Justin Brierley illustrates the fine-tuning argument using dice.
September 5, 2016
How a Dice can show that God exists
Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Theistic Arguments[160] Comments
[160] Comments
Archived Entry
- Post Date :
- September 5, 2016 at 11:25 pm
- Category :
- Apologetics, Theistic Arguments
- Do More :
- You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
-
Follow
Following
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
Thinking to Believe
%d bloggers like this:
September 6, 2016 at 1:00 am
“It has been calculated that there are 239 protein molecules in a minimal cell for the cell
to be fully functioning, ‘all’ these have to be present simultaneously. The chances
against this happening are 10 to the 119850th power (1 followed by 119850 zeros) to 1. Such figures are ridiculous and defy any chance
of no-God process constructing such a system. No wonder the Bible says the fool had
said in his heart, ‘ there is no God.’ (Psalm 53:1).” –J.H. John Peet, In the Beginning God…,
London: Grace Publications Trust, 1994, p.52.
LikeLike
September 6, 2016 at 3:40 am
Folks (especially scientists) do not want there to be God…it is not necessarily true that they do not ‘see’ that the dice indicate that there IS God…and that the probabilities do point to that being the case. Somehow they conjure up more faith than the typical Christian in order to not believe.
The numbers (exponents) used in the video can be better compared (spreading more ‘light’ on this issue) by realizing too (as stated by Frank above) that there are also about 10X10^84 atoms in the universe and too if one figured the amount of seconds in an old earth creation (13.7 billion years) such numbers in comparison bring similar results: either there needs to be more of either ‘stuff’ or ‘time’. ((admittedly the number of atoms concerns hydrogen–making up 75% and helium 24% and helium to the best of my knowledge is not calculated in the exponent…google it for more accuracy)).
There is a analogy concerning mathematicians/scientists whereby some have stated about a million monkeys ponding typewriters for a million years and that they would eventually complete the works of Hamlet all by chance (I gather that is to surmise that we could be flukes of chance…life; if monkeys can produce Hamlet by fluke). Yet, should that be the case and such a monkey got ‘lucky’ and ended up with a flawless transcript; that monkey would not KNOW what he had accomplished as it would carry no informational value to him or any of the other monkeys. Further, if said transcript were left in the woods or in the monkey’s ‘cage’ and some human came along and discovered the ‘fluke’ he would then NOT think that monkeys did it but rather that some other human left it there and that it should be in the library with the other works of Shakespeare. Information comes form intelligence and such things are called books and we store them in special places called libraries. The monkey thing is not working! Besides who provided the typewriters, and all the bananas…was that a fluke too???
LikeLike
September 6, 2016 at 9:36 am
This dice analogy is all wishful thinking, as usual:
“The rate of the Universe expansion was exquisitely finely balanced.
Any faster and the universe would have expanded too rapidly to allow the formation of chemicals, atoms, stars and galaxies.
Any slower and the universe would have collapsed back in on itself.”
These speculative assumptions form the foundation of Brierley’s roll of the dice comparison odds for life being able to form and again reveal that faith in speculative imagination still follows the path of entertaining fallacies.
On the other hand Brierley is actually setting up his speculative foundation that just as easily could conclude in favour of the “Evolution” of life forms and not the Creation myth of pre-fabricated life forms appearing in a “poof poof” moment of time as though thought itself brought forth that which was thought, and lo and behold, Adam and Eve!
And who would worry about trillions of years it might take for the roll of the dice to hit 1X10-55; after all, how many trillions of years are there in forever, “Forever” being the age of God herself.
And indeed if the universe expansion is expanding into forever, one might imagine the propulsion to be the result of stars exploding and that the explosions are not linear but spherical and the shape of the universe then should be globular like the planets and the stars. And the universe we are able to penetrate, to come up with an estimate of when the universe began, is only based on the ability to see the edges of the past universe at around 13-14 billions years and is identical in every direction is it not?
If God exists then everything visible and invisible and consciousness itself must be the same age. The twin ages: “Forever”, and “Never” would be the same which is to say: “never beginning” and “always forever” are identical concepts.
And this should be understood with as much ease as Brierley’s speculation.
You study and you flatter yourself on your biblical scholarship. You derive from it your theological and philosophical propositions and maybe you think the way to deal with this is to engage it in polite and sometimes impolite debate and to make all your little points and counter points and show us all what a clever dick you are using math and that’s great fun for you. And the good news is you don’t even have to worry about someone like me damaging your cause because you haven’t got a cause. What you’ve got is a hobby.
The honest thing to say and be correct about is “I Do Not Know” what the Life Forces are, neither the theist nor the atheist, the scientist nor the bishop, the prophet nor the psychic. We all have belief, not knowledge..yet…; however, the clearest road to search on is the road of knowledge, belief will “never” get you anywhere and you know how long “Never” is.
LikeLike
September 6, 2016 at 9:55 am
get1949
“Folks (especially scientists) do not want there to be God…”
A most ridiculous statement.
It would be appropriate to say:
“Folks (especially believers) want there to be God…”
That’s like saying scientists don’t want to discover knowledge, what actually is. Scientists search for truth not because they don’t want truth to be known, that’s why they search and research they are seekers of knowledge. In biblical words it is declared “seek and you shall find, knock and the door will be opened, ask and you will be answered”. Pros 18:15 5 “The mind of the prudent acquires knowledge, And the ear of the wise seeks knowledge.” That is the pursuit of scientists and some folks
Not wanting knowledge is the domain of believers who have already nailed their colors to the mast before they know there’s even a ship attached to it.
Because the believer cannot bring themselves to say “I don’t know”.
LikeLike
September 6, 2016 at 10:51 am
“The honest thing to say and be correct about is “I Do Not Know” what the Life Forces are, neither the theist nor the atheist, the scientist nor the bishop, the prophet nor the psychic. We all have belief, not knowledge..yet…; however, the clearest road to search on is the road of knowledge, belief will “never” get you anywhere and you know how long “Never” is. ”
Leo, I’m surprised you made this statement for someone who is keen on knowledge and leery of mere belief.
I don’t know if you can receive this, but stating that God created the universe is a piece of Knowledge in of itself. It is from this knowledge that we can get a proper understanding of not only the Universe but of life and death itself.
While nobody can directly quantitatively prove that God created the Universe, we are saying that the creation of the Universe by God is self evident and is foundational to all knowledge. Faith is believing that this is true but it’s not really a huge leap if you consider the complexity of the Universe.
It takes a great deal more faith and mere belief to believe that the Universe happened by chance or that it happened by some other “unknown” process that we accept we will never know. While that may work for some, it is not good enough for most to accept the fact that they have no clue how we got here and what we are doing here.
Cheers.
Naz
LikeLike
September 6, 2016 at 12:32 pm
Cheers Naz:
First of all, belief is non knowledge, the state of not knowing. Knowledge is not having belief but having knowledge and there is a huge difference.
Example:
A man had a flat tire. He knew that the spare tire was held under the rear end of the van and believed that one had to crawl under the van and wiggle the spare tire loosen from the latch that was holding it in place. A second man stopped to help but had no experience with replacing tires so the believer told him to crawl under the van and loosen the spare tire from its perch.
The second man did so and a third man came upon the scene and heard the clanging of the second man using a wrench banging on the latch that held the spare tire. After assessing the scene the third man told the second man that he could bang all day on the latch and the spare tire will never come loose. Why not said the first man, the believer?
“Well”, said the third man, “because the tire is held in place by the latch and the latch is affixed to a cable and the cable is held in place by a nut that needs to be turned counter clock wise so the cable would unwind and the both the latch and the tire would lower down to the ground from where the latch could be removed and the spare tire retrieved.”
And” continued the Third man with knowledge, “the nut is housed on the cargo floor at the back of the van and needs to be unwound with the same tool as the nuts on the tire rim holding the tire onto wheel housing the vehicle.”
So the third man took the tool the second man was using to bang on the latch, inserted it into the nut opening and unwound the cable holding the latch and both latch and tire then lowered onto the ground.
The believer came over and said to the second man,
“You know, he is right”.
BY knowledge both the believer and the second man were set free from their belief that banging on the tire would lower the tire and that knowledge set them free to replace the tire and go on their way and not only that both the first man and the second man went away with knowledge and their beliefs had vanished because knowledge replaced the belief.
What we know is that we life, have consciousness and have a mind to think with and understand with and reason with.
What we know is that we are not the creators of our lives but only know the processes whereby life comes into the world. The “why” and “what for” this has come to pass we don’t know and so we imagine how these things have taken place and for what purpose because we can’t imagine this has come to pass without some purpose. And so we then have to imagine the meaning of life and not only the meaning of life but the meaning of why that life always seems to end for everything, eventually. Not only for mankind but for all life including the trees some of which are 4 and 5 thousand years old.
Prometheus (recorded as WPN-114) was the oldest known non-clonal organism, a Great Basin bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva) tree growing near the tree line on Wheeler Peak in eastern Nevada, United States. The tree, which was at least 4862 years old and possibly more than 5000, was cut down in 1964 by a graduate student and United States Forest Service personnel for research purposes. The people involved did not know of its world-record age before the cutting (see below), but the circumstances and decision-making process remain controversial; not all the facts are agreed upon by all involved.
The tree’s name refers to the mythological figure Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. The designation WPN-114 was given by the original researcher, Donald Rusk Currey, and means it was the 114th tree he sampled in his research in Nevada’s White Pine County.
In 2012 a bristlecone pine in California’s White Mountains was measured by Tom Harlan to be 5062 years old, making it the oldest known tree in North America and the oldest known individual tree in the world.
As far as we know the oldest imaginations conjured up the word God or Gods and began storytelling and devising all kinds of myths about them as they tried to describe how the world and its life forms came about.
The mythological gods gave way to the one lump god that lumped all the other gods and stories and fables and imaginations into the so called God of the Desert, which is to say the God of Abraham.
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are sometimes called Abrahamic religions because they all accept the tradition that God revealed himself to the prophet Abraham.
And the myth turned over a new leaf and thus began the version of the modern God.
And there came Holy Books that describe the Gods and how to live and how the gods wrath was shown in earthquakes, fires, natural catastrophes, famine and flood. These were the times when sacrificing children to appease the gods were prevalent; when men would kill their sons and daughters for rain so the crops would be bountiful.
And this sacrificial killing continued with the God of Abraham: “Now it came to pass after these things that God tested Abraham, and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then He said, “Take now your son, your only son Isaac,(not counting his son Ishmael, of course, born of Hagar) whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”
Luckily for Isaac someone came along(an angel of the lord if you can believe it) and wrestled the knife from Abraham’s psychotic controlled hand and eventually the deranged Abraham came to his senses and realized what he had almost done and then thanked the Lord who told him to do it in the first place.
Genesis 22: “Says the Lord, because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son(not counting his son Ishmael, of course, born of Hagar); blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies. In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.”
Which is pretty much the same thing as God promised Abraham in the chapter before, Gen 21:12 “….Your descendants will come through Isaac…..”
As language communication became the main communication after hieroglyphics, laws and records started to be kept by chiseling stone and today there are thousands of laws on the books that have morphed from theocracism to secularism and ever since then the world is awakening to knowledge and leaving the belief systems of non knowledge behind as religion loses its grip on the masses and eventually the world will say
“Can you believe what they use to believe in the old days of 21st millennium? OMG they were so stupid. What took them so long to get out of the cave?
That’s how I see it.
LikeLike
September 7, 2016 at 3:43 am
possibilities, probabilities, hunch, reason, science, philosophy, guess, mistake, truth, and oh yaaa…chance and mistake and error. OK sit on the fence with your ‘big’ brain and wait. Waiting for an answer is also forever (and a choice…YOUR choice to be responsible for) for those not drawing air in their lungs. Is it even POSSIBLE that you just do not WANT there to be an intelligent agent called God? If that is the TRUTH…then say so and stop the mind game with yourself…who else are you wanting to entertain?
LikeLike
September 7, 2016 at 7:08 am
God, by His word, spoke the universe into existence long before the birth of scientific notions. The same God, by the power of His word, destroyed the earth with water in the great flood. Scientifically, what God said, long before someone found the oldest tree, explains why the oldest tree on earth is not tens of thousands of years old, but only dated back to the approximated time of the great flood. Also, long before science discovered the universe will eventually stop expanding and reverse course and cease to exist, the same God, by His word, said the current heavens and earth are reserved for destruction by fire. All of these things were spoken by God, long before science had a theory. Therefore, the Bible should be understood as “God has spoken”, believe it or not, what God says is true, therefore, knowledge and truth is not based on our beliefs, but based on what God said long before any of us ever came into being, and long before science discovered anything!!!
LikeLike
September 7, 2016 at 7:52 am
Gerald Schroeder, Big Bang, Genesis, Age of the Universe 5/5
megawolf7
Uploaded on Jan 22, 2010
This is not day = ERA theory
Today, we look at time going backward. We see 15 billion years. Looking forward from when the universe is very small – billions of times smaller – the Torah says six days. In truth, they both may be correct. What’s exciting about the last few years in cosmology is we now have quantified the data to know the relationship of the “view of time” from the beginning, relative to the “view of time” today. It’s not science fiction any longer. Any one of a dozen physics text books all bring the same number. The general relationship between time near the beginning and time today is a million million. That’s a 1 with 12 zeros after it. So when a view from the beginning looking forward says “I’m sending you a pulse every second,” would we see it every second? No. We’d see it every million million seconds. Because that’s the stretching effect of the expansion of the universe.
The Torah doesn’t say every second, does it? It says Six Days. How would we see those six days? If the Torah says we’re sending information for six days, would we receive that information as six days? No. We would receive that information as six million million days. Because the Torah’s perspective is from the beginning looking forward. Six million million days is a very interesting number. What would that be in years? Divide by 365 and it comes out to be 16 billion years. Essentially the estimate of the age of the universe. Not a bad guess for 3000 years ago.
The way these two figures match up is extraordinary. I’m not speaking as a theologian; I’m making a scientific claim. I didn’t pull these numbers out of hat. That’s why I led up to the explanation very slowly, so you can follow it step-by-step. Now we can go one step further. Let’s look at the development of time, day-by-day, based on the expansion factor. Every time the universe doubles, the perception of time is cut in half. Now when the universe was small, it was doubling very rapidly. But as the universe gets bigger, the doubling time gets exponentially longer. This rate of expansion is quoted in “The Principles of Physical Cosmology,” a textbook that is used literally around the world.
(In case you want to know, this exponential rate of expansion has a specific number averaged at 10 to the 12th power. That is in fact the temperature of quark confinement, when matter freezes out of the energy: 10.9 times 10 to the 12th power Kelvin degrees divided by (or the ratio to) the temperature of the universe today, 2.73 degrees. That’s the initial ratio which changes exponentially as the universe expands.)
The calculations come out to be as follows: * The first of the Biblical days lasted 24 hours, viewed from the “beginning of time perspective.” But the duration from our perspective was 8 billion years. * The second day, from the Bible’s perspective lasted 24 hours. From our perspective it lasted half of the previous day, 4 billion years. * The third day also lasted half of the previous day, 2 billion years. * The fourth day – one billion years. * The fifth day – one-half billion years. * The sixth day – one-quarter billion years.
When you add up the Six Days, you get the age of the universe at 15 and 3/4 billion years. The same as modern cosmology. Is it by chance?
But there’s more. The Bible goes out on a limb and tells you what happened on each of those days. Now you can take cosmology, paleontology, archaeology, and look at the history of the world, and see whether or not they match up day-by-day. And I’ll give you a hint. They match up close enough to send chills up your spine.
Originally posted by Knowwheretorun1984
LikeLike
September 7, 2016 at 9:21 am
Brierley’s argument about the catastrophic effects of “small changes” to the gravitational constant is specious. It’s just something he read somewhere about the anthropic argument for the justification of the existence of God but he actually doesn’t understand what he’s talking about. If I recall correctly from one of Carl Sagan’s books, changes to the gravitational constant plus or minus an order of magnitude (factor of 10) produce a universe of mostly white dwarf or red giant stars, not ideal for life, but not impossible either. Brierley’s time analogy is also sophistic nonsense. The production of the elements of life – carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur and phosphorous – occurs in the core of stars at a faster rate than he can toss a dice at the craps table.
It all comes down to arguments from incredulity, as far as I can tell, on both sides. Which is more incredible, a mathematical model for all of the atoms in the universe, or that God, who was around before space-time even existed, spoke and all matter came into being? Which is more believable, the incomplete, work-in-progess observational and experimentally derived model or the writings of a priest for a group of Hebrews who lived in the Levant 2500 years ago? Personally, I’m not a fan of the priest, who was utterly clueless about the sheer enormity of the universe he was attempting to justify.
LikeLike
September 7, 2016 at 9:29 am
B Bob:
The Bible was written by men who were school appointed or self appointed messengers to the Caricature Concept they attributed their writings to but trying to give themselves credence. that’s the God who never spoke and nobody ever heard her speak or seen her or had personal contact with her.
If their was a God she would be natural and not supernatural as Jesus himself declared.
LikeLike
September 7, 2016 at 9:34 am
The early universe I submit may very well have lived out its longevity and blown themselves out of existence or dispersed into newer universe elements. Therefore if theory was so then that would explain why we can only see as far back as the longevity will allow and perhaps in another billion years we still will only be able to see back 14 or 15 billion years and in a trillion years we may still only be able to see as far back as the longevity before the elements exploded will still only be 14 or 15 billion years.
The Theory of Universe Longevity of stars, of planets, of bodies, of galaxies etc………..That’s all Folks.
LikeLike
September 7, 2016 at 9:36 am
Bob Mason:
A great logical commentary…I admire your reasoning…
LikeLike
September 7, 2016 at 9:39 am
In answer to your question, for me, the priest is more believable if you are referring to the writings of the Old Testament. So many of those writings were prophetic and have come to pas, proving they were true. The reason for this is simple, the written words of the scriptures are the “spoken words of God”.
LikeLike
September 7, 2016 at 12:30 pm
The delusion is alive and well and living in B Bob. Completely contrary to the words of Jesus who said the World of religion cannot hate you but it hates me because I testify of it that its works are evil..and it was the religious priest who wrote the old testament.
LikeLike
September 7, 2016 at 1:16 pm
Leo,
Your comment sounds very familiar to me. Like the serpent in the Garden of Eden, you mock the word of God. Disregarding what the word of God says, you offer up hopelessness in disbelief and the knowledge of nothing.
LikeLike
September 7, 2016 at 7:54 pm
B Bob:
You are suffering under the delusion of religious stupidity; there is no mocking of the word of god, the mocking is of self appointed messengers who claim that whatever they say IS the word o God…and you buy into it hook line and sinker. without a common sense thread in your brain.
LikeLiked by 1 person
September 7, 2016 at 8:05 pm
Leo,
What do you think happens when you die? Will you have a consciousness of being or is death final and your existence comes to an end?
LikeLike
September 8, 2016 at 12:27 am
Information Enigma
DiscoveryScienceNews
Published on Oct 7, 2015
Information drives the development of life. But what is the source of that information? Could it have been produced by an unguided Darwinian process? Or did it require intelligent design? The Information Enigma is a fascinating 21-minute documentary that probes the mystery of biological information, the challenge it poses to orthodox Darwinian theory, and the reason it points to intelligent design. The video features molecular biologist Douglas Axe and Stephen Meyer, author of the books Signature in the Cell and Darwin’s Doubt.
LikeLike
September 8, 2016 at 12:58 am
Privileged Species
DiscoveryScienceNews
Published on Mar 24, 2015
Are humans the accidental products of a blind and uncaring universe? Or are they the beneficiaries of a cosmic order that was planned beforehand to help them flourish? Privileged Species is a 33-minute documentary by Discovery Institute that explores growing evidence from physics, chemistry, biology, and related fields that our universe was designed for large multi-cellular beings like ourselves. Featuring geneticist and author Michael Denton, the documentary investigates the special properties of carbon, water, and oxygen that make human life and the life of other organisms possible, and it explores some of the unique features of humans that make us a truly privileged species.
LikeLike
September 8, 2016 at 2:06 am
Claude Shannon – Father of the Information Age
University of California Television (UCTV)
Uploaded on Jan 16, 2008
Considered the founding father of the electronic communication age, Claude Shannon’s work ushered in the Digital Revolution. This fascinating program explores his life and the major influence his work had on today’s digital world through interviews with his friends and colleagues. [1/2002] [Science] [Show ID: 6090]
The applications of his scientific research are astounding, from audiology to rocket propulsion to molecular biology to cryptology and more.
LikeLike
September 8, 2016 at 6:41 am
“Which is more incredible, a mathematical model for all of the atoms in the universe, or that God, who was around before space-time even existed, spoke and all matter came into being? ”
Bob, are you saying that there is possibly a mathematical model to account for the creation of the universe ?
If so, then atoms are eternal (no beginning and no end) and have always existed. In fact, you have just described the nature of God, who is eternal with no beginning and no end.
Is it possible we are not talking about science versus God but rather god versus God ?
Best regards,
Naz
LikeLike
September 8, 2016 at 7:54 am
B Bob:
“What do you think happens when you die? Will you have a consciousness of being or is death final and your existence comes to an end?”
I don’t know and I do not have answers to those questions, so far nobody has the answers which would explain why there are so many expert opinions on this subject.
LikeLike
September 8, 2016 at 9:10 am
Nah:
The universe is eternal….forever; that has no end……never
Forever and never amen……
If atoms are eternal, the universe is eternal and the root word which you can’t get out of your system God unless Science Vs Science or God Vs God but then God would have to be considered natural and not supernatural.
But that was not the God Jesus talked about when he said the Father is within you; he was not talking about the external God but the internal God.
THE SIMPLISTIC VIEW explained and defined as the God of Jesus:
Seriously Naz.
Everybody is born with the Father living within; AKA, the holy spirit, the person born is the Son/Daughter: the physical, visible s/he who will eventually give a physical, visible expression of an invisible self intimately identified with an invisible Father by the indwelling of the holy spirit with the human spirit.
All there is of Good (God) is available to the person who is available to all there is of Good (God). And here’s the description of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. it’s real easy: And you are smart enough to understand it.
Think of the Father like this:
THE FATHER
is like the Immune System ready to defend you and there’s nothing you can do to interfere with his work; it’s automatic: The immune system is a system of many biological structures and processes within an organism that protects against disease. To function properly, an immune system must detect a wide variety of agents, known as pathogens, from viruses to parasitic worms, and distinguish them from the organism’s own healthy tissue.
In many species, the immune system can be classified into subsystems, such as the innate immune system versus the adaptive immune system, or humoral immunity versus cell-mediated immunity. Pathogens can rapidly evolve and adapt, and thereby avoid detection and neutralization by the immune system; however, multiple defense mechanisms have also evolved to recognize and neutralize pathogens.
The sympathetic nervous system is one of the two main divisions of the autonomic nervous system, the other being the parasympathetic nervous system.The autonomic nervous system functions to regulate the body’s unconscious actions. The sympathetic nervous system’s primary process is to stimulate the body’s fight-or-flight response. It is, however, constantly active at a basic level to maintain homeostasis. The sympathetic nervous system is described as being complementary to the parasympathetic nervous system which stimulates the body to “rest-and-digest” or “feed and breed”.
THE HOLY SPIRIT
is like Memory so that you can grow up and learn hot and cold, up and down, day and night and by practice train up your senses in the discernment of good and evil and use your will to decide which you will accept.
THE OLD CHEROKEE LEGEND:
CHIEF:
A fight is going on inside every other person between two wolves. One is evil; he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.
The other is good; he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.
GRANDSON:
Which wolf will win?
CHIEF:
The one you feed.
Which wolf to feed within? for we are also just as capable of rejecting the kingdom of good (Heaven) within and accepting the Kingdom of Evil (Hell) within as we see humanity play-role both these dimensions of the human experience. All aspects of your sensory perceptions stay with you in the Memory.
Both the Father/the Holy Spirit are there with an undying, unlimited protectorate just for you, your own personal guardians from birth.
THE SON/DAUGHTER……….S/HE
You acknowledge the Father by letting the Father do it,
for the Holy Spirit, you listen and heed the memory there, for your protection and guide; learn from mistakes, get up when you stumble and continue in that fashion;
for the immune system, wash your wounds, cleanse your wounds, bandage your wounds maintain your health with wisdom from your own guide and the wisdom imparted by others who have become advocates for your physical health: dentists, doctors, medicine, hospitals, paramedics, firefighters, 911 responders.
Treat and respect others as being born with the same capacity, the same Father, the same Holy Spirit as yourself. It is worldwide and widespread but very individual and personal for each of us, at the same time.
LikeLike
September 8, 2016 at 9:27 am
Nah:
An adjunct to the SIMPLISTIC VIEW of Post 24:
All religions create their own Gods, not just the Abrahamic religions:
Hinduism, often referred to as the world’s oldest religion, is mono-theistic, in that the millions of their created gods and goddesses are perceived as being avatars of the one supreme God Brahman. This is similar to the Trinity doctrine Christians believe, only more diverse.
Yet even the Legend of Brahman notes the “within” aspect of “Good”:
“The Brahma God, the God of all Gods, decided to remove the God-head from man because of man’s abuse. He was very much puzzled as to what to do with it. He wanted to hide it where man himself would be un-able to find it. Rather than assume this great responsibility, the Brahma God decided to call a meeting of all the other Gods to help him decide where to hide man’s God-head.
The God of Isaac, God of Jacob, God of Abraham, God of Truth, God of Spirit, God of Soul, God of Love, God of Principle, God of Peace, God of Wisdom, and all the other Gods met in a great conclave to make this decision.
The Brahma God asked for suggestions.
One God suggested that the God-head be removed from man and placed on the highest mountain peak. The Brahma God said: “No, do not hide it there. Man will climb the mountains and he will scan its highest peaks and find it.”
Another God suggested that the God-head be buried down deep in the ground. The Brahma God said: “No, do not hide it in the ground. Man will dig in the ground searching for gold, silver and other precious metals, and there he will find it.”
Another God suggested that they sink it in the deepest part of the ocean. The Brahma God said: “No, do not hide it in the bottom of the ocean. Man will dive and search out the bottom of the seas and there he will find it.”
Finally, the God of Wisdom said: “Then, let us hide the Godhead down in Man himself.” “Yes,” the Brahma God said, “we will hide it there, because Man will never think to look for it within himself.”
So the God-head has been hidden in Man ever since. It is still there. Most men are constantly digging, climbing, searching, looking for it everywhere but the right place. They are trying to find it from without.
Turn within, and there you will find your Godhead. The moment you find it you will come to a conscious realization of this great creative force with-in you. That great force, that untapped power, that dynamic something, that unconquerable soul within you is yearning for expression. It is asking for recognition. It is begging for an opportunity to lift you up and aid you to greater achievements. This great creative force within you is an imprisoned giant which when unleashed can carry you on to a success undreamed of.
Jesus knew this and always referred to the Godhead as the “Father”…”within you”. Learn this simple lesson and you will learn the simplicity of Jesus, Jesus the Real Man. Not man like you and I are but man as he is God created man to be. All there is of Good is available to the man who is available to all there is of Good.
LikeLike
September 8, 2016 at 9:59 am
Where does the INFORMATION (codes, mathematics, fractals [Mandelbrot set of numbers, lightning, mountain ranges, etc.]) come from?:
Dr. Jason Lisle | The Secret Code of Creation [Fractals]
Doulos Iesou Christou
Published on Oct 21, 2013
PHILOSOPHY OF NUMBERS
In this video, astrophysicist and author, Dr. Jason Lisle, presents a compelling argument for God being the creator of the universe. It’s entitled “The Secret Code Of Creation”. Dr. Lisle showcases the Mandelbrot set of numbers, their infinitude and complexity, and speaks on the One who could have created such an intricate concept.
Dr. Lisle is speaker and author of the following books:
1. The Ultimate Proof of Creation: Resolving the Origins Debate
2. Discerning Truth: Exposing Errors in Evolutionary Arguments
3. The Stargazer’s Guide to the Night Sky
4. Taking Back Astronomy: The Heavens Declare Creation
5. Why Genesis Matters
LikeLike
September 8, 2016 at 10:07 am
Leo, I respectfully disagree with you, as usual.
But my disagreement is not because of my undaunted faith as you may presume, but my disagreement is based on simple logic.
Naz
LikeLike
September 8, 2016 at 10:08 am
How Great is Our God with How Great Thou Art
praiseshark
Uploaded on Apr 10, 2011
Just a simple lyrics video from the First Baptist Carrolton Worship Choir version to be shown on a short screen.
And He is before all things, and by Him all things consist. (Colossians 1:17)
LikeLike
September 8, 2016 at 12:38 pm
Leo,
Thank you for your honest answer. You might have gotten a little carried away with the use of the word “expert”. It’s agreed, there are many opinions, but how many can be consider expert?
Would it be reasonable to consider the disciples of Jesus that witnessed His teachings, miracles, resurrection, and ascension as experts? We know more than 500 people witnessed it and of those people and through those people the gospel of God spread. It is these people who testify, through the NT Biblical writings of the things they seen and heard. They would qualify as experts wouldn’t they? If so, then why not believe them?
LikeLike
September 8, 2016 at 2:24 pm
B Bob:
Thank you for your recognition.
When I read the bible I read it without a supernatural slant. Everything in the bible in my opinion is explainable by natural common sense regarding the teachings, miracles, resurrection, and ascension. The teachings are fairly easy to understand unless one has a with supernatural mindset then they become fabulous fantasy. It becomes even more complicated when trying to explain miracles, the escape from the tomb and the ascension and even before the ascension, Christians claim Jesus walked through walls and appeared in their midst…..he said to the disciples when he showed up in their “safe house” and they were frightened as if they’d seen a ghost but Jesus said ” Don’t be afraid, look at the scars on My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself! Touch Me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see I have.”
As to the 500 Jesus appeared to, I don’t believe that for a minute, knowing what I know about Jesus, his message, so called miracles, resurrection and ascension as well as John 2:24 “He did not entrust himself to any man” The number given in 1 Cor. of “over 500 brethren” seeing an appearance of Jesus also doesn’t sit well with Acts 10:40-4: “But God raised him “from the dead”** three days later and caused him to appear, not to everyone, but only to the witnesses that God had already chosen, that is, to us who ate and drank with him after he rose from death.” I have checked all the versions I can find and it does not look like this verse refers to a huge banquet of “500 brethren.” It reads like it is referring solely to the apostles as various commentators agree. In my opinion Paul exaggerated this claim and Paul himself had never met Jesus before or after the crucifixion as far as we know.
Why then would Christians claim Jesus walked through walls? Furthermore we know flesh and bones do not ascend into the sky neither are spirits visible.
No, the disciples were not experts nor did Jesus allow them to be privy to certain aspects of his life; he did not tell them who the two men were that he had a meeting with at the so called transfiguration, shortly before he was arrested and hauled off to his trials and scourging. He did not entrust himself to any man. Though the bible story speaks of Moses and Elias a supposed by the Peter, James and John, Jesus did not tell the disciples who the two men he met with were and was silent about their identity
The transfiguration of Jesus (recorded in Matthew 17 and its parallels) is a unique scene in the gospels. Unlike many other events, Jesus did not announce that it would happen, the disciples certainly did not expect it, and this event was never repeated. It is not connected with any of the great discourses of Jesus, and Jesus instructed those disciples who witnessed it
“Tell the vision to no man, until the Son of man be risen again from the dead.”
I believe I understand who that meeting was with, what it was about and why the disciples were told not to mention anything about it until after the resurrection.
** Note “from the dead” is also a metaphor for the Belly of Sheol as Jonah had escape from the Belly of Sheol or Jesus were dead but that they escaped from the “place of the dead”, “the tomb”, “the belly of sheol”, “from the dead”; AKA, “hell”
LikeLike
September 8, 2016 at 3:31 pm
Leo,
I understand what you are saying and how you approach the scriptures. Your assessment is correct about those that believe the Bible is a supernatural book. Therefore, they would accept the supernatural stories as true. However, everyone knows there is evidence of supernatural things occurring in this life, because there are too many things that have been witnessed and experienced by too many credible people. The Bible has nothing to do with these other worldly experiences witnessed and reported throughout human history. I only mention this for your consideration regarding the the probability of the existence of the supernatural.
Regarding your comments about Jesus and the 500, I the don’t have time to address everything here, but for now, I would like to address the resurrected body of Christ and your take on Acts 10:40-44.
The resurrected body of Christ is made of flesh and bone, but it is not like ours. It no longer operates by blood (it was shed and He died), but somehow, it now operates by spirit. We don’t know how it works, but it is the type of body that all of us will have in the day of the resurrection of the living and the dead. Apparently, the resurrected body of Christ, operated by spirit, is capable of appearing from invisible to visible without the restrictions of the earthly bodies we possess. Even you should be able to accept this concept is possible.
I believe it may have escaped your notice that Pater was strictly referring to the appearance of Christ to them on the day of Jesus’ resurrection. The other witnesses to the appearance of the resurrected Christ took place over the following forty days. This explains what you or others might view as a conflict. Look at the scripture again, Peter is talking about the day Jesus rose from the dead.
LikeLike
September 8, 2016 at 3:56 pm
Naz:
The operative word is “model”, in this case a representation of the interactions between mass and energy, or more precisely, the elementary particles that make up mass and energy. Scientists like models. They are useful for predicting behaviors, from which one can then design experiments to test the validity of the model’s predictions and thus the validity of the model itself. So far, every prediction made by Einstein’s relativity model for the interactions of space, time and gravity have been confirmed by experiment and observation. So far, the predictions made by the two competing models for interaction of mass and energy during and shortly after the Big Bang have not been borne out by experimental data.
The single universe model for the Big Bang predicted a specific mass-energy for the Higgs’ boson (the “God” particle, a fundamental building block of matter). The multiple universe or multiverse model predicted a mass-energy some 40% higher. When the Higgs’ boson was finally detected and measure at CERN in 2013, the mass energy was just under half way between the two predictions. Thus, the models remain a work-in-progress. But, what neither model requires is a First Cause, due to the weirdness of quantum mechanics, weirdness that perplexed even Einstein (“God does not play dice with the universe.”).
Theists don’t have to deal with intense scrutiny of their ideas or worry about standards of verification. All they have to do is claim that God existed prior to 13.72 billion years ago (or prior to 6000 years ago, depending on which Protestant denomination one belongs to) and no one can prove them wrong. There is no way to test the validity of such a hypothesis, leaving them free to go on their merry way, safe in the “knowledge” that God exists.
LikeLike
September 8, 2016 at 4:00 pm
Jesus escaped from the tomb the same day that the tomb was sealed……you may believe that he rose on the third day but he was already gone on the third day and on his way to healing.
Why was Jesus hungry when he appeared with the group and asked them for food?
“…….. it may have escaped your notice that Pater was strictly referring to the appearance of Christ to them on the day of Jesus’ resurrection….huh? I only mentioned Peter regarding the transfiguration before Jesus was crucified so I don’t know what you mean about being in conflict regarding the forty days of appearances. I never mentioned Jesus appearing to Peter.
“……everyone knows there is evidence of supernatural things occurring in this life…..”
I am sorry but I do not know about any supernatural events happening in the world, ever, so what evidence are you talking about?
Oh there are tons of conspiracy theories
Only religious and hollywood express the supernatural, both for continued financial security…paranormal are great box office hits and money makers. And as long as religion keeps the believers in thrall about the supernatural which does not happen now or has ever happened in all of history the collection plates will continue circulating to pay for the palaces of popes and archbishops and how many palaces does one need to live in at one time without blushing?
The Laws of Physics are never broken to appease the ludicrous claims of clergy.
Diamonds, rubies and jewels may fall in the church yards in South American churches and medical cures may occur in Brazil but: the Doctor said “The family asked me to make a statement to the medical community because during the procedure on the patient in the ICU they prayed asking for Mother Teresa of Calcutta to intercede.” So Mother Theresa’s “miracle” is sufficient a miracle to gain her Sainthood just because someone says so; it’s a laughable claim.
You’ve got to be kidding, prayer, at best a placebo effect;. the immune System is more marvellous in its ability to defeat viral infections than any prayers. Believers are sometimes charged with murder when they pray instead of taking their child to the hospital until they die and they deserve being charged with killing their child in those cases.
The disciples were so brainwashed by miracles, myth and magic they couldn’t tell what was real and what was unreal.If they could not explain it it was a miracle, if they could not understand it, it was a miracle. Even Moses started his ministry with a magic trick and the bible called it a miracle.
LikeLike
September 8, 2016 at 4:48 pm
Leo,
In summary, the Bible is book that you don’t believe in, right? Your fascination with it is to laugh at how ridiculous it is for others to believe it and nothing more, correct?
LikeLike
September 8, 2016 at 9:11 pm
10 Alternatives To The Big Bang Theory
Alltime10s
Published on Sep 5, 2016
The Big Bang theory is so often proclaimed as the likeliest cause of our Universe’s existence. But there are alternatives theories that deserve to be looked in to. Here are 10 of the best!
LikeLike
September 8, 2016 at 10:03 pm
Human blood most certainly is a unique body fluid as this research paper attests. One characteristic in particular is the fact that red blood cells are anucleate meaning they actually discard their nucleus during maturation while continuing to function.
Gene expression analysis of human red blood cells
http://www.medsci.org/v06p0156.htm
Abstract
Understanding of molecular mechanisms governing the enucleating phenomena of human erythrocytes is of major importance in both fundamental and applied studies. Total RNA (n=7) from human RBCs (purity of erythrocyte preparation >99,99%) was tested using 2100 Bioanalyzer (Agilent, USA), and transcribed to cDNA. Microarray analysis was performed with the Human Genome Focus GeneChip (Affymetrix, USA), containing 8500 transcripts corresponding to 8400 human genes. Here we report that human RBCs contain typical eukaryotic RNA with 28S- and 18S-rRNA standard bands. Microarray studies revealed the presence of transcripts of 1019 different genes in erythrocytic RNA. Gene Ontology analysis recognized 859 genes involved in general biological processes: 529 genes for cellular metabolism, 228 genes for signal transduction, 104 genes for development, 107 genes for immune response, 62 genes for protein localization, 53 genes for programmed cell death, and 5 genes for autophagy. A number of genes responsible for transcription, translation, RNA-stabilisation as well as for apoptosis and anti-apoptosis have been identified for the first time in circulating human RBCs. The presented data shed new light on the genetic determination of erythropoiesis, apoptosis and may have implications on the pathophysiology and diagnosis of various diseases involving red blood cells.
* * * * *
‘For the life/soul of the flesh is in the blood, and I [YHWH] have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood by reason of the life/soul that makes atonement.’ (Leviticus 17:11)
LikeLike
September 8, 2016 at 10:04 pm
B Bob:
In summary, the Bible is a book I believe in because I interpret it perfectly, like Jesus did, and I understand it accordingly. I see the caricature concept of God as an entity the ancients created in their image to debit or credit everything man did pertaining to man’s ilk but the God of the ancients was always an external God and a God completely different from the God off Jesus that advocated a God that is internal, “within you”.
The old adage: Who has the power(the gold) makes the rules. I see metaphorical examples throughout the bible as a matter of normality but Christians cannot see the metaphor because they are stuck in literal text.
Man subsequently created laws of behaviour and claimed those laws were given to God’s Messengers in dreams, thought and natural phenomenon and that those laws became the inviolable laws to govern mankind. That would be the Mosaic laws of revenge as per the OT “eye for an eye/tooth for a tooth”.
Remember B. my guideline does not include the supernatural bent, which in my opinion, does not exist and has never existed. Those are my parameters as I read, interpret and understand the bible and the history of mankind accordingly.
Now, I can laugh at how others interpret the bible in their supernatural mindset but that doesn’t really address the problem because the problem is really a folly, attributed, not to the masses, but to the clergy’s attempt to brainwash the masses to follow the cleric dogma using whatever means necessary for pence and power of control and if that takes false miracles using magic or in recent examples, an earpiece that surrogates tell the pastor of the ailments of certain parishioners, so he may try to instil a session of seance and healing such as the Popoff Scenarios; well, so be it…no remorse:
Peter Popoff (born July 2, 1946) is a German-born American televangelist, and confirmed fraud. He initially rose to prominence in the 1980s, conducting revival meetings and hosting a nationally-televised program, during which he performed seemingly miraculous cures on audience members. After an electronics expert demonstrated in 1986 that his “divine” revelations were being fed to him by his wife via a wireless radio transmitter, Popoff declared bankruptcy the following year. He has since resumed his faith healing sessions “in a manner identical to his method prior to his exposure as a fraud”. Researcher and bioethics expert Fred M. Frohock cited Popoff as “one of many egregious instances of fake healing.”
Popoff continues his fakery weekly TV advertising of his miracle water in ketchup packages to believers willing to send him donations for the chance of riches and helming and any number of wishes out of the genie lamp.
LikeLike
September 8, 2016 at 10:31 pm
Leviticus 17:11 is so atrocious statement: “….or it is the blood by reason of the life/soul that makes atonement….” that is so last 5 millennia that the use of the statement is an affront to civilization itself. That one has to spill blood and take the life of the sacrifice is so barbaric as to wonder why modern man can accept the insanity of religion gone wild!
LikeLike
September 8, 2016 at 11:57 pm
Brit Hadasha – Part 1: His Sacrifice – 119 Ministries
Published on Mar 20, 2013
Yeshua our Messiah is said to be our sacrifice. The TANAKH, or the Old Testament declares that our Creator is against human sacrifice. Now we have a problem, or do we…Welcome to the opening teaching of the Brit Hadasha series, in which we take the Brit Hadasha, the New Testament, and begin to Test Everything…
LikeLike
September 9, 2016 at 12:00 am
The Lost Sheep – 119 Ministries
Published on Mar 21, 2014
In this newly remastered teaching, with over ten minutes of new material added, you will embark on a systematic journey through the scriptures to understand the greatest love story that is NEVER told. You will learn what the majority of the bible is truly all about as the mystery of the gospel is revealed through the scriptures and pieced together by Paul’s insight.This teaching will forever change your understanding of almost everything you thought you knew about the Bible.
LikeLike
September 9, 2016 at 12:04 am
Brit Hadasha – Part 3: Nailed to the Cross – 119 Ministries
Published on May 28, 2013
Part of the Brit Hadasha Series from 119 Ministries – Test Everything!
LikeLike
September 9, 2016 at 12:10 am
Repent and Live – 119 Ministries
Published on Oct 22, 2013
In Ezekiel 18, our Creator does not provide the answer on how He is able to forgive our sin should we repent, despite Israel questioning Yah on this matter. He simply commands Israel to focus on repenting first. He did not say that it was not a good question. It is actually a very good question. They simply asked the question at the wrong time. Now it is time to find out how He forgives us of sin, when we repent and live.
LikeLike
September 9, 2016 at 12:31 am
John 3
13 No one has ascended into heaven, but He who descended from heaven: the Son of Man.
14 As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up;
15 so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life.
16 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.
17 For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.
18 He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
19 This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.
20 For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.
21 But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.”
22 After these things Jesus and His disciples came into the land of Judea, and there He was spending time with them and baptizing.
23 John also was baptizing in Aenon near Salim, because there was much water there; and people were coming and were being baptized–
24 for John had not yet been thrown into prison.
25 Therefore there arose a discussion on the part of John’s disciples with a Jew about purification.
26 And they came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, He who was with you beyond the Jordan, to whom you have testified, behold, He is baptizing and all are coming to Him.”
27 John answered and said, “A man can receive nothing unless it has been given him from heaven.
28 You yourselves are my witnesses that I said, ‘I am not the Christ,’ but, ‘I have been sent ahead of Him.’
29 He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice. So this joy of mine has been made full.
30 He must increase, but I must decrease.
31 “He who comes from above is above all, he who is of the earth is from the earth and speaks of the earth. He who comes from heaven is above all.
32 What He has seen and heard, of that He testifies; and no one receives His testimony.
33 He who has received His testimony has set his seal to this, that God is true.
34 For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God; for He gives the Spirit without measure.
35 The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand.
36 He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”
LikeLike
September 9, 2016 at 6:30 am
Bob, you proved my point by saying that the quantum mechanics model does not require a first cause. Something that does not require a first cause is eternal, like God.
So what we are talking about is the starting point. It’s either God or the eternal matter/energy described in quantum mechanics. That would make matter/energy a god in of itself which would make existence totally meaningless.
In the end while you are correct in saying that we cannot “prove” God exists in the science lab, the Big Bangers can’t prove their theory either. So we are left with a question that is beyond the scientific realm. With God as the first cause we have meaning and purpose. Without God there is the meaninglessness and despair of random eternal matter and energy.
I’ll go on my merry way now…..cheers Bob.
Naz
LikeLike
September 9, 2016 at 6:37 am
Leo,
Your cultural and societal observations are true for the most part. I can see how someone could attribute those truths (falsehoods) to the development of the Law of Moses and the rest of the Bible. What I cannot see, given your skeptical view of it, is how you claim to believe in the Bible. It seems incredulous for you to claim to believe in the Bible when you see it mostly as a hoax. It seems Jesus, in your view, is only different than other charlatans because He did not con people out of money, yet according to you claim, He conned them nonetheless. Am I missing something?
LikeLike
September 9, 2016 at 8:13 am
Naz:
I typed First Cause, not first cause. I’ll try not to despair that I was too subtle in my meaning.
LikeLike
September 9, 2016 at 8:42 am
B Bob:
To believe in the bible simply means interpreting it perfectly in understanding without a thousand supernatural angels dancing on the heads of pins.
As I prefaced my last post by telling you that:
“In summary, the Bible is a book I believe in because I interpret it perfectly, like Jesus did, and I understand it accordingly. I see the caricature concept of God as an entity the ancients created in their image to debit or credit everything man did pertaining to man’s ilk but the God of the ancients was always an external God and a God completely different from the God off Jesus that advocated a God that is internal, “within you”.
All Religion derives from a person and appeared on the world scene from the year dot when the armies of Religion began their conquest of the World’s people. We should be very clear that this was a military conquest, disguised as a missionary enterprise, and through the use of force, authorized by a declaration of the one true God against infidels, Religion was able to forcibly convert and assimilate non-religious and non-believers into their fold. Very few indigenous communities of the world survived this.
There are minorities and people struggling for survival in the religious ocean of the world and we must be very sensitive not to unwittingly and inadvertently support religious Imperialism, with their attempts to wipe out all other cultures and civilizations, among them Atheism, the LBGT community, gay marriage, scientific research and space exploration for the origin of the cosmos and life itself.
Religious ideology had run amuck in the New testament era when Jesus came into the picture. Jesus was a man full of common sense, sensibilities and love for humanity. Of all the things Jesus despised, he hated religion the most along with the perpetrators of religious hoaxes of miracles, myths, magic, mayhem, ritualism and the supernatural notion of ghosts and the paranormal, of angels and demons. This supernatural folly was used by the Religious Powers of the day to ostracize the poor, the disabled and the sick citing their afflictions as consequences of their sins.
The real prisoners of the world were slaves of religion, the downtrodden masses, in thrall to the tyranny of religion. It was the masses that Jesus wanted to liberate, by showing compassion, by helping and healing, feeding, clothing, forgiving, showing tender loving care to; in other words, giving the basic human rights to the rejects of society by the power base of Religious zealots. Religious zealots who even today in Israel still rail against people for picking up sticks on the Sabbath and religious fundamentalists who willingly kill people for disobeying sexual laws laid down by religious ancestors.
Jesus’ began his campaign against the cruelty of religion toward the masses they governed by announcing that his mission and purpose in life was to release the downtrodden and set free the captives of religion, to show them the acceptable way of the Father, innate from the womb through natural forces endowed in every person which was contrary to the teachings of mankind by the promoters of the supernatural pseudo-God of religion’s invention.
I rejoice daily that I do not have blind faith and that leaves me to use common sense and natural explanations for the supernatural and tired expressions of theological dogma, exactly what Jesus came to set the downtrodden and captives of religion, free from.
LikeLike
September 9, 2016 at 8:47 am
B Bob:
Some people blog like a Ferrari but by lacing it with supernatural nuts and bolts, end up with the Model T of antiquity.
It is worth noting that the Gospels only mention the two Sanhedrin Council Members Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus as being the secret disciples of Jesus, present throughout Jesus’ campaign and most notably at the end of the campaign when they were the only two present who claimed the body, carried out the tomb burial ritual and sealed the tomb with the huge wheel-like stone.
Jesus was not dead just because some people said he was; he could have been if Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea had not been such friends to him, loving him and protecting him from the egocentric religious bastards whose toes he stepped because Jesus wanted to do something other than comply with the supernatural nonsense of religious insanity.
The God of Jesus serves up only good for man so that all there is of good is available to the man who is available to all there is of good. Religion interferes with that process trying to fake the role of God through clerics. Religious men would be wise to let God alone to work through man, not man’s warped views of non existent entities of imagination that fosters and promotes financial security and ego esteem for wannabe messengers of non existent supernaturalism.
Jesus appeared bodily to the disciples and while he did not entrust to any man, the few he did appear to had as much trustworthiness as any he had known except for Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea who themselves were secret disciples unknown to anyone but Jesus.
These two illustrious characters, members of the Sanhedrin and secret disciples of Jesus, moved by the supreme proof of love of truth revealed by Jesus, come out of the shadows invested with an extraordinary courage. They openly show themselves to be disciples of the Crucified One in the last days and each offers him a gift: Nicodemus, precious spices and perfumes for anointing, and Joseph, his new tomb he had hewn out of the rock face for two years prior. The authors of the Gospels have exalted them forever to the memory and veneration of all Christians.
The Church of Jerusalem and the Christians of the Holy Land commemorate Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus each year on 31 August.
I can construct a replicate tomb to demonstrate the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea and it would not involve any supernatural means whatever. I could seal it with a huge rolling stone, secret a tunnel, remove the body for medical attention, placed the grave clothes in a neat little pile, engineer the stone to roll away on its own from the entrance to reveal an empty tomb and Presto, let the worship being! And you would have to search to figure it out or in the absence of due diligence you might just get lazy and claim it was a miracle and leave it at that. And the news of a miracle would be noised throughout the land as a testament to the supernatural God of mankind and place your offerings in the collection plate.
Well done. Well done!
THIS IS THE Ancient Religious Tradition:
God’s will, so called, is revealed in the “holy” scriptures. The sacred book formulates the will of God and specifies what is to be given to the clergy. Clergy become parasites. “… All things of life are so ordered that the clergy is everywhere indispensable; at all the natural events of life, at birth, marriage, sickness, death. Natural values become utterly valueless. The Clergy sanctifies and bestows all value. Disobedience of God (the clergy) is ‘sin.’ Subjection to God (the clergy) is redemption. Clergy use ‘sin’ to gain and hold power.
Jesus tried to set the people free from religious belief with knowledge, the downtrodden, the oppressed, the captive, the poor, recovery of sight for the blind for they were all walking in the ditch, forced to stumble along and on pain of death, to follow. Thereby the Son proclaims the favorable year of the Lord, revealing the true Lord, the Father living within the sons and daughters of his domain, within their humanity.
That is the bible I believe in and the Jesus who proclaimed the bible in that way.
LikeLike
September 9, 2016 at 9:08 am
Leo,
God bless you! I really mean it. Anyone can see you truly believe what you are saying. Sincerity is commendable virtue because it comes from the heart. It has no bearing on the truth.
I like to recall how many times I did something out of sincerity and with good intentions, but, in the end, was wrong. Perhaps this is where the old saying “hell is paved with good intentions” came from.
I would like to offer up a comment for you to consider with no intention to offend you. None of us has it all figured out. None of us should think we do. For this reason, a red flag of warning should be raised when we arrive at the moment we, and only we, know the answers. There is something inherently arrogant and wrong when we do this. Why am I telling you this? Because, you believe that you (perhaps, you alone) interpret the Scriptures perfectly. Honestly, from my observation, your perfect interpretation includes changing, disregarding, and even completely denying what some of the texts state, in perfecting your view.
Again, I am not trying to offend or be disparaging, as I truly respect your opinions. I am only trying to point out the flaws presented in your written discourse concerning the Holy Scriptures. I hope you think it prudent to at least consider what i am saying
LikeLike
September 9, 2016 at 9:20 am
B Bob:
Yes you are missing………… a whole lot!
I hope you find some enlightenment, that it may prompt some questions, ponder other views and challenge your thinking from my discernment perspective as I understand Jesus to represent.
“I said ye are Gods and children of the most high”. Jesus quoted this scripture personally when accused of blasphemy by the clerics. It is scriptural, do you believe it and if so what would you interpret it to mean in your life?
LikeLike
September 9, 2016 at 10:00 am
B Bob:
Thank you very much for your forthright comments. I appreciate your diplomacy and your sincerity and I take no offence with anything you have said.
This is not something I have taken lightly since I was 12 years of age as I sat in the church oblivious to the priest but engaged deeply in the texts of the Gospels about Jesus and what he said and it was like he was talking so directly to me that I understood everything he said. And I often wonder how many times Jesus was berated because he spoke as one having authority.
Now just relax a moment with me please while I sermonize to you about the real Jesus as I discern him and the real God, the Father of Jesus and why I do not buy the supernatural but I do buy into the natural as described by Jesus of who the Father is and where the Father lives. And while I talk about God I do not talk about a supernatural God somewhere out in the northern sky or anywhere else in the cosmos; I talk about the one who is “BE-“ING within us all the time………if we let him….not always an easy task but a willing soul makes a sweeter soul and as such move forward.
Be still God said; I want you to know something. I’m God.
And if you’re prepared to pause long enough and know that I AM God .
And to recognize where I live, in you. Anything else you need to know?
For if God be for you who can be against you? If only we’d learn to take one step of every moment of every day on the simple assumption that he’s God, lives where he does, sharing his life with us on earth on the way to heaven then we truly will discover that everything that threatens to be over our head is already under his feet. Nothing more complicated about the Christian life than that. One thing we need to learn is simply to credit God as God with being big enough for the job. And give him the opportunity to demonstrate.
You know, whenever the Lord Jesus preached, people were astonished; he was an astonishing preacher. Did you ever notice that, as you turned to the record given of his life on earth in the gospels? For instance in the last 2 verses of the 7th chapter of Matthew’s gospel, Matthew chapter 7 verse 28, And it came to pass when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine. The astonishing doctrines of Jesus Christ.
Now remember, the Lord Jesus never preached from the New Testament, not because he didn’t like it, he just didn’t have it. Surprising how many Christians of long standing haven’t fully grasped the fact that the only bible the Lord Jesus ever had in his hand was the Old Testament. The only bible that the apostles used as they evangelized the then known world in one generation, Old Testament. The only bible the early church possessed, Old Testament. Let anybody undermine your confidence in the Old Testament scriptures and you’ve robbed the Lord Jesus and the early church of the only bible they ever possessed. So it was the Old Testament the Lord Jesus took in his hand and yet the amazing thing is this: though this was that book from which the others were accustomed to preaching, when they listened to the Lord Jesus they were astonished,. For it says in the last verse in that chapter that he taught them as one having authority. Not as the Scribes; in other words, when the Lord Jesus got up, he spoke as though he said what he meant and meant what he said and had the right to say it. Nothing apologetic; he didn’t throw out a few suggestions. He didn’t say “I suppose”, “Maybe”, “I think”. His was a proclamation, not like the Scribes. When the professional preachers got up the congregation nestled in the corner of their pew and went for a quiet doze hoping they’d wake up just before the benediction and preferably after the offering. But when the Lord Jesus,; when he got up, everybody was on the edge of their seat wondering what AMAZING thing he’d say next. He was an astonishing preacher.
If you were to turn on to the 13TH chapter of the same gospel, in the 54th verse of that 13th chapter of Matthew: “When the Lord Jesus was come into his own country he taught them in their synagogue insomuch that they were astonished and they said whence hath this man this man this wisdom, whence hath this man these mighty words and you recognize what they meant by “this man”. You see he was altogether too ordinary, as some of us have reminded ourselves, they’d known him as a little baby, nursed in his mother’s arms, they’d seen him clinging to her skirt, they’d seen him romping in the streets with his village pals, he was the one who as an apprentice at the bench was learning his trade, he was the man who came and fixed the window when it jammed, “this man”. And they tried to rationalize. You see, it would have been so much easier if he would of had sort of a genius for a father or a mother, if he’d been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, everything that money could buy, he’d come back from this university and the other having gathered every kind of academic distinction and degree but he was too ordinary, “this man”.
Is not this the carpenter’s son, is not his mother called Mary and his brethren James and Joses and Simon and Judas and his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath “this man” all these things?
Now why were they astonished? You might quite sincerely say,
“Well they were astonished because they did not know that he was God”. But I think you’d be wrong. They were not astonished because they did not know that he was God; they were astonished because they did not know that he was……man. Not man as they were, not man as you and I are….but man as he is God, created man to be. Real man. That’s what made him astonishing. You see, you and I can derive an immense amount of comfort from the fact that when the Lord Jesus came into this world he didn’t come into this world to behave as God; though God he was. He came into this world as man; he stepped out of eternity into time; he came from heaven to earth and he was born, conceived of the holy spirit and fashioned in the borrowed womb of that virgin girl in the city called Bethlehem, the house and city of David. It behooving him in all points to be like unto his brethren, he assumed our flesh and blood; he was born a human being. And he came to be the truth. Not just to preach the truth, not just to proclaim or explain the truth; he said, “I am the truth”, I preach.
Remember that, John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth and the life”. In other words, I’m the truth about the way, the truth how to become a Christian. Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself, the hallmarks of my savior. Says the Lord Jesus, if you’re lost, if you’re groping in the dark; if you’re still trying to find your way home, if you feel dirty, if you want to be clean, if you know you’re lost and a sinful person and you want to be saved, you want to be redeemed, if you want to know forgiveness, said the Lord Jesus, “Come to me, I am the way” how to become a Christian but I’m not only the way to become a Christian, I am the Life. If having become a Christian and you want to know how to live the Christian life, well, said the Lord Jesus, very simple: “Come to me; I am the life”. I’m the truth not only as to how to become a Christian, I’m the truth how to be the Christian you have become. Because having given myself for you to be the way on the grounds of redemption whereby you can be reconciled to a holy God, be accepted in the beloved and know that your sins are forgiven, acquitted. Having given myself for you in redemption, I rose again from the dead to give myself to you in spiritual regeneration to re-invade your humanity in the person of my other self, the other Comforter, the Holy Ghost to credit you with my divine presence so that by virtue of who I am, God, living where I do, in your heart as a redeemed sinner I can impart to you all divine dynamic of my indwelling and give you what it takes.
Now that’s the gospel, not the gospel plus, not the Lookist Edition. The fact that the Lord Jesus rose again from the dead, ascended to be with his father, glorified at his right hand, to invade the humanity of every forgiven sinner, and share his life with them on earth and communicate that life through them to their fellow man, this isn’t for the fanatical, this is normality, this is a man being restored to his true humanity. Because you see, it takes the life of the Lord Jesus in you, to be in the process of time what the CRUCIFIXION of the Lord Jesus for you gives you the right to become in the crisis of the moment. All that’s comprehended in the remedial measures that God has introduced in the person of his son to get us back as men to where we belong. The life of the Lord Jesus in you imperative to the process of time in being the Christian that you became in the crisis of the moment on the basis of what he did for you. He’s the truth, about the way, how to become a Christian, the truth about the life, how to be the Christian that you have become. And you discover that you need not only what he did because of what you’ve done, you need who he is, living within you to take the place of what you are.
But he wasn’t only the truth about the way and the truth about the life, he was the truth about God, and the truth about man. You see anything you and I can know about God we see magnificently magnified in the person of his incarnate son. As we have already reminded ourselves, said the Lord Jesus, he that has seen me has seen the father.
“Show us the father said Philip, it sufficeth us”.
Said the Lord Jesus, “have I been so long time with you hast thou been so long time with me and not known me Philip? He that has seen me has seen my father”.
We remind ourselves that for the very first time since Adam fell into sin God in heaven could look at his son and see in him a man, a real man, could see himself, perfectly reflected. The word was made flesh, said John, and we beheld his glory. The reflected glory of his father, indwelling his humanity, manifesting himself, as God, through Jesus Christ as man. John 12:45: He that has seen me has seen him that sent me. So he was the truth about God. He interpreted deity. In the physical, visible body of his humanity he gave not only a physical, visible expression of his own invisible self but an invisible self intimately identified with his invisible father who indwelt his humanity in the person of the holy spirit and whom he allowed from within his human spirit to gain total access to his human soul so that the father through the holy spirit could teach his mind, so control his emotions that the father in the son would direct his will and govern his behavior. So the Lord Jesus constantly testified: John 5: 19; John 5:30; “Without my father I can do nothing”.
Don’t you believe Philip that I am in my father and my father is in me? And the words that I speak unto you, I speak not of myself; the father who lives in me; he does the work; everything I do, he does; everything I say, he says; everything I am, he is. That’s why when you look at me you see him. Because you see, the Lord Jesus was not only the truth about God……………………..
Now if ever there was a man who walked this earth who knew the truth about a man’s humanity and that relationship that must govern that man’s humanity, with God and God with him, that man was Jesus Christ. He just happened to be God who engineered man and who deliberately, though never himself never less than God stepped out of eternity into time and insisted of his own free volition, something he need never ever have done, being never ever less than God came into this world to behave as though he were never ever more than man. As opposed of course to man, who being never ever more than man, struts across this planet and behaves as though he were never ever less than God. That’s the essential difference. Jesus Christ never ever less than God behaved as though he were never ever more than man; man never ever more than man behaves as though he was never ever less than God.
The truth about God and the truth about man; in other words, the Lord Jesus, as our creator and the one who assumed the office of the man he made knew exactly what that relationship would be that would govern his humanity on earth and his father, as God in heaven and deliberately submitted himself to those criteria of our humanity to the limitations that make man, man.
So here are two very simple points to establish: Jesus Christ in whom was seen the total glory of the father was the truth about God. But being the creator who made man, assuming his office, to fulfill his role was the truth about man. Now what is equally obvious is that the Lord Jesus was the truth about God because he was the truth about man because the truth about man is that man was created to be the truth about God. In case I said that too fast, let me say it again. You see, all I’m doing is making the obvious, obvious; the tragedy is that obvious by and large is so obvious it ceases to be obvious. It’s the simplicity that is in Jesus. You see we are past masters at complicating the issue and turning our Christian faith into a complicated procedure when in point of fact, it derives from a person; it’s of him, through him, to him, all things to whom alone be glory. He’s the beginning and the end; he’s the author and the finisher of our faith; he’s the source and the sustenance; he’s the root and the fatness; Christ himself. And he came into this world to be the truth about God and the truth about man and he was the truth about God because he was the truth about man, because the truth about man is that man was created to be the truth about God.
Now B Bob even knowing this I do not pretend to be the person Jesus was but I try in my own way to be the positive force with everybody I meet; unless, I receive vibes from certain individuals that are way too contrary to engage with even with a smile; there are some very cruel people around and when my peace goes out and like a radar returns to me, I get off that track and out of the picture like Jesus slipping many times from the grips of evil as it comes to throw you off a cliff or whip you or scourge you……….yada yada yada..
I appreciate your sentiment and welcome the opportunity to dialogue.
ltg famous quote:
“When you are wrong be quick to apologize; when you are right be quick to forgive. © abba-1991
LikeLike
September 9, 2016 at 10:11 am
Bob, sorry, I don’t follow your meaning of First Cause ?
Please elaborate.
Naz
LikeLike
September 9, 2016 at 10:20 am
I could be wrong but I believe Bob is talking thusly:
“First Cause”, the God Concept………….
due to the weirdness of quantum mechanics, weirdness that perplexed even Einstein
HOWEVER,
(“God does not play dice with the universe.”) if God is the presumed First Cause
That is, if one believes that God is the
“First Cause”
Thus the CAPS, “F” & “C”
Bob may better explain what he means……
LikeLike
September 9, 2016 at 10:38 am
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_argument
LikeLike
September 9, 2016 at 10:53 am
Bob:
This makes sense to me:
The question is not about what got things started or how long they have been going, but rather what keeps them going.
Because when we figure out what keeps them going, therein the answer of starts and ends will be. To me at this point in time there are no starts and no ends, just a “what keeps them going”. Just the Birth and Death of stars in the cosmic garden yet never quite satisfying the questions they posed.
How can perpetual motion ever start or ever end? It’s a conundrum.
LikeLike
September 9, 2016 at 4:45 pm
Leo,
It’s interesting how your view of God is similar to my own, yet my view of the Scriptures being inerrant is in total contrast of yours. It has always astounded me that people don’t realize that God is also man. God has always been one person of both Spirit and flesh. Otherwise, man, who is both spirit and flesh, could not have been made in His own image and likeness (which all Christians believe) if He wasn’t. If God was only spirit, then we would only be spirit. This is also the reason the doctrine of the trinity is impossible to be true. If it were true, then each of us would have to me made of three separate persons, yet somehow be one. Anyone can look around and see this is not the case.
I personally believe all the fullness of God (Elohim) permanently abided in Jesus Christ before the God said “let there be light” and there was light. I believe it was Jesus Christ, the lamb slain before the foundation of the world, that God spoke through in creating all things. I also believe it is Jesus Christ who holds all things together. These truths are recorded in (Col 1). You may reject it because it is written by Paul, but I accept all Scripture to be written by inspired people of God, and God is the sole author. I believe that God is Jesus Christ.
I believe it is true God originally made man in His own image; the image and likeness of Jesus Christ that was born of a woman. Who was also subjected to sin and death. So, I agree with your revelation that Jesus Christ is the man God made us to be like. I also believe the promise God made in Gen 1:26 is fulfilled in the redemption provide by the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Man, all that believe in Christ, will be, once and for all, and in finality, made in the image and likeness of the glorious and resurrected Jesus Christ.
It is my firm belief that the scriptures do not lie and they do not contradict themselves, therefore they must be authored by God. To me, it is folly to choose which Scriptures are true and which are not. Either they all are truly authored by God or God is the author of none.
Thank you for the civil dialogue. I have enjoyed it
LikeLike
September 10, 2016 at 6:11 am
B Bob:
I’m curious. Given your belief in scripture inerrancy, how do you rationalize the differences between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, or do you accept JEDP authorship of the Pentateuch?
http://www.hope-of-israel.org/twocreationsaccts.html
Just wondering.
LikeLike
September 10, 2016 at 6:36 am
Bob,
Could you please be specific about what you want me to rationalize. I don’t want to assume anything. There are many things to consider and rationalize between Gen 1 and 2. Not just the use of Elohim and Jehovah.
LikeLike
September 10, 2016 at 6:55 am
Bob,
Any debate as to who the books of scripture were written by are irrelevant to who the author is; God is the author. One simple and amazing fact is there are 40+/- writers telling a central theme and story for the sole purpose to provide revelation as to who God is, yet none of these writings contradict themselves. This is not humanly possible to do, therefore we are left with no other conclusion; someone other than humans authored the book. According to the book, God is the author. Why not believe it?
Science and the Bible are in agreement with each other. To use one against the other is futile. I believe you already recognize this. It seems to me, one could prove there is no God, not with science, but by disproving the Bible story from beginning to end. Have you ever considered that possibility Bob?
Back to your question about Gen 1 & 2. Please specify your the exact issue.
LikeLike
September 10, 2016 at 7:26 am
B Bob,
You wrote, “It has always astounded me that people don’t realize that God is also man. God has always been one person of both Spirit and flesh. Otherwise, man, who is both spirit and flesh, could not have been made in His own image and likeness (which all Christians believe) if He wasn’t. If God was only spirit, then we would only be spirit. This is also the reason the doctrine of the trinity is impossible to be true. If it were true, then each of us would have to me made of three separate persons, yet somehow be one. Anyone can look around and see this is not the case.”
You also wrote, “It is my firm belief that the scriptures do not lie and they do not contradict themselves, therefore they must be authored by God. To me, it is folly to choose which Scriptures are true and which are not. Either they all are truly authored by God or God is the author of none.”
Please explain how you square that with this:
John 14
16 I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever;
17 that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.
25 “These things I have spoken to you while abiding with you.
26 But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.
John 15
26 “When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me,
John 16
7 But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.
8 And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment;
9 concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me;
10 and concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you no longer see Me;
11 and concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged.
12 “I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.
13 But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come.
14 He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you.
15 All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you.
– Frank
LikeLike
September 10, 2016 at 7:28 am
Posted as reference:
JEDP theory
http://www.theopedia.com/jedp-theory
LikeLike
September 10, 2016 at 7:40 am
Frank,
Thank you for your questions. I am more than pleased to address them.
Meanwhile, can you tell me how you square this:
God made man in His own image and according to His likeness. If God is a trinity of persons (three separate persons with separate wills, minds, etc, yet one in unity). Since we were made in His own image and likeness, why are you,me, and all of mankind not three separate persons with separate wills, etc, yet one in unity?
To believe the scriptures teach a trinity of three separate persons of God, requires us to be made as and in a trinity of three separate persons of man, does it not?
I would submit, the argument of the trinity proves the Bible is in error starting at Gen 1:26-27. If that is the case, we should close the book, and believe what we wish and go our merry way.
LikeLike
September 10, 2016 at 7:52 am
Frank,
To be clear, if the argument of the trinity is true, then Gen 1:26-27 is not and cannot be true. If Gen 1:26-27 is not true, then the Bible is not true.
LikeLike
September 10, 2016 at 8:08 am
B Bob,
Thanks for writing back.
One manner in which we are made in God’s image and likeness is that we consist of body, soul and spirit. But I don’t see where you’ve addressed the challenge I presented to you. Building a claim for Biblical doctrine while providing a solitary verse of Scripture proves insufficient in the least and foolhardy at worst. Perhaps you could expound?
I’ll offer you this for consideration:
The Trinity Explained
InspiringPhilosophy 11 videos * 48,289 views * Last updated on Sep 1, 2015
The Trinity is confirmed logically and in scripture. This short playlist confirms that.
– Frank
LikeLike
September 10, 2016 at 8:13 am
Frank,
I see I wasn’t clear. I will respond to your questions and in fact I am preparing my response noe. Please realize you asked several questions and it takes a little time to address them properly.
LikeLike
September 10, 2016 at 8:16 am
Frank,
You didn’t make a good argument for the trinity doctrine, but you made an excellent argument to\ the contrary. You described one person consisting of mind, body, and spirit (soul).
So I ask you again, explain how the mind, body, and spirit (soul) is a trinity of three separate persons?
LikeLike
September 10, 2016 at 8:17 am
B Bob,
Take all the time you need. Meanwhile, also consider & respond to the information provided in this:
Holy Spirit
http://www.theopedia.com/holy-spirit
LikeLike
September 10, 2016 at 8:17 am
Franks,
I also want you to stop answering with so many websites and videos. I do not have time for those things. Please discuss these thing with your own thoughts and words.
LikeLike
September 10, 2016 at 8:21 am
B Bob,
You have a conflation problem.
Be well.
– Frank
LikeLike
September 10, 2016 at 8:48 am
A SERIOUS SERMON in SUPPORT of SANITY, SPECIALLY for SENSIBLE SAINTS SEEKING, STRENGTH, SOLACE and SOUL SURVIVAL:
“The men who run religion know the human spirit can’t be contained by their miserable dogma; they know it’s like trying to force a mattress into a bucket and they know that their religion isn’t capable of understanding the things it claims to be expert in because it won’t allow itself the tools. They’re not in a position to deliver enlightenment to anyone because they don’t possess it themselves. So they have to drag us down to their level to stop us from rumbling their racket.
This is why it’s vital for them that we don’t feel at home on this earth; that we feel rootless and disconnected, they even use the word “earthly” as a pejorative term when it’s about as heavenly as it gets. They can’t justify any of this logically of course, so they hide behind smoke and mirror words like “transcendent” while carefully stoking our most primitive fears because they need to point us in the wrong direction away from the path of intuitive knowledge, to make us shrink ourselves in our own minds and to make us feel helpless and in need of guidance when the truth is we don’t need guidance from them anymore than we need a miner’s helmet to see our way around in broad daylight because it’s right there for us anytime we want it and it always has been.
For those who would call themselves Christian: “Do unto others as you would be done by” and “seek the Kingdom of heaven within” is the message of Jesus; That’s it! The rest of it, all of it, is just embroidery and none of it is there for our benefit. There’s nothing complicated or arcane or mysterious about the message of Jesus. It doesn’t need to be interpreted, explained or filtered by any self appointed middlemen and there is nothing that any of us need to transcend except our own gullibility and the criminally self serving anti humanity of organized religion.” pcondell
And everybody said….. “_ _ _ _”
You know the word here, fill in the blanks, it’s a Christian ritual!
LikeLike
September 10, 2016 at 8:51 am
Frank,
Really, you take this route because you cannot answer one very simple, reasonable, and honest question about your belief in the trinity doctrine. I thought were a serious person. I just spent the past 20 minutes giving thoughtful answers to your questions, but I now see there is no reason to do so.
This post argues the origin and the sustainer of creation. Christians argue that their God is the creator and sustainer of all things. They base their belief of God on the words in the Bible. How ridiculous and nonsensical does it appear to a non believer, to believe God made man in His own image and according to His likeness, yet man is nothing like God. Declaring God of the Bible is three separate persons with three separate wills, three separate consciousness, yet declares Himself One? Reconciling God is not One in person, but “three”; only One in unity of three (not one) persons. YOU CANNOT SQUARE IT UP. Gen 1:26-27 cannot be reconciled with this belief. Therefore, the non believer is justified in rejecting the scriptures as being of being true.
Does that set well with you?
LikeLike
September 10, 2016 at 10:02 am
MIRACLE OF CATCHING FISH
HUH?
Perspective in common sense and simplicity of Jesus
versus
Religion’s complicated, common nonsense of supernaturalism:
PREAMBLE:
My personal experience is hardly removed from the context of the bible text of the Miracle of the Catching Fish:
My experience demonstrates to me the similarity of the context and suggests that Jesus, for example, knew the fish run had begun even though Simon said they had toiled all night and had taken nothing, exactly as teenagers we had toiled with our scoop nets and taken nothing; and then, quite suddenly in many cases, the fish appeared and we were swamped by the magnitude of their numbers.
Therefore it is easy for me to understand how the nets were swelling with fish in the bible context of the fishy story compared to my own similar encounters with huge schools of fish as their migration manifested itself in areas where before there was nothing. One of the first signs of a fish run is the intermittent flashes of fins sparkling atop the surface of the water reflecting the daylight and sunlight of an early morning run.
You may be inclined and very content to chalk it all up to another miracle that fulfills the comfort feed to a religious brain but my knowledge based brain rejects the notion that events unfold by paranormal means.
Once when Jesus was standing on the shore of Lake Gennesaret, the crowd was pushing in on him to better hear the Word of God. He noticed two boats tied up. The fishermen had just left them and were out scrubbing their nets. He climbed into the boat that was Simon’s and asked him to put out a little from the shore. Sitting there, using the boat for a pulpit, he taught the crowd.
When he finished teaching, he said to Simon, “Push out into deep water and let your nets out for a catch.”
Simon Peter did not show a willingness to follow Jesus’ suggestion by the fact that he argued about the suggestion, saying, I imagine: “what’re you talking about? We’ve toiled and fished all night, we’re tired and sleepy, there’s no fish here man.”
Then thinking better about what he said in a moment of annoyed reflex and perhaps even humbled by the way he addressed Jesus whose only intention was to be helpful and considerate to the few friends he hung out with, in a softer tone said,
“Okay, okay, I’ll drop the net for your sake because you asked,” and shouted to the the other fishers on board…
“Okay fellas, prepare the nets for one more troll; don’t come up empty or you’ll all go home with empty pockets again today…Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go! Let’s make it or break it.”
Then, astonished that the fish run had begun in the morning instead of in the night as was expected, in amazement mixed with delight, Simon Peter rushed to Jesus exclaiming,
“OMG Jesus! Look at the fish, OMG, oh dear heavens you shouldn’t be hanging out with a loudmouth guzzling tavern dwelling fisherman like me; thank you for your alert wakefulness; I was falling asleep and didn’t see the waters rippling and glinting with fish. Wow! Thank you. Thank you.”
“Take it easy Simon, calm down”, said Jesus, I understand. I know you’ve worked all night but me?, I’m fresh, up from a sound night’s sleep. Thank you for your friendship, as a friend Im pleased I was able to help. I’m glad I noticed the thin glisten of silver splashing and sparkling the surface”
When they pulled in that catch of fish, awe overwhelmed Simon and everyone with him. It was the same with James and John, Zebedee’s sons, coworkers with Simon.
Jesus said to Simon,
“Don’t worry Simon, you’ll soon be fishing for men and women, making huge catches and filling many seats in many rooms”
They pulled their boats up on the beach, prepared the fish for Joseph of Arimathea’s chain of fish markets, collected their remunerative due then left the boats tied and secured, nets and all, and walked with Jesus, in laughter and light banter about the marvels of life, to the pub to celebrate the huge catch with a hearty morning breakfast. Over joy that overtook their earlier depression.
Meanwhile the Scribes and Pharisees were watching from their distance at the goings on were enraged how Jesus walked and talked and befriended the many publicans and sinners who sat also together with Jesus and his disciples: for there were many, and they followed him.
And when the scribes and Pharisees saw him eat with publicans and sinners, they said unto his disciples, How is it that he eateth and drinketh with publicans and sinners?
When Jesus heard it, he saith unto them, They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
“All the people, yes, even the tax-collectors, when they heard John the Baptist speak, were baptised by his baptism. But the Pharisees and the experts in the Law only tried to frustrate the purpose of John’s baptism.
“What can I say”, Jesus continued, “that the clerics of this generation are like—what sort of men are they? They are like children sitting in the market-place and calling out to each other, ‘We played at weddings for you, but you wouldn’t dance, and we played at funerals for you, and you wouldn’t cry!’
John the Baptist, my cousin, came in the strictest austerity and you say he is crazy. I come, enjoying life, feasting and celebrating and they say, ‘Look, a drunkard, a lush, a glutton, a bosom-friend of tax-collectors, fishermen, sinners and outsiders!’
Ah, well, wisdom’s reputation is entirely in the hands of her children! The proof of the pudding is in the eating.”
LikeLike
September 10, 2016 at 11:28 am
THE NATURE OF SOUL:
It is amazing to no small degree how so few people understand the nature of “SOUL”; in particular, Christians who seem only able to glean their daily information from the bible that was, itself, conceived and written in antiquity. There are pages and pages about how to sacrifice animals, and keep slaves, about who to kill and why. There’s nothing about electricity, there’s nothing about DNA, there’s nothing about infectious disease, about the principles of infectious disease, much less about what a soul is.
So turn on the lamp of your knowledge receptors and soak in the illustration about the nature of soul that you cannot possibly fail to understand. You will tell your kids and your grandkids one day what a soul really is and reflect on the day that you discovered the meaning of “soul”, on Jason’s Theosophical Blogsite.
THE NATURE OF SOUL:
We may be profoundly thankful with this magnificent piece of engineering that we have been provided called body but it’s not you; you’re on the inside. And if you want to communicate your real self to the outside you simply use the body to that end, you may or may not wish to communicat what’s happening on the inside: the physical, visible body that has been given to us so that we can give a physical, visible expression of an invisible self.
Now of course all animals operate that way and of course man physiologically is an animal; we bleed and breathe and feed, the animal way. You see, what distinguishes the animal kingdom from the vegetable kingdom is that there is built into every form of animal life a behaviour mechanism; it’s called the Soul. Comes as quite a surprise sometimes to discover that animals have souls, of course they do, otherwise they’d be vegetables.
You see, the fact that you’ve got a soul doesn’t prove that you’re Man, it simply proves that you’re not a vegetable. I mean, that’s encouraging. When I was a boy at school the teacher who taught me was never ever convinced that I was anything but a vegetable.
You see the Soul, commonly in the bible called the heart, is comprised within the Mind, Emotion and Will of an animal: a mental, an emotional and a volitional capacity. The mind with which you think, on occasions, the Emotions with which you react and the Will with which you decide. And the way you exercise the will to motivate the body into action, to do something, say something, go somewhere, operates under the influence of Mind, Emotion and Will.
Whoever captures your Mind, whoever captures your Emotion captures your Will and they can manipulate you. That’s why you live in a propaganda age, that’s why you have television commercials, that’s why you have great big fat newspapers full of advertisements, that’s why you have every kind of crusade and propaganda machine,
That’s why you have political campaigns and whistle stops because the person who captures your Mind and Emotion knows that now he has your Will and he can manipulate your behaviour and you’ll do what he intended. Mind, Emotion and Will. That’s how we behave and the animal behaves in exactly the same way. Because it too, can only communicate it’s inner self by virtue of exercising its physical and visible body.
If I go to a house I’ve never visited before and there’s a dog between me and the door, I don’t look at the door, because I’m reasonably satisfied as to how the door’s going to behave, it’ll probably swing on its hinges. I’m a little concerned how the dog’s going to behave. But I can’t read its mind, I don’t know whether its thinking benevolent thoughts, whether it welcomes my presence or whether it’s hostile.
I wonder which end of its anatomy is going to get into action, it’s tail or its teeth. And so I watch it. If it’s one of those fluffy little things, you know, with one ear up and the other ear down, and half a grin on its face and it comes wiggling in my direction, rubs itself up and down on my leg, I’m encouraged.
If on the other hand it gets back on its haunches and its tail goes between its legs and its ears go back and it bares its teeth and there’s a grumbling noise on the inside, I get the message. And I stay where I am until the man’s come, called off the dog and go through the door.
But man is not designed just to be an animal, man is designed very uniquely and for a fantastic privilege. You see, in common with all other forms of animal life man has a physical visible body so that in that physical and visible body he can give a physical and visible expression of an invisible self but it wasn’t just that he might give an invisible expression of his own invisible self but of an invisible self intimately identified and in spiritual union and oneness with an invisible spirit, that’s the difference. So that all creation looking at man behave by what he does and says and is, would know what God(Good) was like. We’re made that way.
Now the animal kingdom is protected; each species has a built in computerized program we call for convenience sake, instinct. And this built in computerized program called instinct operative within the animal soul teaching its mind, controlling its emotions and directing its will, protects it. Governs its behaviour so that its behaviour patterns are predictable because they’re repetitive. The fisherman knows where to go to catch his fish, the bird watcher knows at what time of the year and where, to see the species that he seeks to find. A spider doesn’t have to go to school to learn how to spin.
The built-in computerized program called instinct will govern their migratory paths, there feeding habits, their building skills, their mating seasons. In this fantastic way instinct protects the animal kingdom but man isn’t protected that way for a very good reason. When the animal kingdom behaves the way it does, it does so because it must. There’s a rigid interlock between the instinctive thrust and the animal soul.
So that what it does it does by the Law of Compulsion. By doing what it does it’s not saying anything; the bee, in its magnificent corporate behaviour that is essential to the survival of the swarm in what it’s doing it’s not saying I love you, and I wanted to be the kind of bee that you want me to be, see. No, the bee isn’t saying that. The bee is simple doing what it does, and it’s absolutely magnificent the way it does it, because it must.
But man is a creature that can love. And the only thing that satisfies love is to be loved. The only thing that requires friendship is to be befriended. And you can’t compel another person’s friendship and you can’t compel another person’s love. You can’t go to somebody with your fist clenched and say you’re going to be my friend. Did you make friends like that? I didn’t get my wife that way; I keep her that way but I didn’t get her that way. lol
You see love demands the exercise of a free volition so man is uniquely designed with not only a body and a soul, man has a body, a soul and a spirit. That unique capacity is exclusive only to man, the human spirit that enables man to be inhabited by Love. So that Love, the Father himself, can actually inhabit man’s humanity and man you see, was so made that the presence of Love within the creature is indispensable to his humanity.
So that, Good, co-equal with the Father and the Holy Spirit indwelling the human spirit might by moral consent on the part of man gain access to his soul not by the law of compulsion but the law of faith on the basis not of a rigid interlock but a threefold moral interlock out of love, reciprocating love, dependence on Love and obedience to Love
And when out of love for, in dependence on and obedience to, Love, I allow Love inhabiting my humanity to gain access to my soul, teach my mind, control my emotions and direct my will and Love in me becomes the origin of its own image, Love becomes in me the source of its own activity, Love in me the dynamic of all its own demands and the cause of its own effect.
Then if man only knows and allows Love from within the man to teach his mind, control his emotions and so direct his will, watch that man behave and who would you see behaving? Well, God………. the Be-ing that Jesus called, the Father, residing in his Kingdom“, where?…..within you”.
LikeLiked by 1 person
September 10, 2016 at 11:36 am
The Secret of Happiness Nasrudin is known as much for his wisdom as his foolishness, and many are those who have sought out his teaching. One devotee tracked him down for many years before finding him in the marketplace sitting atop a pile of banana peels–no one knows why. ”Oh great sage, Nasrudin,” said the eager student. “I must ask you a very important question, the answer to which we all seek: What is the secret to attaining happiness?” Nasrudin thought for a time, then responded. “The secret of happiness is good judgment.” ”Ah,” said the student. “But how do we attain good judgement?” ”From experience,” answered Nasrudin. ”Yes,” said the student. “But how do we attain experience?” ”Bad judgment.”
* “COMING OUT”:
Coming out of the atheist closet in pre-biblical and post biblical days where atheism remains in many old school religious Muslim countries today is blasphemy that calls for capital punishment.
Given the evidence of this cultural mindset, it is no small wonder that few people ever publicly took their life into their own hands by disobeying religious decrees. Displaying blasphemous behavior in word or deed in disobedience by omission or commission the first four religious decrees of the Mosaic Commandments demand capital punishment.
1st & 2nd. Commandments, Exodus 20:3 “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”. Old Testament punishment – Deuteronomy 17:1-5 “And hath gone and served other gods, and worshipped them, either the sun, or moon, or any of the host of heavens, which I have not commanded. Then shalt thou bring forth that man or that woman, which have committed that wicked thing and shalt stone them with stones, till they die”. Among the three cardinal sins for which the penalty was death, idolatry stood first (Talmud Pes. 25a and parallels).
3rd. Commandment, Exodus 20:7 “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain”. Old Testament punishment – Leviticus 24:16 “And he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death”.
4th. Commandment, Exodus 20:8 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy”. Old Testament punishment – Exodus 31:15 “Whosoever shall work in the Sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death”.
LikeLiked by 1 person
September 10, 2016 at 12:13 pm
Frank:
B Bob has a valid point; namely, that you do not express your ideas in your own thoughts in your own words”.
Others on this site have admonished you time and time again including myself.
In responding to anything posted here and I see your response; frankly, when you can only post somebody else’s video, it is not your response, it is someone else’s ideas and nobody can counter somebody else’s idea because they are not here to receive it.
Why you do this I can only guess but you have never answered anybody’s commentary with your own words except mine when you go into a fit of rage about ranting and raving; therefore you have no answers of your own and you are only a mere surrogate for others trying I suppose to sound scholarly with somebody’s video.
You’re like a person who has no ideas and only retweets things they like or that fit into what you think is better your belief or others. You always have a need to seek the approval of others through videos that nobody can take issue with because you are their proselyte..like Donald Trump sending his surrogates to tell people what he himself can’t.
When someone actually has something to say, & you have nothing to say, except that you’re “posting videos”. Why bother?
Whether you have a disagreement or an agreement with someone’s position then that person at least deserves a civil response and a show of respect but if you can’t even answer B Bob in a civil way and use only an ad hominem “you have a problem with conflation”, you already lost the argument and personallyI would not accept that for myself; I would be insulting my own intelligence as well disrespecting the person I am addressing.
So let’s come to repentance, not only for the sake for forgiveness from she beyond which a greater cannot be thought but for your own growth edification, as a “work in progress.
Women of the World-WOW, forward, backward and upside down stands for
Mothers of Mankind- MOM
Amen for women in your life.
LikeLike
September 10, 2016 at 8:00 pm
Conflation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflation
From the above article:
Conflation happens when the identities of two or more individuals, concepts, or places, sharing some characteristics of one another, seem to be a single identity, and the differences appear to become lost. In logic, it is the practice of treating two distinct concepts as if they were one, which produces errors or misunderstandings as a fusion of distinct subjects tends to obscure analysis of relationships which are emphasized by contrasts.
LikeLike
September 10, 2016 at 8:18 pm
“God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things. And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’ Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man’s devising. Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.” (Acts 17:24-31)
LikeLike
September 10, 2016 at 10:37 pm
Frank,
You originally answered correctly in your post #6. You said “One manner in which we are made in God’s image and likeness is that we consist of body, soul and spirit”. I agree.
However, this is not a description of a trinity, so without realizing it, you understand God is not a trinity of three separate persons. If you know know this and understand this, why hold onto a false teaching?
If God is a trinity, then each one of us must be a trinity of three separate persons according to Gen 1:26-27. Likewise and according to the same scripture, if we are not a trinity, but we are made up of mind, body, and spirit, then God also must be made up of one mind, body, and spirit.
If we declare the Bible is the word of God and is true, then we must believe it accordingly. The Bible says God is spirit, but it does not say He is spirit only, because He is also flesh; Jesus Christ.
One more thing, the spirit of God (the Holy Spirit) is the Spirit of Christ see Peter 1:11. The Spirit of Christ (the Holy Spirit) overshadowed the virgin Mary, making Him the father in His humanity. see Matt 1:18, Luke 1:35. It should be no wonder why John said Jesus Christ is the one true God. see 1 John 5:20.
Frank,
The only thing you need to do to prove the God is a trinity is to explain how we are made in the image and likeness of God; the trinity? So far, you have dodge the question. Why not face it directly. I welcome anyone to answer this question.
LikeLike
September 11, 2016 at 1:06 am
B Bob:
Anybody who believes that Mary became pregnant without a man can hardly be credible about defining the trinity. But maybe you never heard about the spirit of love that overcomes girls and pregnancy results; happens all the time today and happened all the time in the ancient world too. It’s the same way that Elizabeth became pregnant with her son who became known as John the Baptist.
I suppose you believe that the curse of Ham (actually the curse of Canaan) was because Ham saw his father naked or that he had some homosexual deviancy toward him while Noah was drunk inside his tent. Metaphors, similes, sayings, tradition and cultural influences; how fast is man going when he is going “faster than a bat out of hell” or when a man is chomping at the bit does he actually turn into a horse for a moment or two. Aesop Fables and Jesu’ parables have a lot in common; my sister was so big she couldn’t fit into the picture I took with the camera; it’s hardly any wonder that she married a man who was six axe handles across the rear end.
Jumping from the frying pan into the fire is an idiom with the general meaning of escaping a bad situation for a worse situation. It was made the subject of a 15th-century fable that eventually entered the Aesopic canon.
When you can only see literal text and forget what it might be saying besides what the text actually seems to say, you’ll be on your way to patching the holes in your net that will improve your reading skills and what about the man who burst his stomach from laughing so hard.
Rylan Clark-Neal has described the stomach-churning moment his lip filler burst as he was interviewed live on This Morning.
The TV star was left with collagen “dribbling out” the side of his mouth and “half his lip spread across the floor” during the embarrassing incident back in 2012.
Well that’s pretty supernatural if you ask me.
LikeLike
September 11, 2016 at 1:18 am
B Bob:
Made in the Image and likeness and the trinity would not be the only thing you could come up with to refute the image and likeness thing. If you were made in God’s image and likeness you’d be omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent would you not and since his image and likeness is invisible and you are not, maybe you’re not made in the image and likeness in that respect any more that you are endowed with being faster than speed itself.
Mind emotion and will body soul and spirit but the truth is that
PLEASE UNDERSTAND a little recognized concept called Pregenesis:
What God is:
God is a Simply Structured System to Shape and Satisfy the Searching Sage who Asks, Seeks and Knocks.
The Will of God IS the Will of Man because the Will of God was created to be the Will of Man; not about the ordinary will of man, the Will of God was created to be about the BEST Will of Man……. which necessitated caveats. In case I said that to fast; you see, we are past masters at complicating the issue;
in other words, the First Seven Assertions of the Will of Man broadly state that at the dawning of intellectual thought of conscious awareness, the question necessarily arose………Why? and then about Self, the answers flowed forth:
CHAPTER 1:
THE DAWNING:
[1] MAN created God in his own image and gave Him the Perfect Attributes of Deity.
[2] THESE are those attributes which Man aspires to but the likes of which Man has also determined to be impossible to achieve
[3] MAN sets the highest standards for his God and then pre-ordains those standards to be unreachable by Man using the phrase “God Willing” thus insuring
[4] THE justification for Man as he goes about his business of being just the opposite of the attributes he has given to his God
[5] BEING stupid, unforgiving, greedy, a liar, a cheat, a stealer, a killer, a deceiver and a most hateful and
[6] MURDEROUS character of which even among his own kind many cannot believe
[7] HE IS capable of the worse acts of atrocity on his fellow man, the environment and the life forms which support him
[8] PRAYING to a god is like praying to yourself.
[9] PRAYER works only when one prays to some one, a person, who can answer prayer: when you have a toothache you pray to the dentist to relieve your pain
[10] YOU pray to the judge to give you justice, to your family or the bank for a financial loan; you call 911 for help
[11] THOSE are prayers that have effect, prayers to a reality capable of answering them, not a caricature concept myth named God
[12] THOUSANDS of gods have been created since before time and events were recorded and they are all relegated to the failed gods of mythology and
[13] LUMPING the failed gods into the one true God, Allah, Jehovah, Yaweh is worse than merely useless
[14] AS mankind fights and kills in the name of their pet myth and cannot get on with living for a cause rather than dying for a cause
[15] EVERY society has it’s religious, mythical symbols and entities
[16] MANY wasted talents have been snuffed out by false religious fanaticism and teachings and
[17] HAVE deceived many throughout the centuries, continuing unto this very day and that’s what’s wrong with mankind
[18] GET prayer to the supernatural out of the mindset along with witchcraft, voodooism and rain dances
[19] SANTA and SATAN are variable spellings of each other but do not exist outside the metaphorical mind concepts .
[20] THEY merely satisfy an emotional crutch, a thumb sucker for adults
[21] THERE is no god but that which was created by man
[22] WE DID NOT understand why it rained, so we created a Rain God. When we came to understand meteorology, the Rain God was sacrificed on the alter of science
[23] WE HAVE abandoned our Gods in the name of progress. Now we have but one left, and when we are a stronger species
[24 WE Will abandon the Singularity too without abandoning the metaphorical concepts it represents
[25] HIGHER POWERS? Almighty powers? Sure! stardust and forces, gravity and electricity, light, magnetism, big matter, small matter, black holes, dark energy, dark matter, no matter.
[26] BUT, personal supernatural gods that intervene in human affairs, occasionally, by prayer, hope, wish, dream, supplication, entreaty, petition, plea, request, do not exist except in the minds of men put there by religious magicians and perpetuated by clergy wannabee mediators.
[27] “OKAY, “OKAY”, you might say, “we get it. You don’t believe in god but at least religious organizations do a lot of good work especially in the third world. Surely you can’t knock that?
[28] SO WHAT are you telling me? If they weren’t religious, they wouldn’t be doing this work? It’s not really coming from their hearts? They’re just doing it because they’re following orders? Is that what you’re saying?
[29] NO, THERE IS GOOD in the world; we know Good, we see and understand Good because there are Good people in the world and these “Good” people are Good despite religion; we know Good by its demonstration and that is the closest metaphor to God you can know, the human spirit as close to a personal god as one can be and children the closest to godlike purity humanity can observe.
[30] RELIGION ALWAYS claim “Good” people as their own and by that association take credit for the Good.
[31] ALL RELIGIONS derive from a person. Jesus said: “The Sabbath was made for Man, not Man for the Sabbath, therefore Man is Master of the Sabbath” Mark 2:27. Thus is it that Religion falls within this parameter.
LikeLike
September 11, 2016 at 1:21 am
I am talking here about the created supernatural Gods of man not the same as God the father of Jesus as he explained and demonstrated.
LikeLike
September 11, 2016 at 1:32 am
“Remember B. my guideline does not include the supernatural bent, which in my opinion, does not exist and has never existed. Those are my parameters as I read, interpret and understand the bible and the history of mankind accordingly.”
This is clearly your problem you are taking all that is the Bible (and God…spirituality) as if material venues can make do the answers to your questions. God is NOT material (and if that is the first time you’ve heard that then it should be “LeoTheTiny”)!
Everyone else here has given back point after point, and data, from other sources including many supportive videos and the like to support and provide a collective avenue of knowledge—you ‘Leo’ do little more than pile on your opinions. And I might add your subtle (at times) ad-hominin attacks…condescending and trite, smug comments. Frankly, it is one reason why many folks do not want to come here…you monopolize the board. Don’t you have a job or are you just independently wealthy?
Your knowledge of the Bible seems great but not in a spiritual manner (your words above). Many scientific areas are in fact running weak in the materialism ‘area’. Quantum mechanics, dark matter and energy, Higgs, and even abstract values such as fairness, love, friendship, perfection etc. Materialism is a joke at the extreme limits of Gods ‘area’ of creation—I doubt that God cares much about the Plank Limit.
Information is a killer to anyone who is going to use the Bible in a materialistic approach. Information ALWAYS points to intelligence, and likewise cause and effect can regress only to the point of an uncaused cause—past the singularity we will never go/know, materialistically!
The reason we have science (and monkeys do not–partly) is because there is design. If the world was in chaos (no design) then there would be no repeatability (or cycles, symmetry, order, entropy etc etc) and there would be no science. I doubt God uses mathematics to accomplish His design, but rather the mathematics ‘drops’ out of the ‘universe’ and hence we ‘see’ it as design…there is truth in the fact that it is unreasonable that mathematics should be able to explain a seemingly very complicated universe with a few rather simple and small formulas and a few unique and strange constants. Arthur Eddington (and a few others) had commented that the universe and life we experience is not only stranger than we suppose but that it is stranger than we CAN suppose. That certainly nails the coffin on materialism, and science that limits itself can only stagnate wither and die. I don’t want that and neither do you.
Science that controls is WRONG so too is it that religion that controls WRONG. Religion (and the Bible supports this – Isaiah 1:18 and too Jerimiah 33:3 and many others) that we are to seek knowledge/wisdom in one’s youth. So the Bible is about two things at least: God’s relationship to us His creation (however that was accomplished) and God’s plan for our spiritual salvation back to Him (if we can have/gain the faith to a changed mind and the Holy Spirits action for our change of heart). All this is supernatural not nature/materialism. I’m lead more and more to sense that we have barley a clue what is really going on (like fish in water…don’t know they are wet; we just will not see the information pointing to intelligence), and however are certain (in some collective manner of science, internal knowledge, philosophy, and religion that this is NOT our home; that we are here temporarily, and that this is a journey. We are purposely ‘built’ with internal spirits that will return to Him who gave it; that we are not meat robots but rather conscious observers and moral agents. Even you Leo…like it or not…there are some things that are true whether you believe them or not and many things in science that cannot be tested (big bang and multiverses) are still considered to be science (science–of-the-gaps?). Faith is not blind but rather: is the SUBSTANCE of THINGS hoped for the EVIDENCE not SEEN (Heb 11:1 capped words related to a material effect to understand spiritual things). Religion and Science MUST enjoin its ‘followers’ by reason…by math…by wooing us over as each one tests their inner spirit and has then changed their mind…each done individually. Romans 12:2.
Now if you’re going to bash and slash with your third-grade bully tactics then from now on I recommend that we all reply to you as LeoTheTiny. (or maybe worse) and too I will just drop away again and/or others will label you even worse. You have interesting things to say but your personal skills, well…suck! You need to expand your boundaries and not limit your abilities…sure keep the materialism but welcome in too the spirituality. You’re not afraid are you?
LikeLike
September 11, 2016 at 6:51 am
Leo,
We, those that believe in Jesus Christ, will be like God in the resurrection of the living and the dead. The difference between you and me is our regard to the inerrancy of the scriptures. I believe them to be true words spoken from the mouth of God. I believe God does not lie.
You seem to have a different view than mine. The scriptures are metaphorical, but also full of lies, falsehoods, etc. I will never understand how someone could consider the Bible as a worthwhile resource if the foundation is known to be built upon falsehoods of every kind. Somehow, it appears, you are comfortable with it. That’s ok, I respect your right to your views, but we see and argue our views from a totally different angle that cannot shine light on the others views at this time.
FYI: The Sabbath Jesus spoke about (Mark 2:27) was the seventh day of God’s creation, not the earthly day of the week. The Sabbath was made for man when we become like Christ in the resurrection. Man will not serve that day, but that day will serve man in his reward from God.
LikeLike
September 11, 2016 at 7:14 am
B Bob:
You are wrong about the Sabbath. Jesus referred the Pharisees to David and his men when they were hungered as the disciples were as well as to his disciples.When men are waking dead they can be resurrected by life knowing Jesus message. The Pharisees were nigglers for ritual rather than hunger drives………wonder about it.
I’d like to hear your take on the curse of Ham and what Ham actually did that cause the curse.
I am not saying the bible is full of lies and falsehoods but Christians misinterpret and misunderstand the bible because they cannot see beyond literal text and because they have been brainwashed into the nonsense of the supernatural they can’t see the trees for the forest.
Off course the priests and prophets were not lying because they said that God talked to them and told them what to do; it was the culture for them to do so. So Moses and Aaron never talked directly to any entity but the prophets as the representative of their created God who spoke to people in those days in dreams and only to the prophets. They were simply uneducated in reality and lived with the dogma they developed as their only resource and the writings and the references to miracle, magic and myth reflect that.
You may believe that Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days without understanding the metaphor of 3 days as a “period of time” just as 40 days and 40 nights as a period of time, 3 and a half years as a period of time. A day was a period of time and seven always represents heavenly things. A day unto the eternal is like a thousand years and a thousand years like a day.
You are just regurgitating the seventh as the Sabbath following the old testament calendar because nobody knows what the calendar schedule was and the reason some of the patriarchs lived to 800 hundred years old and longer; it’s more likely than not that a year to the ancients was a moon cycle and not 365 days of the yearly cycle as we know it, so if you divide 900 moon cycles, a someone’s age as if it were years and divide 900 by 12 you get 75 years of 365 days each…wonder about it.
LikeLike
September 11, 2016 at 7:33 am
Leo,
You are correct that Jesus was addressing the seventh day of the week to the Jews in the immediate context, however He also addressed the Sabbath in the broader and ultimate text. The Jews did not understand this is what He meant.
The sabbath, like many other examples in the OT, is a type and shadow of the future events to come in the fullness of time; namely, the seventh day of creation in which the new creation of man (in the resurrection of the living) will enter after the destruction of the current heaven and earth; see 2 Peter 3:7-10.
I don’t have time to give you my take on Ham, but I’ll look at it later and reply.
LikeLike
September 11, 2016 at 4:43 pm
B Bob,
Kindly don’t misconstrue my comments or my posts. When I first wrote you I asked for a response to a specific aspect of your theological thinking; i.e. your denial of the Holy Spirit and the Triune nature of God. You did not reply to my inquiry but rather sought to involve me in your confusion caused by your conflation concerning the relationship between the attributes of God and the nature of humankind as created by God. Our understanding of God assures us that He is immutable. He does not change. One source of this knowledge is Scripture [Hebrews 13:8; Malachi 3:6]. Now because we are created by Him in His image and likeness, does that mean that we do not change? Hardly, I can’t think of anything more fickle than the human mind. Moreover, God cannot lie. It’s contrary to His nature of Truth [John 1:14, 8:45, 14:6]. Does that mean that since we bear His image and likeness we cannot lie? Not a chance. Read your local newspaper. You’ll find it’s full of lies and disinformation. So then because the Biblical Creator God is Triune why should it follow that His creatures be triune? The fact is you’ve conflated two conceptions in your “theology” which has brought you to erroneous conclusions. You contradict yourself because you claim to adhere to truth in Scripture yet you promote false assertions drawn in ignorance. The video set I provided you for examination would have taken about an hour and a half of your time. I told you to take all the time you’d need to send your response, didn’t I? You simply chose to dismiss it immediately claiming you have no time for such things. That indeed is your choice to make. But then don’t jump the gun by accusing me of refusing to engage you in thoughtful dialogue. For certain you have no business directing me how I am to convey my own messages. I don’t bow to censors of any type or stripe. First, demonstrably resolve your conflation dilemma. Next, if you have a case to make to me about the Biblical Triune Creator God & the Holy Spirit then make it. Make sure you understand my view correctly by mindfully considering the evidence I’ve presented to you in my posts. Otherwise, you won’t be taken seriously and there will not be another opportunity. You can start by identifying and defining your terms and what significance they hold in your “theology” along with independent, solid, credible substantiation for your conclusions.
Imago Dei: What Does It Mean?
August 1, 2011
By Kenneth R. Samples
http://www.reasons.org/articles/imago-dei-what-does-it-mean
From the above article:
The Bible reveals that of all God’s creatures, only man (humankind) was created in the expressed image of God. While Scripture mentions the imago Dei (Latin for the “image of God”) several times (Genesis 5:1, 9:6; 1 Corinthians 11:7; Colossians 3:10; James 3:9), Genesis 1:26–27 is the most important text.
Hebrew references to “image” (tselem) and “likeness” (demût) convey the idea of an object similar to or representative of something else, but not identical to it. Further, the words “image” and “likeness” should not be understood as referring to two different things, but rather as interchangeable terms that reflect a Hebrew form of synonymous parallelism. The New Testament Greek word for image (eikōn) conveys virtually the same meaning as the Hebrew. Both languages indicate that God created humans to be similar to himself, but not identical to himself. Therefore from a biblical perspective, human beings are in some sense both LIKE and UNLIKE the God who made them (emphasis added).
Speaking of taking things seriously, I’d urge you seriously consider what Messiah Yahshua says in Scripture regarding the Holy Spirit and address it in your response to my post # 60.:
“Therefore I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven people, but blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven. Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come.” (Matthew 12:31-32)
– Frank
LikeLike
September 11, 2016 at 6:16 pm
Frank,
I was preparing an answer to your multiple questions when you sent the following post #68;
Now, does your statement “You have a conflation problem” and your sign off “Be well” meant to continue a conversation? I think not. At that point I stopped working on your requests. That is all there is to it.
To be fair, I only asked you one question, while you cited several scriptures. websites, and videos to look at and respond to. You may noticed my posts fairly are brief and to the point. This is for the purpose to discuss things as we go. We don’t need to write a book every time we post or do homework for several hours.
Had you not sent a trenchant response to my question, you would have received answers to yours.
A little later today, I will send you another way to see what I see, there is one God, who is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, abiding in the person of Jesus Christ.
LikeLike
September 11, 2016 at 6:26 pm
Frank,
YWHY and Jehovah of the Old Testament are Jesus of the New Testament. It is He that we were made in the image and likeness of in the beginning and it is He that we will be made in the image and likeness of in the resurrection of the living.
There are two testaments to God’s word in the Bible. They both testify of the same Lord God of Israel. Not two Lords, but two testaments of the same “One Lord God” (Jehovah Elohim). The OT leads us to the testimony and revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of all (Acts 10:36). If there is only one Lord, and if Jesus Christ is the Lord of all, then it is now revealed by the NT that Jesus Christ is not only the Lord God of Israel, but Lord of all. This is why John declared Jesus Christ as the one true God (John 5:20). It is also why Jude (the brother of Jesus), declared Jesus as our only Lord and master (Jude 1:4) and Jude also understood it was Jesus that lead the people out of the land of Egypt (Jude 1:5).
All the fullness of God (Elohim) permanently abides and permanently abided in Christ before all things see Col 1:17, 19, 2:9. Not if, but since God (Elohim, meaning all that God is) permanently abides in Christ, who is before all things, explains why no one can come to the Father except though Jesus Christ (John 14:6). It also explains how and why Jesus’ own brother called Him our only God and Savior see Jude 1:25 in which the OT Scriptures testify (Psa 106:21, and a multitude of other OT Scriptures). It also explains how and why Jesus Christ is the creator and sustainer of all things see Col 1:16-17.
Knowing God created the universe and commanded all things by His word (2 Peter 3:5-7), the one speaking creation into existence is the one and only Lord Jesus Christ (Col 1:16). There can be no other Lord of all. This is the One that made man in His own image and Jesus is the one whom we will be in the image and likeness of in the resurrection of the living see 1 John 3:2.
Check these scriptures out for yourself, they are written in harmony with the revelation of Jesus Christ!
LikeLike
September 11, 2016 at 6:28 pm
Frank,
Correction: I meant 1 John 5:20
LikeLike
September 11, 2016 at 7:22 pm
B Bob,
Like I said, I’m not interested in receiving your misconstructions of my comments [You missed the point totally regarding the conflation issue. Didn’t you read post # 67?] or your sermons either. Nothing of what you’ve written explains why the God of the Bible is not Triune. You’re simply making a case for Jesus/Yahshua and YHWH being one and the same which I have no problem with [ “I am no longer in the world; and yet they themselves are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep them in Your name, the name which You have given Me, that they may be one even as We are.” (John 17:11)]. You’ve sent me nothing by way of valid substantiation or corroboration for your ideas. Your weak scriptural opinions do not address the issue at hand. (View the refutations to objections in the video set in post # 64. That would take about half an hour.) At least they should have been accompanied by independent verification to hold any weight. I can get the same sort of sermonizing from Jehovah’s Witnesses but that doesn’t make it theologically instructive or valid. You need not send anything else.
– Frank
LikeLike
September 11, 2016 at 8:01 pm
Frank,
Everything I have written explains exactly who God is; Jesus Christ, the only God anyone will ever see. The scriptures and arguments I have presented make it clear that all that is God (including the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), is found in one person of God (not three, but one). Col 1 makes this very clear and it also makes it clear that Jesus is the one who created all things. Jesus is also the one who judges the living and the dead (not the trinity, but Jesus Christ).
Again, in your own words, you made it clear that we are like God because we have a mind, body, and soul (spirit). I’m sorry, but I have misconstrued nothing. If you want to explain, in plain and simple language, how your words describes a trinity, then please do.
Regarding the Jehovah witness comment: Have you actually read what I have written? Jehovah witnesses do not believe Jesus Christ is God? I believe, the one and only God is Jesus Christ. Not only do I believe it, but also John, Jude, Paul, Peter, and all the writers of the New Testament believe it.
Frankly speaking your conflation argument is nonsense. I didn’t receive it as if it came from a good place. It doesn’t address the real issue and proves nothing to support the validity of your belief in the trinitarian doctrine.
Attacking me and suggesting I might be blaspheming the Holy Spirit was also out of line.
If you want to continue this discussion, please be civil. I am not judging you, nor anyone else. I am only expressing my beliefs, based on the support of the Holy Scriptures.
LikeLike
September 11, 2016 at 8:43 pm
Frank,
For clarity, I have not denied the Holy Spirit. I believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The only difference in what I believe and what you believe is that I believe the fullness of God (the Father , Son, and Holy Spirit) can only be found in one person: Jesus Christ. This is not a denial of the holy Spirit or the Father, it is only a denial of the post biblical doctrine of the trinity.
LikeLike
September 12, 2016 at 9:29 am
B Bob and get1949:
“…….I believe the fullness of God (the Father , Son, and Holy Spirit) can only be found in one person: Jesus Christ………..”
B Bob, you are wrong about this. And here’s why.
Jesus was the first and only person who knew that man was born with the fulness of God (Father, Son and the Holy Spirit) and by practicing and preaching that message to mankind by who he was, by what he said and by what he did, he constantly revealed that message that all humanity was born the same way. This is the Divine Logic that Jesus made known throughout his life from the first day of his campaign to revolutionize religion and onward.
So Jesus was not the only one who can know the fullness of God, he was the first and only one who discovered it and then took the message to all mankind to reveal his discovery so that others may follow.
That’s what the Lord Jesus meant in John, the 8th chapter of John, when he said,
“You’re tied down to the mundane; I’m in touch with what is beyond your horizons. You live in terms of what you see and touch. I’m living on other terms. I told you that you were missing the real God in all this. You’re at a dead end. If you won’t believe I am who I say I am, you’re at the dead end of sins. You’re missing God in your lives.”
They said to him, “Just who are you anyway?”
Jesus said,
“What I’ve said from the start. I have so many things to say that concern you, judgments to make that affect you, but if you don’t accept the trustworthiness of the One who commanded my words and acts, none of it matters. That is who you are questioning—not me but the One who sent me.” The One I represent.
They still didn’t get it, didn’t realize that he was referring to the Father. So Jesus tried again. “When you raise up the Son of Man, then you will know who I am—that I’m not making this up, but speaking only what the Father taught me. The One who sent me stays with me. He doesn’t abandon me. He sees how much joy I take in pleasing him.”
if you will abide in my word, you will know the truth and at last discover the principle that governs a man’s relationship to God and God’s relationship to man and when you discover that truth, that truth will set you free. Free. And if the son shall make you free, you’ll be free indeed.”
Accordingly, anything you do that derives from other than letting Divine Logic do it, is sin. Sin isn’t an act. Sin is that errant, conceited attitude of human self sufficiency. Sin is that attitude that says Divine Logic is for old women and those who need a crutch. That’s just where you’re wrong. You’re the devil’s dupe. That’s why life is so twisted on this planet. Whatsoever is not of faith is sin, in the day that man believed the devil’s lie that a man could be man with by using his created, supernatural God and not the Divine Logic within you and embarked on that mad experiment of human self sufficiency, the holy spirit was withdrawn from the human spirit and man had a body and a soul just like any other animal but not being protected by instinct couldn’t behave like an animal and not now being governed by the Father couldn’t behave like a man so he behaves like the maniac he does and you and I are the heirs of the chaos and the anarchy and holocaust that is the inevitable consequence of man’s stupidity and Divine Logic is saying GET BACK TO WHERE YOU BELONG! That is was revealed to mankind by Jesus…”get back to where you belong”.
In other words, the Lord Jesus, presented his humanity to the Father, as God, through the holy spirit and the Father, as God, presented himself in deity to the son, as man, through the holy spirit. So the holy spirit is the third co-equal member of the triune Godhead through whom a man makes himself available to God and through whom God shares his deity with a man. Fantastic. Let me put it in a nutshell this way, “All there is of God is available to the man who is available to all there is of God.” For he that cometh to God must first believe that God IS and that being who he IS, he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. All there is of God is available to the man who is available to all there is of God. How available was the Lord Jesus, as man, to his Father, as God? Totally. How available was the Father, as God, to his son, as man? Totally. So there was total, mutual, inter-availability and if you want a definition of being filled with the holy spirit, that is it!
Mutual inter-availability. So that a man on earth, though he now doesn’t deserve it, but on the grounds of redemption having been created that way, re-invaded by deity makes himself in totality, available to the total availability of God. Has nothing to do with psychedelic experiences, going high, goggling your eyes or thumping chairs; it only has to do with your humanity, body, soul, spirit, mind, emotion and will being as available now to the Lord Jesus, as God in you, as he, as man was then available to his Father, as God in him, that’s all. That’s normality.
And because there was mutual inter-availability there was no margin of difference between what the Lord Jesus did as man and the Father did as God. No margin of difference between what the Lord Jesus said as man and the Father said as God. No margin of difference between what he was as man and the Father was as God except that God is invisible and the Lord Jesus in a physical visible humanity gave a physical, visible expression of an invisible self intimately identified with an invisible God so he could take God out into the open where he could be seen and that’s exactly why he made you and me. That’s normality.
And only when we recognize normality do we recognize the abnormality of a dirty human race that is nothing but a nasty caricature of what God intended man to be.
So you see B Bob the fullness of God is and was available to everybody, not just Jesus,, it just took Jesus to reveal it to others…the Divine Logic, the Father has always been there but people just never knew it and why Jesus could say to the Pharisees:
“Abraham—your ‘father’—with jubilant faith looked down the corridors of history and saw my day coming. He saw it and cheered.”
57 The Jews said, “You’re not even fifty years old—and Abraham saw you?”
58 “Believe me,” said Jesus, “I am who I am long before Abraham was anything.”
Before Abraham was, I am………….. Divine logic, the Father, the Son, The Holy Spirit existed.
That did it—pushed them over the edge. They picked up stones to throw at him. But Jesus slipped away, getting out of the Temple.
And Christians have been throwing stones at Jesus ever since by trying to relegate him back to the created supernatural God of the Ancients, ever since.
Whether you can see this or not is my concern and I tell you only what has been revealed to me.
B Bob, lastly your comment that follows is almost exactly what the religious adherents of Jesus day said to him…………”I would like to offer up a comment for you to consider with no intention to offend you. None of us has it all figured out. None of us should think we do. For this reason, a red flag of warning should be raised when we arrive at the moment we, and only we, know the answers. There is something inherently arrogant and wrong when we do this. Why am I telling you this? Because, you believe that you (perhaps, you alone) interpret the Scriptures perfectly…………..”
And they went further as others here have said to me….
Here’s what they said about Jesus because he interpreted scripture perfectly:
They said, “We’re not bastards. We have a legitimate father: the one and only God.”
42-47 “If God were your father,” said Jesus, “you would love me, for I came from God and arrived here. I didn’t come on my own. He sent me. Why can’t you understand one word I say? Here’s why: You can’t handle it. You’re from your father, the Devil, and all you want to do is please him. He was a killer from the very start. He couldn’t stand the truth because there wasn’t a shred of truth in him. When the Liar speaks, he makes it up out of his lying nature and fills the world with lies. I arrive on the scene, tell you the plain truth, and you refuse to have a thing to do with me. Can any one of you convict me of a single misleading word, a single sinful act? But if I’m telling the truth, why don’t you believe me? Anyone on God’s side listens to God’s words. This is why you’re not listening—because you’re not on God’s side.”
The Jews then said, “That clinches it. We were right all along when we called you a Samaritan and said you were crazy—demon-possessed!”
Jesus said, “I’m not crazy. I simply honor my Father, while you dishonor me. I am not trying to get anything for myself. God intends something gloriously grand here and is making the decisions that will bring it about. I say this with absolute confidence. If you practice what I’m telling you, you’ll never have to look death in the face.”
At this point the Jews said, “Now we know you’re crazy. Abraham died. The prophets died. And you show up saying, ‘If you practice what I’m telling you, you’ll never have to face death, not even a taste.’ Are you greater than Abraham, who died? And the prophets died! Who do you think you are!”
Jesus said, “If I turned the spotlight on myself, it wouldn’t amount to anything. But my Father, the same One you say is your Father, put me here at this time and place of splendor. You haven’t recognized him in this. But I have.
LikeLike
September 12, 2016 at 9:43 am
Leo,
I very much like the thoughtfulness you put into your posts. They are often more lengthy than need, but thoughtfully presented. I appreciate it.
The problem we have as humans is wrapping the idea that God could father Himself in His own humanity whereby He becomes a part of His own creation exactly as the ones He chose to be created like Him. If God the Father, father’s is own self in Humanity (not in Spirit), then God the Father (Spirit) is also, His own Son! The soul of the Son of God, is the Spirit of God. The humanity aspect of God’s being is what God refers to as the firstborn over all creation.
If the soul of Jesus is the Spirit of the Father, then Jesus Christ is both Lord and God (Elohim) of all, whether on earth or in heaven. This is the reason the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ – see 1 Peter 1:11. Paul understood this mystery and it is why Pauls said the mystery is “Christ in you (the Holy Spirt of Christ is the Spirit that dwells in all that believe).
LikeLike
September 12, 2016 at 10:48 am
B Bob:
Sometimes my commentaries are lengthy and I have not yet achieved the art of succinct editing; AKA,the Précis.
I don’t actually see the soul as spirit, I see the soul more as emotion: Soul-Emotion, Body-Mind, Will-Spirit:
Body, Soul, Spirit / Mind, Emotion, Will the three Musketeers of humanity.
Mind, Emotion and Spirit can each also be synonymous with Disposition. But I can understand the body as having three different functions but in one capsule, the Body, The Immune System, the Memory and the Will to decide, to behave, to do or not to do, to be or not to be.
I give you this to ponder.
Planarians are known as masters of regeneration: they can re-build any part of their bodies after amputation. This ability relies on a large number of pluripotent stem cells. To further investigate the mechanisms that enable planarians to maintain their stem cell pool over generations, scientists have now established a method for analysing the composition of planarian stem cells and the turnover of their proteins. They discovered a protein that is not only required for the maintenance of the stem cell pool in planarians, but might also be active in the pluripotent stem cells of mammals.
Everyone knows the myth about earthworms: if you cut them in half, you get two worms. Nothing could be further from the truth, alas. However, if the earthworm is replaced by a flatworm, the two parts can survive these childish experiments. What’s more, be it skin, intestine or brain, the body part lost through cutting will simply grow again in a matter of days. The creatures involved here are planarians [1], a class of flatworms that are so flat that they need neither lungs nor a heart to take in and distribute oxygen in their bodies. So simple and yet so ingenious? It would appear so. Regeneration studies involving these animals have shown that a dismembered planarian can generate several hundred tiny animals, hence they could “almost be called immortal under the edge of a knife” (Dalyell, 1814). The astonishing aspect here is that both the blueprint and construction material for the regeneration process must be contained in each of the fragments: a small piece of tail, for example, becomes a com
Not the preserve of youth: pluripotency also available in adults
So where do the components needed to rebuild the cellular structures come from? In their search for the answer to this question, scientists have a population of small cells in their sights, namely the approximately five-micrometre-long neoblasts. These cells are found almost everywhere in the planarian body and behave like stem cells: they divide, renew and can form the different cell types that have been lost as a result of amputation. When the planarian loses a body part or discards its tail for reproduction, the neoblasts are reactivated and migrate to the wound. They divide there and their offspring form a blastema, in which – as a result of interplay between various extra- and intra-cellular factors – important differentiation and patterning processes take place. Thanks to these processes, in turn, complex structures like the brain are formed. If the neoblasts are eliminated through radiation, for example, the planarian loses its ability to regenerate and dies within a few weeks. The fact that, following transplantation into an irradiated, neoblast-free worm, a single neoblast can produce all cell types and enable the host worm to regain its ability to regenerate shows that at least some neoblasts are pluripotent. In healthy mammals, pluripotency, that is the ability of one cell to produce any given cell type found in an organism, e.g. muscle, nerve or pancreas cells, only arises in the early embryonic stage. Therefore, stable pluripotency in the adult organism is something special but not impossible as long as mechanisms exist for conserving this characteristic – as is clearly the case with the planarians.
FULL SOURCE here.
https://www.mpg.de/8244494/flatworms-regeneration
LikeLike
September 12, 2016 at 11:06 am
Leo,
Let us recognize that it has been established that we view the Bible form a different perspective, yet, in a certain sense, we have similar revelations of the scripture, but we look at them from a different angel.
I understand what you say and how you see things. I see things differently, but that’s ok right? I believe the Bible is a supernatural Book authored by God and I believe we are made of spirit and flesh. I believe the spirt of man is never separated from the mind of a man, even in death. So let us continue to share our thoughts accordingly.
FYI: I need to look at the story of Ham before I can give you my thoughts. Frankly, it is not a story that i have meditated on very deeply. I briefly looked at it and realized there is much to consider before i cold form a reasonable opinion. So, I will eventually give you my take when I actually have one. You might remind me sometime later on if I don’t post it.
LikeLike
September 12, 2016 at 11:40 am
B Bob:
Fair enough….So let us continue to share our thoughts accordingly.
I look forward to the Ham comment after your review.
LikeLike
September 12, 2016 at 12:58 pm
Leo, Agreed, maybe we are both crazy and just don’t know it . . . just kidding. Franks crazy. lol. Relax Frank, I am just kidding about you too.
LikeLike
September 12, 2016 at 1:08 pm
ik ether old saying all fishermen lie except me and you and I’m not sure about you. heh heh heh 😉
LikeLike
September 12, 2016 at 1:09 pm
“Like the old saying…………..”
LikeLike
September 12, 2016 at 1:12 pm
Leo, Do you know how people around you can tell when you are lying?
LikeLike
September 12, 2016 at 1:13 pm
When I open my mouth?
LikeLike
September 12, 2016 at 1:14 pm
That’s how I know Donald Trump is lying. I watch his mouth and as soon as he opens it I know he’s lying. lol
LikeLike
September 12, 2016 at 1:14 pm
yes, when they see your lips move. haha!
LikeLike
September 12, 2016 at 1:16 pm
that is true of ALL politicians.
LikeLike
September 12, 2016 at 2:17 pm
Someone asked me one time how the miracle of the money in the fish’s mouth could be explained? unless it was a supernatural event.
Matthew 17:24-27. When they arrived at Capernaum, the tax men came to Peter and asked, “Does your teacher pay taxes?”
25 Peter said, “Of course.”
But as soon as they were in the house, Jesus confronted him. “Simon, what do you think? When a king levies taxes, who pays—his children or his subjects?”
26-27 He answered, “His subjects.”
Jesus said, “Then the children get off free, right? But so we don’t upset them needlessly, go down to the lake, cast a hook, and pull in the first fish that bites. Open its mouth and you’ll find a coin. Take it and give it to the tax men. It will be enough for both of us.”
I grew up close to the river’s edge on the East Coast and every year the gaspereau(alefish), we called them kayaks, would run the river rapids much like the salmon to the inland lakes and bodies of quiet water to spawn but unlike salmon they would head back to sea after the spawn; they came every year sometimes early, sometimes late and we would set the seines, weir traps called “les bourne” in french. We would set about the same time every spring early summer and sit for days on end and nothing; then suddenly they became so plentiful in a matter of minutes we would stand on rocks and using huge dip nets to catch scoopfuls, at times to breaking point capacity; some people had an uncanny ability to say within hours, minutes even, that the run was starting and the word would go out to set the bournes.
This scenario would not be incredulous from personal experience but catching the first fish, opening its mouth finding money, that’s incredulous; unless….. unless opening the mouth for money was a cultural “metaphor” for gutting a fish for market-ready sale which the usual way was to place your finger in through the backside gill to hold the fish firm which would force the mouth to open and that “gutting” would turning the catch into money at the marketplace; in that way, I could understand the phraseology meaning the money from the sale of a good size fish would fetch enough to pay the temple tax for two people. Not literally money out of the mouth of the fish but the “opening the mouth and gills for “gutting”; i.e., “cleaning” and maybe even “filleting” for frying pan ready cooking, now that’s another matter and white possibly how one would catch a fish, open its mouth, find a coin and pay the temple tax. nest ce pas?
a piece of money, a stater coin, a four- drachma coin, a stater: it is half an ounce of silver, in value two shillings and six pence, sterling; about fifty five cents (the Athenian silver tetradrachm (four drachmas) was weighing 17.2 grams.) Staters were also struck in several Greek city-states……..
LikeLike
September 12, 2016 at 10:38 pm
B Bob,
Thanks for clarifying your position. No offense taken. No harm done. I’m just a work in progress like the rest of us.
For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren;
and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified. (Romans 8:29-30)
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:17-18)
Truly,
Frank
LikeLike
September 12, 2016 at 10:50 pm
Isaiah 6
6:1 In the year of King Uzziah’s death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple.
2 Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.
3 And one called out to another and said,
“Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of hosts,
The whole earth is full of His glory.”
4 And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke.
5 Then I said,
“Woe is me, for I am ruined!
Because I am a man of unclean lips,
And I live among a people of unclean lips;
For my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.”
6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal in his hand, which he had taken from the altar with tongs.
7 He touched my mouth with it and said, “Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away and your sin is forgiven.”
8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
LikeLike
September 13, 2016 at 3:32 am
Frank,
You gave us several lovely scriptures in your previous posts, but did not give me your take on these scriptures. If you have a point you want to make, I need you to expound upon it. Otherwise, how am I supposed to understand what these scriptures mean to you.
I have the following comments on these scriptures. It is what I see. Can you see what i see or do you see something different?
Post #107 supports exactly what I have been saying. Namely, we will become completely transformed in the new creation God made us to be through Christ, being raised up in the image and likeness of Jesus Christ in the resurrection. This is the description of man being restored in the image and likeness of God and, one might notice the image and likeness we are being restored into is Jesus Christ, who is the One True God – see 1 John 5:20
Post #108 refers to the Lord God of the OT. That Lord God is also the Lord God of the NT who has been revealed as Jesus Christ. What better example could we have than the testimony of his own earthly brother: Jude, born of the same woman; Mary. Jude understood and believed Jesus was our only Lord and Master – see Jude 1:4. He also understood Jesus was the Lord (Savior) that delivered the Jews out of Egypt – see Jude 1:5. In conclusion, Jude understood God resided in Christ forever – see Jude 1:25. Jesus Christ is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He is the Lord of all.
LikeLike
September 13, 2016 at 3:40 am
Leo,
Nice story about the coin and the fish. It illustrates your ability to stay true to your belief that all stories are metaphors. Of course, you understand, my view is to believe the story and the incredible circumstance it presents.
However, I believe the literal events that are recorded in the OT happened for examples and types and shadows of spiritual metaphors, if you will, for our benefit of the spiritual things to come in the NT.
LikeLike
September 13, 2016 at 8:32 am
B Bob:
After you review the story of Ham and what Ham did, we’ll talk a little more about metaphorical examples.
In Post 14 you stated re the OT: “………..So many of those writings were prophetic and have come to past, proving they were true……”
Can you give me a list of what prophetic writings have come to past proving they were true?
It would be useful if you can not quote things that have come to past from the Bible itself; it’s rather unwise to use prophetic instances from the bible to prove other writings from the bible; believers from one generation to another generation claiming things are prophetic and true is like quoting the Three Little Pigs that built their houses: one of straw, one of sticks and one of bricks because where it says that the one of straw was blown down by the wolf is the prophetic equivalent of the prior story that says one house was made of straw etc.
etc.
So share with me what writings have come to past from regular historical accounts.
Falwell and Robertson claimed that God punished America because abortionists and gays among others were to blame:
TRANSCRIPT:
The two men then talked about religious revival and whether the events of September 11 might spark spiritual renewal in America.
Then Falwell said, “What we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be miniscule if, in fact, God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.”
Robertson replied, “Well, Jerry, that’s my feeling. I think we’ve just seen the antechamber to terror, we haven’t begun to see what they can do to the major population.”
Falwell said, “The ACLU has got to take a lot of blame for this. And I know I’ll hear from them for this, but throwing God…successfully with the help of the federal court system…throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools, the abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked and when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad…I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who try to secularize America…I point the finger in their face and say you helped this happen.”
Robertson said, “I totally concur, and the problem is we’ve adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government, and so we’re responsible as a free society for what the top people do, and the top people, of course, is the court system.”
Falwell added, “Pat, did you notice yesterday that the ACLU and all the Christ-haters, the People for the American Way, NOW, etc., were totally disregarded by the Democrats and the Republicans in both houses of Congress, as they went out on the steps and called out to God in prayer and sang ‘God bless America’ and said, let the ACLU be hanged. In other words, when the nation is on its knees, the only normal and natural and spiritual thing to do is what we ought to be doing all the time, calling on God.”
—30—
LikeLike
September 13, 2016 at 8:49 am
Re Post 107
Jesus said about the resurrection of the dead:
“….…Matt 32:25 Now there were with us seven brethren: and the first, when he had married a wife, deceased, and, having no issue, left his wife unto his brother:
26 Likewise the second also, and the third, unto the seventh.
27 And last of all the woman died also.
28 Therefore in the resurrection whose wife shall she be of the seven? for they all had her.
29 Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God.
30 For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.
31 But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying,
32 I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?
God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.
Re Post 108:
I believe this post is wrong because the God of the OT is the external supernatural God and the God of the NT is the internal natural God living in you. Therefore these are two separate Gods from where I sit.
Goodness knows what Frank thinks, he never shares his understanding so we have no idea what role he tries to play in dialogue…none??/
LikeLike
September 13, 2016 at 8:56 am
B Bob
Now all stories are metaphors; some stories just have to apply common sense instead of supernatural common nonsense; for example, see this animation about the feeding of the multitudes:
LikeLike
September 13, 2016 at 9:31 am
Leo,
Ref Post #111, Your guidelines are very restrictive, but possible to do. however, I don’t have time to do the research.
Are you familiar with the Jewish historian Josephus? If so, look up the history of the Jews and Alexander the Great and also the history the Jews have with Cyrus. The Scriptures predicted both, hundreds of years before they existed. When the Jews showed Alexander the Great they knew he was coming because it was prophesied, Alexander did not attack them.
Cyrus was prophesied to come an bring down the gates and walls. Cyrus invented an “earth shaker” device that cause the ground beneath the defensive wall of the cities to come crumbling down.
I am sorry but I simply don’t have time to give more, but these should somewhat suffice your curiosity.
LikeLike
September 13, 2016 at 9:41 am
B Bob:
I was actually thinking of some examples in modern day times that we can see or did they all, already happen in antiquity and we have no way to fact check them? Which is usually par for the course when it comes to biblical prophecies which prophet and psychic are synonymous and psychics are in almost every street corner in major cities..in other words a dime a dozen and at the fairs where you can pay for the prediction if you have more money than brains.
Oh and did you read the account of Ham; it’s actually not that long. Only a couple minutes of reading and presto you should be done and understand what’s happening but if not well…..
LikeLike
September 13, 2016 at 9:48 am
Leo,
The best source for modern times that I know of is by Irvin Baxter. See his Broadcast Archives – vide/audio from TV and radio show. Scroll around. He lays them out pretty good.
Website: http://www.endtime.com/
Ham, Not yet, but be patient, I will and I must say again. This is a story that I need to chew on a little bit.
LikeLike
September 13, 2016 at 9:52 am
When addressing the mythical nature of Jesus Christ, one issue repeatedly raised is the purported “evidence” of his existence to be found in the writings of Flavius Josephus, the famed Jewish general and historian who lived from about 37 to 100 CE. In Josephus’s Antiquities of the Jews appears the notorious passage regarding Christ called the “Testimonium Flavianum” (“TF”):
“Now, there was about this time, Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works,–a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.” (Whitson, 379)
This surprisingly brief and simplistic passage constitutes the “best proof” of Jesus’s existence in the entire ancient non-Christian library comprising the works of dozens of historians, writers, philosophers, politicians and others who never mentioned the great sage and wonderworker Jesus Christ, even though they lived contemporaneously with or shortly after the Christian savior’s purported advent.
A False Witness
Despite the best wishes of sincere believers and the erroneous claims of truculent apologists, the Testimonium Flavianum has been demonstrated continually over the centuries to be a forgery, likely interpolated by Catholic Church historian Eusebius in the fourth century. So thorough and universal has been this debunking that very few scholars of repute continued to cite the passage after the turn of the 19th century. Indeed, the TF was rarely mentioned, except to note that it was a forgery, and numerous books by a variety of authorities over a period of 200 or so years basically took it for granted that the Testimonium Flavianum in its entirety was spurious, an interpolation and a forgery. As Dr. Gordon Stein relates:
“…the vast majority of scholars since the early 1800s have said that this quotation is not by Josephus, but rather is a later Christian insertion in his works. In other words, it is a forgery, rejected by scholars.”
LikeLike
September 13, 2016 at 10:18 am
Leo,
I agree. There is no way the Josephus would have testified about the “KING OF THER JEWS”. It would be like yelling out, please arrest me and hang me upside down. Therefore, don’t be alarmed that Josephus did not wrie about Christ.
LikeLike
September 13, 2016 at 10:58 am
B Bob,
The Scripture verses from post # 107.; i.e., (Romans 8:29-30) & (2 Corinthians 3:17-18) demonstrate God acting in His Triune nature. God the Father and God the Son act in (Romans 8:29-30). God the Holy Spirit acts in (2 Corinthians 3:17-18).
Post # 108. records Isaiah’s vision and commission as a prophet of God wherein again God demonstrates His Triune nature in Isaiah 6:8 (Note the capitalization of “Us”.)
LikeLike
September 13, 2016 at 11:08 am
Franks,
Is it your contention the Lord God of the OT is the Father?
LikeLike
September 13, 2016 at 11:11 am
Re: post #s 39-43.
Romans 12:1-2
(1) I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. (2) And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
http://www.theberean.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Home.showBerean/BereanID/8466/bblver/NKJV/Romans-12-1-2.htm
From the above article by John W. Ritenbaugh:
He [Paul] means that, due to God’s great gifts to us, it is “reasonable” for God to expect us to sacrifice ourselves. Sometimes modern Bibles will render this word as “spiritual,” which is a correct alternative. The Greek word underlying it appears only one other time in the Bible, and in that place it clearly means “spiritual.” Here, though, it means “reasonable,” that it is right that we should be a sacrifice. It is logical, rational, to do this.
LikeLike
September 13, 2016 at 2:36 pm
The problem Christians have is that they go to NT scriptures or to interpreters of NT scriptures and use the writers who wrote what they believed to confirm OT scriptures, but belief does not confirm it!
That is exactly what is the inerrant word of God iOS totally false. All that the NT writers wrote is their beliefs and that can be as wrong as anybody’s beliefs writing on any subject just because they believed it.
Why do you suppose that the disciples were astonished when Jesus appeared to them, thinking Jesus was a ghost? Because they did not understand what Jesus was trying to tell them and Jesus did not reveal to them the intentions of the cross because Jesus entrusted himself to no man.
Not even Jesus’ brothers as noted in John 7:2 Now the Jew’s feast of tabernacles was at hand.
3 His brethren therefore said unto him, Depart hence, and go into Judaea, that thy disciples also may see the works that thou doest.
4 For there is no man that doeth any thing in secret, and he himself seeketh to be known openly. If thou do these things, shew thyself to the world.
5 For neither did his brethren believe in him
And Jesus response to his brothers was to lie to them because all his brothers wanted to do was draw attention to Jesus so they could bask in his glory as someone who was close to him.
6 Then Jesus said unto them, My time is not yet come: but your time is alway ready.
7 The (religious) world cannot hate you; but me it hateth, because I testify of it, that the works thereof are evil.
8 Go ye up unto this feast: I go not up yet unto this feast: for my time is not yet come.
9 When he had said these words unto them, he abode still in Galilee.
10 But when his brethren were gone up, then went he also up unto the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret.
thus bypassing his loud mouthed brothers who would have revealed Jesus whereabouts to those who wanted to kill him as the first verse of John 7 indicates:
John 7:1 “……..After these things Jesus walked in Galilee: for he would not walk in Jewry, because the Jews sought to kill him………..”
LikeLike
September 13, 2016 at 2:40 pm
Some fundamental facts about the Trinity:
10 FACTS About the TRINITY You Should Know | Is It Pagan?
Bible Flock Box
Published on Dec 16, 2015
The Trinity is a fundamental doctrine in most major Christian churches. However, there are a few groups that oppose it. Some of those groups include the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, and Oneness Pentecostals. Jehovah’s Witness and Oneness Pentecostals claim that the Trinity has pagan origins. Is this true? Find out by watching this video!
LikeLike
September 13, 2016 at 2:46 pm
10 facts about the Trinity! Are you kidding Frank?
For the love Christ anybody can come up with things called facts but it’s just other people’s beliefs like Donald Trump throwing out his perceived facts that are not factual at all hoping but hoping when it hits the wall some of it will stick to those who accept anything Trump says as gospel.
It’s the same as you. Even though B Bob asked you to use your own words to describe why you believe the videos you post, just rolled off your back like a duck in water and you continue to do the same thing but won’t say why you believe in the ten facts you post….Why?
So what you post is as incredible as the facts you post and mean absolutely nothing to us. You nay as well stop because your postings are useless as tits on a bull.
LikeLike
September 14, 2016 at 12:34 am
Have you not read or have you not heard, ltg?
So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ/Messiah. (Romans 10:17)
This is the only thing I want to find out from you: did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith? (Galatians 3:2)
So then, does He who provides you with the Spirit and works miracles among you, do it by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith? (Galatians 3:5)
Why We Believe While Others Reject (1 Corinthians 1:18-2:16) John MacArthur
Grace to You
Published on Jun 18, 2012
LikeLike
September 14, 2016 at 1:01 am
Frank:
There is one thing absolutely for sure and that is, neither Paul nor anybody else writing or interpreting the New Testament scriptures decide or define the spirit that is within moi.
Which explains why I have no guilt whatsoever laid upon me by men who want to keep me in thrall because I am a toxic sinner and need the power nutrients according to their belief.
In this; I have full knowledge and understanding of the message of Jesus as to who he was and who he represented and what the important takeaway should be from his life on earth, not his death as so many Christians inadvertently are lulled into believing that his death was more important than his life.
That is just where the entire Christian religion has faltered and fell into the pharisaical belief trap that the Mosaic Law they still teach as the Law of God is not the law of God but the law of men who claim it is the law off God.
And when Jesus came he said …”Sorry but you are totally mistaken; just because you teach the precepts of man as the commands of God, you state that the precepts of man are the commands of God but they are not and never were and never can be…….. Uh uh…you are the devil’s dupe!
Jesus revealed that the Father God was an entity living within the humanity of mankind, not an external supernatural caricature concept of man’s fragmented imagination who wanted something to die and shed blood for, for the remission of sins; that’s the Old Testament’s ludicrous teachings of men exposing their frailty because they can’t even get the Jesus message straight in their heads…they simply regurgitate the OT God prophesizing through the surrogates about the future coming of the Son of Man………… in his day……………!
and that’s when the y began plotting the demise of Jeus while investing in the new following so they could hijack it for their own use….and it worked. Now you have Christians preaching the Pharisee lifestyle that Jesus railed against for 3 and a half years and preaching it in such a way as to be called the Gospel……You could not be any further from the truth than that.
LikeLike
September 14, 2016 at 6:59 am
Re: post # 107.
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:17-18)
Which Veil? – 119 Ministries
Published on May 7, 2014
We have heard many times over from people how the law is no longer for believers today. And many of those refer to 2 Corinthians chapter 3 for their support in claiming how the law is a veil and we are to no longer have that veil since it is removed in Christ. Join us in this brief teaching as we examine just which veil Paul was really talking about.
LikeLike
September 14, 2016 at 7:05 am
As usual, Frank persists in following the Law of Logical Argument with his postings:
Law of Logical Argument – Anything is possible IF you don’t know what you are talking about.
LikeLike
September 14, 2016 at 7:12 am
Frank:
Why do you believe what Jesus Christ rejected?
LikeLike
September 14, 2016 at 9:05 am
Frank,
What denominational faith do you follow?
LikeLike
September 14, 2016 at 4:04 pm
Under whose authority are you?
In whose image are you made?
HeadCoverings (Remastered) – 119 Ministries
September 14 2016
1 Corinthians 11 is often a source of confusion for many. We examine this chapter through the lens of Torah and historical context to offer additional clarity and insight.
LikeLike
September 16, 2016 at 9:26 am
Exodus 20:8-11
(8) “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. (9) Six days you shall labor and do all your work, (10) but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD/YHWH your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. (11) For in six days the LORD/YHWH made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD/YHWH blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.
http://www.theberean.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Home.showBerean/BereanID/7988/bblver/NKJV/Exodus-20-8-11.htm
From the above article by John W. Ritenbaugh:
Existentialist philosophers say that life is absurd, that it is but a prelude to death. All of life, they proclaim, is virtually empty of value because it has no ultimate goal better than what one already has. Life is going nowhere. Yet, keeping the Sabbath is in fact a celebration of just the opposite: It is all about life and its great goal as planned by the very Creator! It concerns His ongoing creative process toward our being made into the spiritual image of His Son.
LikeLike
October 7, 2016 at 7:26 pm
The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear Him,
And rescues them. (Psalm 34:7)
Isaiah 11
11:1
Then a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse,
And a branch from his roots will bear fruit.
2
The Spirit of the LORD will rest on Him,
The spirit of wisdom and understanding,
The spirit of counsel and strength,
The spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.
3
And He will delight in the fear of the LORD,
And He will not judge by what His eyes see,
Nor make a decision by what His ears hear;
4
But with righteousness He will judge the poor,
And decide with fairness for the afflicted of the earth;
And He will strike the earth with the rod of His mouth,
And with the breath of His lips He will slay the wicked.
5
Also righteousness will be the belt about His loins,
And faithfulness the belt about His waist.
* * * * *
Jewish Recognition of Trinitarian Facts
InspiringPhilosophy
Published on Oct 7, 2016
Join us at: http://www.inspiringphilosophy.org
To help support this ministry click here: https://www.patreon.com/inspiringphil…
Many Jewish thinkers have recognized there is Trinitarian evidence in the Old Testament and this video goes over these facts.
LikeLike
October 9, 2016 at 10:19 am
Hello B BobIt’s been just about a month since you last statement:
September 12, 2016 at 11:06 am
FYI: I need to look at the story of Ham before I can give you my thoughts. Frankly, it is not a story that i have meditated on very deeply. I briefly looked at it and realized there is much to consider before i cold form a reasonable opinion. So, I will eventually give you my take when I actually have one. You might remind me sometime later on if I don’t post it.
You might remind me sometime later on if I don’t post it.
Thusly do I remind you.
LikeLike
October 11, 2016 at 4:54 pm
You are right. I forgot about it. I will get back soon
LikeLike
October 11, 2016 at 7:24 pm
B Bob:
Thanks at least for answering my reminder…
Nevertheless what I have found in recent and not so recent posts…when it comes to scriptures Christians generally take a Trump position and try to bluster their way through but in reality, when the questions arise about pertinent bible scripture they are usually long on absence and short on memory.
Certain elements of scripture cannot be anything but from a supernaturally inspired mindset, even when the disciples say it, it has no more credence that when anybody else says it.
Jesus did not entrust himself or his actions or his intelligence sources to the disciples, yet Christians are quick to say “there, if the disciples said it, their word is true, otherwise they would not have said it right? but really? They do not know.
[John 2:23– Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing. 24 But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people 25 and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man.]
Take the Transfiguration when the disciples said to Jesus …Matthew 17:1-3 Six days later, three of them saw that glory. Jesus took Peter and the brothers, James and John, and led them up a high mountain. His appearance changed from the inside out, right before their eyes. Sunlight poured from his face. His clothes were filled with light. Then they realized that Moses and Elijah were also there in deep conversation with him.
And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart,
2 And was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light.
3 And, behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elias talking with him.
4 Then answered Peter, and said unto Jesus, Lord, it is good for us to be here: if thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias.
NOTE: [A Tabernacle was “(in biblical use) a fixed or movable habitation, typically of light construction. A small, movable tent that was used as a place of worship by the ancient Israelites.]
5 While he yet spake, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them: and behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.
6 And when the disciples heard it, they fell on their face, and were sore afraid.
7 And Jesus came and touched them, and said, Arise, and be not afraid.
8 And when they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no man, save Jesus only.
9 And as they came down from the mountain, Jesus charged them, saying, Tell the vision to no man, until the Son of man be risen again from the dead.
10 And his disciples asked him, saying, Why then say the scribes that Elias must first come?
11 And Jesus answered and said unto them, Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things.
12 But I say unto you, That Elias is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall also the Son of man suffer of them.
13 Then the disciples understood that he spake unto them of John the Baptist.
10 The disciples, meanwhile, were asking questions. “Why do the religion scholars say that Elijah has to come first?”
11-13 Jesus answered, “Elijah does come and get everything ready. I’m telling you, Elijah has already come but they didn’t know him when they saw him. They treated him like dirt, the same way they are about to treat the Son of Man.” That’s when the disciples realized that all along he had been talking about John the Baptizer.
NOTE: Now if Elijah was already come in the persona of John the Baptist how then could one of the men Jesus talked to, be Elijah since John was beheaded) And if they were wrong about Elijah they most certainly were wrong about Moses….how would they even know what either Moses or Elijah looked like or were they wearing their names printed on their clothing. Of course not because the two men were not Moses or Elijah…So the question is…who were the two men Jesus met and talked to?
Who the two men were is obvious to me but many Christians have no idea who the men were and simply repeat the scriptural dogma of miraculous belief that it was a supernatural apparition….bullocks!….do you know who they were?
The curse of Ham is another example and the other question I ask is how did Jesus know who the disciple was who would betray him before the betrayal took place?
These are a few of the questions that cause Christians to squirrel away from the conversation, ignore the question or repeat the supernatural voice from above who “knows all things” and invoke the classic literal translation because it’s all they’ve got! All of which does nothing to move their agenda forward in this modern age of enlightenment because they themselves do not know but cannot admit they do not know.
LikeLike
October 15, 2016 at 1:11 am
sonofman,
I apologize for not getting back to you sooner. My schedule has become very hectic and it will be this way for the awhile. I truly cannot comment of the story of Noah and Ham because i had never given pause to dwell on it. Therefore, until I do, what can i say about it. I will get to it and comment one way or the other, even if my comments are “I don’t know.” For the moment, I don’t know enough to profess any real depth of knowledge concerning the story.
Likewise, the transfiguration is another story that I have not dwelled upon too much either. However, I can make a few comments regarding some of the points and issues you brought up.
Firstly, ALL scripture is authored by God. All writers wrote the scripture under or through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, if the Bible says it, God said it. If God said it, it is true whether or not we believe it.
Jesus said to the seventy : “he who heareth you, hearethh me.” This was and is Jesus’ attitude toward all of the scripture. Another example is found in John 5:45-47. Jesus said to the Jews who were persecuting Him ““But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?” IOW’s if you don’y believe what God has said, then how can you believe what I am saying, I speak the words of God, because I am not only the son of man, but I AM also God.
For the reason that all scripture are truly words spoken by God, then the persons that the word of God say are Elias and Moses must be true. God is a God of the living.
Matt 22:31-32
“But regarding the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God: 32‘I AM THE GOD OF ABRAHAM, AND THE GOD OF ISAAC, AND THE GOD OF JACOB’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.”
You brought up some very interesting points that i want to address, but these are deep things that require time to properly articulate the concepts that would address them. Time does no allow me to expound further, but I will get back with you.
Meanwhile. I will leave you with these scriptures and thought.
Job 3:23: Job sought the temple or tabernacle of God (fixed place where God resides), but could not find it, for it had not been revealed to him.
John 2:19-22: Jesus said He (His bodily form) was the temple of God. The made without hands.
Col 1:19: Jesus was eternally purposed to be the permanent and fixed dwelling of ALL the fullness of God
Col 2:9: Jesus is the permanent and eternal dwelling of ALL the fullness of God in bodily form (the resurrection and ascended Christ is the Glory of God that Moses saw the hinder parts of. Moses wrote about Him).
1 Cor 15:20-28, 27-28:P This is the depiction and description of who God is, in the end. God the Father subjected all things to the son of man (excepting Himself). After all His works were finished, the son, subjects himself in bodily form to God the Father, so God could be the ALL in ALL. This is the picture of who the God of eternity is. This is the God of the eternal day of creation; the true Sabbath day of God. The day that never ends.
Mark 2:27-28: For the above stated reason, this explains what Jesus meant when He said “man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath was made for man, therefore, the son of man, is Lord of the Sabbath.
Now, here is the thing: The author of the Bible and the One telling the story of His creation, is the eternal God depicted and described through the invisible thread of the Scriptures (I quoted enough to connect the dots, but many more scriptures lead to the same place because the Scriptures testify about the Glory of God: Jesus Christ).
Therefore, the Bible is written and God has spoken from His eternal place in Heaven. However, we still exist in the fullness of time of God’s works. Even though He finished them before the foundation of the world.
If God finished His works before He made man, then He spoke creation into existence from his place in eternity, which is depicted in 1 Cor 15:20-28, 27-28.
We should now understand why Col 1:16-17 says all things were created by Him and through Him. God spoke creation into existence and the One who lifted up His voice is the One who is the ALL in ALL depicted in 1 Cor 15:27-28; All the fullness of God, eternally dwelling in the bodily form of His own Glory; Jesus Christ.
This means the voice that was heard at Jesus’ baptism of John’s baptism into repentance and at the transfiguration, came from God, the ALL in ALL, where He eternally abides in the bodily form of His own Glory; Jesus Christ.
This is the God of eternity and this is the only God that has ever spoken!
I must go now, but chew on these things for awhile.
LikeLike
October 15, 2016 at 10:45 am
B Bob
Job 3:23: Job sought the temple or tabernacle of God (fixed place where God resides), but could not find it, for it had not been revealed to him.
WHY? Follow Jesus logic: The essence of character, the compulsion of conscience, the guide of brain power memory along with the ability of reason, logic and discretion form a commonality among men, the wisest being able to understand the concept of “God” WITHIN, wherein resides the personal God, the “Father”.
This Knowledge-based concept of the god-head within, is the entity Jesus referred to as the “Father’s Kingdom”, and of which he said: nor will they say, ‘See here!’ or ‘See there!’ For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you.”
Now follow the Supreme God Brahman:
According to an old Hindu legend…
..there was once a time when all human beings were gods, but they so abused their divinity that Brahma, the chief god, decided to take it away from them and hide it where it could never be found.
Where to hide their divinity was the question. So Brahma called a council of the gods to help him decide. “Let’s bury it deep in the earth,” said the gods. But Brahma answered, “No, that will not do because humans will dig into the earth and find it.” Then the gods said, “Let’s sink it in the deepest ocean.” But Brahma said, “No, not there, for they will learn to dive into the ocean and will find it.” Then the gods said, “Let’s take it to the top of the highest mountain and hide it there.” But once again Brahma replied, “No, that will not do either, because they will eventually climb every mountain and once again take up their divinity.” Then the gods gave up and said, “We do not know where to hide it, because it seems that there is no place on earth or in the sea that human beings will not eventually reach.”
Brahma thought for a long time and then said, “Here is what we will do. We will hide their divinity deep in the center of their own being, for humans will never think to look for it there.”
All the gods agreed that this was the perfect hiding place, and the deed was done. And since that time humans have been going up and down the earth, digging, diving, climbing, and exploring–searching for something already within themselves.
Job could not find the residence because he could not imagine that it was within him.
When Jesus came he was the first to discover that truth and thereby revolutionized religion by revising the God Concept and advising where exactly God lived, within you……… and not only within Jesus………. but within all humanity….within you and within me……that’s why he could say over and over the Father who lives in me, he does the work, what I say, he says, what I do, he does, who I am , HE IS!
To know this is not claiming to be Jesus’ equal but to understand what Jesus meant about God’s Kingdom within you….not “among you” which some want to declare because they still do not want to take responsibility that the Father lives within them if they let him and they will not let him so they niggle of the word within to be among. Jesus was not only taking about himself but all mankind.
So Job could not find God anymore than the Pharisees could find God or want to, any more than today’s clergy can or want to. That is the bastardization of Jesus life message to humanity.
LikeLike
October 15, 2016 at 10:59 am
You understand, Jesus said “He is the resurrection and life.” He also said “no one can come to the Father except though Him.” Right? This makes your theory to be impossible to have the Father (God) inside you unless you first come to Jesus Christ. Therefore, we don’t have God inside each of us unless we have been baptized with the Spirit of God, which is, the Spirit of CHrist.
LikeLike
October 15, 2016 at 11:41 am
B Bob:
“………For the above stated reason, this explains what Jesus meant when He said “man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath was made for man, therefore, the son of man, is Lord of the Sabbath………..”
That is absolutely inaccurate and does not explain what Jesus meant at all when he said what he said about the Sabbath. B Bob you do err greatly relying on rote teachings about things that totally wrong and not only wrong but false when you own bible tells you otherwise from the horse’s mouth Jesus, Not Paul or other interpreters of what Jesus was all about. It’s a fault you need to overcome.
First of all you have to understand that when the Prophets spoke they spoke as though they were talking on behalf of God, that was the nature of religious tradition. God did not speak to anybody except religion tradition accepted that when the Prophetic Leader, self appointed or school appointed, spoke it was through him that God spoke. The prophet said “God Said” or “God did” but that was not God that said or did but the prophet who claimed to be talking as God’s Messenger speaking, doing etc. Every phrase about God or the Lord says are words out of the mouth of the messengers.
Now the precepts of men, the Commandments and other laws about eating shellfish or wearing clothing made of different fabrics was abomination not because God said Pig was an abomination or eating shellfish but because the religious tradition was that the religious leaders ruled the masses on pain of death if they disobeyed.
One such precept was the Sabbath (that you would be killed if you disobeyed) and because the Pharisees niggled over work they accused Jesus and his disciples when they were picking corn to feed themselves, they accused them of working therefore breaking the Sabbath rule.
Jesus then said hey just a minute which one among you if your cattle fell into a hole would not immediately go and pull the beast out? And then he mother that David when he and his soldiers were hungry and had no food went into the sanctuary where nobody was suppose to go and ate the “Shewbread” which was not lawful to eat except for the priests.
So Jesus meant that the Sabbath Rule, a law made by the clerics was a useless ritual when it comes to overruling a man’s hunger.
Matthew 12:1 At that time Jesus went on the sabbath day through the corn; and his disciples were an hungred, and began to pluck the ears of corn and to eat.
2 But when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto him, Behold, thy disciples do that which is not lawful to do upon the sabbath day.
3 But he said unto them, Have ye not read what David did, when he was an hungred, and they that were with him;
4 How he entered into the house of God, and did eat the shewbread, which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them which were with him, but only for the priests?
5 Or have ye not read in the law, how that on the sabbath days the priests in the temple profane the sabbath, and are blameless?
6 But I say unto you, That in this place is one greater than the temple.
7 But if ye had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless.
8 For the Son of man is Lord even of the sabbath day.
And again:
Luke 14: One time when Jesus went for a Sabbath meal with one of the top leaders of the Pharisees, all the guests had their eyes on him, watching his every move. Right before him there was a man hugely swollen in his joints. So Jesus asked the religion scholars and Pharisees present, “Is it permitted to heal on the Sabbath? Yes or no?”
4-6 They were silent. So he took the man, healed him, and sent him on his way.
Then he said, “Is there anyone here who, if a child (your son or daughter) or animal(cow) fell down a well, wouldn’t rush to pull him out immediately, not asking whether or not it was the Sabbath?” They were stumped. There was nothing they could say to that.
You see Jesus did not try to come up with theological philosophical ideas about God this and God that; the simplicity that was in Jesus eludes the high minded philosophical academics because the reason you gave is absolutely nonsense as to what Jesus clearly meant about the Sabbath. Even though the Sabbath was made for man as a day to relax and reflect and rest, it was nothing compared to the needs of a man and that’s why the sabbath was made for man and not man for the sabbath because Man is Master of the sabbath just as Man is master of the rituals so Man controls the rituals but not at the expense of his own self. That’s like Ramadan when believers can’t eat or drink in daylight hours to the detriment of the people especially the elderly, the infirm and the children even in 100 degree heat of the sun. This is how the rituals and sacrifices are not pleasing to the Father.
Yet Christians today still forget the evils of religion that Jesus testified of and warned us about: sacraments, sacrifices, prayer rituals, finger beading, bible thumping and hand-raising hallelujahs……….the Mosaic futility and insignificance of idle ceremonies, mummeries and observances, of no effect towards producing the social utilities which constitute the essence of virtue; such a one is the keeping of the Sabbath; “‘These people honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. They worship Me in vain; And their reverence for Me consists of tradition learned by rote……”
Another ritual is baptism.
“Hence when Christ entered into the world he said sacrifices and offerings you have not desired”; in other words, the pragmatic, externals of mere religion are not satisfying to you Father. It isn’t that a man goes once a week in a piece of real estate. Or simply undergoes as a matter of tradition and form certain sacraments. Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired but instead Father you have made ready a body for me to offer you, father, a body that is your temple and much, much more than the temple you go to worship and practice useless rituals!
Now just to further your knowledge I submit this account of teachings. There were school of divinity just as their are today, in ancient Israel These were the schools of the Prophets who would go, receive instruction and after a time graduate from the School as a Prophet…simple as that of a priest who graduates from the Seminary or Minister from a Divinity College, and when they graduate they are in effect God’s mouth to speak on earth so when they speak we might say God said as you read in the bible:
It is surely instructive to find, these numerous bands of young men, congregated under prophetic oversight, and receiving sacred instruction. The origin of “schools of the prophets” seems traceable to Samuel (1 Samuel 19:20). But the order took a new impulse under Elijah.
So when they graduate like the priest from the Seminary: The Catholic Church teaches that when a man participates in priesthood, he participates in the priesthood of Christ Himself. All men who, through the Sacrament of Holy Orders, have become priests participate in Christ’s priesthood; they act in persona Christi Capitis, in the person of Christ, the Head of His Body, the Church.
This is the tradition of religion from ancient days to modern days they are metaphorical examples of God saying, doing, demonstrating, walking etc.
You have to understand this concept or you are at a disadvantage in discourse with me and others who understand this concept.
Remember too as outlined in this brief:
THIS IS THE Ancient Religious Tradition:
God’s will, so called, is revealed in the “holy” scriptures. The sacred book formulates the will of God and specifies what is to be given to the clergy. Clergy become parasites. “… All things of life are so ordered that the clergy is everywhere indispensable; at all the natural events of life, at birth, marriage, sickness, death. Natural values become utterly valueless. The Clergy sanctifies and bestows all value. Disobedience of God (the clergy) is ‘sin.’ Subjection to God (the clergy) is redemption. Clergy use ‘sin’ to gain and hold power. Priest, Preacher and Prophet……….
LikeLike
October 15, 2016 at 12:22 pm
B Bob:
You just understand:
Jesus said “He is the resurrection and life.” He also said “no one can come to the Father except though Him.” Right?
Exactly and this is what make my theory possible knowledge of the Father (God) inside because that was the message of Jesus so we would know the Father through Jesus, that the Father is within us all, if you let him. That is why Jesus is the “Resurrection and the Life” because the truth of his message is the knowledge of the Father within you; know this and you have “Resurrection and Life” which knowledge is that the Father is within you as made known by the First Son of Man to discover and relay this revolutionary concept to mankind.
Remember this conversation? Jesus speaking:
You see Nicodemus, you were born uninhabited by God, inhabited only by sin. I was born uninhabited by sin, inhabited only by God and so everything I do Nicodemus because I let my father do it, is what he does, everything I say Nicodemus, is what my father says, because I let him speak. everything I am Nicodemus is what he is, because I allow him my father as God to be who he is in me Nicodemus, the man. And the only thing Nicodemus that demonstrates the validity of my claim to be who I am, the son of God, is the authorship, the origin of what I do and what I say and what I am. My father who lives in me, he does the work. You see Nicodemus, I just happened to make man that way as God and I came into this world, though God to play the role of man so you’d know how I intended you should live. Any questions Nicodemus?
You see the Lord Jesus came magnificently to demonstrate the proposition, the divine logic of which is absolutely imperative to a man’s humanity. And in explaining this to you, I’m simply preaching the gospel. Don’t please imagine that the gospel is simply come to Jesus and have your sins forgiven; that isn’t the gospel. You will only have your sins forgiven if you are prepared for the guilty sinner that you are, come to the Lord Jesus and accept him into your life for the savior he came to be but THAT IS NOT GOSPEL. That simply lets you off the hook; that simply changes your destination; that simply trades hell for heaven but Jesus Christ didn’t come into this world simply to get you and me out of hell and into heaven; he came into this world supremely to get God out of heaven in to you and to me.
You don’t imagine that God takes any pleasure in having a heaven filled with men and women redeemed in the blood of his incarnate son who will be as useless in heaven as they were on earth? Stacked in bundles of 10, dusted with DDT once a week by a bunch of angels, do you imagine that’s what heaven’s going to be like? Heaven is going to be populated with men, women, boys and girls, who’ve been restored to their redeemed and now true humanity
LikeLike
October 16, 2016 at 10:43 am
1. Atheist Lecture: Does Truth Exist? | The Road Runner Tactic | Frank Turek, PhD
Theology, Philosophy and Science
Published on Oct 11, 2016
Lecture by Frank Turek. This video is part of the Atheist Lectures playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
LikeLike
October 18, 2016 at 4:33 am
Sonofman,
Ref Post #141
Jesus was telling Nicodemus that the man God made in His own image needed to be “made again” in His own image, aka “born again”. This is only through believing and “obeying” the gospel. When we believe the gospel and obey it we will be born again through obedience to the command to be baptized with water and Holy Spirit. Jesus commanded the apostles to teach us all that He commanded them. The obedience to this command was taught to us through the obedience of the gospel command to repent, be baptized with water into Jesus Christ and to receive the Holy Spirit (the Spirit of Christ).
We are not born again unless and until we obey the gospel. Otherwise, we did not need Jesus to come and die for our sins.
LikeLike
October 18, 2016 at 4:43 am
Sonofman,
Ref Post #140
In these to particular verses of scripture: Mar 2:27-28, Jesus is absolutely speaking about the seventh day of creation. Jesus often spoke to the jews in a way they could not comprehend what He said. This is one of those times. Jesus is the Lord of ALL. He is the Lord God of eternity that is depicted in 1 Cor 15:20-28, 27-28. see post # 137
I am short on time, but examples of this is John 2:19-22, Matt 17:12-13, John 3:3-8, and many other times.
LikeLike
October 18, 2016 at 4:45 am
Sonofman,
I have not forgotten your question about Noah and Ham. I simply have not had time to look at it. I will and get back to you with whatever thoughts i have.
LikeLike
October 18, 2016 at 8:51 am
B Bob:
You stated that “Jesus is absolutely speaking about the seventh day of creation.” That is absolutely false! Your notion is called “spin:” in the politics of church dogma.
Jesus was absolutely not talking about the seventh day of creation. Jesus was absolutely talking about the precept, the rule, the demand, the law, of man’s imagination as the ancients decided. God created everything and then rested on the seventh day. Do you really think that the God of the desert needs to rest? That was a precept of man and had and has absolutely nothing to do with God; it was the reality that “those who have the gold, have the power” that makes the rules.
LikeLike
October 18, 2016 at 8:52 am
B Bob:
You see, you have already settled for the fallacy that the words from of the imagination of the interpreters accurately depict the will, word, and behaviour of an almighty creator. But this is the same that way all mythology believers have thought and worshipped and followed since the year dot. God did this, the Lord wants you to this and that. What special attributes did ancient man
have to enable him to ascribe all events natural and otherwise to the Gods? The power of the sword, the power of gold and the power of death. The first four commandments are decrees of the ancients that you had to follow, the disobedience of which were capital penalty offences. Those are pretty powerful words that have lingered down the line to posterity generation after generation.
Once your mind has been spun into a web of supernatural confusion then all things that flow forth from your indoctrinated web and is inevitably; in this case, not the web you weave but the weave you web seeking proselytes to support the weave from the web of supernaturalism effective since before the control of fire, since before the invention of the wheel.
LikeLike
October 18, 2016 at 10:03 am
Leo,
Ref Post #146
You changed your name? Ok, whatever.
You are right, but He not only was talking in context of the law of the Sabbath day, but also of the eternal day of God’s rest.
Jesus often did spoke both ways as i have a couple of references to this before.
I don’t have time to go any further. If you still disagree, fine, we simply disagree. I am not going to change something that i know is correct. I am not asking you to do so either.
LikeLike
October 18, 2016 at 10:06 am
Leo,
Ref Post #147
not much to comment here. I believe the Bible and what God says. PERIOD.
This is not open for debate. God said, It is so, I believe believe it. If your concept is that i am deluded, then that is fine with me. We all cannot be at your level.
LikeLike
October 18, 2016 at 10:09 am
B Bob:
I am not surprised you say you have forgotten the question about the Curse of Ham in Genesis 9. It shows just how little credence you give to the questions of others. It seems to me if you were charitable you would simply STATE WHAT YOU BELIEVE THE TEXT MEANS, in the absence of chewing on it a little.
Personally I do very little chewing these days regarding the bible (if I read the bible once cover to cover once, I’ve read it a thousand times-40 days and 40 nights-metaphorically speaking, one day is like a thousand years to the Lord and a thousand years is like a day.).
here are a few Posts over the last month…..which should have jogged your memory more than a thousand times……..which you forgot about?…….
Post 79:
I suppose you believe that the curse of Ham (actually the curse of Canaan) was because Ham saw his father naked or that he had some homosexual deviancy toward him while Noah was drunk inside his tent.
Post 84:
September 11, 2016 at 7:14 am
B Bob:
You are wrong about the Sabbath. Jesus referred the Pharisees to David and his men when they were hungered as the disciples were as well as to his disciples.When men are waking dead they can be resurrected by life knowing Jesus message. The Pharisees were nigglers for ritual rather than hunger drives………wonder about it.
I’d like to hear your take on the curse of Ham and what Ham actually did that cause the curse.
I am not saying the bible is full of lies and falsehoods but Christians misinterpret and misunderstand the bible because they cannot see beyond literal text and because they have been brainwashed into the nonsense of the supernatural they can’t see the trees for the forest.
Off course the priests and prophets were not lying because they said that God talked to them and told them what to do; it was the culture for them to do so. So Moses and Aaron never talked directly to any entity but the prophets as the representative of their created God who spoke to people in those days in dreams and only to the prophets. They were simply uneducated in reality and lived with the dogma they developed as their only resource and the writings and the references to miracle, magic and myth reflect that.
You may believe that Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days without understanding the metaphor of 3 days as a “period of time” just as 40 days and 40 nights as a period of time, 3 and a half years as a period of time. A day was a period of time and seven always represents heavenly things. A day unto the eternal is like a thousand years and a thousand years like a day.
You are just regurgitating the seventh as the Sabbath following the old testament calendar because nobody knows what the calendar schedule was and the reason some of the patriarchs lived to 800 hundred years old and longer; it’s more likely than not that a year to the ancients was a moon cycle and not 365 days of the yearly cycle as we know it, so if you divide 900 moon cycles, a someone’s age as if it were years and divide 900 by 12 you get 75 years of 365 days each…wonder about it.
Post 85:
I don’t have time to give you my take on Ham, but I’ll look at it later and reply.
Post 96:
FYI: I need to look at the story of Ham before I can give you my thoughts. Frankly, it is not a story that i have meditated on very deeply. I briefly looked at it and realized there is much to consider before i cold form a reasonable opinion. So, I will eventually give you my take when I actually have one. You might remind me sometime later on if I don’t post it.
Post 97:
September 12, 2016 at 11:40 am
B Bob:
Fair enough….So let us continue to share our thoughts accordingly.
I look forward to the Ham comment after your review.
Post 111:
September 13, 2016 at 8:32 am
B Bob:
After you review the story of Ham and what Ham did, we’ll talk a little more about metaphorical examples.
Post 115:
Oh and did you read the account of Ham; it’s actually not that long. Only a couple minutes of reading and presto you should be done and understand what’s happening but if not well…..
Post 116:
B Bob Says:
September 13, 2016 at 9:48 am
Leo,
Ham, Not yet, but be patient, I will and I must say again. This is a story that I need to chew on a little bit.
Post 134:
October 9, 2016 at 10:19 am
Hello B Bob. It’s been just about a month since your last statement:
September 12, 2016 at 11:06 am
FYI: I need to look at the story of Ham before I can give you my thoughts. Frankly, it is not a story that i have meditated on very deeply. I briefly looked at it and realized there is much to consider before i cold form a reasonable opinion. So, I will eventually give you my take when I actually have one. You might remind me sometime later on if I don’t post it.
You might remind me sometime later on if I don’t post it.
Thusly do I remind you.
Post 135:
B Bob Says:
October 11, 2016 at 4:54 pm
You are right. I forgot about it. I will get back soon
Post 136:
October 11, 2016 at 7:24 pm
B Bob:
Thanks at least for answering my reminder…
Nevertheless what I have found in recent and not so recent posts…when it comes to scriptures Christians generally take a Trump position and try to bluster their way through but in reality, when the questions arise about pertinent bible scripture they are usually long on absence and short on memory.
Post 137:
B Bob Says:
October 15, 2016 at 1:11 am
The transfiguration.
Who the two men were is obvious to me but many Christians have no idea who the men were and simply repeat the scriptural dogma of miraculous belief that it was a supernatural apparition….bullocks!….do you know who they were?
The curse of Ham is another example and the other question I ask is
how did Jesus know who the disciple was who would betray him before the betrayal took place?
These are a few of the questions that cause Christians to squirrel away from the conversation,
Post 145:
B Bob Says:
October 18, 2016 at 4:45 am
Sonofman,
I have not forgotten your question about Noah and Ham. I simply have not had time to look at it. I will and get back to you with whatever thoughts i have.
One final note: If you are familiar enough about the bible to understand everything Jesus said and everything about the creation of the Cosmos, the Creator himself and the Laws of Moses but have given little thought about
the Curse of Ham,
the Transfiguration or
how Jesus knew who the betrayer was at the last supper before Judas betrayed him…then you do not know biblical text as much as you claim. And what you have said so far about Jesus is absolutely not based on knowledge but regurgitated nonsense that others have preached to you, they are not thoughts of your own because you are dependent on other interpreters like Paul for example who never knew Jesus and never met Jesus but persecuted and executed his followers including Stephen in Acts which Paul sanctioned. I submit Paul may have been the lead person in the Pharisaical Trojan Horse which eventually hijacked the followers of Jesus and led them back to the Old Law and the traditions of the Pharisees which Jesus denounced and debunked including the baptism of (old) the water which was replaced by the baptism of the (new) the spirit.
Jesus never baptized anybody
LikeLike
October 18, 2016 at 10:21 am
Jesus did not come to die for our sins; Jesus came to live an example of how we should behave, treat others and the reason for why. The sins of the religious leaders is what crucified Jesus. To say that Jesus came to die for our sins is church dogma; AKA, hogwash, and an example of how we justify with glorify g(l)ory death; get the “L” out of Glory about death and reject it as
g-ory death nothing glorious about it.
LikeLike
October 18, 2016 at 10:39 am
B Bob:
You need not rise to my level, you need to rise to the level of understanding Jesus who debunked the supernatural, and the religious leaders who also believed the bible as God’s word; they invented the practice and preachers pre & post Acts have repeated but you’ll never get there by refusing to hear Jesus words…Listen carefully to Jesus words about the religious preachers, the same preachers that indoctrinated you with sales teachings:
Matt 15: 1-2 After that, Pharisees and religion scholars came to Jesus all the way from Jerusalem, criticizing, “Why do your disciples play fast and loose with the rules?”
3-9 But Jesus put it right back on them. “Why do you use your rules to play fast and loose with God’s commands? God clearly says, ‘Respect your father and mother,’ and, ‘Anyone denouncing father or mother should be killed.’ But you weasel around that by saying, ‘Whoever wants to, can say to father and mother, What I owed to you I’ve given to God.’ That can hardly be called respecting a parent. You cancel God’s command by your rules. Frauds! Isaiah’s prophecy of you hit the bull’s-eye:
These people make a big show of saying the right thing,
but their heart isn’t in it.
They act like they’re worshiping me,
but they don’t mean it.
They just use me as a cover
for teaching whatever suits their fancy.”
10-11 He then called the crowd together and said, “Listen, and take this to heart. It’s not what you swallow that pollutes your life, but what you vomit up.”
12 Later his disciples came and told him, “Did you know how upset the Pharisees were when they heard what you said?”
13-14 Jesus shrugged it off. “Every tree that wasn’t planted by my Father in heaven will be pulled up by its roots. Forget them. They are blind men leading blind men. When a blind man leads a blind man, they both end up in the ditch.”
15 Peter said, “I don’t get it. Put it in plain language.”
16-20 Jesus replied, “You, too? Are you being willfully stupid? Don’t you know that anything that is swallowed works its way through the intestines and is finally defecated? But what comes out of the mouth gets its start in the heart. It’s from the heart that we vomit up evil arguments, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, lies, and cussing. That’s what pollutes. Eating or not eating certain foods, washing or not washing your hands—that’s neither here nor there.”:
LikeLike
October 18, 2016 at 11:01 am
B Bob:
Let me give you an example of metaphorical text.
In the King James Version of Genesis, it states in Chapter 9 starting at verse 22 “………And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father…..”
23 But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it upon both their shoulders and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were turned away, so that they did not see their father’s nakedness.…
So my question to you is what does “nakedness of the father” actually mean and what then, do you think Ham actually did.
I have asked many Christians this question and they either will not say or they ignore it…… How about you? Can you please tell me what you think Ham did according to the text?
LikeLike
October 18, 2016 at 11:15 am
Sonof Man,
Ref Post #153.
Did you see my Post #145. I don’t have any real thoughts on this story because I have not studied it. I read it before, but never really contemplated or meditated on it. Therefore, what can I really say at this time other than I don’t know much about anything about the story yet.
I will get to it, but i am very busy with lief right now.
LikeLike
October 18, 2016 at 11:47 am
Sonofman,
Post # 152
Try to remember what we agreed to accept about each other. I don’t need you to believe as i believe, nor vice versa.
I am very confident in the Holy Scriptures being the very words of God. I believe what God says. I have also experienced what God said.
LikeLike
October 18, 2016 at 1:10 pm
Re: post # 150.
“I submit Paul may have been the lead person in the Pharisaical Trojan Horse which eventually hijacked the followers of Jesus and led them back to the Old Law and the traditions of the Pharisees which Jesus denounced and debunked including the baptism of (old) the water which was replaced by the baptism of the (new) the spirit.”
* * * * *
Debate: Does Paul Give Us the Truth about Jesus? David Wood (Christian) vs. Shabir Ally (Muslim)
Acts17Apologetics
Published on Oct 4, 2015
http://www.answeringmuslims.com
Christians believe that the Apostle Paul was one of history’s most faithful men of God. Muslims, however, often claim that Paul was a deceiver who corrupted Christianity. Can an examination of the evidence help us decide who’s right? In this debate, David Wood and Shabir Ally debate the question, “Does Paul give us the truth about Jesus?”
LikeLike
October 18, 2016 at 1:27 pm
Sonofman,
Ref Post #150
I was honest with you and now you want to be judgmental of me? I don’t have a take on your question yet. PERIOD. It is not something I have studied or given much thought to. I looked at it when you asked and realized there are things that could be going on that I don’t understand, therefore, I need time to study it. This is not what I do to make a living, therefore, something like this must be put on the back burner until such time I can focus on it.
If you cannot accept that I have become very busy since our first encounter, then let us stop our discourse now. Do not accuse me of being something that I am not. I cannot meet your time schedule for an answer to something that obviously needs to be researched and studied before I can speak intelligently about it. I am not one to pop off an answer to something I don’t understand.
If you continue to accuse me of things i find offensive and untrue, fine, have at it. I will not participate with you.
LikeLike
October 18, 2016 at 2:25 pm
Re: post # 156.
In his debate with David Wood on the question: “Does Paul Give Us the Truth about Jesus?” Shabir Ally references Paul in connection to clean & unclean foods and Acts 15 [segment beginning @ 39:43].
This will provide clarity:
Meat Sacrificed to Idols – 119 Ministries
119Ministries
Published on Apr 30, 2013
Meat sacrificed to idols would appear to be an issue of the past and not something believers in the faith must deal with today. But what about the issue of Halal?
LikeLike
October 19, 2016 at 8:55 pm
B Bob:
Isaiah 1:
10
“Listen to my Message, you Sodom-schooled leaders. Receive God’s revelation, you Gomorrah-schooled people.
11-12
“Why this frenzy of sacrifices?” God’s asking. “Don’t you think I’ve had my fill of burnt sacrifices, rams and plump grain-fed calves? Don’t you think I’ve had my fill of blood from bulls, lambs, and goats? When you come before me, whoever gave you the idea of acting like this, Running here and there, doing this and that— all this sheer commotion in the place provided for worship?
13-17
“Quit your worship charades. I can’t stand your trivial religious games: Monthly conferences, weekly Sabbaths, special meetings— meetings, meetings, meetings—I can’t stand one more! Meetings for this, meetings for that. I hate them! You’ve worn me out! I’m sick of your religion, religion, religion, while you go right on sinning. When you put on your next prayer-performance, I’ll be looking the other way. No matter how long or loud or often you pray, I’ll not be listening. And do you know why? Because you’ve been tearing people to pieces, and your hands are bloody. Go home and wash up. Clean up your act. Sweep your lives clean of your evildoings so I don’t have to look at them any longer. Say no to wrong. Learn to do good. Work for justice. Help the down-and-out. Stand up for the homeless. Go to bat for the defenseless.
LikeLike
November 23, 2016 at 8:31 am
Well B Bob:
Are you ready to admit you do not know anything more today than you did three months ago about Ham’s Curse? Or do you need the rest of the year to figure it out? ( heh heh sarcasm.)
LikeLike