love is not simply the essential input for the intellect (if it is to produce truth as its output) it is the very power by which the soul is set free from fear.
However, it should be noted, that every doctrinal distortion which the mind, under the influence of fear, has produced, and to which the soul had heretofore clung with pride, remains as an avenue for the continued introduction of fear into the temple.
This is of course problematic, for those who want to be free from fear. This means that one must sort through the entire belief structure, and remove each black strand of fear-based error, and replace it with a golden stand of wisdom, based on the Truth of God’s INFINITE and ENTHUSIASTIC Love for the Soul.
But this is not such a hard job if one goes at it systematically. Actually it can be a joyous activity, as one need only ask the Master Jesus Christ to amplify the knowledge of love in the temple, as the means by which fear and its error is exposed.
However, it should be noted, that an intellectual understanding of “love” is not the thing that casts out fear. No. It is only the Power of Love that the Master Jesus Christ can ignite within the temple of man in the present moment, only this Love has the power to cast out fear.
And it is worth thinking about this fact, that the prerequisite for receiving the ignition of this Love Knowledge within the temple, is the effort made to be obedient to the Commandments of Christ.
When the soul makes this sincere effort, the Master will always meet the disciple half-way, and deliver this power into the temple, not in some future time, but in the here and now.
This is worth thinking about. What kind of people live in heaven? They are people of pure light. People of darkness are not allowed into heaven. How does one change from being a person in which darkness currently rules, to a person in whom light prevails? This is how it is done. Over time, the Master Jesus will Charge the temple with Light, as the disciple makes the effort to be obedient to the Commandments of Christ. Eventually, if the soul endures unto the end, they will be full of light, and in them will be no darkness at all.
When this task is completed, only then is the soul “saved”, and can be allowed to return to its native heavenly domain, which is ruled solely by God’s Love and Light
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"And so upon you will come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Able to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. I tell you the truth, all this will come upon this generation.”
ReplyDeleteTwo things;
First, "generation" could just as easily be translated age, as it was in Eph3:5, and other places.
Secondly, does it really make sense that all the blood shed by evil in the world would be what?...atoned for?..."made right"?.. by the destruction of the temple?
I don't get how you can attribute the day of vengeance, with the destruction of the temple.
The day of vengeance brings justice to the Earth.
There are still people being oppressed, righteous people being murdered, and there are majorities of people who joyously exalt evil.
"I’m not following your line of thought."
According to your interpretation, if Christ's crucifixion was prophesied 1000 years before his birth, then we would have to assume that God knowingly brought part of Judah back to Jerusalem out of captivity, just so he could curse them all, because some apostate priests brought to pass what God himself had promised in 1000BC.
What would be the point of that?
If this was all part of the plan (and it was) then doesn't it seem more likely that the destruction of the temple was a punishment directed at those particular Jews?
That would be more consistent with every other time Israel/Judah has been/will be punished.
And remember, most of Judah, and almost ALL of Israel were scattered throughout the world. If he wanted to punish ALL of Israel, whether today, or two thousand years ago, it would be a nearly global event.
part 1
MrMeaner: “You have to wonder how many noticed, that the priests were offering them a choice between Jesus, who was being sentenced to die for claiming to be the Son of God...and the murderer Barabbas, whose name means son of god.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure some noticed, and probably removed themselves from the group.”
I’m not following where you are going here?
MrMEANER: “The same was probably true among those hearing Christ's words on the cross.
While some mocked him, and thought he was calling for Elijah, (Not realizing that he said "Eli", rather than Elijah) others heard his words, and surely realized that they were just witness to the fulfillment of Psalms 22.
It certainly convinced the centurian who stood guard.”
So what is your point?
If he intended to curse all those Jews, then wipe them all out, why did he leave those blatant clues right there in front of their faces?
He must have intended for those who knew God through his word, to understand what was happening, and to realize that they had just witnessed the Messiah's first advent, and it's purpose fulfilled.
He obviously wasn't angry with everyone.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHi MrMeaner,
ReplyDeleteYou said:“If he intended to curse all those Jews, then wipe them all out, why did he leave those blatant clues right there in front of their faces?
He must have intended for those who knew God through his word, to understand what was happening, and to realize that they had just witnessed the Messiah's first advent, and it's purpose fulfilled.
He obviously wasn't angry with everyone.”
These were a stiff-necked people who were in rebellion against their God. Christ came in the fullness of time in order to bring that everlasting righteousness spoken of by Daniel the prophet to those waiting and judgment on those who were not.
“But when the time had FULLY COME, God sent His Son, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive the full rights as Sons” (see John 1:12)
Did you notice that? “That ‘we’ might receive the full rights as sons.” Paul is speaking to his contemporaries.
In respect to Daniel 9:24-27 that Jesus spoke of in Matthew 24:15, the decree of seventy weeks that culminated in the destruction of the temple and the abomination (Dan. 9:27) was a “decree for YOUR people – i.e. the Jews. And this time in which sin was to be put an end to by Jesus’ atonement for wickedness and bringing in an everlasting righteousness could not happen until the old sacrificial system – the old heaven and earth that the Jews had known for 1500 years was done away with. With the destruction of the temple it would be done away with. There would be no more animal sacrifices because a better sacrifice had been made – a once for all time sacrifice, or as Hebrews records,
“But NOW He has appeared ONCE FOR ALL at the END OF THE AGES to DO AWAY WITH SIN by the SACRIFICE OF HIMSELF.” (Hebrews 9:26b)
And with the destruction of the temple He appeared a second time, as Hebrews says, “not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who ARE waiting for Him.” (vs. 28b)
So I want you to answer for me whether we have eternal righteousness in Christ, or is this something we are still waiting for? In other words, was the righteousness spoken of by Daniel in Daniel 9:24-27 fulfilled with the destruction of the old covenant in AD 70, or are we still living according to the old covenant by our own righteousness?
PART 2
ReplyDeleteAnother verse to remind you of.
“When you see Jerusalem being surrounded by armies, YOU will know that its DESOLATION is NEAR…For THIS is the time of PUNISHMENT in FULFILLMENT of ALL that has been written…There will be GREAT DISTRESS in the land and WRATH against THIS people. They will fall by THE SWORD.” (See Luke 21:20 onwards)
Now for the Jews of Jesus’ time, they were living in the time of the fourth kingdom that Daniel spoke about in Daniel 2. At the time of this fourth kingdom, “the God of heaven WILL SET UP a kingdom that will NEVER BE DESTROYED, nor will it be left to ANOTHER PEOPLE. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever.” (Daniel 2:44)
Seventy weeks would be determined until the end of the nation of Israel – Daniel’s people. And with the seventy weeks and the destruction of the temple and city an everlasting righteousness would be brought in. This righteousness comes from the Messiah, the King of righteousness! The New Covenant is a covenant of righteousness that the old covenant, the old world did not have because man could not live up to that covenant. Now God was establishing the better covenant and at the same time bringing judgment on these people because they had crucified the Lord of glory. Peter knew this (Mark 13:3) and this is what 2 Peter was all about. It was about recalling “the words of the holy prophets” concerning the last days of that covenant (vs. 3). The new heavens and new earth in which righteousness dwells was about to be fulfilled (vs. 13). Notice Peter’s words,
“But in keeping with His promise WE are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.”
THEY were looking forward to it. Peter, inspired by the Holy Spirit, could say such things and know the proximity because, “when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into ALL TRUTH. He will not speak on His own; He will speak only what He hears, and HE WILL TELL YOU WHAT IS YET TO COME… ALL that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit WILL take what is Mine and MAKE IT KNOWN TO YOU…In that day you will no longer ask Me anything. I tell you the truth, My Father WILL GIVE YOU WHATEVER YOU ASK in My name.” (See John 14-16)
Notice also that Jesus said to them, “Are you asking one another what I meant when I said, ‘In a little while you will see Me no more, and then AFTER A LITTLE WHILE you WILL SEE Me?’
He says to them that they would weep and mourn while the world rejoices, but their grief would turn to joy, and that would be in a little while. 2000 years hardly constitutes a 'little while.'
But the point here is that with the Holy Spirit their knowledge increased, as Daniel 12:4 said it would at the time of the end – the end of the old covenant. Daniel’s vision was to be sealed until the time of the end. But at that time YOUR PEOPLE (Daniel’s) – everyone whose name is written in the Book – will be delivered. This was the judgment of Daniel’s people. The angel tells Daniel to “Go your way, Daniel, because the words are closed up and sealed until the time of the end (of his people as a nation living in covenant with God). Many will be purified, made spotless and refined, but the wicked will continue to be wicked. None of the wicked will understand, but those who are wise will understand.” (Daniel 12:9-10)
So back to your original question. It is because of their wickedness that they do not understand. They are getting what they justly deserve for their hardness of heart and wickedness.
"But when the time had FULLY COME, God sent His Son, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive the full rights as Sons” (see John 1:12)
ReplyDeleteDid you notice what you just wrote?
Gal. Ch.4 has it this way. Pay close attention to the 5th verse.
[1] Now I say, That the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all;
[2] But is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the father.
[3] Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world:
[4] But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law,
[5] To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.
[6] And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.
[7] Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.
Does "redeeming those under the law", mean cursing them and replacing them with Gentiles?
No...just the opposite, in fact
If I have time, I want to make a couple of points about Dan. Ch.9, hopefully today, or this evening
Hi MrMeaner,
ReplyDeleteGal. 4:4: "But when the time had FULLY COME, God sent His Son, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive the full rights as Sons” (see John 1:12)
MrMEANER: “Did you notice what you just wrote?”
Yes, I did. (^8
Did you notice the theme of Galatians? Before Christ came the world was held captive by the law (3:22). The Jews could not live up to it, in fact no one could, and this church in Galatia was in danger of having legalism preached to them too. Paul goes into the history of the old covenant and the curse of the law (3:10-13). The book of Galatians actually compares and contrasts the two covenants (see Gal. 4:21-5:6, which you need to read to get the context in proper perspective, MrMeaner), just like Hebrews does.
“Before this faith came, WE were held prisoners by the law, locked up until this faith should be revealed. So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. NOW that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law. ” (3:23-25)
That is why the old covenant had to disappear. As long as the two lived side by side Jews and even Gentiles were in danger of trying to live by this covenant. That is why Christ came, to put an end to the letter of the law that brings death by fulfilling it on the behalf of those who would believe.
MrMEANER: “Gal. Ch.4 has it this way. Pay close attention to the 5th verse.
[1] Now I say, That the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all;
[2] But is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the father.
Yes, the time appointed by the Father in which the old covenant would disappear, or as Peter would say in 2 Peter 3, ‘the elements will be destroyed by fire.’ The Old Covenant and the law was a tutor to lead us to Christ.
[3] Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world:
Even though the Greek word ‘stoicheia’ is used to signify ‘elements’ you have to understand the Hebrew connotation for element and what it meant to them. We interpret the Bible by the Bible, or another way to put it is the Bible interprets itself.
In Galatians the same word as 2 Peter 3:10 – elements – is used twice, in 4:3 and 4:9. Paul “reminds his readers of how they were once held in bondage to the ‘elements of this world’ when they observed ‘days, weeks, months, and years.’ This refers to observances of the Old Law. The Jews were held in bondage to the Old Law, the fundamental laws and regulations of the Torah that constituted ‘the stoicheia of the world (kosmos).’ Paul’s reference is to the system of the Torah in which his readers had served, not to the material elements of creation. Yet it is called the ‘elements of the world.’” Don K. Preston, The Elements Shall Melt with Fervent Heat, p. 190.
The same word used for ‘elements’ in 2 Peter 3:10 is the word used in Galatians 4:3, 9; Colossians 2:8, 20 and Hebrews 5:12, and means a world system, not the material creation. The elements of the Old Covenant, the old heaven and earth, the old world were in the process of passing away (Hebrews 8:13; 12:25).
PART 2
ReplyDeleteRCofield mentioned Beale and his understanding of the temple as signifying heaven and earth to the Jew in the first century. Don K. Preston has cited some of Beale's quotes from Beale’s book Temple. I think I need to provide a few of these references for your benefit when I get some spare time. It would bring the significance of the statement ‘heaven and earth’ more into focus on how the Jews of that period understood the Temple and the words 'heaven and earth passing away.'
[4] But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law,
The law was the Old Covenant. Do you want to get into that?
[5] To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.
[6] And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.
[7] Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.
MrMEANER: “Does "redeeming those under the law", mean cursing them and replacing them with Gentiles?”
No, it means combining the Gentiles with them in a new covenant because the first was no good. It could not bring the righteousness that the holy and pure God required. Yet the Judaizers wanted to earn a works righteousness of their own, in their own filthy merit. They were getting what they deserved. And God, in the fullness of time sent His own Son to redeem those under the Law and yet the received Him not.
PS, you still have not answered my questions from the previous post concerning righteousness and the covenants.
Sorry, I haven't had much time this weekend.
ReplyDeleteIf Christ's crucifixion was promised as early as the time of David, then there is no old or new covenant.
You could say that not having to atone through animal sacrifice was a change that affects our end of the covenant. But the covenant remains the same. The promises are the same. The things that God considers good are the same, as are the things God defines as evil.
The definition of sin is the same.
An unrepentant sinner is in the same spiritual condition as someone depending on a priest and the blood of rams to clean them.
"But the point here is that with the Holy Spirit their knowledge increased, as Daniel 12:4 said it would at the time of the end – the end of the old covenant. Daniel’s vision was to be sealed until the time of the end. But at that time YOUR PEOPLE (Daniel’s) – everyone whose name is written in the Book – will be delivered. This was the judgment of Daniel’s people. The angel tells Daniel to “Go your way, Daniel, because the words are closed up and sealed until the time of the end (of his people as a nation living in covenant with God). Many will be purified, made spotless and refined, but the wicked will continue to be wicked. None of the wicked will understand, but those who are wise will understand.”
To be delivered, means to be SAVED, rescued, or freed.
In another place, it specifically states that at the time of God's wrath, Judah will be the first to be delivered.
Zech Ch.12
[1] The burden of the word of the LORD for Israel, saith the LORD, which stretcheth forth the heavens, and layeth the foundation of the earth, and formeth the spirit of man within him.
[2] Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem.
[3] And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it.
[4] In that day, saith the LORD, I will smite every horse with astonishment, and his rider with madness: and I will open mine eyes upon the house of Judah, and will smite every horse of the people with blindness.
[5] And the governors of Judah shall say in their heart, The inhabitants of Jerusalem shall be my strength in the LORD of hosts their God.
[6] In that day will I make the governors of Judah like an hearth of fire among the wood, and like a torch of fire in a sheaf; and they shall devour all the people round about, on the right hand and on the left: and Jerusalem shall be inhabited again in her own place, even in Jerusalem.
[7] The LORD also shall save the tents of Judah first, that the glory of the house of David and the glory of the inhabitants of Jerusalem do not magnify themselves against Judah.
[8] In that day shall the LORD defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and he that is feeble among them at that day shall be as David; and the house of David shall be as God, as the angel of the LORD before them.
[9] And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.
[10] And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.
Sounds to me like Christ's return actually rescues Judah, from the other nations.
Would you agree that if the identity of the Harlot of Babylon in Rev. was known for certain, it would identify the targets of Christ's wrath?
Hi MrMeaner,
ReplyDeleteDo you want to continue our discussion? We are just touching the tip of the ice berg but things have petered out here. If not, blessings in Christ Jesus!
Any word from RCofield or Walter? I have not been back to the Washington Post since we left.
Hi Peter
ReplyDeleteSure.
I'd love to continue.
I sort of figured that everyone abandoned ship after the Golden Eagles fiasco, so I've been joining other discussions on other sites.
I've already been banned again from WAPO.
Apparently they're adopting a "no right-wingers allowed" approach....other than a few tokens that have been there forever.
I guess we're not going to hear from Randy and Walter, unless they show up here.
Good to hear from you, brother.
I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on Zech. ch. 12.
ReplyDeleteNote that this was written long after both captivities, (Israel to Assyrians..Judah to Babylonians) and that there are no recorded events where any global empires were destroyed in the Holy land.
Hi MrMeaner,
ReplyDeleteSorry about the delay. I wasn't sure that you were going to respond so I stopped checking.
I skipped over to England and I'm now engaging the British on a rather well designed site called 'UK Debate Forum.'
http://www.ukdebate.co.uk/forums/index.php?board=37.0
All that I can say is RCofield is dearly missed.
Here are the rules and some helpful tips if you are interested. I'm guessing the topics go on for as long as someone it willing to engage.
http://ukdebate.co.uk/forums/help/posting.english.html#bbc
In answer to your last post concerning global empires, please see the link provided as a feasible explanation,
http://www.eschatology.org/all-articles-articles-211/91-study-by-passage/809-was-zechariah-123-fulfilled-in-ad-70
Hi MrMeaner,
ReplyDeleteMy last post went to your garbage bin. If you can fish it out we can resume.
Peter
Hey!
ReplyDeleteGood to see you, brother.
Let me check out your links, and the UK debate forum.
Sounds interesting.
Believe it or not, I've been offering Biblical explanations in a discussion with a group of ancient astronaut theorists....and it has actually been a productive conversation.
Amazing what you can find on the internet.
I was also banned from a Christian discussion forum, before I ever attempted to contribute.
(I'm guessing that when I registered, the site-owner traced my email address to being the administrator of this blog, and decided I shouldn't be allowed to participate)
So, a forum with open-minded administrators sounds pretty good to me.
I'll definitely check out the UK site.
As for Randy, I had a feeling when Golden Eagles started filibustering with new posts, rather than defending his positions in the comment sections, and attacking you and Randy personally, that this site wasn't going to work.
I was stupid for ever making GE an author.
I had hoped that everyone wanted to discuss various issues, rather than pushing their own agenda. I guess I was naive.
Hi MrMeaner,
ReplyDeleteYes, the UK Forum is very well thought out. When you opt for 'Write your reply' there is bold, italics and underlined provided, plus quotation aids, a host of other writing aids, then each post pas a number assigned it.
I'm on 'Religious Debates', 'Does lack of evidence undermine God?' at the moment if you should want to check it out. We could open up a discussion on eschatology or any other subject if you want. It actually tells you how long you have logged in for, although that doesn't give a true account on how long you have spent on each post, for I usually leave it open. The other advantage we have is that we can post at 8-9pm uninterrupted, for in the UK most are sleeping at that time. As you can see there are a number of open discussions that seem to go on for as long as there are participants