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Title: ANTICHRIST RISING!
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Published: Feb 6, 2013
Author: Stone
Post Date: 2013-02-06 22:48:16 by A K A Stone
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Views: 26102
Comments: 54
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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 34.
#4. To: A K A Stone (#0)
Please expand on this subject. The pic is not enough.
The bible is so overused....;}
The Bible presents the Truth and the Truth will set you free.
The Bible contradicts itself so often, how do you know which truth is the one that will set you free.
Please present the contradictions. I am curious what you have to offer.
Many of the things that appear to be contradictions aren't really, but the reason they aren't sometimes forces a change in our perception of things. For example, if you look in your red-letter Bible, to the most famous passage of all in John, you will see everything from John 3:10 to 3:21 is in red letters, indicating that all of it was spoken by Jesus. But actually the red letters should end at 3:12. The rest of it, including John 3:16 ("For God so loved the world...") is John theologizing, long after the fact. It is not Jesus speaking to Nicodemus because it CANNOT be, for it if were, then Jesus here contradicts other parts of the Bible by referring to things that had not happened yet as having already happened. The use of serial "Ands" in ancient texts was a way to indicate sentence ending and paragraph breaks, as ancient written Greek had no punctuation and was written in all upper case letters, and without even spaces between the words in some of the oldest manuscripts. In this writing system, "And" often functioned as a period, not a conjunction. Is it important theologically? Not really; not unless somebody has made a big deal about John 3:16 having been spoken by Jesus. But that is not Biblical. The Bible is silent on exactly who is speaking, but context requires this to be John's theologizing for the reader long after the fact, as opposed to a quote of what Jesus said to Nicodemus. If one insists that the red letters, including John 3:16, were all spoken by Jesus, then there is a hopeless contradiction in John 3:13, for if Jesus speaks these words himself to Nicodemus, at the point Jesus speaks these words, he had never yet ascended into Heaven.
Please go into a little more detail on this. I don't see a contradiction in 3:13. Trifle confusing, perhaps, but I see nothing wrong with red letters from 5 thru 8 , and 10 thru 21
Ok. I'm at a little bit of a disadvantage because I don't have a Bible with me here where I am, so I'll have to circle back and give you more details later. What I am saying here will be more general. First off, this appears in the Gospel of John. John is specific, because he numbers Jesus early miracles. Jesus' very first public miracle is before he begins his public ministry. He already has been baptized and named a few disciples, but he has not started publicly preaching yet. He attends the wedding at Cana with his mother and performs the miracle of water to wine, even though he hasn't actually started revealing his miraculous nature yet (and more particularly, even though he has not instituted the eucharist wine yet at the Last Supper) and protests to his mother that his time has not yet come. So, that's miracle one. Then he goes to Jerusalem and cleanses the Temple for the first time, but doesn't perform any public miracles yet. We know this because John later identifies a miracle as Jesus second miracle. Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night when Jesus is down at Jerusalem. So, this is the context. Jesus is not yet the miracle-man. He has preached in the public and performed one surprising sign, in Cana of Galilee (along way away). He has gained fame (or infamy) by cleansing the Temple and preaching in Jerusalem, but that's the extent of it at this point. Nicodemus is not referring to Jesus raising the dead, healing lepers, feeding the multitudes or any other such thing, because John tells us right in the text that Jesus at this point has only performed one miracle. (Cana is first, and the next miracle, specifically identified as the "second", is later.) Now then, Jesus tells Nicodemus that a man must be begotten again. (This is generally translated "born" but it really shouldn't be. Jesus isn't saying that one has to get mothered again, he is saying that one must be FATHERED again - begotten - by the Father. This is of a piece with what he later says to some of the Pharisees, that their father is the Devil. Jesus says that you have to be fathered again - by the spirit of the Father - but I digress.) The problem is that Jesus says (roughly, from memory) 'Nobody has ascended into heaven except for he who descends from heaven..." This refers to himself. There are two potential contradictions here. The first is that it appears to contradict the Genesis story of the "translation" of Enoch, and the second is that Elijah was carried off into the sky on a chariot of fire. So, we must assume that wherever Enoch and Elijah were taken off to, it wasn't heaven. (It may have been Paradise, which isn't heaven...but the actual structure of the afterlife, though revealed, is not revealed here in this part of the text, so I'll skip over it.) If we assume that Enoch and Elijah were taken to Gan Eden, which is Paradise, and actually part of Sheol (Hades) (with Gehenna - "Hell" being another part of it), then what Jesus says here is not a contradiction. But we cannot have Elijah or Enoch going to heaven where God is, because as of the time that Jesus spoke to Nicodemus, circa 31 AD, NOBODY had yet ascended into Heaven, according to Jesus, other than he himself. And that is the real contradiction. Note well that later, after Jesus has died, he specifically instructs Mary Magdelene not to touch him, because he has not yet ascended. When he does finally ascend, it is about 40 days after the Resurrection. This is the contradiction: if Jesus is speaking here, he is speaking to Nicodemus of having ALREADY ASCENDED, but scripturally, he HAD not. Jesus was a man. While he walked the earth is man's flesh, he was a man, with man's limitations. He prayed alone and performed miracles with divine power, but he "humbled himself" as a man while he lived as a man. Men do not fly. They do not ascend to Heaven. And Jesus' ascenscion was a big deal. Once he died, it was important that he not be touched before he ascended. (Why, precisely, we don't know.) There aren't any lines to suggest that Jesus, the man, was flitting back and forth between heaven and earth while he was a man. Indeed, there is much in the Bible that precludes that, for if he were doing so, he was not fully human. Moreover, he made a big deal of the ascensions after his death. Now, go and look what he said to Nicodemus in 3:10. He said something like "No man has ascended to heaven except he who descends from heaven." Well, Jesus descended from heaven, but until his death, he had not ascended into heaven himself either. That's the problem. The timeline is wrong. Jesus cannot, at this point, refer to himself as having "ascended into heaven", because he had not done so yet, and would not do so for another year or two. He had descended from heaven, as a baby, but he had not ascended to it. When he was alone in the desert, he was fasting and alone. There is not one sliver of a trace in any of the Gospels to suggest that Jesus ever left the earth in any way until he ascended after his death, and it theologically important (if we here true man), that he did not. So, if this is Jesus speaking to Nicodemus, right at the very beginning of Jesus' public miracles, this is nonsensical. He is speaking of nobody, for at that point Jesus himself had descended from heaven, but he had not ascended into heaven. John 3:10 can only be true after Jesus' resurrection and ascension. It was not yet true when Jesus was speaking to Nicodemus. And when Jesus ascended both times (right after his death, and then after 40 days for good), there were witnesses and people to whom he commented. The fact that he was ascending to heaven was a big deal, as it proved his divinity. But the Gospels are silent, and theologically the thought of a pre-resurrection ascension of Jesus, unknown to the Apostles (none recorded an account of it), wou be a real problem. That's why 3:10 has to be black-letter, John speaking theologically after the fact. Otherwise we have Jesus saying something to Nicodemus that is not true, and referring in the past tense to something that has not happened yet. That's why we know Jesus didn't say that, and how we know that it is John's theology, looking back after the fact and teaching us. What follows is of a piece. There is no logical basis to just rip 3:10 out of the text and put it in black letters, then to have Jesus resume speaking. John's theology is very dense and well-developed, and he has used this point to make it. Given that "all scripture is God breathed" we can certainly take it all as inspired by God, but we really can't logically take the language spoken from John 3:10 and onward in that section as coming from Jesus' own mouth to Nicodemus before the crucifixion, for the reasons stated. "For God so loved the world..." is brilliant, black-letter text.
Interesting, but i can't really type much on an ipad, so i'll type more L8tr. Not that i see it as central or that important, but in John 2:23, it says "when they saw the miracles he did". I think john's numbering was numbering the miracles in gallilee. So i'll look at it a bit more, but i still think it's all red letter in the range i said before, but i'll explain when i can type freely.
Could be, as far as the numbering of miracles goes. John 2:23 does indeed say that. It is strange for John to number the miracle at Cana number one and the healing of the man's child as number 2, and then just lump all of the public miracles done in Jerusalem as an unnumbered mass in between. I agree that considering the miracles in Galilee as one and two, allows the text to stand logically, but it sure is a weird way to do it. I ate my first hamburger in a McDonalds in Farmington, Michigan in 1967. I then grew up, moved all over the country and ate thousands of hamburgers in thousands of different places, including a hundred McDonalds. 30 years later, while travelling, I ate my second hamburger in Farmington, Michigan. While this is true, it's a nonsensical way to write about events. But I do agree that it "removes" the apparent conflict concerning the order of miracles (while leaving behind a distinct suspicion, for the reasons stated above, that the text has perhaps not been transmitted to us in the original order, that perhaps something was transposed at some point.) But there isn't anything one can do with the problem of Jesus apparently speaking of having already ascended when speaking with Nicodemus. Jesus did not ascend until after his death, which is a year or two in the future at the point he was speaking. The contradiction disappears completely when we understand this text as John theologizing. That 3:10 starts with an "and", which is one of the "punctuation marks" in an ancient language that had neither punctuation nor even upper- and lower-case letters, ANDINWHICHTHELETTERSWEREOFTENALLRUNTOGETHERASONESENTENCE, helps us see where to divide the text. It is a logical dividing point for John to theologize.
Well, i read john 3:16 again and i realize i don't have a problem with 16 to 21 being john. Perhaps a continuation of what he started from john 1:1 to 1:14. I'd just always thought those were red letter words so jumped right in to defend that, lol. But i'll say more about 3:13 tomorrow when i can type better.
I agree that the latter part, of being lifted up, etc., could be Jesus directly. The trouble is that the linking sentence contains a temporal contradiction that really does not work, and one cannot in any literary sense just insert a sentence in a dialogue like that, not from Jesus, and then resume with Jesus. In a sense, this presents for us a different sort of theological test. In the original Greek manuscripts, they're all written in capital letters (there weren't lower case Greek letters at the time). There is no punctuation at all, and the lettersallruntogetherinonelongpage. "And" ("KAI", in Greek) often served as a sentence break, not a conjunction. The theological test is this: there are no "red letter words" in ancient manuscripts, no quotation marks, etc. In the 19th Century, publishers began to use red ink to demarcate the words of Jesus, because they could. Of course, the choice of what words to put in quotation marks and what words to mark red are purely an editorial choice, that can only be made by the logic of the text itself. The actual Scripture doesn't have anything like that in it. So, given that all "red letter text", and punctuation, and capitalization, is purely a matter of publisher's discretion, does it have any exegetic value at all? "Red letter words" are a 19th Century tradition, not an ancient doctrine of Scripture. Jesus did say (quoting Moses) "Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God". One could take this to mean that the MOST AUTHORITATIVE parts of Scripture are those words spoken directly by God. This is, in fact, the hermeneutic that I myself use. There is a hierarchy of authority in Scripture itself, according to Scripture, and various traditions have always thought there was. The Jews, for example, have never believed and never taught that every word in their Scriptures, what we call the "Old Testament", is of equal authority. Indeed, their doctrine teaches firmly the opposite. According to the Jews, the Torah, the Five Books of Moses, is absolutely supreme, for in the Torah ALONE are ALL of the laws that came from God. Thus, the Torah ALONE is the source of ALL divine law. After that, God spoke through the Prophets, which they call the Nevi'im (and which, in Jewish tradition, does NOT include the Prophet Daniel), but all that God ever did through the mouths of the Prophets was re-emphasize the law. There is NO NEW LAW in the Prophets, other than a summary of the "Law of Kings", which was understood has having been almost by way of punishment for having rejected the direct rule of God, and then the details of the construction of the new Temple as seen by the prophet during the exile. Other than that, although the Prophets - the Nevi'im - contain words of God through the prophets, but all of those words are exhortations to follow what was already revealed through the Torah. Thus, the Nevi'im hold second place as exhortatory, but are NOT a source of law. The Torah ALONE is the source of law. And then finally are the writings, the Kethuvim. The Psalms were considered the highest authority among these, for they contained prayers that sometimes contained direct words of God, or prophesies, but everything else (and this is most of the material in the Old Testament) is explanatory, historical, interesting, but not strictly necessary, and certainly in absolute, strict, complete subordination to the Prophets, which themselves are in complete subordination to the Torah. This hierarchy of Jewish authority in Scripture, with the Law first and the Prophets second, the Psalms third and the rest of the Writings very quadrenary in authority, is reflected by Jesus himself. When Jesus says "the Law and the Prophets", referring to the Hebrew Scriptures, he is using a Jewish expression: "Torah and Nevi'im", which does NOT mean "the Hebrew Bible", it means "the Pentateuch, and certain Prophets". When Jesus quotes the Law, he quotes the Torah. When he quotes the Prophets, it is for exhortation or prediction of a Prophet. When he quotes the writings, he quotes only parts of certain Psalms. Essentially, Jesus ratified the Jewish hierarchy of Scripture and applied it. And the key to the whole thing is that all of the LAW that came from the mouth of God is in the Torah (alone), and the rest of the words from God are contained in parts of the prophets. The Psalms and the rest of the Kethuvim have very, very little "words of God" (directly) in them. So, when Jesus says "Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God", this actually has meaning in a Jewish context. And if one carefully prepares a "Red Letter Old Testament", in which the words actually spoken by GOD in the Old Testament, as opposed to recorded, one discovers that all of the Law is in the Torah, and is generally repeated a couple of times at least, and that the Prophets exhort the Israelites to follow the Law of the Torah, but that the Writings have very little of that in it. And we find that Jesus, for his part, points at the Law and the Prophets, and specifically to the words of God. Make a red letter OLD Testament, and it makes the red letter NEW Testament clearer. It also makes some of the struggles between denominations weaken. For example: the difference between Catholic/Orthodox bibles and post-Reformation era Protestant Bibles is that certain books of the Old Testament are not included in the post-Reformation era Protestant Bibles. All of these writings are among the Kethuvim - the Writings - and are of only fourth-degree authority anyway, whether they are included or not. Say this, though, and people will start quoting Paul, who said "every word is God- breathed". (Perhaps every word is, but Jesus certainly exalted the AUTHORITY of the words of the Torah and Prophets above the rest of it). So, does it MATTER? As a matter of tradition, it does. In fact, it matters as much as the "red letters" of the New Testament. Are "red letter words" more authoritative, or are they not? Is the fact that Jesus said it, or appears to say it, more authoritative than if John said it? Does the red print make a difference or doesn't it? I myself believe that it absolutely makes a difference, because Jesus was the Son of God, and handed down law from the Father, but nobody else was. Within the Apostles there was a hierarchy of authority: Peter was first, made so by Jesus. The 12 were higher than the 72. And dead last in authority of the Apostles, by his own admission, was Paul. So, in places the writings of the Apostle Paul, least of the Apostles, appears to contradict the writings of the Apostle James, brother of the Lord and bishop of Jerusalem. Paul wrote more, but James writes with greater authority. Where Paul appears to contradict James, who has the greater authority? By the text of the Bible itself, including Paul's own pen, James would (for Paul is least). Of course, one could argue that there is not really a conflict. I think that's generally true, but I note that the later traditions that have grown up around the Bible, such as the red letters, and the exaltation of Paul's writings, can create conflicts where none need exist. One example is the one we've been discussing. Jesus simply cannot say to Nicodemus that he HAS ascended into heaven (as in "already ascended"), because that is false. As of the time of that speaking, Jesus had NEVER YET ascended into Heaven. The Son is divine, and perhaps went back and forth to earth in other times as a spirit, but Jesus, the man, was a man, true man, and once he was conceived and born, he never once ascended to heaven until after his crucifixion. It is impossible for Jesus to speak of himself to Nicodemus as one who had already ascended to heaven. And it is the fact of that verb, that past-tense verb, that we know for certain that it isn't Jesus speaking to Nicodemus there, but John speaking to us. Does that make a difference? Does it make a difference that it isn't red-letter? It does to me, because Jesus said that man lives on "every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God", and those words were inspired by God, but they proceeded out of the pen of John. Of course, everything that John said is very kosher and orthodox, and true. Still, if one thinks there's a difference in authority between red letters and the rest of the New Testament, then one is acknowledging that what Jesus said trumps everything else (in BOTH testaments actually) that seems to contradict what anybody else said. It really makes no difference in the passage of John, but it DOES make a HUGE difference when we come to the real fundamental conflict that tradition and Christian civil war has reared up for us to deal with, which is this: do you have to do anything to eventually get into Heaven after judgment? By this, I mean: do you have to be a good person. Do you have to do certain things (such as love your neighbor as yourself, give alms, care for the poor), and NOT do other things (such as blaspheme the holy spirit, commit murder and adultery, steal) in order to pass judgment and get to heaven. Or do you simply have to believe that Jesus was the Son of God? Is the latter bare belief SUFFICIENT to pass judgment? Some will shout YES! And they will cite Paul. Others will shout NO! And they will cite James. Both sides will square off over the idea of "works" (and not generally understand the legal term that Paul was using - "mitzvot" - which refers to a specific KIND of works under the Jewish law). Paul and James appear to flatly contradict each other (they don't, really, when "mitzvot" is understood - Paul actually says that you have to do certain things and not do other things in order to pass judgment as well - in this Paul seems to contradict PauL!) Jesus answers the question decisively. He says that you have to believe in him. He then explains that to "believe in him" is to "follow him", and that to "follow him" is to "keep his commandments", and he asks point blank "what good does it do you to say you follow me if you don't keep my commandments? In other words, if you say you believe in Jesus but you break the laws that he handed down and don't do them, you are not actually following Jesus, and therefore on Jesus' own terms, you don't really "believe" in him at all. So, James and Paul seem to disagree, and it's confusing. But the red letter words put the argument completely to bed: whether you call them "works" or "acts" or "deed" or "faith" - whatever you call them - to believe in Jesus requires that you do the things he said to do, and not do what he forbade. If you do otherwise, you may think you have faith, and cry out "Lord, Lord", but you don't have faith at all and he doesn't know you. Jesus is a lot harsher than Paul is read to be, and the path is a lot harder to find and the gate more constricting according to Jesus than according to many readings of Paul. Those red-letter words matter. The question is, where the red-letter words appear to conflict with anything else in the Bible, do the red-letter words have supreme authority or not. And the answer to that, actually, is YES. YES, what Jesus says does have supreme, absolute authority over everything in the OLD Testament, and everything ELSE in the New Testament. Everything that Paul writes, or Moses, or Jeremiah, or Peter, or James or Jude or Luke or John, or Isaiah - everything else - is subordinate to the words that proceed out of the mouth of God. And the words that came out of Jesus' mouth are those words, directly from God's physical lips. So, the red-letter words matter, and we are right to try to figure out what they are. In this particular case, concerning Jesus' dialogue with Nicodemus, it doesn't ultimately matter whether these words are "red letter" or not, because what John writes either way is so completely in accord with everything else Jesus said that it is not material. Where the rubber really meets the road, though, is the question: What do I have to DO as a Christian. And the answer to that is: (1) You have to believe that Jesus was the ONLY begotten Son of God (2) You have to be baptized. (No modalities are given.) (3) You have to obey all of Jesus' commandments, and teach all of them - for the one who teaches men to disregard the least of these commandments will be called least in the reign of heaven, (4) You have to do unto others as you would have them do unto you (think about that for a minute, and you will realize that Jesus abolished coercive slavery) (5) You have to love your neighbor as yourself (and everybody is your neighbor) (6) You have to love God above all. (7) You cannot murder. (And Jesus speaks of being "begotten", which is the fatherly principle of reproduction, which fits with the Torah and establishes life as beginning at conception: abortion is murder and must be prohibited). (8) You cannot commit adultery (And Jesus speaks of lusting after a woman as committing adultery with her in the heart, so pornography and masturbation are prohibited) - which means chastity. (9) You can marry, for life, and you can never get divorced other than if the other spouse commits lewdness (in other words, spousal adultery may be a grounds for divorce) (10) You cannot lie. (11) You cannot pretend that there are different degrees of truth. Therefore, you cannot swear out oaths, for that pretends that there are different degrees of truth, but there are not and you must not pretend there are, for that itself is a lie. (12) You must pay your taxes, even if the government is evil. (13) More generally, you must liquidate all of your excess wealth, not store it up, and distribute it to the poor, especially poor Christians, your brothers and sisters in Christ. (14) You must offer divine service to the Father, alone (and not to Jesus, and not to the Holy Spirit or any other being). Your prayers should be directed to the Father. You may offer veneration, adoration, worship (proskinesis) to the Son, but the Son says to offer divine service to the Father alone. The Son prays to the Father, and commands those who follow him to pray to the Father. Therefore, we must not cling to traditions that do otherwise, and obey Jesus. (15) You must honor your parents and economically provide for them in their infirmity. (16) You must cease sinning completely and make yourself free from sin first before teaching others. (17) You must fast and pray to the Father. (18) You must not demand interest on money lent to your brothers and sisters in Christ; if you have excess and they ask, you must lend it to them, and you must not prosecute them if they fail to repay. You must forgive them. It's actually a terrifying list of commandments, the some total of which mean that if you are a Christian, you will not have wealth in this world, at least not for very long, and you will be very chaste and monogamous, for life. The only way to get away from that iron law is to assert that the red-letter words are NOT more authoritative than the other words of Scripture, because there is a way to read Paul that makes it all a LOT easier. So, that is finally where everything is staked: do the red-letter words matter more? The implications of understanding that they do (and yes, they do), are profound. Nicodemus is a good proving ground, because this is the first apparent contradiction in the red letter words, and resolving the contradiction in favor of one of the most beloved statements in Scripture being "black letter words" runs headlong into a strongly held human tradition. Reading them all as red-letter words forces an interpretation of "ascended" that departs from what the rest of the Bible reveals. Fiercely defending the red-letter words here, because it is important, means that the red letter words later, where Jesus speaks clearly and directly about everything that a man must DO, those words ALSO have to be taken as authoritative...and that means that "just believing" ain't enough, because Jesus, in red-letter words, says that believing is following, and following is obeying, and obeying is doing. It matters a lot how we resolve this.
Here i am again with not much time and only anipad. I'll never catch up with my comments. I'll try to type briefly later on about john 3, as i mentioned last night. I'll finish your post from today also, but i will interject, when it says 'by every word from gods mouth' i take that to be directly spoken word, from god to us, not written word from scripture.
I agree, but I note that, personal revelations aside, the only way we know what Jesus said, or his Father before him, is by Scripture. So, there's Scripture that says stuff, and there's Scripture that says that it's quoting God. John's Gospel, for example stands or falls as a unit. It is very difficult to argue that John got Jesus' words right, but the rest of what he wrote wasn't also inspired by God. Where it gets interesting is in the Epistles. Paul has a huge influence, but Paul has only a handful of quotes of Christ, and a few more quotes of the Torah. The rest is Paul stating precepts which he says came from the Holy Spirit. So, Paul is acting as a Prophet. Personal revelation to us individually may come from the mouth of God. But it also may come from the mouth of somebody pretending to be God, so it has to be tested. But what shall one test it against? The conundrum is so terrible, and could be applied to ALL scriptures of whatever religion. Fortunately, God left tangible signs outside of the Scripture to prove that Jesus was the real deal, and we can steady ourselves with those and know, when we plunge deep into Scripture, that we're dealing with a man who was the real deal.
I agree with you, regarding His words. They come from several sources. Btw, i hold pauls writings in great regard. He laid out the whole plan, as received, and is second to no other man in any regard as far as i'm concerned. Though he wouldn't approve us arguing which of them is the primo apostle so let's not! I'm reading some John now.
Paul is indeed great, but we are bound to what Jesus said, and also to what Paul himself wrote. It is not unimportant. Jesus was the master. He said so. He made the Twelve, and they were the highest (though one fell). He said so, and the Acts confirm that. Among the 12, he made Peter the head. He said so, and Peter clearly held that role. He made the 72 and sent them out. Paul, writing of himself, says that he is himself the most terrible of sinners and the least of the Apostles. He believed that to be so, and it is so. That does not mean his words are without force, but it does mean that we have to respect the hierarchy in Scripture as presented by Scripture itself. First of all, there is Jesus, what Jesus said, the red-letter words. Jesus point to the Father, and to "The Law and the Prophets", and "every worth that proceeds from the mouth of God", so we have to look back to the "red letter words" of the Torah and the Nevi'im of the Old Testament, for there we find the words of God. We have to read them carefully, and realize that in the Torah and the Prophets there is a law for Jews and a (much easier) law for Gentiles. We are not Jews and never were, so the law that applies to us is the Law of the Torah for Gentiles. Jesus said that not one iota nor serif of the Law would pass away, and it HAS NOT. The law in the Torah for Gentiles still fully applies - but Jesus summarized all of it: Don't murder, don't commit adultery, don't steal, don't commit fraud, don't lie, honor your father and mother, love your neighbor as yourself, love God above all, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and eat anything, for nothing he eats makes a man unclean. That's the OLD Testament law for Gentiles. The "Law" of which Paul writes is the Torah law for Jews, the law of Temple and ritual. But Jesus ended the Temple and said that the time had arrived when men would no longer be worshiping God in the Temple but in truth and faith. He ended the Temple, and with it, the whole sacrificial law, and instituted a new, simple liturgy focused on prayer, fasting, almsgiving, moral conduct, marriage, baptism and the body and blood. It all fits together as a piece. Now, the Catholic and Orthodox and Anglican and Episcopal and Lutheran Churches all claim an "Apostolic Succession" by which the "Power of the keys", "to loose and to bind", granted to Peter and the Apostles continued on down through bishops to our day. It's an interesting claim, but the Bible doesn't say that. Jesus DOES warn about men of the Church seeking to exercise domination. He warns that in the case of the two brothers, John and James, "Boanerges", who sought the right and left hand thrones of Jesus in Heaven. Jesus rebuked all of the Apostles and said that the spirit of domination, to rule over others, was a pagan gentile urge - that those who lead Christians must serve and humble themselves. The Apostolic Succession is not at all clear from Scripture, but Peter's particular authority and the authority of the Apostles, and lastly the authority of Paul, all are clear. So, having read Jesus as the first authority, and looked to what YHWH said in the Torah and Prophets as the second authority, we can now look to the Acts and to the Epistles. In the Acts, we see a lot of what Peter and Paul did, especially. We see God acting directly with Peter on doctrine (concerning eating "unclean" animals and baptizing Gentiles) and with Paul (concerning his conversion). We see the Apostles together deciding that blood was not licit (we assume that this means not eating blood, but we could also read it to mean not shedding blood, both of which would be good reads, within limits. Then we have Peter's two letters. He was first among the Apostles, made so by Jesus, so what he has to say is of primary importance. Peter's letters are short admonitions to faith. Obviously every word Peter says is important, and true. There is very little to say. We do have to raise Peter's vision on the rooftop and place it alongside of Jesus' words , and use those two to utterly slap down ANY effort to establish ANY sort of "Christian Kosher". Christians are not only PERMITTED to eat pork and shellfish and all other foods that Jewish law considered unclean, they are PROHIBITED from asserting the Jewish law as being BETTER. The Holy Spirit rebuked Peter: "What God has made clean YOU are NOT to call unclean." If God told PETER that, it binds any latter-day Christian who wants to assert that it's "better", religious-wise, not to eat pork, shellfish, etc. Actually, it is WORSE to specifically refuse to eat pork. It is defiance of God to claim that there is ANY unclean food any more. Jesus said there is not. The Holy Spirit said there is not. Peter said there is not. The Council of Jerusalem said there is not. That is God speaking twice, and the two sets of people to whom Jesus gave specific binding authority speaking twice (oh, and Paul agrees completely), all forbidding men to make a claim about food cleanliness based on the Torah. The Torah law of food for us Gentiles only EVER said that we couldn't eat blood. Jesus COMMANDS us to eat HIS blood, and doesn't tell us that blood is an unclean food. The Council of Jerusalem says not to eat it, but that may be a time-place-manner issue. In any case, other than blood sausage, there is not doubt at all that every thing on earth that CAN be eaten is licit, and there is also no doubt that any man who says otherwise sins by defying Christ, the Holy Spirit and the binding authority of Peter and the Apostles. This hierarchy of authority does bite down, hard, and here is a place that it does. Most people don't care, but there are people who do assert that there is a Christian Kosher. They SIN by asserting so. It is a SIN, a defiance of God, to attempt to establish food laws for Christians. There are none. For example, Jews were forbidden from eating fat in the Torah. Gentiles were never so prohibited, and Jesus and the Holy Spirit make it clear (and Peter and the Council of Jerusalem and Paul, in that order of authority, all second, third and fourth the proposition), that it is perfectly licit for Christians to eat fat of any sort. And pork. This is important. If men cannot eat pork, then China cannot become Christian, for the primary source of protein in China is pork. Cut out pork, and millions of people die. Mohammed's religion is limited in its ability to expand in China because Allah's law against eating pork means that many Chinese would have to die for Islam to establish itself there. Christ's rule: that ALL FOOD IS LICIT - and the Holy Spirit's admonition - that it is EVIL and DEFIANT OF GOD to say otherwise - makes the conversion of China to Christ possible. The Chinese don't have to starve by the millions to accept Christ. Eat whatever and worship God. This is the law of Noah, and of Christ - the Law did NOT actually change an iota or a serif, but the law that applied to the Gentiles now applies to the world, for the Temple is gone. See how that works? Likewise fat. There are no vegetables in the tundra, and virtually no cold-blooded creatures. Almost every single think that the Eskimos eat - mammal blubber, shellfish (rarely) and mosses (which are not seed-bearing green plants), is not kosher. Orthodox Jews can never live in the Far North as natives, for the earth does not produce a food supply that can sustain them. To live in the Arctic requires a diet that is mostly treif. This is not a problem for the people of Jesus, who can eat anything, including fat. Jews have strict food laws. Muslims have food laws, less strict than Jews. Hindus and Jains and Bhuddists have strict food laws. All religions on earth EXCEPT Christianity have strict food laws. Christianity has NO food laws...if we place Christ and the Holy Spirit as the authority. Christians are prohibited from eating blood sausage if we think that the Apostles have authority to add a rule or to return to a rule that existed before Christ and the Holy Spirit spoke. What of vegetarianism? Christians can practice an aspirational vegetarianism, looking forward to the promised day when the lion shall lay down with the lamb. It is not WRONG to choose to not eat meat in the hope of that day. But it IS wrong to believe that this is a binding moral rule. It certainly is not. If one chooses, for that reason, then it may be a good thing for him. If one thinks that it makes him holier than a bacon-eater, one is not only wrong, but one actually sins by contradicting Jesus and the Holy Spirit. All of this flows from the hierarchy of authority in Scripture. Peter is important for Paul, too, for it is Peter who explicitly says that Paul's writings are Scripture, though he warns that they are difficult to understand sometimes, and that unstable people twist what Paul has said to their own destruction. After Peter, we have the writings of the Apostles who were among the 12: John, Jude and James. Jude and James wrote only one epistle each. In James' letter, the terse "Faith without works is dead" is certainly a reaction to Paul's epistle, but not a rebuke of Paul. It is, rather, a rebuke of the unstable souls who have misunderstood Paul. Jesus clearly, unequivocally, like YHWH before him, made it clear that there are things that a believer in God must DO and must NOT DO. Those are laws, of Jesus. But they are not The Law to which Paul refers. Paul means the Mosaic Torah when he says The Law. We read "law" and "The Law" as the same thing because we use the same word, but Pharisees like Paul, trained Jewish lawyers, meant something very specific when they said The Law. They meant Torah, written and traditional. "Works" too, in Paul, is "mitzvot" under the Torah, things like keeping the festivals and New Moons of the Jewish calendar, tithing herbs, sacrificing a turtledove for certain things, offerings of salt, libations poured out at the altar, etc. Those are the "mitzvot", the "works", of The Law, to which Paul referred. Paul did not mean that helping the poor is unavailing, or that it didn't make any difference whether you kept your wealth or gave it away. Those were demands of Christ, acts required by Christ, laws, to be certain, but not "works" - mitvot - under "The Law" (of Moses) - Torah. That is why Paul can be so confusing. He is a Jewish lawyer writing to people who often understand Jewish concepts. When Paul says "Mitvot under the Torah are unavailing", that's right. That we write "works under the law" here doesn't mean that these "works" to which Paul refers are the same things as the "works" to which James refers when he says "Faith without works is dead." Paul means: following the rites of the Jewish law will derive for you no blessings at all, and you should stop it. James mean: Christ demanded that you do certain acts, and if you don't do those acts, you do not have faith and are not saved. Both use the words "works", but they mean very different things by them. There isn't ACTUALLY a conflict in the Bible, but, as Peter said, "Paul is difficult to understand" (lawyers can be), and many, many people have misread Paul over the years. They shouldn't have, for immediately after Paul makes his comment about Mitvot under Torah, he then speaks about works (acts) that Christians need to do. Paul isn't contradicting himself, but he seems to be, because we see the same word. The bottom line is that as Christians there are actually a whole bunch of laws of Christ we have to follow, things we have to do or not do, if we want to enter the reign of God and live in Heaven come to earth after the Resurrection. Jesus is clear on that and so are the rest of the Apostles. Paul can really be confusing, because people since Luther have been reading into him an "easy way" that is not actually there. John is a special case, because John is pointed out by Jesus in a few key ways. First off, he is 'the Apostle Jesus loved". Of course Jesus loved all of the Apostles, but he had a closer relationship to John. It was to John that he entrusted his filial duty to look after his mother, on the cross. Because of Jesus' special relationship to John, the other Apostles got it in their heads that John wasn't going to die. Peter, the indisputable head of the Church, looks at John and says to Jesus "What about him..." Jesus tells Peter to mind his own duties, and that it is none of Peter's business if Jesus chooses to have John tarry on earth awhile. John writes the last Gospel, in which much of the inner theologizing Jesus did with the Apostles is revealed. This was not revealed to anywhere near the same extent in the Gospels of Mark (which is really from Peter), the Gospel of Matthew (Levi the tax collector) or the Gospel of Luke (who got a lot of his material from the Virgin Mary and from Paul). When the synoptics were written, the Temple was still up and Jesus' prophesies of the future were not yet fully revealed in their import. But when John wrote, the Temple was gone forever, Judaism of the Temple, the religion of Moses, had literally been wiped from the Earth completely. Only the Church was left. The synagogue (alone - there were synagogues before) arose from the sect of the Pharisees, but it was not, and is not, anything like the Temple: no sacrifices, no rites, none of the sacramentals of Leviticus. Forms of those were still practiced only by the Christians. The Church is the Temple, spread throughout the world. The synagogue is a stubborn holdout of a faith whose center is actually found in Christianity now. John's theology, thus, is that of an old man who has seen everything come to pass and seen the religion mature. He has seen the Apostles martyred, and himself been tortured. He has seen the heresies and the hostility of the Jews reach the breaking point. God preserved John's life to record this, and so in this sense John, as the Apostle Jesus loved, has the peculiar authority of being the FINAL witness. Likewise, it is to John alone that the Revelation is entrusted. What will be, the eschatological denoument of the world and the Return of the King, come to us if foreshadowing from Jesus, but then in florid detail from John alone. As an Apostle, John stood a little below Peter in authority and equal to the other 11 in the hierarchy of things. As a friend of Jesus, John stood first of all, and was the man who cared for Jesus' mother after Jesus' death. As a visionary, John stands above even Peter, for to John alone was entrusted the Apocalypse. And as the last of the Apostles living, when John wrote his Gospel at the end of his life, he was the highest authority, the other 11 and Paul having passed. We have to pay particular attention to John, because if Peter was the Alpha of the Apostles, John was the Omega, closing out the generations, and John was the one favored to live, favored to transmit the Revelation. This is important, because John's letters contain precisions that are not found anywhere else. It is from John's letters that we see repeated Jesus' references to degrees of sin. Some Christian theologians argue that all sin is the same. Jesus said the opposite and so did John. Jesus was divine, and John was an Apostle, so when they say there are degress of sin, they speak with authority, and Christians who say otherwise are completely wrong and should change their traditions to fit the revelation. It is not obscure and very clear. Jesus speaks of "the least of the commandments", and John speaks explicitly of mortal sins versus other sins. Gradations of sin, and of punishment, is biblical, from the mouth of Jesus and the Apostle John. It is mandatory doctrine. All Christians who disagree are in heresy and need to submit to Jesus and to John's writings on the matter. (Christians, like everybody else, don't like to be bound, but if they won't be bound to Jesus and the Apostle's words, they are not Christians at all, they are people crying "Lord, Lord", whom Jesus says he does not know. In other words, it's not a legal game and people really are bound to accept what they don't like and believe what they don't want to believe because Christ said it and the Apostles said it.) The other crucial thing that John tells us is that the way a Christian knows that he is saved is if he stops sinning. A man who keeps sinning isn't saved. John is so direct and clear on this that we can marvel that this isn't a central Christian doctrine. But to hear much Christian theology, you'd think that John's epistles weren't part of the Bible, or weren't as authoritative as, say, Paul's letter to the Romans. But actually, John has particular authority as one of the 12, and as the last of the Apostles. Finally there's Paul. The virtual of Paul in particular is that he wrote so many pastoral letters that he dealt with a huge number of issues. Also, he was often preaching to Gentiles, like us, so he doesn't harp on elements of the Jewish Law. In fact, he correctly notes that the Jewish Law is dead and done. Unfortunately, because many Gentiles never knew the Jewish law in the first place, they don't realize that Paul is not saying that LAW is dead or that there is no Law of God. Paul is saying that the Law of Moses won't save a man. Jesus said the same thing. As Gentiles, when we read of complicated issues like the Sabbath, we have a tendency to think that the Gentiles were in sin all of those ages for not keeping the Sabbath, but then Jesus came and things changed, and now we keep the Sunday sabbath. This is an utter mangling of reality. Gentiles were never under the Sabbath law. Sure, God makes it clear that he knows men needed a day of rest, and still do, but he didn't impose one as law on man. He imposed one on the Hebrews, only. And then punished them for not keeping it. Gentiles were not (and are not) sabbath-breakers because there IS no Gentile Sabbath and there never was. Jesus didn't ABOLISH the Sabbath for US - we never had one in the first place. Nor did he create a Sunday sabbath. Christian preachers did that, aping the Jewish tradition before it. After all, if it was in the Jewish law, it must be important so we need it, right? That is a tricky issue. There is wisdom in it, in the sense that the Law God gave to the Hebrews teaches us a lot about the mind of God. But as for us being lawbreakers for not keeping some element of it, such as the Sabbath? That's not only wrong, it is a terrible error. This is actually evident in what Jesus says, but Paul is the one who really makes it crystal clear. So, whence the "Sunday Sabbath"? This raises the question of the Apostolic Succession, and the authority of Christian ministers to make Christian law. The Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Episcopalian and Lutheran Churches all believe that there is such authority. Other Christian Churches say they don't, but have incorporated early Christian traditions which came from that "Apostolic Succession authority" so deeply into the grain of their faith that they don't realize they are doing it: mandatory Sunday "sabbaths" for example, or the erroneous notion that there is a Christian tithe of 10%. And then there are the cultural features, such as the prohibition of alcohol (in worship of a man whose first public miracle was changing water into wine, and whose last major liturgical act before his death was instituting the cup of Passover wine as 'the cup of his blood' at the Last Supper). Christians are really just like Jews when it comes to accreting an encrustation of traditions and cultural preferences all over the religion. This is not a disaster as such, but it becomes disastrous when Christians then assert, in a spirit of domination, that these cultural preferences are actually laws of God. I've gone on too long. Peace, for now.
In any case, other than blood sausage, there is not doubt at all that every thing on earth that CAN be eaten is licit, and there is also no doubt that any man who says otherwise sins by defying Christ, the Holy Spirit and the binding authority of Peter and the Apostles. Thought you might like this from Ray Comfort's website: “Things banned by the Bible: Shaving - Leviticus 19:27, Cursing - Ephesians 5:4, Gossip - Leviticus 19:16 Football on Saturdays - Exodus 20:8, Eating Lobster - Leviticus 11:10, Eating Pork - Leviticus 11:7, Cotton Polyester Blends - Leviticus 19:19, Associating with women who are on their period - Leviticus 15-19.” - Online Atheist Even though this isn’t posed as a question and it’s stated in mockery, I have decided to address it because it’s common for atheists to make statements like this. This is a mixture of moral and ceremonial Hebrew laws. The moral Law (You shall not murder, steal, lie, commit adultery, etc.,) is binding on the whole of humanity. This is summarized in the Ten Commandments and encompasses gossip, cursing, lust and hatred. Its precepts are written on our hearts via the conscience, and each of us will be judged by it on Judgment Day (Romans 2:12, James 2:12). That’s why all of us need a Savior. Then there is the ceremonial/dietary law in which God instructed Israel not to eat horses, camels, cats, dogs, lions, tigers, etc. Only those with a split hoof could be eaten. “Unclean” animals such as pigs and lobsters were forbidden, probably because they were scavengers and were therefore not good for their health. God also told them what to wear and the importance of resting one day each week. If they didn’t rest they were liable to suffer from stress, and if they mixed cotton and wool, it would make them sweat. Christians are free to follow the dietary laws of the Old Testament, however, the New Testament tells us they have no influence on whether or not we enter the Kingdom of Heaven. These laws are not binding on our modern society as is the moral Law, so we can ignore them if we wish. But in doing so we are liable to end up with a stressed, diseased, overweight society that has to rub chemicals under its armpits to stop offensive odor. http://links.mkt3004.com/servlet/MailView? ms=NTU5MDQwNgS2&r=MTA3NDk3NjI5MTUS1&j=NjU4NDkwMzQS1&mt=1&rt=0%%FORWARD_INFO%% &snd=1&fbltype=Like
#35. To: redleghunter (#34)
I shall now correct the record. The Law of God for Gentiles is entirely contained in Genesis. There is not one law applicable to anybody buy Jews in the entire Bible from the end of Genesis until the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew. The ENTIRETY of the Jewish law, including the Ten Commandments, was given EXCLUSIVELY to the Hebrews (of which the Jews are the only surviving Tribe), and none of it, including the Ten Commandments as such, ever applied in the slightest degree to anybody other than Hebrews, and today does not apply to Jews. The Law of Moses has been superseded in its entirety by the law of Jesus. As Gentiles, we have to look at Genesis to see the law. It's there. Don't murder (the Cain incident). Marriage as Jesus described it (and contrary to the law of Moses). No adultery (God punished Pharaoh and Abimelek (twice) for it. Polygamy is bad and leads to heartbreak. Don't steal. Don't lie. Honor your parents. Eat whatever you want, but not blood. Obey God and talk with God and put faith in God. All of that law is there before Sinai. All of it applies to the whole human race. Jesus reiterated THAT law, and revealed and perfected it. The Ten Commandments REPEATED some of the pre-existing law of God, but added the strict Sabbath, which is not a law for mankind in general. With Jesus' death and the destruction of the Temple by the will of God, the Jewish law is over. There is the law of Jesus, only, nothing more. So, let's look at that guy's list. Shaving? The ban only ever applied to the Hebrews, and doesn't apply to the Jews anymore either, since 69 AD at the latest. Cursing? We are accountable for all of our idle words, yes. Gossip? Lying was always banned. Still is. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" applies to gossip. If you're saying good things about people, that's ok. Football? The strict Sabbath only ever applied to the Hebrews, and ceased to apply even to the Jews in either 33 AD or 69 AD at the very latest. Eating lobster? Since the Flood, it has been licit for every human being on earth to eat lobster except for the Hebrews, from the time God gave Moses the law on Sinai until either 33 AD or 69 AD (Crucifixion or destruction of the Temple). Now it is licit for Jews as well, as the only law is the law of Christ, and Christ pronounced all foods clean for Jews. All foods always WERE clean for Gentiles. Eating Pork? See above. Cotton Polyester blends? These would not have been banned even among the Jews from Sinai to Calvary (or Titus), because Leviticus 19:19 applies to wool and linen, and mentions neither cotton nor polyester. Ancient Jews could have worn a cotton/polyester blend even when the law of Moses was in force. Jews today can wear a linen/wool blend. Menstruation? The only people ever prohibited from such associations were Hebrews from the time of Moses until either 33 AD or 69 AD. The prohibition of relations with menstruating women was given to the Hebrews, only, on Sinai, and it never applied at any time to anybody but them. Since Jesus, nothing given on Sinai applies to the Jews either. All are under the laws of Christ and no other law. "Not an iota nor a serif shall pass away until all is fulfilled" - all was fulfilled with the death, resurrection and ascenscion of Jesus, and the destruction of the Temple. From the Garden to Noah the Law of Adam held for all men. From Noah until today, the Law of Noah (which includes most of the law of Adam but expands the food law) applied to all men. From Sinai until Jesus the law of Moses applied to the Jews. Since Jesus, the whole world, including the Jews, is under the Law of Jesus, which is the Law of Noah plus moral precisions. The Law of Moses is still tremendously valuable because it shows us God's mind. But it isn't LAW for anybody on earth. And when it was, the only people to whom it applied was Hebrews.
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#6. To: redleghunter (#4)
#7. To: mcgowanjm (#6)
The bible is so overused....;}
#9. To: redleghunter (#7)
The Bible presents the Truth and the Truth will set you free.
#11. To: mininggold (#9)
The Bible contradicts itself so often, how do you know which truth is the one that will set you free.
#13. To: redleghunter (#11)
#16. To: Vicomte13 (#13)
#17. To: Biff Tannen (#16)
(Edited)
#19. To: Vicomte13 (#17)
#20. To: Biff Tannen (#19)
#21. To: Vicomte13 (#20)
#22. To: Biff Tannen (#21)
#24. To: Vicomte13 (#22)
#25. To: Biff Tannen (#24)
when it says 'by every word from gods mouth' i take that to be directly spoken word, from god to us, not written word from scripture.
#27. To: Vicomte13 (#25)
#28. To: Biff Tannen (#27)
#34. To: Vicomte13 (#28)
Actually, it is WORSE to specifically refuse to eat pork. It is defiance of God to claim that there is ANY unclean food any more. Jesus said there is not. The Holy Spirit said there is not. Peter said there is not. The Council of Jerusalem said there is not. That is God speaking twice, and the two sets of people to whom Jesus gave specific binding authority speaking twice (oh, and Paul agrees completely), all forbidding men to make a claim about food cleanliness based on the Torah. The Torah law of food for us Gentiles only EVER said that we couldn't eat blood. Jesus COMMANDS us to eat HIS blood, and doesn't tell us that blood is an unclean food. The Council of Jerusalem says not to eat it, but that may be a time-place-manner issue.
Replies to Comment # 34. “Things banned by the Bible: Shaving - Leviticus 19:27, Cursing - Ephesians 5:4, Gossip - Leviticus 19:16 Football on Saturdays - Exodus 20:8, Eating Lobster - Leviticus 11:10, Eating Pork - Leviticus 11:7, Cotton Polyester Blends - Leviticus 19:19, Associating with women who are on their period - Leviticus 15-19.” - Online Atheist
End Trace Mode for Comment # 34.
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