Title: College QB arrested, suspended after claiming ‘cocaine’ on his car was bird poop. It was bird poop. Source:
Saturday Down South URL Source:https://www.saturdaydownsouth.com/s ... on-car-was-actually-bird-poop/ Published:Aug 3, 2019 Author:SDS Staff Post Date:2019-08-11 09:33:59 by Deckard Keywords:None Views:39606 Comments:348
Georgia Southern QB Shai Werts has been suspended following an arrest earlier in the week.
Werts was arrested following a traffic stop on Wednesday night in Saluda, South Carolina. According to reports, Werts was originally pulled over for speeding. When the officer attempted to pull him over, however, he kept going and reportedly called 911 to explain that he wasn’t pulling over in a dark area. After reaching town, Werts then pulled over and was arrested for speeding.
The QB was then asked about the white powder on the hood of his car, and he claimed it was bird poop that he tried to clean off at the car wash. The officer tested the powder, and it tested positive for cocaine with two different kits and in two different places on the hood of the car.
“Everything about him and inside his vehicle made him appear as a clean person but the hood of his car was out of place,” the police report states.
Werts denied any knowledge of the origin of the cocaine. The officer wrote that the powder appeared to have been “thrown on the vehicle and had been attempted to be washed off by the windshield wipers, and wiper fluid as there was white powder substance around the areas of the wiper fluid dispensary.”
In addition to speeding, he was charged with a misdemeanor possession of cocaine.
This is all really bad news because Georgia Southern plays LSU Week 1.
Al Eargle, the Deputy Solicitor for the 11th Judicial Circuit which includes Saluda County, told Werts’ attorney, Townes Jones IV, that these kinds of charges would not be pressed on “his watch,” Jones said.
South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) tests were conducted on the substance samples collected from the hood of Werts’ 2016 Dodge Charger, but the results confirmed that no controlled substance was present in the samples.
“I have not seen (the SLED results) yet,” Eargle said on a phone call Thursday night. “But I was informed that the test did come back and that there was no controlled substance found.”
Yes, it does. But that "third day" business is a detail. It doesn't have any moral significance. The resurrection means Jesus was who he said he was, THAT'S why resurrection on the third day was so important, not the fact that it was "the third day". The precise time measure is only important to those whose faith requires an exact trcod
It's about OT prophecy fulfillment and the words Christ spoke. He gave them the sign of Jonah and explained the 3 days and 3 nights. I believe He accomplished this according to His truthful words.
Now tell him "in five years, we're imposing the celibacy rule on pastors."
LOL I would become the pariah if I even joked that. I really do walk a thin line at times pointing out a lot of smaller church discovery learning today is no different than what we saw in the early church.
We even had to two deacons who have degrees in theology run a small group study on the Apostles creed. After two sessions they asked me to teach a class. I took that as a hint to limit my participation and not be an insufferable "know it all" about things Catholic and the early church. :)
You're more sensitive to that than the rest of us cradle Prots.
I'm not sure that's the real underlying problem with American churches. We see Jews now don't intermarry or practice their faith, the Prots denominations are in steep decline, the evangelicals are holding Fight Church if they haven't succumbed to easy-believerism, the Mormons have announced they're ending their door-to-door campaigns this year, etc.
There's simply a drifting away from every type of traditional religion, across the board.
There have been such eras through the centuries. History does reveal it. This is not unique. Just as American politics is actually not much more vicious today than it was 150-200 years ago.
Unless you think this is the final general apostasy before a Second Coming, it's just another periodic drifting away from religion generally. And it's nothing new.
Mainland Europe is already gone, and England is quite close now. I was going to make this a separate thread (may still will) but shows how far gone England has gone even with a state church:
The translation itself must be STRICTLY MECHANICAL, with NO variance or devi deviance. This is of crucial importance, because it fixes one single English word word for each Greek word, or Lati word word for each Greek word, or Latin word, or Aramaic word, or Hebrew word.
It may be a problem to go with literal translation.
Vaticanus and Sinaiticus are from the same text manuscript family. But one of them has hundreds of edit markings from different eras which raises a plethora of questions about its source and accuracy.
What is needed is something to confirm either the Vaticanus or the Sinaiticus as the prevailing version of the early era. At this point, it seems that Vaticanus gets the nod since it is the most complete and obviously a finished product, even being printed on vellum as I recall it. Some still think that it was one of the bibles that Constantine had printed for all the big churches of his era. I think it was perhaps a prototype for those bibles but was not considered of good enough quality to be an imperial issue and so they just kept the prototype copy. If only we had one of the other 50 bibles he distributed, then we would know. Perhaps we'll find one of them someday.
The Dead Sea Scrolls can help SOMEWHAT, but they only cover about 10-15% of the actual Old Testament text, so no, we cannot reconstruct the Old Testament with the Dead Sea Scrolls. We can only compare parts - and the parts that we can compare sometimes agree with the LXX, sometimes with the Massoretic Text, and someti sometimes with n someti sometimes with neither.
Again, how do you do mechanical translation, word for word, through two vernacular languages that shifted over time? Well, you can't really do it. No computer can because it isn't a computer problem, it's a language problem. And the language(s) being used shifted over time, exactly as our languages evolve today over the course of centuries.
There have been such eras through the centuries. History does reveal it. This is not unique. Just as American politics is actually not much more vicious today than it was 150-200 years ago.
Unless you think this is the final general apostasy before a Second Coming, it's just another periodic drifting away from religion generally. And it's nothing new.
I think the First Great Awakening was a turnaround for the American Colonies which reached back to England. Good thing as the 18th century rolled on we started to see Continental Europe with the seeds of Liberal Theology and Skeptic movement coming out of all places, Germany. Went full blown in the mid 19th century.
Some believed the Second Great Awakening 1790-1820 helped buttress the liberal theology from taking root here in the US. But that second awakening also gave us a host of the crazy non-denominationals like the SDA (Ellen G White), and new religions like Joseph Smith's Mormons and a host of snake handlers, Shakers and the lot. But it did also fill more pews in Baptist and Methodist churches. So that was mixed. There were even some Presbyterians mixed in there as well. It was probably this awakening which multiplied many of the non-Trinitarian and non-creedal sects. Before the 19th century our only non-Creedal sects were Quakers and Unitarians, maybe a few others not well known. Throw in there Charles Finney, Pentecostals and the Protestant Piety movement, wow that century here in the US was interesting. If not for the good old Fundamentalists in the late 19th to early 20th century, the European Liberal Theology would have taken us by storm.
Charles Spurgeon in his "Down Grade" works took on the mid to late 19th century liberal theology infecting the Baptist churches in England. Some think he was so worked up with what he saw around him led to his illness which would take his life.
I apologize if I have briefly gone over things discussed in the past and only offer the shorthand of things which take deeper reading/studying. But thought it appropriate as we were discussing a generation falling away from the faith.
It is a key advantage of using computers to tackle the sheer drudgery of manuscript comparisons. You are right to point out that we live in an era where we can bring to bear the entirety of these textual exemplars and analyze them differentially using computers instead of waiting or hoping that some scholars will engage in such mind-numbing work for our benefit.
I know there are probably hundreds of "pay for" Bible study software and LOGOS probably has a monopoly on those who are pursuing degrees in Divinity and Theology. Hey Vic they even have Catholic and Orthodox modules for LOGOS now! :)
For the 'poor layman' I know there there is eSword and a host of others for a lot less than LOGOS and just about anything can be found on the web or at some not for cost academic sites. But I have grown fond of Biblehub.com. It gives you a lot of the functions of eSword along with the Strongs lexicon, numerous commentaries, geography, and if you can read it the various Hebrew and Greek manuscripts used even the translation. Not to mention most of the more popular Protestant and Catholic Bible versions even side by side verse comparison.
So Vic a lot of what you may want to do, may already be at your finger tips as a start.
Mainland Europe is already gone, and England is quite close now. I was going to make this a separate thread (may still will) but shows how far gone England has gone even with a state church:
Europe has been gone for a generation already. It has been many centuries now since Europe was clucking over the loss of Christian north Africa. And the Holy Land. Perhaps that looked to Europe like a final impending apostasy as well.
Charles Spurgeon in his "Down Grade" works took on the mid to late 19th century liberal theology infecting the Baptist churches in England. Some think he was so worked up with what he saw around him led to his illness which would take his life.
So many people never even heard of it. There was a comparable figure in Presbyterianism. He eventually led the breakoff to the formation of Orthodox Presbyterians, a small denomination.
Europe has been gone for a generation already. It has been many centuries now since Europe was clucking over the loss of Christian north Africa. And the Holy Land. Perhaps that looked to Europe like a final impending apostasy as well.
That had mostly been done by conquering Muslim regimes. Wait, what did Europe just do with Muslims again?
It's about OT prophecy fulfillment and the words Christ spoke. He gave them the sign of Jonah and explained the 3 days and 3 nights. I believe He accomplished this according to His truthful words.
Well, the trouble is he said the "Sign of Jonah" - three days and three nights inside of the fish.
At most, using the Jewish measure, he was in the tomb three days (Part (about three hours)of Friday, 24 hours of Saturday and part of Sunday (about 9 hours) and 1 3/4 nights.
Using the Roman measure he was in the tomb a day and a half.
Three days and three nights can't be gotten out of the text with a Sunday resurrection and a Friday execution.
Three days and three nights can't be gotten out of the text with a Sunday resurrection and a Friday execution.
Why do you have to add to scripture and mandate Sunday as the resurrection day? You make Jesus a liar and yourself the new truth. You claim you were raised from the dead. Delusional. You claim you prayed and some lizards and rats or something raised from the dead. Delusional. You also said right wingers should all be murdered if we wanted to solve the worlds problems. You also said you were a socialist.
All of those things make you a non follower of chirst crazy dude who thinks he owns others wealth and can tell them what to do with it.
The other day you were such a hypocrite talking about God didn't give you a right to kill. When in the last year or so you said kill all right wingers. You're quite the head case.
Again, how do you do mechanical translation, word for word, through two vernacular languages that shifted over time? Well, you can't really do it. No computer can because it isn't a computer problem, it's a language problem. And the language(s) being used shifted over time, exactly as our languages evolve today over the course of centuries.
Yes, you can do it. I've got a good mechanical translation of the New Testament, and a good mechanical translation of the Torah.
The groundwork comes in the lexicon. You have to go through the entire text and separate out each and every word, including the different declensions and conjugated forms.
To each base word you must assign ONE SINGLE ENGLISH WORD as its meaning. And you have to use one single form for each different verb conjugation (example: the Hebrew imperfect can be "I will go", "I was going", or "I will be going" - you have to pick ONE form - say "I will go", and use always use that whenever the imperfect form of "Go" comes up. You indicate what part of speech, exactly, with parentheticals to identify the verb tense, number, etc.).
You must be consistent. You cannot allow one English word to be used for two different words in the language to be translated. And you cannot allow two English words to translate one Hebrew (or Greek) word. The correspondence must always be 1 for 1.
This produces a translation that is hard to read, but you make no apologies for it. The world is full of easy to read translations. What THIS translation does is allow you to instantly see the parallels - every time that word is used. And that shuts down a great deal of translation-based theology (of the kind that I abhor).
An example. In Isaiah, YHWH says that he creates good and evil. So many arguments I have had about this, with people who say, because of their traditions, that no, God does not CREATE evil. And this despite the fact that God says directly in the first person that he does. Well, most translations don't put the word "evil" in there in Isaiah. They say "send calamity" or the like. This avoids the problem visually and means people don't have to face the issue.
Others take a different tangent, say that God does not create MORAL evil, so Isaiah is saying that, yes, God can do things like create floods, but he is not the creator of MORAL evil.
That's very comfortable, but then it begs the question. Was the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, from which Eve, then Adam, at the forbidden fruit, knowledge of MORAL evil, or knowledge of earthquakes and hailstorms?
Not one person in a room full of 100 theologians will try to argue that the "Evil" in the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil isn't knowledge of MORAL evil. So that tree in the Garden is knowledge of Good and Moral evil - of "tov" and of "ra" - those are the Hebrew words. Now page forward to Isaiah: what is it that God creates? Tov and ra. The same good and evil that the tree gives knowledge of.
So yeah, God creates Good and Evil - including moral evil.
What's the issue? God is God, and he said so? Just like in the creed: "I believe in One God...creator of all things seen and unseen. That would include Tov and Ra. Obviously.
Why, then, would Christians struggle with this and deny that God creates "ra", when he SAYS HE DOES.
Well, there's a tradition that God doesn't do that, and that tradition is rooted in a psalm of David. DAVID asserted that God had no part in any evil. But GOD said he did. It's a classic contradiction in the Bible, of a devout man actually asserting that God was a bit different from what God himself said he was.
This doesn't trouble ME - I don't expect perfect consistency. But it GREATLY troubles those for whom the Bible must be a perfect idol, lest they lose their faith.
Mechanical translation can be done. The great thing about doing it for the Vaticanus, where both testaments are written in Greek, and Vulgate, where both are written in Latin, is that one can then compare the results from translating the OT from Hebrew and NT from Greek. There, one must select English words for Hebrew words, and those English selections may differ from the English selected for a Greek word in the New Testament. But note that in those places in the NT where the Greek quotes something in the OT directly, the word choices need to be the same. That can bring consistency.
By comparing Hebrew old/Greek new translation of words, one can discover if linquists think there is a difference in words...or the same. One can see the choices.
The problem with doing it any other way is that translation for "meaning" means translation based on what it MUST mean, according to the theology of the translator. I don't want that. Tell me what it SAYS. I'LL decide what it MEANS.
You claim you were raised from the dead. Delusional.
I never claimed that.
I said I broke my neck and was drowning, paralyzed, at the bottom of a lake, and that God healed my broken neck and allowed me to walk out of the lake. I never said I was DEAD.
I said he raised two dead animals in my presence, not ME.
I said I broke my neck and was drowning, paralyzed, at the bottom of a lake, and that God healed my broken neck and allowed me to walk out of the lake.
All of those things make you a non follower of chirst crazy dude who thinks he owns others wealth and can tell them what to do with it.
The other day you were such a hypocrite talking about God didn't give you a right to kill. When in the last year or so you said kill all right wingers. You're quite the head case.
You just have really poor reading comprehension, and no sense of irony or hyperbole.
This produces a translation that is hard to read, but you make no apologies for it. The world is full of easy to read translations. What THIS translation does is allow you to instantly see the parallels - every time that word is used. And that shuts down a great deal of translation-based theology (of the kind that I abhor).
I think I prefer a non-literal translation.
Keep in mind some of the awkward phrasing in certain verses in the NT, very much a reflection of the daily vernacular of the time. For example, scan the KJV versions which offer words in italics to indicate which words were interpolated by the KJV translators so the verses are more comprehensible to the modern reader. The KJV guys gave as direct a translation as possible but they included bridging phrases so it would make sense (and good English prose). Try reading those KJV verses without words in italics and see how it sounds to your ear. Does it make the meaning clearer? No. Does it memorize more easily? Nope.
Anyway, the literal word-for-word translation is an old idea and it's almost never the best choice of a translation. And even with advancements in AI and machine translation, it probably never will be.
I don't expect perfect consistency. But it GREATLY troubles those for whom the Bible must be a perfect idol, lest they lose their faith.
Vic, are you saying that the Bible is not consistent, and that this inconsistency amounts to error that would destroy our faith? And that 2000 years of scholarly research would be undone...by discoveries you've made in your own translation work? That's what it seems like your are saying.
But it's not mechanically translated, and that's the KEY to exegesis, from my perspective.
Finally, I'd have the Torah read hieroglyphically.
A bit difficult unless you program your lexicon to pick meanings to words in phrases as the actual authors intended to use them. That’s a huge principle of exegesis.
I’ve seen folks over at CF go on and on changing meanings to words in the NT to fit their pet theologies. The Universalists employ the root word fallacy to get around eternal in Matthew 25. The SDA use the root word fallacy to dismiss we have immortal souls.
I’ve seen Orthodox tell me sin is just “missing the mark.” That may be the case in the original form, but not how the Apostles define it. John tells us sin is transgression against the Law.
I wish you well in your pursuit but don’t know how you would handle how the authors handled the text.
I’ve seen folks over at CF go on and on changing meanings to words in the NT to fit their pet theologies. The Universalists employ the root word fallacy to get around eternal in Matthew 25. The SDA use the root word fallacy to dismiss we have immortal souls.
Ever see the hyper-Calvinists explain how "world does not mean world" in John 3:16? There's some real textual acrobatics.
Ever see the hyper-Calvinists explain how "world does not mean world" in John 3:16? There's some real textual acrobatics.
Universalists use the other extreme in that verse.
Why knowing that Jesus was speaking to a Pharisee and not us in general. World would mean all across the earth and just not Israel. So once again Jesus was controversial showing Nicodemus the Scriptures the Jews ignored. Redeeming the Gentiles was always part of the plan.
Redeeming the Gentiles was always part of the plan.
Despite the quote of Jesus in Matthew 15:24, clearly stating that "But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
Those "lost sheep" became, after His death and resurrection, the leaders and missionaries of the first Christian churches.
A nice example for Vic to mull over, given his great preference for the words of Jesus.
Dang, you're up late. I hope you have a good excuse. I sure don't.
I think it's bedtime. Well, maybe I'll indulge and eat a small late-night snack. Like some Kaleslaw salad from Wallyworld. Kale, red cabbage, broccoli, raddichio, carrots, sprinkled with some dried fruit raisins (cranberries, cherries, white raisins also from Wallyworld). And sweet tart dressing, Kraft Catalina. Easy to chew and swallow, a nice combination of flavors. And it's a cheap salad to eat at that. I even caught myself one night taking a bowl of it to bed with me which I never do.
Well, you shouldn't eat so late at night but it is a light snack and not too fattening.
At least I finally found a kale salad that I enjoy.
Okay, I had the kaleslaw salad and it was delish. I really enjoy the flavor combo. I'm going to resist raiding my stash of black grapes and hit the sack for a few hours.
Vic, are you saying that the Bible is not consistent, and that this inconsistency amounts to error that would destroy our faith? And that 2000 years of scholarly research would be undone...by discoveries you've made in your own translation work? That's what it seems like your are saying.
No, I'm not saying that at all.
I am saying that there are inconsistencies in the Bible, and gave the obvious example of the time that Jesus was in the tomb.
I've also said that these inconsistencies don't matter, because the Bible is a traditional collection of scrolls assembled by men, and anything men write - whether inspired by God or not - is going to have little errors in it, little inconsistencies, such as the "three days and three nights" business - but that this only matters if one has made an idol out of the Bible and expects to find in a human work the perfection of God.
I suppose I am saying that one SHOULD NOT make the perfection of the Bible an article of faith, because then one has to start doing a fan dance over the inconsistencies that are there, when no such dance is needed.
The inconsistency should NOT destroy faith, unless the faith has been placed on the wrong thing. God and his Son are the right things on which to place one's faith. The perfection of a human work is not.
2000 years of scholarship is all over the map as to results, precisely BECAUSE the text is inconsistent, and therefore pulls scholars in different directions. I note that the Church has been pulled apart into many different factions on account of that very thing. And I note that Jesus called for unity without domination. So I note that if we were to be consistent with what Jesus expressed, we would NOT divide the Church over these very different interpretations. We would be truthful, say we really don't know, shrug our shoulders and hang together anyway.
But we certainly don't do that.
And I am saying that the Church is fading everywhere because we don't.
I have not said at any point "Because of my scholarship the Church is completely wrong." What I have observed is a fact: the Church IS dying out, and I have diagnosed WHY: Christians treat each other like ship and talk to each other in the most condescending, angry and sneering tones. And they have KILLED each other, historically, over petty differences of opinion and rage and power. And the overhang of THAT is what has killed the Church, not me.
I am calling for reform, for all of the Churches - including mine - the biggest one - to look back and focus, for a change, on what JESUS said, and DO THAT, that if he jettisoned the extra baggage and focused on him we would be less contradictory, less hypocritical, and could start to right the ship and pump out the water.
But I see no desire to do that. At all. So I don't see the church recovering. I see a whole fleet of Churches furiously remaining on their present courses, into the rocks, into the shoals, and foundering. I think that's too bad, because it isn't necessary. But if people will not reform, it's inevitable.
Nobody knows what the authors "intended". That is the great big hole into which the translator pours his own theology.
Yes, John said that sin is transgression against the Law. And for Jews, that was true. Not for Gentiles. Gentiles were never given the Law and did not have it. They had a few laws of God given before The Law - the laws about murder and food given to Noah and his children after the Flood (and the laws given to Noah about food are contradicted by the Laws given at Sinai to the Hebrews).
So, to be clear, a Gentile from the Flood until today NEVER transgressed the law of God by eating pork, but a Jew in Israel after Sinai did. And although Jesus "Made all foods clean", he also said "Not a letter nor the stroke of a letter shall pass from The Law until the end of the world."
So, then, did Jesus making all foods clean mean that JEWS could eat pork? (And did Jesus actually make all foods clean at all, or was that an improper edit inserted by Mark, HIS understanding of it?) Was pork EVER unclean for Gentiles? Did it BECOME unclean once Gentiles became Christians?
I have already answered the question: NO, because God's law gave the animals, including pigs, to men to eat after the Flood, and what he did at Sinai to the Hebrews is on its very face a Law JUST for Hebrews, that can't be changed to ADD Gentiles to it.
So, when John says that sin is a translation against The Law (which the Torah, of Sinai), what he is saying is not true and never was, for you or for me. It was true for Jews, vis a vis Israel, and that mattered when the Temple was still up. But God ended the Temple, and with it, any promised effect of The Law which cannot be kept.
There is a law of JESUS, but that is not what John means by "The Law".
In short, John was wrong. At best, John is confused, and heavily caught up in hisJudaism, like Paul was - what John (and Paul) wrote with reference to Judaism has no applicability to Gentile Christians. No, when we break the Saturday Sabbath, and when we eat pork, and when we do not tithe, we do not sin. We're not Hebrews, and The Law never has applied to us.
Ies, Jesus said that, but the very first mass conversion recorded in Jesus' ministry was the mass conversion of the town of Jacob's Well, at the behest of the Samaritan woman who told her town all about Jesus.
Jesus was sent to bring the Jews, his kin, and the people entrusted with Torah, God's special boy, the New Covenant first, and he did. And the early leaders of the new Church were Jews. But the bulk of the Jews preferred their old wine from the old bottle and would not drink the new.
Luke tells us that Caesar Augustus called for a census of the whole kosmos - the whole world.
So, then, did the census takers go to India and China? Did they go to Ultima Thule? Did they go to Sarmatia? No. They went to the Roman world - the Roman kosmos.
"World" does not mean planet earth. There is no word for planet earth in ancient Hebrew. The word THERE is simply "Land". And the word used in Greek, kosmos, does not mean planet earth either. Planet earth is not a concept in the Bible.
I suppose I am saying that one SHOULD NOT make the perfection of the Bible an article of faith, because then one has to start doing a fan dance over the inconsistencies that are there, when no such dance is needed.
We have the doctrine of inerrancy of Scripture for good reason. This doctrine had been hammered out and tested by great men, and by the Bible's worst enemies.
We say the Bible is inerrant in the 'original autographs' (which God destroyed for good reason!)
We claim inerrancy because it is consistent with our God, Who is inerrant, and, we believe He would NOT give us His Word, yet containing errors, to confuse us and make us doubt that very Word.
We believe that the same God, Who spoke innerantly through the the original writers, has also superintended through Godly men a document that is reliable and trustworthy for us today.
This doctrine is one of the most important! People who are lost and confused and despairing of life just do not have the ability to analyize ancient expressions in a foreign language, just to see if they can find some hope to carry on.
So when a Christian tells you that it is their tradition to believe the Bible is without error, it's because they just don't have time to sit and debate every shade of meaning with you. Push them enough and they'll fight you!
And, no, the Church isn't dying, even though it may look like it! The Church cannot die! We have Christ as our Head and Christ in our heart! We are the reason, the only reason, that the world staggers on.
Vic, why don't you set aside your arguments and join with us. Are you any better than the most imperfect of Christians?
it's because they just don't have time to sit and debate every shade of meaning with you. Push them enough and they'll fight you!
And, no, the Church isn't dying, even though it may look like it! The Church cannot die!
Vic, why don't you set aside your arguments and join with us. Are you any better than the most imperfect of Christians?
Join you? I didn't know that I was apart from you. We don't believe the same things on various points, but we think that Jesus was the Son of God, and that what he said to do, we ought to do.
Vic, why don't you set aside your arguments and join with us.
Seriously, what does "join with us" MEAN, concretely?
I think that Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God, so when he said that if I kill people, lie, commit sexual immorality, peddle drugs, am a "dog", reject belief in God or worship idols, I am committing crimes against God that, if not forgiven by God, will land me in the Lake of Fire for the second death after the resurrection.
So therefore I listen to Jesus and avoid those things, to the extent I can, and seek atonement and forgiveness where I cross the line.
That's what is required of people who want to live with God after death.
I don't see that any MORE is required than that. Certainly none of THOSE things can be ignored.
That, to me, is the foundation of Christianity. That's what I believe, and that is what I do. Am I not, then already with you, and you with me? Or do you require MORE than that.
Jesus was sent to bring the Jews, his kin, and the people entrusted with Torah, God's special boy, the New Covenant first, and he did. And the early leaders of the new Church were Jews. But the bulk of the Jews preferred their old wine from the old bottle and would not drink the new.
But Jesus did succeed. Just not in the exact way that was expected even by his own disciples.
But Jesus did succeed. Just not in the exact way that was expected even by his own disciples.
Of course he did. But the new wine burst the old bottle.
That's a key point. Christianity is NOT universalized Judaism. Christians are NOT under the Jewish law. Nor were they RELEASED from the Jewish Law (unless they were Jews). Never under it in the first place, they are not BROUGHT under it when they become Christians. Each covenant stands separate and complete, and deals with different people, and offers different rewards.
The Sinai Covenant was, forever till the end of time, between YHWH and a single tribe, the Hebrews assembled at Sinai, and their heirs, living in Israel (not everywhere in the world). The only individual promise is of a farm in a secure Israel. There is nothing in the Sinai Covenant about life after death, Paradise, eternal life. Obeying the Jewish Law never obtained that as a reward.
The New Convenant, with Jesus, is forever till the end of time. It is a promise between God and INDIVIDUAL people only, no tribe, no collectivity, that their INDIVIDUAL spirits/souls will go on after death, and be rewarded, if they remain clear of certain sins in life, or are forgiven them, and if they otherwise comport themselves in a certain way. It applies anywhere on earth.
It's not an EXTENSION of Sinai, which was not about life after death, eternal life, final judgment or individuals.
It's new wine in a new bottle. Try to put it in the old bottle, and you burst the Old Covenant. You can't put the Sinai Covenant into the Last Supper either - they're different contracts with different objectives.
This is why "Judaizing" is such a pointless thing. Sabbath keeping, not eating shrimp - it completely misses the point! But I don't really care if other people stubbornly miss the point. Just means more oysters for me.
This is why "Judaizing" is such a pointless thing. Sabbath keeping, not eating shrimp - it completely misses the point! But I don't really care if other people stubbornly miss the point. Just means more oysters for me.
Well, I think we should not allow others to go unchallenged when they try to incorporate Old Testament teachings into Christian doctrine. This is very common among Prots and evangelical types and they should be called out on it.
BTW, if there is no afterlife in OT Judaism, where is Elijah? And there are a half-dozen other Jewish figures who ascended to heaven too. And why did Jesus tell the parable of Lazarus And The Rich Man which suggests that Lazarus ended up in heaven with Abraham? It certainly sounds like there is some notion of an afterlife in Judaism whether you find it plainly stated or not. But then, the concept of the Trinity is not clearly and directly expressed in the NT text either.
Modern Jews do generally deny hell and they mostly deny heaven. But the narratives of the Bible tell us directly that there were different ideas about this and ancient Judaism was rife with all sorts of fantastic claims.
