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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: 39350
Comments: 348
Chalk another one up to faulty drug field tests: 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.”
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#1. To: Deckard (#0)
The officer tested the powder, and it tested positive for cocaine with two different kits … Damn … You libertarian drug promoters even birds doing cocaine now. What is this frickin world coming to …
Well, that would be great way to smuggle cocaine. Just pray it doesn't rain.
Smart thinking ...
Which is essentially your admission that drug tests conducted by police departments are either completely corrupt or completely incompetent. I can't quite imagine how big a dumbass any cop would have to be to be so unaware of the properties of crystal cocaine and how it looks if exposed to moisture. What, did the cop think that the QB had, in the process of being pulled over, thrown his coke stash forward (into the wind) onto his windshield and then tried to wash it away with wiper fluid? There is no other way to read this. Corrupt lab and/or corrupt cops. Probably both. Oh, look. It's a black QB. Let's just frame his black ass with phony drug tests that make any pile of poop test positive for cocaine. Thanks for playing. If you were a decent human being, you'd be ashamed of what you've posted here. It does matter to have a black man falsely accused of narcotics and to have such an arrest on his record. Like you even care about this victim of false arrest. I hope he can sue their asses off for defamation of character. He should never have been charged with cocaine possession without a full lab test.
Yeah, it was a process, wasn't it? Nothing says "I'm suspicious" like not immediately pulling over. At least he wasn't shot. And no dogs were shot. And this wasn't a no-knock raid. So what's the big deal? Oh, I get it. The driver was black. AND a quarterback. Hell, he should be allowed to do whatever he wants, right?
It could have been wet/damp powdered cocaine. "What, did the cop think that the QB had, in the process of being pulled over, thrown his coke stash forward (into the wind) onto his windshield and then tried to wash it away with wiper fluid?" I think that was the theory, actually.
“Actually” – Yes. The “field drug tests” conducted police have been a problem. The Next generation field drug testing is suppose to provide new technology that eliminates subjectivity and preserves evidence. The remains however, with proper use training. Werts was smart. He did the right thing under a bad circumstance. He said: “I stayed down and I knew that the truth was eventually going to come out. Just didn’t know how long it would take. It’s definitely been hard to deal with.”
You know as little as the cop did. He was trained. He has no excuse for being so ignorant.
But you didn't care at all about this falsely accused man who now has a narcotics arrest on his record. You can't cover it up now.
Don't you think that this Negro owes the police a thank-you note for not shooting him while falsely arresting him on bad evidence? And another thank-you note for not driving to his house to shoot his dog too? The QB is kind of an ingrate, isn't he, whitey? He's lucky he doesn't get shot on a weekly basis by the cops.
Because none of your remarks focused at all on the injustice that was done to this victim of false arrest who now has a narcotics record. At least, not until I called you out on it. You had no problem at all with it.
What's he supposed to do when the substance tests positive -- twice? Let the guy go because he's black?
How do you know this? Because none of your remarks focused at all on the injustice that was done to this victim of false arrest … Is that right? Let me see now – Also, none of my remarks focused at all on the actions to indicate that justice was done by the police. Is that right? So, what did I say when I said nothing at all? What am I saying when I said nothing at all? If I had nothing to say, I probably wouldn’t say anything at all – nothing would come out of my mouth. So, is it just up to you to arbitrarily decide what it is I meant by my silence? Think about it … My loud silence spoke possibilities to you and I don’t get to control what is is that you are assuming I was saying through my silence. By saying nothing at all, I left you in a most awkward quandary and you were left to “divine” what the heck it was that I was not saying. Tough situation for you. You had to decide what my silence meant. And you did. It is amazing that you are such a good “diviner” sometimes. You have to know that silence could mean pretty much anything while silence can mean pretty much nothing. Obviously, my silence raised a question for you. It made you wonder what was meant by my silence. Even through the silence one could probably have almost heard the neurons at work in that thought factory of yours “thinking and making up shit like: “Gatlin didn't care at all about this falsely accused man.” And that’s what you did, Tooconservative – you just made up some shit.
Your earlier posts speak plainly enough for themselves. I stand by my (accurate) observations.
That figures. It's so typical libertarian mind reading of you. How are you on picking lottery numbers?
Every police department using such faulty tests should make no further arrests until they have verifiable and accurate ways to do lab tests. These field tests are just an excuse to profile people and arrest them at will for crimes such as Driving While Black. It can also be a pretext for a highway-robbery-by-cop in an attempt to use civil forfeiture against an innocent accused person who was arrested without cause for "failing" two obviously flawed tests.
Never tried. But I do have your number.
Should the police department keep using these field tests since they have been proven to give inaccurate results? If they use them again should they be held accountable and sued? Does the real victim the quarterback have a case against the police department for not using a reliable drug test? Why didn't the police know the drug test was inaccurate, don't they test them? If the police knew it gives false readings and it did int he past should the be sued for even more money? Do you go down on cops?
The Texas police departments stop using the drug-testing kits a couple years ago because of the false positive results. As also did the Missouri Highway Patrol. This problem has been around since 2008 that I know of.
So they knew but they kept using them. Or they are just dumb. The quarterback should be compensated financially by those in law enforcement that approved faulty testing kits.
How was the cop supposed to know he'd get a false positive on bird poop? Bringing me back to my original question -- what was the cop supposed to do after two tests showed positive?
Test with bird poop? I'm guessing they didn't. But you're saying they should have?
"In July 2017, the Houston Police Department announced it would no longer use the test kits, but not because of the test’s lack of reliability. Instead, they cited the risk posed to officers from handling opiate-related substances like Fentanyl while performing the test."
If they're inaccurate, then statistically they should give an equal number of false positives AND false negatives. Meaning a whole bunch of guilty people went free. That should make you happy. Freeing guilty people.
It makes you happy putting innocent people in jail without due process. Why is that? 1. You are a sadist? 2. You are dumb? 3. You are dumb and don't know it? 4. You are a former government worker and you think the government is always right?
We do it all the time. If you can make bail, you're let go. If not, you sit there -- even if you're later found innocent.
For the record it is noted that you did not dispute that putting innocent people in jail makes you happy.
America's criminal justice system was founded on the principle that it was better to let sizable numbers of the guilty to go free rather than allow even one man to be wrongly convicted and punished. You might observe that this is because so many colonists in America had suffered at the hands of the monarchist courts back in Europe. Even so, this is what presumption of innocence means and where it comes from. Not that that will ever be supported by a budding fascist like you, drooling to lick the boots of police on any occasion. In that sense, you are an un-American. So is Gatlin. You just don't give a shit who gets wrongly arrested, wrongly convicted, wrongly executed. Your concerns are for the cops who wrongly arrest, the prosecutors who wrongfully convict, the system that can wrongfully execute the falsely accused.
I heard he does suck a few nightsticks. Not wanting to intrude here but I thought I'd pass along this ugly rumor. After all, if it's a false accusation, whitey shouldn't mind at all that he's being falsely accused. whitey loves to defend cops making false charges in unlawful arrests, even corrupt cops. I also heard he once went down on a state trooper for a gallon of gas but that could just be an ugly rumor someone here at LP made up.
I don't beat my wife, either.
What does it mean when a substance tests -- twice -- as an illegal drug? That "presumption of innocence" suddenly shifts to "probable cause" of a crime. Now, it later turned out to be a false positive. Because the system worked as it should. The "guilty go free" is after due process.
So you don't know that it's true, you did not ensure that it's true, yet you published it anyways. And, based on your previous posts about me, you published that with actual malice. This means it must have been made with disregard for the truth, and with the intention of doing harm to my reputation on this forum. I'd say I have an airtight defamation lawsuit. Or at least enough to get you kicked off this forum.
A K A Stone to misterwhite: After all, if it's a false accusation, whitey shouldn't mind at all that he's being falsely accused. whitey loves to defend cops making false charges in unlawful arrests, even corrupt cops. I also heard he once went down on a state trooper for a gallon of gas but that could just be an ugly rumor someone here at LP made up. So you don't know that it's true, you did not ensure that it's true, yet you published it anyways. And, based on your previous posts about me, you published that with actual malice. This means it must have been made with disregard for the truth, and with the intention of doing harm to my reputation on this forum. I'd say I have an airtight defamation lawsuit. Or at least enough to get you kicked off this forum. I say that you are wrong about ever getting Stone to kick TC off this forum. He will never do it, albeit the right thing to do with the malicious and vulgar defamation of character displayed by TC. I predict Stone will not do shit about it. We shall see …
misterwhite v AKA Stone, Tooconservative et al? Yeah good luck with that Parsons.
Government is in the last resort the employment of armed men, of policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen. Not at all. I clearly said it was only a rumor.
That is just a line from the movie Natural Born Killers, a near-quote.
It almost sounds like getting me banned from LF is something that Gatlin and misterwhite have discussed previously.
I know, this seems petty, but hear me out. “Good luck” is not a religious or emotional statement in any way. It’s something we say to each other to communicate ‘I want the best for you (in this matter).’ But “good luck” is a terrible way to say this. Despite being a common phrase, it’s got a couple of significant problems. First, “good luck” is a pessimistic phrase. It encourages, as the psychologists say, an external locus of control. In non-psychology-speak, this means the phrase “good luck” encourages us to see events as outside of our control (as opposed to within our control). When we perceive outcomes as outside our control, we don’t work to affect them, leaving us in the passenger seat of our lives. Second, “good luck” implies, to the person you’re saying it to, that they need luck to succeed. Instead of encouraging or helping them, you’re wishing for the world to conspire in their favor. If you had a friend who was about to compete in a contest, you wouldn’t tell them “I hope the judge is feeling lenient today,” but to say “good luck” is to say the same thing. Last, “good luck” is a terrible phrase no matter what your religious orientation. If you are a theist, and believe in god, it’s bordering on blasphemous. Why are you appealing to a nonexistent ‘luck’ when it is God who directs the events of the world? If you are an atheist, it’s a meaningless statement because it acknowledges there is no way for you to affect this luck. Either way, you’re out of luck (get it?) Some obvious religious alternatives to “good luck” include “blessings” and “thoughts and prayers.” But there are some great secular options as well.
These both express doubt in a person's ability to succeed. Which sounds worse than "Good Luck" which you consider to be expressing the thought that only sheer accidental success can happen to the well-wishee. This sounds harsher but is less bad than the first two IMO. I'd rather have a Good Luck though. Many things in life do happen outside your control. Wishing someone "Good Luck" expresses the hope that good things will happen by chance in their lives rather than bad things happening. Sometimes, it is a matter of luck. The real knack in life is to learn to make your own luck, at least sometimes. Something like "Don't Worry, Be Happy" is also good. We should all be reminded to take some time for happiness.
Eccl. 9:11 I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. I sometimes find myself saying "good luck" to the unbeliever...because that's about all they have...time and chance.
Thank you for the response and scripture ...
Isn't that just some variety of "Good luck on your little path to hell"? It's not surprising the country is turning atheist. The organized churches seem like smug self-interested morality clubs, often using their tax status to provide entertainment/services to their members at discount, that do very little for anyone but their own. And possibly the larger influence is with the charismatics and healers and other flim-flam people you can see on those awful cable channels. And it is difficult to discern anything that resembles a serious doctrinal view in modern churches. I look at local churches and people I know in them and they all seem to believe most anything they want, even if it opposes the church's offical doctrine. Preachers won't even get close to doctrinal preaching. So, if you're talking to me, I'd rather not hear any smug "Good luck in hell" talk. It got old a long time ago. Little wonder that people want nothing to do with religion any more. It's more a rejection of the sales force than Christianity itself.
It's not surprising the country is turning atheist. The organized churches seem like smug self-interested morality clubs... When I say "good luck" to a person it is said with a most heavy heart. Your assessment of the church...is true. With one exception: there IS doctrinal preaching in many churches but it is obviously not helping. Now, you've told me the symptoms, but can you pinpoint the exact cause? (I can) And, your feelings about the church's condition...is it anguish for something you love?
I don't attend any more. I got tired of the pettiness and some of the preaching I was hearing was clearly wrong in basic understanding of scripture. Bad preaching, rivalry of different factions, lack of interest in simply gathering to amicably worship, ... it just seemed so irrelevant and unfulfilling. I thought about driving farther to find a church but I didn't have any confidence of finding anything better within driving distance. I could tell some real horror stories about the last one I attended. It was a disgrace, nothing godly about it. Let's hear it. Offhand, my guess is you'll offer a prophetic note, the church falling away from sound doctrine as the Second Coming becomes imminent and Christians face persecution before the appearance of the False Prophet and then the Antichrist. Itchy ears, rejecting sound teaching, the takeover over churches and government posts by those who will be the accusers of the brethren during the Tribulation.
You are still giving me symptoms! When I call my brother the doctor* back home and ask about an old classmate who's sick he always says the exact same thing in a hushed voice "I can't talk about it" (never uses the dramatic "YOU KNOW I can't talk about it"). Even so, he knows the exact diagnosis. Why then will he not tell me! Because I'm the guy who just wants to know. The "let's hear it" guy with hardly any skin in the game, unlike the actual patient and the patient's loved ones. Maybe I feel that way right now, Tooconservative. I do understand your concerns about the church. *He got the brains, I got the girls, then, he then got the mansion, I got the...drafty frame house in a cow pasture. Talk about rotten luck!
Some might say you got the better deal. Depends on how many cows you got.
Government is in the last resort the employment of armed men, of policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen. Well, there are limits to the personal info I'll exchange online with strangers. I would not, for instance, detail the rather outrageous stuff happening at the last church I attended because it could lead other locals to identify the church. And they've already written Ichabod over their own door to any of the locals who might think of attending there. Some pretty scandalous stuff. Apparently they just couldn't assemble to worship amicably without getting overinvolved in each others' lives or persecuting the few members who actually cared about evangelism, running a good youth group, having sound preaching and an orientation toward scripturally and doctrinally solid preaching.
Depends on how many cows you got. I was just about to say...I still feel kinda sorry for him! Cattle. They are the measure of wealth in the Bible. That's why AOC and her ilk want to take them away from us (all the while themselves dining on good ole hambugrers)
Well, cattle and gold were all the rage a few thousand years ago. Or even a century ago. You'll notice that almost no rich people are trying to get into ranching and there are no billionaire cattle barons in the modern era. Modern tycoons are more likely to invest money in luxury bomb shelters on old missile bases than to invest that same money into owning land suitable for grazing cattle or to put that money into building dairies to profit off milk production. Modern dairies supply our milk, we have many sources of protein. Times have changed since the ancient era. I don't think taking cows away as a means of depriving people of wealth as part of a Satanic conspiracy is the actual motive of AOC and her neo-communist girl gang. They simply lack the imagination and religious background that would be needed to try to impose such a cow-free regime for religious or political reasons. Frankly, they're too stupid and uninformed to even think of something that traditionally religious. You seem to think AOC and her Marxist Girl Scout troop know a lot more about religion (or anything else) than what they do know. In truth, they don't know much about anything at all and mostly recite half-digested Lefty drivel from their former college professors. They're not that smart and they really weren't dedicated political ideologues who actually read their Marx and Gramsci and Alinsky and try to apply those principles to government. Cattle are not a measure of real wealth in a world of plentiful food. The ancient world, like almost the entire history of mankind, was a world of food insecurity. And in ancient times, cattle were a source of protein, a way to keep your household alive and in decent health by converting that useless grass on unfarmable lands into food, both milk and beef. And owning cattle, like sheep or goats, often made the difference in whether your children survived a famine. I'm not sure we should get every economic idea we have from the Old Testament. Would we want to return to a biblical ban on Jews or Christians engaged in usury (bank loans)? Leaving aside the historical record in which Christians in Europe outlawed usury for Christians so there could be no Christian bankers but also barred Jews in their ghettos from most other professions which meant that one of the few ways that Jews could make money and survive was through making loans as a lending house. And if one of the local merchants or barons was too deep in debt, he could rile up the local barflies against the Jews and they would invade the ghettos, burning and killing. But especially burning down the offices of Jews who had records of money owed to them by the merchants and nobility. If the Jew banker is dead, his bank burned, and his heirs have no record of debts owed to them by the local "Christian" merchants and nobility, poof, that merchant or baron is instantly a lot richer and doesn't have to give up anything. However, credit will be tighter in the future since you've ruined those who lend money for interest. OTOH, if you could effectively erase all your debts in one night of pogrom that you incited against your Jew banker, you didn't have much need for loans any more. And tighter credit meant you had fewer individuals who could aspire to using loans to acquire more wealth and compete with you for ownership of retail shops, import/export businesses, owning farmland and ranchland, etc. IOW, killing off your Jew banker and erasing your debts kept your potential creditors from having access to loans so they could compete with you for economic opportunities. I think the closest you'd come to cattle as a measure of wealth in the modern era would be bond holders who, until the 2009 crisis, were always paid off for their investment before all other creditors. The feds broached that standard by screwing the GM bond holders completely and just treating those bonds as being worth less than the fairly worthless GM stock which was and still is worth less than the stock of toy companies like Mattel. In fact, those bond holders might have been better off to own GM stock than to have invested in GM bonds. Perhaps you are not directly acquainted with the realities of owning and caring for cattle in the modern era. You wouldn't generally consider ranchers to be wealthy if you knew enough of them. They are generally asset-rich but cash-poor their entire lives. And the land needed to graze cattle has increasingly devolved into fewer and fewer hands as the schools and counties continue to pile up more laws and taxes on the ranchers. A lot of rural states tend to live off these people's taxes while the big businesses like Walmart pay very few taxes in those states while paying their employees so little that they qualify for welfare programs which will further burden the rural economies including the ranchers who hold the most land that is subject to property taxes. Cattle are a way to use land that would otherwise be worthless for agriculture. That was true in ancient times as well as the modern era. When economic activity advances, you see cattle being priced out of their former pastures due to the encroachment of small landowners who want an acreage they can keep a few horses on and not have to live 20' away from their neighbors in a suburban housing tract. Rural gentrification does have an effect, especially considering how much land in America is owned by the feds and its use for housing or ranching is restricted.
First of all, I am sincerely humbled by your very thoughtful replies to my sad attempts to comment here on this forum. I often have to dash something off in great haste, as now. Thank you, Tooconservative. There is so much in your reply here. I cannot possibly address every thought you have presented, even though I want to. Just for now please know that there is a huge smile on my face reading the quote I pulled from your comment. My CATTLE would totally agree with you! At this very moment they are telling me I had better get acquainted with the reality that their stomachs are empty and their udders are full! While that rich milk is flowing I will be considering all that you have said! And I will have a few thoughts of my own to make reply.
Your posts are a pleasure to read.
First of all, I am sincerely humbled by your very thoughtful replies to my sad attempts to comment here on this forum. I often have to dash something off in great haste, as now. Thank you, Tooconservative. There is so much in your reply here. I cannot possibly address every thought you have presented, even though I want to. Just for now please know that there is a huge smile on my face reading the quote I pulled from your comment. My CATTLE would totally agree with you! At this very moment they are telling me I had better get acquainted with the reality that their stomachs are empty and their udders are full! While that rich milk is flowing I will be considering all that you have said! And I will have a few thoughts of my own to make reply. Your post, watchman, was no doubt one of the greatest posts I have ever seen on this forum. I can think of nothing better in this world than a truly inspired and magnificently presented insult. A great put-down is a rare thing of beauty and something to be remembered and relished like a fine wine. Someone can in no way pretend to be offended when they are insulted with the right combination of artistry and wit. While history has been filled with crushing zingers and fantastic comebacks that have made us go “whew” – yours here to Tooconservative will live in the diary of history in my mind as the best way I have seen anyone to ever tell someone “to shut the fuck up and leave me alone for I have no time to listen to you.” I thought I was good at put-downs, but you have truly set a new high standard and I will now focus my attention and dedication towards learning to match your ability to respond to someone who thinks he knows all there is to know about everything.
I really liked the response by watchman.
I didn't see watchmans response as a put down. Maybe I'm missing something. Watchman is a blessing to have here.
I enjoy reading his posts.
I came back to this for a moment. When I first read a couple of watcchman’s one liners I Had the distinct feeling the he was Bucky using one of the multiple screen names and many different ISPs he has bragged about having and using on LF. Then after I saw and read watchman’s longer posts I was quick to realize the he was far too smart, possessed too much common sense and used far better judgment than Bucky. Personal Observation: I feel that watchman could easily have his own blog and/podcast if he wanted to devote the time.
Only people who have raised cattle for years really understand The Cow Thing. We had a smallish herd for decades and my father and grandfather raised cattle so, like you, I have Cow Stories I could share. Sometime, I should assemble some of the stories I have about the weirdest and smartest cows we owned over the years. Not to mention some of the bulls. You probably know what I mean. They live in Cow World. We're just their beasts of burden who steal their babies and break their hearts every year for the sake of some free winter feed. ; )
My posts are way too long and haphazardly written to be smooth prose. But they do at least represent what I think and I try to give an idea of why I think those things. Which means long posts work better than short posts for telling my opinion and why I hold those opinions. Anyway, I used to complain that Vic's posts were a little too long but I am even more longwinded sometimes, often repeating myself and making poorly structured posts. Vic is more pithy and a much better writer when it comes to invoking history and constructing a good composition. So, you are kind to encourage me. But I'm never going to be a great writer. Perhaps I'm too undisciplined or disorganized to write well.
I think you've gone full senile. I wasn't insulted at all. I don't think watchman intended to insult me. Or maybe he's just way too subtle at insulting me. He needs to be more obvious about insulting me or it just won't register, I'm afraid. I'm not that perceptive to subtle insults, I guess. What's clear is that you are desperately hoping for someone to insult me or to have some incident on the board where you can get Stone to kick me out. Your recent posts indicated that you and misterwhite want me gone along with Deckard. Then the new millennium would arrive and LF could be a forum where the only views expressed are those of misterwhite, Gatlin, GrandIsland and maybe yukon could even make a comeback (when he isn't clicking on his other browser tabs of gay porn). Let's see. hondo68 is gone (or at least limited). If you could get Stone to ban me and Deckard, you could make LF a full-blown warmongering copsucking outpost here at LF. Paid for by Stone too. Like the interwebs are lacking in those kinds of fora. You can haunt FreeRepublic for a full dose of that any time you like. And you are, like GI, posting at FR. You are, here at LF, a cross-forum troublemaker who counts your petty victories on who you can silence and who you can get management to ban. Because you don't want to debate anyone; you want to silence and expel them. We saw this sort of thing back at LP too. When Stone inherited the ex-freepers that posted at LP, he got the types of troublemakers like you that only post on a forum to disrupt it, not to build it up. How frustrating it must be for you that you haven't found a way to get Stone to do what you want with his forum. Maybe you'd like it if I apologize for having opinions you don't like or want anyone else to hear? And I have quit this forum (and returned) just as many times as you have. Stop trying to look down your nose at me, you old fruit.
Must have missed that one. Not surprised though. If you could get Stone to ban me and Deckard, you could make LF a full-blown warmongering copsucking outpost here at LF. Paid for by Stone too. Sounds like a sinister conspiracy to turn this place into an echo-chamber. And you are, like GI, posting at FR. Same screen name?
Government is in the last resort the employment of armed men, of policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen. Just wondering - do you sell raw milk to willing buyers?
Government is in the last resort the employment of armed men, of policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen. It is refreshing to have a new poster here with some independent views. I, for one, want to offer a warm welcome to all new inmates here at your asylum. LOL
It's not that sinister because they aren't exactly subtle about their intentions. As you probably know, you are their #1 target to eliminate, hondo was #2 (he got banned or restricted due to some friction with Stone), and I am target #3. Others, like Fred Mertz or Willy Green, are just useful to bat around but don't seriously challenge the status quo they would like to impose here at LF.
Woo-Hoo!! Government is in the last resort the employment of armed men, of policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen. I don't see that happening. Despite my mistake in the past.
I like ripping your positions I disagree with. You aggravate me often. But I still like you.
Hondo just posts memes that aren't true. He rips people for positions that his candidates actually supports. I have him to two posts a day. I will put him on full right now. Just let him know to be honest and not stretch the truth so much.
The quarterback should be compensated financially by those in law enforcement that approved faulty testing kits. He should indeed be compensated. Most importantly, his arrest record should be expunged, as should all arrest records in all such cases. And those states who continue to use tests known to produce false positives should be very aggressively sued every time they use the tests. I would expect they already are, and that the Defense Bar all across America challenges every positive result produced by those tests, wherever they appear. There's probably a page somewhere on a Bar site that has those producers names and a whole litany of false positives, all spelled out and summarized for ease of use in defense cases.
I can tell you why the Church has mostly died in Europe, and is rapidly fading in North America, and starting its descent in Latin America too. But being that I'm Catholic, all past experience has taught me that we have to re-fight the Reformation to even get to the beginning of the conversation, and that all such re-fights (which happen a million times a year all over the world) never result in getting to the beginning of the conversation. (Which is one of the reasons why the Church continues to die at an accelerating clip.) Truth is, Christians would rather that the Church die and not exist in two or three generations, then compromise on anything, let alone admit they are wrong. Therefore, the Church is almost dead in Europe, is dying in North America, and has begun to die in Latin America. My only reason for writing this at all is that I guess I still hold a small spark of hope that Christians can behave like the Germans and French have managed to do. But I really just expect the Church to die, because I don't think the good will truly exists to save it.
You can stay if your personal insults leave.
You can stay if your personal insults leave. Not your decision to make whitey.
Government is in the last resort the employment of armed men, of policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen. Well, what JR deemed to be disruptive. In my case it was both my criticism of Israel's actions and my support for pulling the plug on Terry Schiavo. His feelings trumped my facts. But … his forum, his rules.
Thank you, AKA Stone, I appreciate that. I know that I am walking among titans here! And...I was being sincere with TC.
JR banned me for saying that getting rid of HW Bush was worth putting up with 8 years of Clinton. Now he is old and sick and I don't care.
watchman could easily have his own blog and/podcast If I had half the talents that Bucky has...and my own blog...I would be an internet GIANT! Interpretation: a true compliment to Bucky but, no, God forbid that I should ever have my own blog/podcast, primarily because I DON'T have Bucky's talent. My old pastor/mentor told me on several occasions, "Never write anything down! If you do they'll have written proof of what you said and will hang you for sure!" Did I listen? Well, here I am, writing things down...
Even though it's legal to sell milk from one's farm here in Maine...I do not trade with someone I don't know. If someone drank our milk, and then happened to get a stomach flu from their kid's daycare (for example), that could come back on me. The Mennonite folks are mostly who I deal with. It is their steadfast belief NOT to sue anyone. I honor that by being obsessively clean with the milk. May I ask, what is the situation with raw milk in your state?
For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. Ps 50:10 Ps 50:10 is a precious verse to Christians. When God says He can supply our needs this is one of the ways He assures us that He can do it! This verse was going through my mind when I replied to Deckard. Perhaps cattle aren't the measure of wealth to humans (nowadays) but they ARE (still!) a measure of wealth to God. And rightfully so. Everything about a cow is, well, delicious. There is no other meat like beef (that is available to the common man). The same with their milk. Not to mention their gentle natures and their calming affect on the stressed out soul. Therefore, I DO believe there is a satanic conspiracy to deprive us of the richness of cattle. ie. cattle are the cause of climate change by farting/burping etc. this is such a lie! If it were true then kill off all those ruminants in Africa. Better yet just get rid of horses, the most gaseous creature you'll ever encounter. Ah, but no, these are the favored animals of the elite. Today, cattle are being absolutely vilified. And what is being championed: dogs and goats. Just walk into Tractor Supply. The livestock aisles have been all but replaced by endless aisles of dog food and dog treats and dog this and dog that. The same is happening in other venues with stinking goats. Just do a little word study in the Bible on cattle, dogs and goats. And, BTW, nobody said AOC or any other minion actually had to be smart. You continually surprise me. Did you say you are 6 ft/145 lbs. Slender Man! So it's not a myth! Time for you to carry on that noble family tradition. Buys cows soon. You will be asset rich once again!
You can stay if your personal insults leave. I don't want "him" gone. I would however like to see his "insults" gone. He really has been on a tear with those lately. His nastiness is quite a drastic change for him. Maybe there is hope - I'll check back in and see.
There are a lot of very tall but very slim men in my family. I'm one of the shorter ones. The taller, the slimmer. I think they all weigh 160 or less but we don't inquire about each other's weight.
Those are some enviable ratios. My closest friends, all hitting retirement age, all running marathons.
I think you have dairy cows, like placid Holsteins. I don't know anyone who describes Angus cattle as having "gentle natures". And they have the opposite of a "calming effect on the stressed out soul". Dairy cows are so gentle compared those other kinds of cows. The kinds of cows that drive their owners nuts. I was recalling after my earlier post how I once had to stop and take my horse to house while chasing an old old cow to the house in winter to give her better feed than she could get with the herd, corn and alfalfa. She didn't want to go. ...yada-yada-yada-yada... I got the chainsaw and put it in the pickup and was roaring out of the yard when my dad hustled out of the house to jump in with me, to find out why I was getting the chainsaw instead of showing up without the cow I was herding... ...yada-yada-yada-yada... And my dad watched the whole thing, didn't say a word until later when he said he had never seen any cow do anything like that in his life. Damnedest thing. I could never even have imagined getting into such a perverse situation with a cow. Yeah, the cow had raced as hard as she could toward an embankment along which was growing a fairly large tree. There was a sturdy branch about 20' up the trunk and about 4' out from the trunk, the branch formed a "y". And that Y in the branch was actually less than 6' from the top of the embankment. The old rip at a dead fun flew out into the air, running blind through tall weeds, and just happened to land like an Olympic ice skater on that "Y" branch on her side. She was exhausted and couldn't move. Probably she was as dumbfounded as I was. She didn't struggle around and just laid there, catching her breath. Up in the tree. When your cows start hiding from you 20 feet up in a tree, you really are doing something wrong. I'll never forget my dad's look when he saw that cow laying on the Y branch, 20' off the ground. He couldn't really blame me because none of us had ever had a cow in a tree before. The cow did seem to think it was the final insult when I cut the entire tree down with her still in it. No, I am not shitting you, this happened to me, a memorable day. And yet, I would probably accuse anyone of being a liar if they told a story like that to me. It's, well, unthinkable. Cows just don't hang out in trees, 20' up in the air. They're not freakin' squirrels or coons. Don't keep cows that get too old. They get suspicious and make trouble for you. Given the way that cow acted, you'd think I'd beaten her on a daily basis for the last 15 years. So she wanted to fight me to the bitter end because I was so mean that I wanted her in a sheltered pasture with corn and alfalfa daily until her calf delivered. I was a total monster obviously. A monster with a chainsaw. I don't live on a farm any more. But I do have that same old John Deere chainsaw on my back porch. And don't get me started on milking an Angus heifer. I assure you it was pleasant for no one.
What made you give up farming, I mean, aside from the obvious cow-in-tree situation. We have jersey's (that are bred to angus each year). When I'm stressed, I go out and stand with my girls. There is that moment when they begin to eat, especially hay, that is so rhythmic. You've undoubtedly heard of asmr videos...I get that everyday.
It's biggest advantage is for running. When you're skinny, you can run a long long ways. I recall a few times when I was on foot chasing stubborn cows and chased them down. They could outrun me on foot but I kept catching up. I did put them in the corral after chasing them for miles. They were kind of surprised that any human would actually chase them that far. Otherwise, a real disadvantage is that it's hard to get clothes that fit well. The clothes for those body types are made for teenage boys or guys in college. I sometimes resort to those but I don't like to look like I'm going through my third adolescence. Still, I do like clothes that fit my body type, not baggy stuff made for heavier people. So sometimes I will buy teen clothes, a little embarrassing at my age. I would only be officially underweight at 6' at 137 pounds. I do recall from age 18 to my mid-thirties, nothing I could eat would push my weight up a single pound past 134. I consumed 3000-4000 calories a day for a few years in there, never managed to gain a pound. Like my weight was set on cruise control. I did weigh as little as 120 when I got mononucleosis once when I was 20 or so. Ended up in the hospital, then off work for a few weeks, couldn't climb the three flights of stairs at work without resting on each flight until over a month later. Man, I was sick. And so thin I looked almost like an Auschwitz survivor. I couldn't look at myself in the mirror 'cause I was so thin. Being underweight isn't a joke for the person who is suffering from it. I had an aunt, maybe 5'5" who never weighed more than 85 pounds. And she did do a lot of work, harvesting her cherry trees and gardening. She had two kids, never weighed more than 100 pounds. Skinniness can be a family trait just as obesity is. I admit I do feel sorry for the people, many of them much younger than me, that can't even walk around Walmart without riding an electric cart. But then, I weigh half as much so of course it is easier to get around. I think it is easier being older if you aren't heavy. When you're younger and stronger, you can be heavy and still do a lot of stuff. When you're older, the pounds just weigh more and people get immobile. So I'd rather be my weight and look too slim, even if my old aunts are pushing 90 are telling me I'm too thin, rather than to be a cousin or two that I have on the other side of the family that are kinda obese and can't walk up a small hill without risking cardiac arrest. I always wanted to weigh 170 as long as 25 pounds of it weren't just my gut hanging over my belt. Nothing sillier looking than a skinny man with big gut hanging out. But if I can't pack those 25 pounds on as muscle, I'd rather just let my body be slim, the way it wants to be. It's a little late to get it to change. BTW, there is a new study that indicates far higher mortality rates for strokes and heart attacks among thinner people than people with normal weight and even the obese. So being skinny can kill you in your sixties from a stroke or heart attack that people of regular weight and even obese people would survive. Or so the doctors are saying now. The folks on those electric carts at Walmart will probably outlive me and buzz around Walmart on their electric carts, shopping away for decades after I'm gone from a slim heart attack or a skinny stroke. But that's okay with me anyway. I've always cared a lot more about how well I lived than about how long I lived. Being old and sick and increasingly helpless has never been the main goal of my life. In fact, it sounds really awful and pitiable. Also, I find America has become like a foreign country, not the country I grew up in and felt more connected to. I don't want to live so long that I don't even recognize the country at all.
My dad had dementia, suffered a final neurological crisis, had no nursing home insurance. The cattle were sold to help pay for his care after he had been in the nursing home for a year and a half at around $6K/month, something he had told us would be necessary if he or my mom were in a nursing home for a few years. My dad was not good at making plans for funerals or what would happen to his stuff and his farm when he was gone. He got very upset at the thought of it. He died before we were forced to sell the farm. We sold it later anyway after my mom died since he had left a trust for my siblings and me and also for each grandchild. A few thought we should just keep it but my dad never thought that we would keep it in the family after he was gone. It was his farm, not anyone else's in the family. And one of my cousins bought it in the end so it stayed in the extended family. Best solution really.
A well-behaved tame herd is actually a delight. I saw a herd like that once, herd cows, not dairy cows. They belonged to an exceptional local rancher who had raised them with complete gentleness. I could see why people said his cow herd was just like dairy cows. One of these cows was a little old and was very fat, with a belly so big that she couldn't even fit into the cow chute for a preg-check. He said that was no problem and a half-dozen of us stood in a circle around her and we preg-checked that cow in the open in the corral with no restraints or ropes on her and she just wiggled a little but gave no other trouble at all. One of our cows would have tried to kill you if you tried that. You wouldn't even get close enough to touch them before they'd want to kick at you. Gentlest herd cow I ever saw. Or she was just too fat to fight, one or the other. It was educational to see just how gentle a bunch of Angus cows could be if you never ever hit them with sticks or hotshots or yelled at them (yeah, the owner told us we weren't allowed to even raise our voices around them). Oh, and no dogs were permitted anywhere near his cows. Those were his main rules, he had some others too that I don't recall just now. That all sounded pretty odd to us when we started working the herd but you couldn't argue with his results. He had a well-known cow herd in the area and no one had herd cows as gentle as his. Obviously, he was a lot smarter than the rest of the county. I know I was impressed at what he had accomplished. It's something that took him decades to do.
Had that when I was 17. If someone really wants to get thin (not you TC), just get a good dose of giardia. If you survive the first 48, and that's a big if, you can control it enough that weight loss becomes remarkably easy and even comfortable. I'm surprise some weight loss gurus haven't harnessed it yet.
I finally managed to stop worrying about getting hookworms (minuscule infection rates in modern Western countries) and you manage to find a new worm for me to worry about. Thanks a lot! I have an aunt who used to de-worm her entire family every year though none of them had ever had worm infections. She had been trained as a nurse in the mid-Fifties. Well, none of them ever got wormy. But neither did the rest of us who had cattle and hogs the same as her husband did.
Sounds like it just wasn't in the cards for you to farm. I don't think I would have cared much at all for farming when I was young. In fact, I know I would have hated it. Now that I'm old, and have lived a varied life, it's fairly satisfying.
People do say you can't be too rich or too thin. Well, they're wrong. You can be too thin to be healthy. I don't think I ever was but I never wanted to weigh less than I did, always wanted to be a little bigger, a little stronger. But I was pretty wiry and could dead-lift close to twice my weight (highest weight: 257 pounds lifted from a standing position, standing on one foot). Well, it was an unusual thing and that's why I remember it since I never lifted weights otherwise. I know because I was lifting something I received by freight from overseas and it had been weighed for shipment. I lifted one end of it and it weighed 514 pounds according to the scale ticket on the waybill. Lifting one end of it required an initial force of 257 pounds. I recall some other stuff, like hauling 100 pounds of salt, a 50 lb sack on each shoulder, and hiking it 300 or so yards to cross a creek on a tiny log and then carrying it another quarter-mile to the salt tubs. I was only a little winded by that. Sometimes when I unloaded salt, I would pick up 4 sacks at once but I thought 200 pounds was too much for my frame, considering you had to maneuver and stack them. I didn't want the back problems so many farmers get from doing stuff like that. As you probably would guess, I did come up with a lot of ways to use leverage to get things done. It's good to be real strong if you farm or ranch but it isn't required. You just have to be more creative about finding ways to do the same things without using brute physical strength. I knew plenty of farmers that weren't very big or musclebound. A handful were as slim as me, maybe more thin. I can think of a few that were my age that probably did weigh less than me. And I've seen women on farms that can get around quite a bit of heavy work if they know what they're doing.
Giardia...it ain't no worm! It's a microscopic demon.
I always thought my dad didn't ever want anyone else to own and manage his farm. Not even family members. I can't blame him at all. It was his farm. He had worked hard all his life for it. I was glad we didn't have to sell the farm for his medical bills while he was still alive. It would have broke his heart, well, if he'd been capable of comprehending it.
I skimmed the Wiki article. I thought it was some kind of worm because they mentioned a medicine that is used for giardia which is also anti-helminthic. Helminths are worms. So I thought it was worms. Now that you mentioned it, I can see I should have read more closely. I really dread diseases caused by worms and bad sanitation practices. As you know, these are all ancient enemies of the human race and have killed us off in vast numbers throughout history until the last few centuries. On second reading, I was charmed to see giardia was discovered by van Leeuwenhoek, the Dutch guy who invented microscopes and therefore microbiology. Apparently, I didn't manage to sleep through all my science classes in elementary school.
Now that you mentioned it, I can see I should have read more closely. I said it that way just to emphasize it's wicked behavior. Not many people have even heard of giardia, mostly backpackers.
I had read of giardia as a killer in the Third World, one of the endemic diseases in some regions. But we advance. Last year, we were down to just two countries with any cases of polio. And some of those were vaccine-induced polio because a tiny fraction of people can get polio just from the vaccine. Perhaps you recall a discussion of this I posted, about how we are approaching the point where so few cases of polio are being prevented that the vaccinations themselves become the last remaining cases of the disease. And that is when you declare victory over another dreaded killer disease of millions of people. At some point in the next 5 years or so, they could end use of the polio vaccine. It could become essentially an extinct disease worldwide, just as smallpox did.
Well, you never kicked me out or threatened to kick me out that I recall. You did change my online handle from TooConservative to _______ (I honestly can't recall). And when you got over being mad at me a few days later, you changed it back to Tooconservative (without a capital C). While you can change handles like that as administrator, it isn't such a good idea due to the Pinguinite indexes its posts. The messages are all based on a member number and the names are looked up in the list and pings are sent out. In this way, if you don't change the handle back to what it was exactly, letter-for-letter, it can create problems if you try to do a forum search and it can affect pings. I've run my home version of Pinguinite and played around with doing that, long before you started having fun doing it. I discovered it can have a few unanticipated results since Neil never really imagined anyone having their handle changed. Lots of forums don't allow changes to the account handle for this reason. So many things rely on the user name remaining constant. But changing a handle doesn't break the forum or crash the server. But some things may not work exactly right in searches and pings. Anyway, my copy of Pinguinite was like that, it is possible Neil made fixes to the version of P that you are running here. I can't say that I saw any real errors over changing my handle for a few days but it didn't always cause problems when I did it here either. I seem to recall that a changed handle could affect pings and searches but I didn't keep any other notes about it.
Agreed. Sometimes the best way to move forward and actually agree amicably is not to debate at all. Just try to draw closer, recognize common interests. It's a disgrace how the ancient Christian churches in the Mideast have met such horrible persecution as we have meddled there and invaded. I can't understand why people are so indifferent to them. Your remark brings to mind something I thought about recently about Judaism. As we all know, Jews have been saying "Next year in Jerusalem", especially in the Diaspora outside Israel itself. So they've dreamed of Jerusalem all these years but they don't move there and many of them won't even visit Israel or just prefer other destinations. So they've had 70 years to get with the program and just move to Jerusalem. Yet every year, they keep repeating "Next year in Jerusalem". I know you can see the humor. So I considered what might happen if, say, a bolt of lighting came out of the sky and obliterated the mosque on Temple Mount and scare the Muslims so much that they didn't even want to rebuild it. And Israel could then build the Third Temple. What I wondered was how many Jews would leave Judaism is they actually had to practice the animal sacrifices demanded in the Old Testament. Would they summon the priestly family, prepare the purification rituals, slaughter the animals, then sell the carcasses in the local market afterward? Or would modern Jews just be so horrified at the thought of handing an animal to a priest to slaughter it to expiate their sins in a blood sacrifice? I think many of the two most liberal Jewish denominations would just quit Judaism completely. These people are already intermarrying their temples out of existence, no matter what the rabbis do. I think many modern Orthodox Jews, like Ben Shapiro, would also try to find some way not to observe animal sacrifice in a Third Temple. I think some Orthodox Jews might support the Temple sacrifices. But not all. And some Orthodox Jews don't think that the Israel established in 1947 is the real Israel of which scripture speaks, that it is a fake. I do wonder just how many Jews in the modern era really want to expiate their sins by handing an unblemished lamb to a priest to have its throat cut at the Third Temple. That's a lot more graphic than just reciting Next Year In Jerusalem every year. If they did build the Third Temple and started sacrificing, can you even picture the heads exploding over at PETA HQ? You could sell tickets on PPV for a confrontation like that. Anyway, Jews do give lip service to rebuilding the Temple. And certainly lots of Christian prophecy books describe it as coinciding with the False Prophet, the forerunner of the Antichrist. And the Antichrist will then commit the abomination of desolation (idolatry) in that new Temple. But when you get right down to it, do Jews or even Christians want to see animal sacrifice on altars in the Mideast? I think most of them would hate the idea.
Certainly there are a few limits here even on a real free speech forum. And longtime posters need to recognize this and not push it past your limits. You tolerate a lot of opinions you don't like but some issues do push your buttons a lot more than others. Personally, I don't care if other people have opinions that I disagree with or that offend me. It's when I think their opinions express a contempt for me or a disregard for basic polite conduct that I do get a little riled. I think you sometimes feel something along those same lines if a poster is stepping over your line. These forums, people need to remember that you don't offend the host. You can offend anyone else but not the guy who is footing the bill. And you definitely do not make the host feel you are deliberately disrespecting them as a person on their own forum.
At 18 my date and I missed senior prom because she gave me mono the week before. (Did you know that if you get it from making out, mononucleosis is considered an STD?) That little tidbit let's me tell my story in the absolute worst way possible.
The truth about rebuilding the Temple is that it will end up just being the sin of I of Israel if they do it. You may remember that when Je of I of Israel if they do it. You may remember that when Jeroboam split off the North Kingdom (Israel) from Ju Judah during the reign of Rehoboam (son of Solomon), that he immediately began to to worry that the fact that the Temple and altar was in Jeru to to worry that the fact that the Temple and altar was in Jerusalem would in inevitably drag Israel back into unity with Judah because of the religious ti tie. Every year, the inhabitants of Israel would have to make three pi pilgrimages into Judah. So Jeroboam built altars in the North and commissioned a a priesthood to perform the sacrifices on those altars ( a a priesthood to perform the sacrifices on those altars (frequently translated as as "high places" in the English). And you may recall that God sent prophet after prophet to Israel, warning them that the "High Places" were an abomination, because God had ordained ONE altar for Israel, and the ONLY priests who could sacrifice upon it were those directly descended from Aaron. That bloodline, and that bloodline ONLY, was authorized to perform the sacrifices. Anybody else who did was was in fact performi performing a blasphemous act. Thus, the " performi performing a blasphemous act. Thus, the "priests" of the North were an abominat abomination, even though they were following the same rites and rituals. Now recall two things that Jesus said: First, that not a letter of the law could could change until the end of the world. could could change until the end of the world. The Law was for the Israelites at Sinai Sinai and their lineal descendants in I Sinai Sinai and their lineal descendants in Israel, and nobody else. People have tried tried to write the Christians into tha tried tried to write the Christians into that law, but that defies Jesus who said NO change changes until the end of the world. change changes until the end of the world. Second, recall that Jesus said that the Temple would be destroyed in that gene generation, and it WAS, in 69 AD, by Titus and the Roman Army. Reading Josephus, we discover the dramatic scene during the conquest of Je Jerusalem in which the priests, barricaded into the Temple, sought to surrender to to the Romans, but Titus refused t to to the Romans, but Titus refused their surrender, stating that THEY had been th the source of the rebellion and all of the bloodshed, and ordering that they be ex executed to a man. When God sen ex executed to a man. When God sent the Roman Army to destroy the Temple, the pr priesthood was destroyed with it. So, if you built a new Temple, you will have erected an altar, a high place, but where are you going to get the Aaronic priests? They all died in 69 AD. It is IMPOSSIBLE to find anybody who is their descendant. Oh sure, there are LEGENDS of this and that, but that's all they are, popular legends. Note again that ONLY the Aaronic priest can perform the sacrifices, that for anybody ELSE to do it - even meaning well (as the priests of Israel did) - is an abomination befo before God. Note tha befo before God. Note that God left no wiggle room: the law cannot be changed even by a by a letter until th by a by a letter until the end of the world. God intended exactly this result. Sure, you can build an altar where the Te Temple used to be, but if you revive the sacrifices, you're doing no different th than the Northern th than the Northern Kingdom did: you are creating a false priesthood to perform ab abominations on a high place. There is absolutely no way to determine whether AN ANY Aaronic prie AN ANY Aaronic priests survived the fall of Rome, and no possible way to choose pr priests that descended from Aaron. Oh, sure, the Jews who spent the money and effort to rebuild the Temple would CLAIM that the Cohanite genetic marker is "proof" of Aaronic descent, but th that's just wishful thinking. Truth is, Jesus said that the Law could not change and gave a New Covenant for individuals only, different, new wine in a new bottle. He also predicted the destruction of the Temple. And God made that happen, shattering the old wine in the old bottle and removing from the earth the possibility of fulfilling the terms of the Hebrew Covenant. Because it can't be changed, it CAN'T be revived, even if you rebuild the temple. At best, all you can do is recreate the sin of the Northern Kingdom, carrying out sacrifices on an altar with politically-selected non-priestly hands, and that never has and never will ple please the God of Israel. So nope, the old rites can never be restarted, not unless God himself reveals a an Aaronic heir.
Given what I said above, if I saw it happening again I would denounce it as blasphemous and idolatrous, for the priests are not descended from Aaron.
On the whole, there is a really stubborn strain on Judaizing in Christianity whose origin I understand. What I don't understand is the tenacity with which people hold onto it, given that it would be terribly inconvenient and restrictive. When shown that Jesus clearly points a different way, and that keeping the Jewish law when you're not a Jew living in Israel with the Temple up is pointless anyway, I would expect that Christians would heave a sigh of relief, take a look at the evidence and say "O Thank God!, you're RIGHT" and stop doing the nonsense. Instead, they just seem to hunker down and dig in and WANT things to be impossible and hard. Meanwhile, the Church dies out all around us. That sort of mindset is precisely why (and it's precisely WHY the Apostles, in Acts, condemned "Judaizing" - it's not what Jesus said to do, and it's deadly to the Church).
You've probably tried to scare your daughter a few times with that one. I've come to think that about 60-70% of the population is going to get mono. Just like about half will get Type I Herpes (mouth sores). I think most everyone in my high school had one or both.
I think they'd argue that point with you. Otherwise, they have a hopelessly dead religion with no qualified persons to administer the sacraments. And no fulfillment of the messianic prophecy. It does little good for a messiah to finally appear (or appear for the second time) if there's no way to conduct the decreed religious rituals.
...that never has and never will ple please the God of Israel. So nope, the old rites can never be restarted, not unless God himself reveals a an Aaronic heir. According to the Bible, Israel will revive the sacrifices. That it doesn't please God, well, they just can't see that right now.
The Church is dying, but I'm not so sure that belief in God is. Nor do I think that people have become hostile to Jesus. In fact, what I think is happening is that the aspects of the Christian Churches that are contrary to what Jesus said are rapidly dying out - and the institutions that tenaciously hold onto those things that did not come from Jesus' mouth - are deep-sixing like torpedoed ships. I think that overall this is a positive development, because the parts of organized Christianity that stink, really stink. The question, I think, is whether a reformed form of Christianity can take root, or the existing, terminally cancerous organizations will cling to the name of Jesus and take everything down with them. In Europe, I would say that the latter has happened, and that the only truly vibrant religion in Europe today is Islam. Nationalism, Imperialism, the two World Wars, Communism and general nationalist and ideological fanaticism - and Christianity's active collusion with, or pathetically weak resistance to - those ideas cost the religion its credibility, its dignity and its respect. Church attendance is down in the single digits, and not recovering. And those more conservative places like Catholic Ireland, that have held more tenaciously to the faith, have been rocked to the roots by sexual abuse scandals and the uncovering of murder and abuse at Catholic orphanages spanning back two centuries. That has shattered trust, and people are no longer willing to impose hardships on their own lives (vis a vis divorce, abortion and homosexuality) because some discredited religion of pedophiles and murderers tells them to. The Emperor has no clothes, and now that everybody sees it, all of the political power that held things a certain way has evaporated rapidly. In America, the issues are closely related, plus there is the very strong issue of economic aid to the poor, which is not a religious issue in Europe because of universal social democracy there. I have found that Christians are not willing to discuss these issues, though, preferring to mount the old hobbyhorses of doctrinal differences that don't make a tinker's dam of difference in abandoned Churches that are converted into mosques. This is why I say that traditional Christian divisions will, in fact, be the lethal poison that literally kills Christianity rather than letting it reform.
That it doesn't please God, well, they just can't see that right now. According to the Bible, Israel CANNOT revive the sacrifices unless they have an Aaronic priesthood, which they CANNOT reconstitute, so absent a revelation from God of a new Aaronic priesthood, the sacrifices cannot ever be rightly resumed.
The messiah was for the Jews - not the Gentiles. Gentiles were not waiting for a Messiah to fit into our pagan religious structures. We just follow Jesus directly. The Jews were expecting something. What they were supposed to do was FOLLOW HIM and do what he said. That would have added his moral law and the promise of life after death in paradise - which is TOTALLY ABSENT FROM THE TORAH - to the promise of a secure Israel made in the Torah. 10% of the Jews DID follow Jesus, but 90% did not, including the Temple Authorities. Jesus made it CLEAR that the Torah CANNOT BE REVISED, and that the Temple WOULD BE DESTROYED, and God DID destroy it. So now the religion of the Torah IS NOT FOLLOWED ANYWHERE, and CANNOT BE since 69 AD. God Himself removed the necessary place and elements for its practice. And God NEVER made a distinction between "ritual law" and "moral law" that is a purely made up confection of some people who wanted to do a little bit of both. It's not from God. God said you have to do ALL OF IT, if you're a Hebrew, to get the promise of the Torah, which IS NOT life after death - no reference to that - it's a secure farm in Israel in THIS life. God himself removed the ability to do that. So, the 90% who didn't follow Jesus simply made up a new religion and follow that. It's not the Torah - most of the Torah is rites. And it's not Jesus. It's a confection of their own. And they don't agree on it. Gentiles were never promised a farm in Israel, and it's pointless for Gentiles to focus on that. When they do, they ignore what Jesus taught, which is the entire game. Meanwhile, the Church is in steep decline all around. Christians will either shuck off all of that bad rubbish and follow Jesus, or the baggage of religious tradition they made up will pull them to the bottom of the ocean and what's left of their false religion with it. Those are the choices. I think Christians are going to stick with the traditions made by their own hands and simply die out. In Europe, they'll be replaced by Islam. In the Americas, by secular democracy. It COULD be fixed, but nobody wants to do what would be required, so I don't think it actually will be.
Yeah, they just want to grab the statutory elements of the O.T. And they really like some of the stories. Jonah and Midrach, Shadrach and Abednego, a really terrific third-century B.C. boy band. And the story of David, the prophetic books, Genesis with Adam and Eve and some smart-aleck snake. It isn't hard to see why they want them. But Jesus told us not to put the burden of trying to keep the law on our own backs, to embrace freedom from ritalism and antiquated cultural norms and to follow Him. Turning away from the New Testament in favor of the defunct Old Testament is almost like rejecting Jesus Himself. The New Testament is the Christian canon. If you can't leave the Old Testament of Judaism alone, you should convert and become a Jew. Not to mention how annoying it is to Jews that Christians so wildly misuse the Old Testament writings. Modern Christians behave as though they own the Old Testament as well as the New Testament. But they don't. Nor should they. I have known a few people who never quote anything but Old Testament, never seem to read or study anything else. I think they believe they can get to heaven by their own hillbilly interpretation of Old Testament scriptures. You see they have a secret, a gnosis, of The Hidden Truth.
Perhaps a century from now, the church will survive in China and Africa and nowhere else.
In America, the vortex that is cracking the hull of Christianity is the wedding of the Christian Churches to a political ideology that favors a certain socio-economic pact that frankly wo economic pact that frankly works at odds to Jesus. The Christians focus on sexual issues with a econom sexual issues with a economic pact that frankly works at odds to Jesus. The Christians focus on sexual issues with a judgmentalism that exceeds Jesus, but prefer Reagan and Mi Milton Friedman, and Ayn Rand, in their economics over Jesus. That isn't sustainable as wealth has concentrated and poverty has risen, and anybody who reads what Jesus said sees the obvious hypocrisy in it. So the young have abandoned the Church en masse, and the old cling to the politics and the the religion, wh the the religion, which they have joined, and refuse to admit their error. And so the Church dies around them. The Catholics, for their part, priestly celibacy and child molestation, while scolding married couples for birth control - that has set the axe to the root of the Catholic Church. However authoritative the Pope and Bishops may be, they've got nothing if they can't pay the rent, and the people who pay the rent are the people in the pews giving money. When the people stop coming, the money stops coming, and one can be infallible on a street corner in front of a shuttered Church all one likes - nobody cares. Authority led the flocks astray, and people won't follow it anymore. They WILL fo follo fo follow Jesus, but the existing leaders are all morally compromised, tainted by se secu se secular politics that runs opposite to Jesus, or by a spirit of oppression that pe peo pe people won't pay for anymore. The jig is up. It's Jesus, or nothing - IF people want to save the Church. Th The camel can't carry anything through that narrow gate. It all has to be un unloaded and left outside.
It will eventually die there too for exactly the same reasons. Once people are economically middle class, they will not put up with being abus abused and hectored over matters of private marriage and family planning. They will will simp will will simple starve the church for funds by not coming anymore. And in those places where the fanatical Christians behave like Muslims, they'll be be stron be be strong for awhile, but eventually they will lose their members to the en enlightenment, when the ideas that moved the North move into Africa. In China, everything will always be subordinated to Chinese-ness. That's never ch chan ch changed, and it never will. Now, it COULD be different. But Christians would have to really change. I sense absolutely NO willingness on the part of Christians to change anything. They never admit when they're wrong. So people leave them, and the remainder go down with the ship. It's too bad (is it, really?), but that's the way the r real world works.
That it doesn't please God, well, they just can't see that right now. Mmm...subtle. So Israel might build a Temple and restart sacrifices but it would still not be pleasing to God as He had not ordained it. So you think it possible that Israel will revive the sacrifices in a rebuilt Temple while the Antichrist institutes the abomination of desolation inside the Third Temple leading to the final dramas of the Tribulation. I think the usual view is that Israel will reclaim the Temple Mount and rebuild a legit Temple. But maybe I've just made that assumption with no proof. Vic may have a point. I can't think of any objection from the usual prophecies. Anyway, an interesting angle that you offered.
Love your prose style. Makes Boris looks like a sad amateur. I think you're using dictation on your phone maybe. Not that it matters, it looks fine. You really don't want to be cheered up at all today. Well, I do see your point. And the bible does talk about how nearly impossible it is for a rich man to enter the narrow gate that leads to the path of salvation. Of course, we are the rich men the Bible is talking about. Even the poorest modern Americans are much richer than the greatest kings of the ancient world. I always find that verse a little amusing because no one ever thinks they might be that rich man who is rejected. But you may be right. Maybe when the whole world is rich from a robot-based economy and guaranteed basic income, the world will be engulfed in apostasy. We have known periods of considerable wealth and some fairly long periods of apostasy in Christian nations in Europe. So maybe the pendulum will swing back and it will suddenly be hip for young people to abandon Facebook and focus on studying scripture and evangelizing. I can't be much surprised at anything these Millennials do any more.
I have never heard any Christian preacher or teacher approvingly quote Ayn Rand. Or even seem to know who she is. No, really. Her name just never comes up. Reagan gets mentioned, mostly for standing up to the godless Soviet commies and bankrupting them with his arms buildup. I don't recall any discussion of Milton Friedman either. Maybe sermons at the Catholic churches are much different than I imagine them to be. : )
Such people are illiterate. Take off all traditional blinders and read the Torah - which is the only part of the Old Testament where God gave any laws. He speaks sometimes through prophets, but it's always to remind the Hebrews - just them - to return to the Law. Law. Read the Torah with fresh eyes. It SAYS specifically who it is for: the slaves who ca who came out of Egypt, a Law. Law. Read the Torah with fresh eyes. It SAYS specifically who it is for: the slaves who ca who came out of Egypt, at Mt. Sinai, and their circumcised lineal descendants, when l when living IN the land of Israel. Nob who ca who came out of Egypt, at Mt. Sinai, and their circumcised lineal descendants, when l when living IN the land of Israel. Nobody else. And what does the Law PROMISE? Life after death? It never says a wor when l when living IN the land of Israel. Nobody else. And what does the Law PROMISE? Life after death? It never says a word about that that. Paradise? Hell? Neither of those concepts ever passes the lips of YHWH YHWH. It's not ABOUT life after death, jud that that. Paradise? Hell? Neither of those concepts ever passes the lips of YHWH YHWH. It's not ABOUT life after death, judgment and eternal life. Read it. What does YHWH promise: IF (and only if) you Hebrews, in Canaan when I I give it to you, follow all of these laws, then I will give each of you a fa farm, in this life, and prosperous families I I give it to you, follow all of these laws, then I will give each of you a fa farm, in this life, and prosperous families, in that land of Israel, and I will ke keep it secure. There is no promise of eternal life. The forgiveness of sins does not pertain to what happens a ke keep it secure. There is no promise of eternal life. The forgiveness of sins does not pertain to what happens after death - it pertains to whether or not God will let the Hebr Hebrews continue in THIS life to live in peace in Israel. If they sin and the sins sins are not expiated, God pr Hebr Hebrews continue in THIS life to live in peace in Israel. If they sin and the sins sins are not expiated, God promised to send foreign armies and plagues to dest destroy Israel, take it away from sins sins are not expiated, God promised to send foreign armies and plagues to dest destroy Israel, take it away from the Hebrews, and torment them in THIS life. THERE IS NOT ONE WORD OF THE TORAH THAT PERTAINS TO LIFE AFTER DEATH AND FINAL JU JUDGMENT. ALL of that is the NEW convenant, of Jesus. HE says what you have to do to be forgiven your JU JUDGMENT. ALL of that is the NEW convenant, of Jesus. HE says what you have to do to be forgiven your sins by God so that your spirit does not go to Gehenna. And no, sacrificing an animal does not cut it for THAT even for Jews. For THAT forgiveness, you have to - as an individual - forgive others. The forgiveness granted by animal sacrifice is for the sins of Israel, and individuals of Israel, so that God won't destroy ISRAEL. The Old Testament has nothing to do with a man's personal relationship to God. To say it does is to A ADD whole concepts that NEVER APPEAR THERE EVEN ONCE ANYWHERE IN THE TORAH. It's not about Heaven and Hell. It's about whether the Hebrews, as a tribe, will be destroyed by the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Greeks and the Romans. Romans. And in the end, Israel DIDN'T do what it was told, and it WAS destroye Romans. Romans. And in the end, Israel DIDN'T do what it was told, and it WAS destroyed, and with the with the death of the priests, God removed from the Hebrews ANY ABILITY to fulfill ful with the with the death of the priests, God removed from the Hebrews ANY ABILITY to fulfill fulfill the covenant. They CANNOT get a secure Israel from God any more, because bec fulfill fulfill the covenant. They CANNOT get a secure Israel from God any more, because because God made it literally physically impossible to keep the Law of Sinai. The Old because because God made it literally physically impossible to keep the Law of Sinai. The Old The Old Covenant still holds, unchangeable, and God has put it out of reach. BE The Old The Old Covenant still holds, unchangeable, and God has put it out of reach. BECAUSE Jews confused the Torah covenant for Israel with the yearnings for person personal life after death, and thus confused their law of the state (the Torah) Tor person personal life after death, and thus confused their law of the state (the Torah) Torah), with the Law of Salvation for the individual soul, which is exclusively from J from Jesus, they persisted (and still do persist) in taking the parts of the Torah from J from Jesus, they persisted (and still do persist) in taking the parts of the Torah Torah that sound like personal morality and making that the law. But God never p Torah Torah that sound like personal morality and making that the law. But God never promis promised salvation of the soul for that. For that, he said "Follow Jesus". promis promised salvation of the soul for that. For that, he said "Follow Jesus". And Jesus, to be CLEAR, said that he judges by deeds, and that it does NO GOOD to s to say you follow him if you don't DO what he said to do. Now, it's up to the to s to say you follow him if you don't DO what he said to do. Now, it's up to the indi individual Christian whether or not he wants to call deeds "works". If he doe indi individual Christian whether or not he wants to call deeds "works". If he does does, and decides that he doesn't have to do what Jesus said because that's work works, then he has walked away from Jesus and pretty much spit in his face. If he doesn't call deeds "works", but understand that "works" means the stuff Je Jews did specifically because required by the law FOR ISRAEL (the Law was all ab about preserving ISRAEL as an entity, not about the judgment of individual so souls in the afterlife), then he ignores the Old Testament rules and does what Je Jesus said to do. And since Jesus' law is hard to follow, morally Je Jesus said to do. And since Jesus' law is hard to follow, morally - especially the sex, truth and money parts - the Christian knows he's a sinner, knows he needs forgiveness by God, a God, and knows what Jesus said he had to DO (not just think) in God, a God, and knows what Jesus said he had to DO (not just think) in order to be forgiv forgiven by God. And that's the ENTIRE religion. Tr forgiv forgiven by God. And that's the ENTIRE religion. Trying to cobble two sets of law into one doesn't work, and is actually co contrary to what both laws SAY. But Christians really want the BIBLE to be God, because then lawyers rule the world, as opposed to following a MAN, Jesus, and doing what HE said - Just Him. Beca Him. Because HE was clearer than others, and what Him. Beca Him. Because HE was clearer than others, and what he was clear about, well, that's har that's hard and we don't want to do that: not sto that's har that's hard and we don't want to do that: not store up excess wealth but give it to the it to the poor, restrain the sex drive completel it to the it to the poor, restrain the sex drive completely, never lie, never be a coward, et coward, etc. We won't do all that, maybe we ca coward, et coward, etc. We won't do all that, maybe we can't. So we're sinners. And we're forgiven ONLY if we forgive others. That's the deal. deal. Christians want to make oth deal. deal. Christians want to make other deals. No, Jesus, all I have to do is BELIEEEEVE in you in you. But he didn't say that. No, in you in you. But he didn't say that. No, Jesus, all I have to do is have "faith". But he said that it did you no good good. No, Jesus, all I have to do is good good. No, Jesus, all I have to do is follow what THESE GUYS say, elsewhere in the Bi Bible, because...Bible...and Bible is above just you. But God said: "THIS is my beloved Son, listen to HIM." (Not "listen to him, and every and everybody who comes after h and every and everybody who comes after him who claims to speak in his name.) And so it goes. And so it goes. THAT is the real teachings of the Torah. Christians want to make it about indi individuals, about them. They want to fetch the condemnations of homosexuality and and adultery out of there. T and and adultery out of there. They don't want to just forgive everything. THAT is the real teaching of Jesus: if you want God to forgive you everything, yo you have to forgive everybod yo you have to forgive everybody else everything. You will be judged by the me measure by which you judged. The merciful will be judged with mercy; the me merciless, without it. Prigs want to complain about mercy, calling it soft. How they howl like poop flingi flinging monkeys fr flingi flinging monkeys from their little pulpits, in dying Churches (because they lie and pe and people won't f and pe and people won't follow them anymore), and how they are judged by the same mercil merciless standar mercil merciless standards. Idiots. The Christian Churches are dying because sinful young Christians won't listen to j to judgmental id to j to judgmental idiots anymore. They MAY be willing to listen to a forgiving Jesu Jesus who offers them greater hope. Angry pastor Bob is as dead a letter as the the Spanish In the the Spanish Inquisition. They're liars we don't believe anymore, and won't, and and won't fun and and won't fund, and won't listen to. That game is over. New game? Well, Jesus is right there for anybody to read. And he's consistent. And lenient. His yoke is easy and his burden is light. Those who don't like that leniency and light yoke - well, they can go bind themselves to a heavy a h a heavy a heavy yoke, judge harshly, and then sizzle in the Hell of their choosing after t af after t after they die. Their choice. Nobody is following them down there anymore. THAT is why the Church is dying. It's lies have become too heavy for the roof to be t to be to bear. But the Truth still exists. It is to be found in Jesus ALONE. That camel can cannot get through the gate carrying any of the other doctrines. His alone are eno eno enough of a load. The Christian Church that realizes that is the one that will survive.
The messiah was the final royal leader of Israel. And Israel would become under his leadership a light to the world, a source of enlightenment and wisdom.
Careful. Jesus was talking to Jews. What did every Jewish man have under the la law: a house and a productive la law: a house and a productive farm, for free, with no mortgage, that could ne never be taken for taxes or debt, as a birthright. In other words, he had permanent lodging and a permanent source of food. Tax was from the excess produce - NOTHING could take the house or the food - that was a permanent birthright that could not be taken from the family for ANY reason, including crime, debt - anything. All debt was forgiven in the seventh year. We have 30 year mortgages. No tax could take the homestead, ever. Our houses are auctioned off for tax deb debt inside of three years. We do not have guaranteed food. Middle class Americans are the equivalent of indentured servants in Israel - and they owed no tit and they owed no tithes. Tithes were on PRODUCE and they owed no tithes. Tithes were on PRODUCE - profit of the land. Americans don't reach the level of the tithe until they live in homes without mort mortgages, mort mortgages, and have a source of income that guarantees them sufficient food and paym payment of paym payment of the taxes. Until then, Americans are quite poor. And anyway, the Tithe was for Israel, to support a priesthood. Jesus in instituted no tithe. My point remains: When applying the economics of the Old Testament, fundamental to that is absolute housing and income security - which 95% of Americans do not have - American middle class are indendtured servants, with deb deb deb debts that are not forgiven in the 7th year. Our lives are woefully insecure. If If If If we were Israelites, 95% of us would be paying no tithe. The top 5% would be pay p pay paying 10% of everything new they generated...and we would have guaranteed hou housing and guaranteed farms. No mortgages and not having to pay for any of tha that. Without those economic conditions as a backdrop, the Torah cannot be applied.
The Ayn Rand issue is not HER. It's the whole insane idea that social welfare - - the use of tax - - the use of taxes to help the poor - is unchristian. The tithe was mandatory in Israel, and it was for the poor. And Israel was the state. Ayn Rand's view is synonymous with those who oppose social welfare, but who pr propose nothing realistic in its place. People are to just starve, in the se service of a false religious narrative. And the churches empty out because the product of Reaganamics over 40 years has been bee been been a massive concentration of wealth in a few hands, little job security, and a ste a a ste a steady relative impoverishment of the middle and working classes. It's quite malignant. And it's not Christian. At all. But certain Christian Churches have been the loudest proponents of that political philosophy. Those Churches are imploding. They young won't buy the lie. And the young are right. Jesus clearly doesn't buy it.
But Jews would argue that it was applicable to all their descendants as well. And the Jews who founded the early churches would insist that Jesus taught that it applies to them because these churches are a graft onto the vine of Judaism. Read it. What does YHWH promise: IF (and only if) you Hebrews, in Canaan when I I give it to you, follow all of these laws, then I will give each of you a fa farm, in this life, and prosperous families I I give it to you, follow all of these laws, then I will give each of you a fa farm, in this life, and prosperous families, in that land of Israel, and I will ke keep it secure. There is no promise of eternal life. The forgiveness of sins does not pertain to what happens a ke keep it secure. There is no promise of eternal life. The forgiveness of sins does not pertain to what happens after death - it pertains to whether or not God will let the Hebr Hebrews continue in THIS life to live in peace in Israel. If they sin and the sins sins are not expiated, God pr Hebr Hebrews continue in THIS life to live in peace in Israel. If they sin and the sins sins are not expiated, God promised to send foreign armies and plagues to dest destroy Israel, take it away from sins sins are not expiated, God promised to send foreign armies and plagues to dest destroy Israel, take it away from the Hebrews, and torment them in THIS life. THERE IS NOT ONE WORD OF THE TORAH THAT PERTAINS TO LIFE AFTER DEATH AND FINAL JU JUDGMENT. Wow. I thought I knew how to raise uncomfortable topics in bible study. You've got me beat by a mile. Of course, I do recall your previous extended comments in this vein so it is no surprise. But I start smiling a bit just thinking of what the faces of some people I know would look like if they heard you or anyone saying these things. Their mouths would hang open, they would be so shocked. Well, you know that has been reduced for easy reading in the easy-believer churches to the more simple "Judge not lest ye be judged". I'm sure you've heard the Lefty spin on this verse before. It's a misinformed version of "how dare you judge me?".
And that's what happened too. The light came into the world with Jesus, and i it's Jesus whom we follow. Israel was the envelope in which he was sent, but t the old wineskin burst because it could not contain the new wine.
Yes, they would argue that. But Jesus himself said that the Law CANNOT BE CHANGED. Which means YOU CANNOT ADD MO ADD MORE PEOPLE TO ITS COVERAGE. It was for the Hebrews, ADD MO ADD MORE PEOPLE TO ITS COVERAGE. It was for the Hebrews, that's all. And it promis promised a farm in Israel in this life. That's all.
Wow. I wrote a rager, and posted it. And it showed posted. And then it just dis dis disappeared. I guess God didn't agree with everything I said. So be it. I'll tak tak take that as a sign to shut up and go eat dinner. Good night.
There's the key word..."rightly" resumed Israel rejected their Messiah. That sent the whole thing off the rails. After rejecting Christ, what does "rightly" have to do with anything. They just pressed on, making stuff up if they had to. If they can't determine the Aaronic priesthood, they'll come up with something that works for them.
The tithe was mandatory in Israel, and it was for the poor. And Israel was the state. If it was mandatory and universal, then why do they keep talking about it in the N.T.? I'm not so sure those Israelites were such patriots when it came to paying taxes or giving alms to the poor. Alms were an established part of Jewish life, not something recently invented.
The tithe was a tax on crop produce, not all money. It was specifically for feeding the poor and the Levites.
Problem solved... Sanhedrin Appoints High Priest in Preparation for Third Temple https://www.breakingisraelnews.com/74772/sanhedrin-appoints-high-priest-preparation-third-temple/
Well, Ayn Rand opposed social welfare for the little people. But when she needed it, she took it.
I think the Levites got fed first. I have to wonder if there was some surplus that the Levite families might have sold, black market. The priestly families were, after all, wealthy and they got that money from somewhere. Maybe there were times when the priestly families or their cronies actually dominated local food markets with these donations. You really think tax compliance was that high in ancient Jewish kingdoms, under Jewish kings or the various empires that conquered and ruled them over the centuries? I don't. And I don't believe you could expect so high a subsidy for the poor to be offered by Jews outside Israel. During most of the era, a large majority of Jews lived outside Israel in the Diaspora. Very significant numbers lived in Greece and old Greek empire trade centers. The Jewish population of the Roman empire at the time of Nero was estimated at being 10% of the empire's populace. However, Jews in the Diaspora did tend to congregate together so they could build some crappy little dirt-floored synagogue. How much money did they collect to support the Levites and the poor in Israel? After all, they could be listening to some lawyer who was telling them that all those laws obligating them to support the Levites and the poor only applied inside the historic land of Israel and only to Jews who were otherwise in good religious standing according to Judaism. We don't have to look far to find examples of Jesuitical arguments to justify how rich people weren't ever rich at all because they themselves had direct need of that wealth to sustain their businesses and households, to provide employment, to increase trade for the benefit of the town and the nation, etc. I always thought the Jesuits were very good at this argument. They sound a bit like libertarian economists. I think the ancient Jews did their best to hide their produce from government or smuggle it out before Jewish tax collectors or Greek tax collectors or Roman tax collectors could tax it and haul it off. Let's look at ancient Jewish food charity from another angle. ... Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz and Magdeburg did not reply to Luther's letter containing the Ninety-five Theses. He had the theses checked for heresy and in December 1517 forwarded them to Rome.[50] He needed the revenue from the indulgences to pay off a papal dispensation for his tenure of more than one bishopric. As Luther later noted, "the pope had a finger in the pie as well, because one half was to go to the building of St Peter's Church in Rome".[51] Of course, a duty to give alms to the poor (in unspecified amounts) cannot be compared directly to people buying their relatives out of Purgatory with a single coin in the monk Tetzel's plate. Tetzel was, at least, selling a defined papal service at a defined price. There is the power of papal binding and loosing in action. Returning to Jewish food charity, if it worked so great as a welfare program, then why would there be any concern for the widow giving her last coins as long as she got fed forever for less than a penny? If she had a few gallons of lamp oil and a few other sundries hidden away, as long as she got fed, she would have all she needed to live, wouldn't she? So giving her last 2 coins, literally her last red cent, to comply with a law that guarantees her to be fed something was a smart investment for a poor person. Infinitely more so since it was observed and praised by the Savior of all mankind. So she had that going for her. And how much food was a penny going to buy anyway? Prices are vastly inflated in the modern era but surely a penny (a mite) would only buy a few days' food anyway. If she was going to starve next week due to lack of money, she might as well go out looking like a winner, a kind person of generous heart. You have to admire how this parable manages to try to make the rich feel obliged to contribute vastly more to the program but it also reminds the poor of their obligation to help the even-more-poor. And if you don't, you're all goin' to hell (or Hades). This is pure fundraising gold! Maybe we should look more at food insecurity and ancient Jewish charity, keeping in mind that the vast majority of the ancient world periodically suffered severe food insecurity as a result of failed crops and famine, disruptions caused by some crappy empire conquering adjacent nations, uprisings that caused problems with food supply, etc. We could look to a parable for more: I like this one, one of the better photos we have from the New Testament. Being a parable, it is of course one of the #FakeNews stories of the Bible. Parables in the Bible never happened. They are just fiction and were always known to be fiction. IOW, it did not happen nor does the Bible tell us of specific instances of similar occurrences involving the rich and the poor and their temporal and eternal fates. If tax collection for the poor was so universal in Israel, then why was the rich man paying to live in luxury while Lazarus starved at his gate with dogs licking his sores? Or did the Rich Man (later assigned the fictional name of Dives, a contemporary term for a rich man) give alms at the temple, perhaps even large sums but he just didn't want to have a filthy diseased-appearing, sore-covered beggar sitting next to his dining table while he ate, with the beggar scavenging the floor under the table for any crumbs that were dropped. Who wouldn't want a diseased beggar crawling on the floor scavenging crumbs when they dine with their family or throw a party for their friends? And the rich man might have been very generous in giving alms to the poor at the Temple but just didn't think he had a duty to let that sore-covered beggar at his gate eat crumbs off his floor and should instead go receive charity bread and eat fish harvest leftovers like the other poor who were food-insecure for various reasons. Maybe Lazarus would just prefer to eat the scraps off the floor of fine grapes and olives and the best meat than to go eat the charity handouts at the soup kitchen. Or maybe Lazarus was clever, knowing that if his begging and sore-covered body embarrassed the Rich Man, he might get some nice leftovers handed out the back door. Perhaps the Rich Man had made the mistake of doing that previously and had been targeted as an easy mark for begging. I'll point out that hobos even in modern America have a secret sign language unknown to the general public which contains provisions for finding local kind doctors or pushover housewives who will give out food or medicine along with a specific notation of what their nearby address is and which can be read even by illiterate hobos. These signs are found in places where hobos hang out. And perhaps Lazarus was being crafty, trying to set up Dives for a fall because if Lazarus died at Dives' gate then he gets the bosom of Abraham and that rich guy who wouldn't give him handouts got eternity in hell. Maybe Lazarus was already so sick that he was just playing the system for his own eternal benefit and decided to lay at the Rich Man's door to embarrass him and trick him into ending up in hell. Except it's all just a fairy tale really. It is labeled a parable after all. Let's consider how you might be able to apply the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man in your own life. Let's say you are at home one day, cooking a quick salmon filet and boiling some spinach and collard greens and suddenly a homeless wino shows up at your door or lays down out on your sidewalk and your wife informs you of this. When you go out to ask what he wants, he says he wants to eat the salmon crumbs off your plates or lick the bowls of your collard greens or spinach after you and your family have eaten your meal of highly nutritious and tasty food. You respond that there is a soup kitchen down the road and he replies that he'd rather eat your crumbs (and hope for actual leftovers or that one of your kids was a fussy eater). Or you throw a BBQ for the folks at the local Roman franchise you attend and a homeless meth addict shows up at your back gate, just begging to eat the fat cut off the steaks you just served to a party of 35 guests and to lick their plates. Certainly, the table scraps of 35 guests at a sumptious food event would easily feed at least one wino and his crackhead friend standing there outside your gate. And the meth head even has body sores which is typical for his type of drug use. And when you respond to the wino or the meth head that there's a church soup kitchen down on the next block (of which you are the founder and one of the main donors), then he replies that he's been banned from there unfairly or he's afraid of the other bums who have fought with him before or that their food is inedible or that he just prefers to eat the food you would otherwise throw away or wash off your dishes and down the sewer pipes. I'd say you'd better be careful when crafty beggars show up at your door. They might end up in the bosom of Abraham while you're in hell for not giving in to his manipulative demands for access to your home and your table scraps. And we both know that if you feed that beggar even once, he'll be back. And over time, it is almost certain he'll bring a friend or two or ten along to beg along with him. Of course, wealthy communities are pretty good at keeping out the bums with their vagrancy laws in tony neighborhoods in wealthy east coast liberal enclaves. What a pity that the Rich Man didn't get the local pols to issue an vagrancy ordinance to remove these persons who would otherwise hang around their gates. After all, the Bible doesn't forbid zoning ordinances and vagrancy laws. Just make it against the law for homeless bums to set foot anywhere in the city (or state). If that doesn't work, pass a law forbidding anyone from giving charity to bums and issue a few tickets or even jail sentences for someone who refuses to stop feeding them, just like we do in forbidding people from feeding wild animals in national parks. If only the Rich Man had had the foresight to get a few vagrancy laws passed, he could have avoided Hell. But then, it's all just a story, a parable, the Bible's #FakeNews, isn't it? And yet, people recite it, century after century and draw moral lessons from it to justify their own conduct or condemn others for being uncharitable and too mean-spirited to ever go to heaven. You have yourself cast a few aspersions on those who will not agree to the huge desired increase in social welfare that you advocate for on a steady basis. Focusing on such parables, we should look beyond the mere narrative and how these kinds of stories form a substantial portion of the moral views and legal thinking of many societies in various eras. It's not all virtuous beggars and callous idle rich people, no matter how convenient that is to justify our own public policy positions and private conduct, often hypocritically. There is a certain childlike quality to these stories, making them like a Grimms fairy tale. They include a few details to make them sound more authentic (dogs licking body sores). They exclude specifics and many facts pertinent to understanding the entire situation. It is, in fact, the duality of many of these stories and the necessity of a reader's mind to supply more details in personal terms that gives them their power. After wandering far afield, we should return to the point you pursued. However, modern scholars are still arguing over matters like what the population of Israel was during the Roman era, how many Jews lived in various Roman cities, the extent of taxation compliance, whether there are any records at all to support the idea that ancient Jews actually did support the poor, no information on how much was given to the priests and whether any was left over to help the poor, etc. The truth is that we simply don't know and can barely make an educated guess with any evidence or records being quite incomplete. We do not know, for instance, the geographical distribution and size of ancient Jewish communities with any certainty, certainly not comparable with the birth/baptistry records or census records of the Middle Ages for which we have original documents or known copies of them and can find other evidence to measure their consistency and accuracy (like gravestones). There had to be a lot of people who simply did not comply with censuses or who dodged taxes in big and small ways. It was just as true then as now. Probably it was more true then than it is now. I know, I know, next thing I'll be doing is raising questions about whether George Washington actually did chop down a cherry tree on his father's land but then did not lie about it when questioned, perhaps I might even suggest it is a modern morality tale on the virtues of confessing your misdeeds to authority figures that was useful to governments, parents, churches and other authority figures of the era.
For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always. The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. People dealt with the poor, elderly, and sick back in the day pretty much how we deal with those issues today...maybe with a few variations on some themes. There's nothing new under the sun, TC! Now I'm late for milking. PS,I could use a little of that subsidy you mentioned. Do you think they'd send me a check or something...
Sanhedrin have no more power to make new priests than Jeroboam, king of Israel, did.
Of course she did. She wrote bad fiction and smoked a lot of cigarettes. She was not a martyr for any cause.
I don't know. I have a homeless man living in my house right now, in the spare bedroom. If he really wanted to eat out of the garbage, I wouldn't stop him, but he doesn't need to, thanks to food stamps, and the fact that I'm perfectly willing to share my food with him. Last night I came home and he had cooked dinner, which I appreciated because I was tired and would have probably just eaten a bowl of Cheerios and gone to bed.
Seems to me that the key complaints of prophets such as Amos and Malachi is that the laws of God were structured in such a way that there would be neither poverty nor permanent slavery in Israel, given that every Israelite had an inalienable piece of property, and every foreign slave could obtain freedom by conversion. There would be no debt slavery or grinding debt or homelessness either, because of debt remissions and Jubilees. Seems to me that the prophets excoriated Israel because the Israelites REFUSED TO OBEY the Law. Seems to me that the Law said explicitly, from the mouth of God, that IF the Israelites obeyed, they would have all of that prosperity and permanent security in the land promised, but that if they DIDN'T, that all of that would be revoked completely and that, instead, they would be driven from the land and through the world, a horror, persecuted. Seems to me that Jesus, in pronouncing the doom on the Temple, was God saying "YOUR TIME IS UP". Seems to me that everybody who reads the Bible, who skips over all of those warning parts and pretends that God's promise is unconditional is either a liar and an idolator, or just an illiterate fool who should not presume to teach anybody about Scripture. Yes, the Israelites didn't keep the tithe. Yes, there was poverty and opporession in Israel, And that is WHY there is no longer a Temple, a priesthood, or any hope of reconstituting Israel under the Old Testament protections: because God imposed the penalty clauses, and Israel cannot get its grace back, as God made it IMPOSSIBLE TO KEEP the Old Covenant. He didn't CHANGE it - he said it CAN'T change, and he removed from the world the possibility of obeying it. In other words: Israel is finished. It cannot be resurrected. There is no promise at all anymore for the tribe of Israel. The only deal available now is for individuals: YOU can, individually, not as a tribe, please God and go to Paradise when you die. As Israel, you can do nothing. Paul and James clearly did not believe this, but when THEY died, the Temple was still up.
Call the local USDA office. They're always eager for customers. Otherwise, they might get classified as an underutilized branch and get closed and their work transferred to another office. We've seen that before when they consolidate USDA offices. It shouldn't surprise you that the welfare agencies are looking for clients to "help". They have incentive to do so. If they bring more money into the town, you're that much more likely to buy a pickup from the USDA's lady agent's brother or buy higher priced cattle supplements from her brother's feed store, feel more able to patronize the local grocery store to help keep it open even if it's prices are higher than Walmart's which is 20 miles away. Seriously, go to the local USDA. They will tell you what you can apply for. It is their job. C'mon, you can be a welfare farmer and learn to farm the government just like everyone else. Go check that link I posted and see how much some of your neighbors are getting from the feds. Why are you less worthy? Why should your spouse and kids get by on less because you're too proud to sign up for legal subsidies offered by the government. If you go in to talk to them in person, you should inquire about other subsidy programs too. Ask about programs that subsidize pasture watering systems so you can install underground pipes to put watering tanks all over your pasture area. You might also be able to get support for certain types of fencing. I know someone (from the above list of people I know who are in the $2 million range for USDA subsidies over 11 years) who got a federal agency to finance the construction of his new house as a hunting lodge, so it was an economic development thing. It's a nice 3,500 square foot house. AFAIK, he has yet to have a single lodge customer after about 10 years. I think he does have a few buddies who come back that would stay with him anyway and he does some token charge. But most people have no idea that his house is a hunting lodge because it is never advertised and really not talked about much in town. Of course, to me this is just greed and fraud but if it is legal, it is legal. The problem is giving the feds so much power and money to create giveaways, not that someone takes advantage of these legal and lawful giveaway programs.
Israel has some of the most extensive DNA tracing research programs around. They might be able to find an Aaronic family unless you assume that no ancient priest ever slept around when they got a chance. Or they could do enough to insist that they had located such a priestly descendant. Even if there were detractors, any scandal would die down in 20 years or less once the Temple was there. You might still be disputing whether he was a real Aaronic priest but they wouldn't care a bit what some Gentile thought.
Homeless as in an old bud who needed a place to stay when his wife kicked him out or homeless homeless like a wino or meth head street person? Most people with a wife and child would think twice about allowing a real street person to live in a home with them. I wouldn't count them as homeless for instance if they have a job but just can't meet high local rents.
I have no doubt whatever that what you have said, DNA-wise, is exactly what those who are hellbent on setting up a new temple will do. I also know, that we have no way of knowing who is a descendant of Aaron. You're right, nobody cares what a Gentile thinks. What matters is what God thinks. If they push ahead and get it wrong, God will smite them - and they still won't get it. Religious nuts never seem to. For my part, it's perfectly clear that there is nothing in the Old Testament for me after the laws given by God to Noah and his family after the Flood. After that, it's all the story of Abraham and his descendants, which I am not. I know that the early Christian Jews - notably James, John and Paul - were very much into their "Jewishness" and worked very hard to synthesize the two convenants, because they just couldn't believe that the Old had nothing to do with life after death - they were very impressed with their Jewishness. But they end up contradicting Jesus on several points, so they can't be taken seriously in those places where they depart from what the Son of God said.
Seems to me that the prophets excoriated Israel because the Israelites REFUSED TO OBEY the Law. I think it might be as much just a resentment that they were located along the path of conquering empires who wanted Egypt. They were just in the way. They didn't like being hosts to conquerors who mistreated them, stole their wealth and crops and livestock, disrespected their religion. There was a considerable element of nationalism and populism that ran through the history of ancient Israel over the centuries. Of course, I don't entertain myself by finding ways to make O.T. more central to my thinking. If the New Testament is not adequate to lead to salvation, then the Old Testament won't save either. Defunct scriptures, like the Old Testament, have their only value in presenting prophecy failed or fulfilled. I can see why you like O.T. as literature though. Any lawyer would. But since we all know that lawyers are all going to hell anyway, you may as well enjoy your Old Testament reading hobby. LOL
You have to admit that surely some of Aaron's male descendents did sire offspring with women who were not their wives or even went apostate. Or maybe they've kept the secret of their Aaronic descent secret all these centuries, knowing that the most persistent antisemites would love to kill them all off just to ensure that the Temple can never be returned to service under legitimate Aaronic priests. Sounds like a ripoff of the DaVinci Code, eh? I can't deny your consistency or criticize your interest seriously. You want to know how God dealt with Jews through history to get some insight into His character and the attributes of humans who desire to follow Him.
I can't imagine how you can seriously say that Paul was very much into his Jewishness. Exactly the opposite according to the New Testament and his writings.
Most people with a wife and child would think twice about allowing a real street person to live in a home with them. I wouldn't count them as homeless for instance if they have a job but just can't meet high local rents. Homeless, as in a man whom I know through the men's group at Church. An older man who lost his job and his savings due to the economy and various problems with his family. Not an old friend or anything, just a fellow Catholic. Not a drug addict or alcoholic. Unmarried, without children. Simply a man for whom life has been very hard (and quite unfair, in truth), who was otherwise sleeping in his car. Part time job that pays a pittance while he looks for new work. I would not put anybody at risk, and do not expect people to bring drug addicts into their homes. In fact, I don't myself expect anybody to do anything - I'm not God. Jesus has said what he expects. For my part, I have a house with spare room, and an old Catholic man who can use some help, and a wife and daughter who temporarily live a couple of hours away for school and work, so there is no skin off their nose except on weekends, but then I just go down and stay with them.
Actually you can. Many Jews from the priestly families have the same Y chromosome. Their names are, Kohn, Cohn, Kogen, Korn, Kuhn, Kahn, Cahn, Kane, Conway etc ...
Here's how. (Before I write this, I already know that you are really not going to like it.) Paul goes on and on about how Jesus is the perfect unblemished lamb of sacrifice, to save "us" from our sins. The "us" here is not us Gentiles. There was no animal sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins of Gentiles. God did not give law like that to Gentiles, and Jesus never preached anything like that. For Gentiles (and Jews as individuals) to be forgiven our personal sins by God, such that we do not have to pay for them in the afterlife (through Gehenna), we must do what Jesus said we had to do, and sacrifice had nothing to do with it. Jesus said that to be forgiven our sins by God, we must forgive those who sin against us. We will be forgiven by God only to the extent we forgive others. Because this is a completely new thing to the Jews to whom he preached, he told them they had to trust (believe in) him on this matter, and that if they did not believe in him, such that they did not do what he said - in this case forgive others - that they would not be forgiven their sins. Animal sacrifices forgave ISRAEL the sins of its people, so that the sins of the individuals would not be visited upon Israel. But the Old Covenant has NOTGING TO DO WITH life after death, or eternal life. The Jews of the First Century NEVER accepted that, they were NEVER able to accept, intellectually, that their Law was about what it says it is about. Ancient Judaism has no real concept of life after death, paradise, etc. That only appears with the Hellenic conquest in the mid-300s BCs. The Greeks came with a highly developed theology of the afterlife, of Hades, of sin and punishment. The Jews found their own religion lacking in discussion of this, so they syncretically added on the idea of Gehenna (which is Jewish Purgatory). That never appears in the Old Testament, however. It's a pure Jewish tradition, based on Greek religion. Jesus affirmed it with his own references to Gehenna in the Gospels, and the prison to which the unforgiving will be sent by God to pay their sins "until the last penny is paid". The animal sacrifices of Israel were not about life after death. They were about covering the sins of individual Israelites SO THAT Israel would remain safe under the covenant. Paul did not really accept this. Rather than accept Jesus' formula for forgiveness of sins: which was exclusively that one must forgive others their sins for God to forgive them, and that one would be judged by God using the standards by which one judged other men: the merciful with mercy, and the merciless without mercy. "You shall be measured by the measure by which you measured." There is absolutely none of this in Paul. Paul either discarded Jesus, or never knew that Jesus taught that (the Gospels having not been written), and instead extended the Jewish Law of sacrifice to make Jesus "the perfect sacrifice" for all the sins of his followers, such that, according to Paul, the blood of Jesus washes away all sins of all followers of Jesus, and the consequences of sin. Paul's theology annuls Jesus's teaching about the forgiveness of sins, and substitutes the Torah blood sacrifice of animals - in this case Jesus - for the forgiveness of sins of individuals with regards to the afterlife. Jesus never taught anything like that. It is an example of Paul straining really hard to synthesize a Judaism that his Pharisaic heart loved with Jesus and the New Covenant. But Paul was wrong about that, dead wrong. It's a lovely story, but it was neither true for the Jews nor for the Gentiles. Animal (and human) sacrifice never forgave Gentile sins, and while Jesus - the perfect lamb of God - his sacrifice DID cover the sins of Israel theretofore, and DID serve to allow Israel to proceed forward blamelessly under the Torah - but Israel pitched headlong into the sin of its high priesthood having killed him - an innocent man - to get there, and then having rejected Jesus' message along with him. Paul the Pharisee was proud of his Judaism, and desperately sought to give a significance to it under the New Covenant. Jesus' bloody sacrifice was the true type of sacrifice under the old covenant, but it was also the last such sacrifice. It having been done as it was done, with the rejection of him, meant that there was no going back for the Temple and it leaders. Unfortunately, Paul's focus on the Jewish sacrifice aspect of it has befuddled Christian minds ever since. So, how are we forgiven sins, by forgiving others, as JESUS said, or because of some Old Testament blood sacrifice ritual that never pertained to us in the first place, and that never had anything to do with life after death? The former. Paul did good service by noting the signficance of Jesus' sacrifice UNDER the Hebrew Covenant, a true fact. But Paul's erroneous emphasis on that as the means by which the liability for personal, individual sin is relieved before God is an error that has caused dramatic divisions in the Church ever since. It is, I'm sure, going to be at the very heart of the division between you and me. And it ultimately comes down to a matter of authority: Jesus or Paul, or some blend of the two. I say Jesus alone, for he alone was the Son of God, with divine knowledge, and of him alone God said from the sky for the crowds to hear: "This is my beloved Son, listen to HOM." And Jesus repetitively gave but one way to be forgiven sin. Now, he did say that his blood would be shed for the forgiveness of sin, and he said to drink the cup of it, so yes, the EUCHARIST is important, but Jesus' actual death on the cross itself completed aspects of the OLD TESTAMENT COVENANT OF THE JEWS, but, contrary to Paul, does NOT absolve you of yuor personal sins before God Only the forgiveness of other people and merciful treatment of them does that. Had Jesus NOT died on the Cross, had he been accepted, the same rule would apply: to be forgiven, you must forgive. Blood doesn't cover it. His crucifixion doesn't cover it. Works under the Law of Moses doesn't cover it. YOU have to FORGIVE other people. If you will not, then you will not be forgiven your sins by God. Period. Jesus said so. Paul says differently, because Paul is a Jew, and cannot let go of the idea of animal sacrifice for the forgiveness of PERSONAL sin, vis a vis the afterlife. He's simply wrong, and he's wrong because his Jewishness won't let him simply segregate the Old Covenant and the New. The Reformation itself was in large part fought over this very issue.
Part time job that pays a pittance while he looks for new work. I would not put anybody at risk, and do not expect people to bring drug addicts into their homes. I believe you. And it is commendable. You can understand why I distinguished between homeless-by-circumstance-or-misfortune from drunk-insane-methhead-homeless. Still, good for you. And I don't think you're doing it to cultivate any admiration in local church circles. I'm not quite as cynical as I probably sound at times. For some reason, I had already thought your wife and daughter were not present in the house but I didn't want to pry too much. You can see why. Nice work, Vic.
Their names are, Kohn, Cohn, Kogen, Korn, Kuhn, Kahn, Cahn, Kane, Conway etc ... If family legends about themselves can be believed. Look how many American hillbillies are descended from British royalty for a comparable situation.
The house has toxic mold in it thanks to a flood last year that I haven't had the resources to abate. So, in addition to the fact that my daughter's school and training facility are both two hours away, and my wife's job is there as well, there's the fact that the mold makes my wife sick every time she comes into the house. So we got a tiny apartment down in the City for them to stay in until school is done and the mold is cleaned up. That will be next year. So the fellow has a year to try to make something work. Once family comes home it will be harder, because it's a small house.
Yes there are many theories. Learned long ago to deal with certainties. But you make a valid observation. If the state of Israel does build another temple on Zion, there is always the issue of the Dome of the Rock 'getting in the way.' Many considerations of how that happens, meaning the dome goes away and there is temple built in place, or some archaeology shows the two can co- exist etc. But a lot of happening needs to happen for that to happen. :) The other observation I think you make is, if this second temple is just the re- institution of the sacrifices and feast keeping...and of course would not be ordained by God as Jesus is the once for all sacrifice for sins...and the man of sin (aka anti-Christ) somehow creates an abomination there, then what is the significance of a non God ordained temple being desecrated. That makes me think too. If that is what the conversation so far was getting at?
I am constantly amazed with the young families in my church. They seem to make due with a much lower salary (and give) as military families which I have encountered more in over 30 years of service and now retired military. They do great work evangelizing at home and keeping busy with church ministries (not just showing for a weekly Bible study) and form strong bonds with other Church and out of our particular church families.
Moved a bit around in the military and never heard any name but Reagan pop up now and then. But never in a sermon or Bible study or anything like that. Just that he was a good president who respected human life.
Look how many American hillbillies are descended from British royalty for a comparable situation. This is a wrong analogy. Yarn of hillbillies is one thing, but in a close knit traditional society, where the respectable families are watched, admired and have ritual functions and obligations, where everyone knows their ancestors, it is quite hard to insinuate oneself into aristocracy. Check what Birkat Kohanim is.
Nobody remembers family lines back to the Roman Empire, not through the chaos of the Dark Ages. The Kohanim business is a set of yarns from the middle ages, not real. But the Jews believe it is real, and you are right that, if they were to reconstitute a Temple, they would use that as the basis to re-establish the "Aaronic priesthood" - and there would be many idiot Christians cheering them on too.
The "us" here is not us Gentiles. There was no animal sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins of Gentiles. I see your point. My first impulse would be to argue that when God decided to enlarge His plan of salvation from His Chosen People to all mankind but He had to keep faith with His former requirement for expiation of sin by blood sacrifice. So to include all of the non-Chosen People (Gentiles) while abolishing the Temple system, He had to replace it with a one-time all-encompassing sacrifice, a perfect sacrifice, the same sacrifice He had demanded of Abraham in the sacrifice of Isaac: the sacrifice of his only begotten son as a blood sacrifice for sin. God stopped Abraham since such sacrifice would have frustrated God's plan for Israel but it foreshadowed the eventual sacrifice of Jesus as the one-time perfect sacrifice to suffice to expiate the sins of all mankind under the New Covenant. And it ultimately was justification of His pardon of the sins of faithful Jews prior to the time of Christ who had never known or believed in Christ Himself but only in the popularly promoted idea of the Jewish messiah to come. I do agree with Paul but then that's pretty convenient, eh? No great leap for a Prot type. You know us Prot types pretty well but you also know we would not express it in those terms. Tell me, when Jesus died on the cross after He said, "It is done.", was the 'it' just his own life? Or was 'It' the end of the old covenant so the new covenant could begin, the end of the Temple veil as a dire warning to Israel and the priests, the end of the ability to use animal sacrifice to expiate sins, the end of exclusion of Gentiles from joining the covenant with God? I could go on but you get my point. I think that Jesus was not talking about the smaller matter of His own imminent death but about much larger matters. So I think you are accusing Paul a bit much on a thin basis. I don't think he missed the mark by that much. But then, I once got into a dispute back at FR on those endless Calvinism threads where we debated Hebrews 10:1-13 and especially verse 14, the center of the dispute. You understand that we debated things like the placement of a comma or semicolon in the vernacular translations. We got far down into the weeds, what should be properly termed as "unprofitable disputes". Hebrews 10:14:For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. I felt I lost close friends in that debate and thought they were being unreasonable when they tried to insist that verse 14 contained six different doctrines in it. I had gotten a little antsy over this insistence that bible verses were intended to teach 4-6 different doctrines at once. When people write letters or speak to others, they don't ever seem to have more than a double meaning at most. I spent some time and effort and concluded it is possible to get to 3 or even 4 meanings in a joke (I do well at tortured humorous wordplay and punning). So, while constructing such phrases with multiple meanings, yes, it can be done through clever wordplay (a waste of time). However, I can never believe that any of the writers of the New Testament had any such intentions. I'll concede a little humor and a few double-entendres in the New Testament but I otherwise believe that New Testament writing is straightforward accounts of history (the Gospels) and doctrinal books and epistles that strived for clarity, not subtle wordplay or trying to pack six entirely different theological doctrines into one verse just so a few thousand years later someone can "discover" all the hidden meanings. And I didn't think you should condemn someone like me who just thought such claims were overblown and ridiculous and led toward a view that one could "discover" a half a dozen doctrines in any verse of the Bible. But that's just me. So you picked an example of Pauline theology that you probably can never sell me on, based on my experiences with That Verse back at FR. Perhaps I mentioned this incident to you before. Can you cite any Catholic doctrinal source that says the same things you are saying here? You are saying that scripture has no divine inspiration or mediation if you allege that Paul could foist his own false doctrine on the church and it would still be included in the canon and then promulgated for the next 2,000 years. So, scripture is infallibly inspired or not? Please answer yes or no. Are you with Luther in attitude toward some books of the canon and perhaps want to move all the Pauline writings to the back of the canon to make them quasi-apocryphal writings? So it would make your own theology more consistent? I would say that Paul took considerable risks as the major leader who advocated for inclusion of Gentiles in the New Covenant and resisting requirements of Old Covenant law such as requiring circumcision of converts (since all the apostles and leaders of the early church(s) were Jewish and circumcised). This was a bit of an issue even before the time of Jesus. Circumcision and uncircumcision were both fiercely debated over the centuries. You go almost to the point of the secular scholars who claim that Christianity's distinct doctrines are entirely due to Paul, not to Jesus or the other disciples. I don't agree. But the Bible was created by Roman bishops and certified by the popes over the centuries. If you have an argument with the infallibility of scripture, you have a much bigger problem with Rome than with me. I'm still not confident that Catholic theologians would agree with you. I think they would go as far as asserting that Prot types have misused Paul's inspired writings as a basis for Prot theology, starting with Luther. I'm not going to debate alternative histories of Christianity and Judaism. What happened, happened. It is unprofitable to debate what would have happened if Jesus hadn't been crucified and had just died of old age or disease and therefore was not the savior of mankind. I really do think you are robbing Jesus of his role as savior to a certain extent with this line of argument. It strikes me how many times, almost a senseless number of times, the Bible speaks of the glory of God, of God glorifying Himself before men, His desire to be glorified by men with all their hearts. So please don't suggest that Jesus was only supposed to save Jews in ancient Israel and it's all Paul's fault that us nasty rebellious Prots split off from the corrupt popes whose shameful legacy you are willing to accept as the conduct of the head of the church on earth. Vicars of Christ? Mostly, corrupt men who gave no evidence that they were anything but corrupt, murderous, luxury lovers and manipulative atheists who enjoyed displaying fancy art to impress each other and the rubes who came to Rome on pilgrimage to much local profit for the church and the local business community. The Roman Chamber Of Commerce loved all that stuff but I don't think Jesus died on a cross so some corrupt pope could have the power to marry his daughter off repeatedly, stage orgies in the Vatican, and take advantage of gullible pilgrims from the sticks who came to gawk at a pile of phony relics and tasteful art created by some very un-Christian homos. I think Paul believed Jesus' place as the savior of mankind could never be questioned or limited in any way. I don't think you can argue otherwise. What meaning can you assign to these quotes in John? That Jesus was "the Lamb of God" but that really meant instead that He was "the Lamb of Israel only until those bastard priests killed him"? Are you going to join the Calvinists to try to twist the word 'world' in John 3:16? "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son..." As you've heard asked before, perhaps from others, does "world" mean "world" or does it mean, as you are suggesting that "world" means "Israel" and that dumb Paul decided to use his writings to impose false doctrines on the church for all time and the bishops of the Council of Hippo decided they would just include all of Paul's writings and false doctrine anyway, just for the fun of it? You know, people were dying for these writings at the time, not just chit-chatting on some anonymous internet forum. This was not a casual and consequence-free debate for them. It certainly was though there were other crucial factors as well. Corruption and greed and worldliness of the hierarchy. Cruel and wanton persecution against any dissenters. Opposition to vernacular translations of scripture and being held in private hands.
I'm sure I don't have to warn you about how dangerous it is to you. Take no chances. Better to burn the house down than to succumb to mold. I'm sure you have sealed the affected area and would not enter the room(s) without a respirator but mold is really dangerous. Too bad. I know it must be hard for you to be without family around but adults do make choices to benefit their children and keep them safe. I'm thinking you are willing to take the risk yourself but not to risk your wife or especially your daughter. Typical father. Or just find work in the sticks where he can afford rent. Of course, he has to know your charity isn't permanent.
I have to ask that I am curious about how many modern Jews would still want to be Jews if it involved animal sacrifice. Admittedly, a mean hypothetical question. But they do recite "Next Year In Jerusalem" every year when they could just fly to Jerusalem at reasonable cost for a few days and then they wouldn't have to say it because they'd be standing in Jerusalem already. I don't listen much but Ben Shapiro sometimes ends his show by going through descriptions of what a modern Orthodox Jew believes as doctrine and he asserts the views of Judaism in certain OT passages that Jews think the Christians have distorted. And he's amicable enough about his language choice. Give him credit, he's a good wordsmith as any Harvard lawyer would be. I'd just like to hear him say he wants to sacrifice a lamb for forgiveness of his sins in the Third Temple. But, yes, that would be the question I would ask him. Or a rabbi if I ever met and was on good terms with one. Do they even want their Temple back so they be The Animal Sacrificers again, just like in 69AD before the Romans spoiled their fun by leveling Jerusalem and killing everyone (mostly Jewish pilgrims who were trapped in the city during Passover when the Roman siege began). Ben Shapiro might say yes but I think a lot of modern Jews would not enjoy the question or answer it. Who wants to wind the clock back 1951 years and restart a religion of animal sacrifice? I sure don't want to sacrifice a chicken or goat or lamb in a church. Being a Baptist type, I say we slaughter the animals elsewhere, then bring the carcasses to the church to cook up for a nice potluck supper for the retirees and children. A choice of vegetable, a few fruit-and-jello salads, and a nice mint-and-nut cup on the side with big piles of sweets to finish. But no slaughtering on church property, please.
Around here, they're a lot more likely to want to get tattooed than baptized. It's a little surprising to see how fast it has changed over the last decade or so. But then, they're dumbasses so that's just how it is.
That was indeed the intent and what was commanded. In Nehemiah we see this reinforced as the returned Jews immediately drifted from this. The priests were hoarding supplies and the rich were preying on the poor and lesser land owners forcing them into servitude. Nehemiah flipped out when he saw this coming back for the second time to Jerusalem.
Uh-huh. I'd like to put that to a test. A comprehensive DNA test. A lot of people claim ancestors based on dusty scraps of paper. I think there is a lot more promiscuity and marital infidelity than that. Telegraph.uk: Most European men descended from just three ancestors
Yep. And yep.
Yep, that would be your first point. To which Jesus would answer: 'Not a letter nor a penstroke of the Law shall be changed until the end of the world.' So no, you cannot ADD the rest of humanity to people covered under the Sinai covenant with the Hebrews and their heirs in Israel. And no, you cannot ADD the bit about forgiveness of personal sin by God for everlasting life to the Sinai land deal covenant. And no, God's original covenant with Israel HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH "SALVATION" for life after death. There is not ONE WORD of that in the entire Old Testament. The sacrifices and the Law PURELY promised, the Hebrews - Just them, no one else - IN Israel - just there, nowhere else - a secure homeland in which to dwell (Israel) - IF, and ONLY IF, they as a tribe followed all of the laws, and where they departed, if they expiated the sin of Israel through the sacrifices. There was NEVER any promise of life after death or paradise in the Sinai Covenant, so the whole idea goes off the rails immediately with the idea that the sacrifices in the Temple "saved the souls" of Israelites in preparation for life after death. God never, ever, revealed anything like that. It is adding what Jesus did - the NEW Covenant - to the Old, by reading life after death and "Salvation" for the afterlife into it. There is no Salvation of ANYTHING in the Old Covenant. It is PURELY the preservation of Israel, as a country entity, for the security of the Hebrews living there in this life. That's all it says. What you did there is driven by the error of Paul, and it is the cardinal source of division in Christianity. There isn't any bridging it other than by ignoring it. But the belief gives rise to two very, very different Christianities that can't be reconciled. So Christians can retain unity by not making any of that important in the religion, or they can be disunited. Personally, I think disunity is the inevitable result of holding onto ANYTHING other than what came from Jesus, and that whole sacrificial system was for salvation business came from neither Jesus nor YHWH. It came from the Jewish apostles and the traditions they spun.
This is tedious, but I will try to explain. It is not needed to remember the whole line over many centuries. It is enough to keep it continuous in the community. Unless the tradition is broken catastrophically and reestablished from the scratch by the usurpers , the prominent families will continue, know each other and be known. Perhaps it is different with the lower classes, maybe it is easier for them to lose their identity. You claim some aristocratic lineage. Is it made up?
Isaac was not Abraham's only begotten son. Abraham's first-begotten son was Ishmael. And after Sarah died, Abraham took another wife, and begat six more sons by her: Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak and Shuah. The Christian tradition that puts Abraham and Jesus in parallel is simply bunk.
Most of Americans do not understand traditional societies that lasted for many centuries. They move, break contacts, mix and forget. It might happen, but in the Jewish law, priestly families are obliged by special rules and customs, otherwise they can be demoted and lose their status.
God never said that the sacrifice of Isaac he demanded of Abraham was a blood sacrifice for sin. He said it was a test. Whether or not Abraham PASSED the test by being willing to do it is an interesting question. Because Abraham was willing to do it, God followed one path - gave a ram as substitution - not for a sacrifice for sin (there is no mention of the offering of Isaac as a SIN offering - that's more Jewish and Christian tradition-making). He said to Abraham "Because you obeyed me in this thing" (offering up a child of his, not his firstborn, as a sacrifice, like the Canaanites all around did), "I will give you this land." Suppose Abraham had said "No, Lord. You commanded us not to shed blood. You said that he who sheds man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed. I will not do as these dirty murderers all around me do and offer up my second-born son to you as though you were Molech. What you have asked me to do is wrong!" God MAY have said to Abraham: "Well done my faithful servant! You have kept my law, even resisting me when I tempted you with evil, and held to the true law I gave to all mankind, which does not change. Therefore, I give to you the entire world!" We don't know what God would have said to Abraham had he not made the decision to become a Molechite because God tested him by asking him too. We don't know if Abraham PASSED the test, only his choice and what God gave him. I talk to God sometimes. If he ever asked me to sacrifice my daughter to him, I would tell him no, that would be wrong. If he wants her, he can take her himself. I'm certainly not going to do it." And I believe that, had Abraham kept to the Law of God, that is what he SHOULD have said to El Elyon when he was asked to behave like a child- sacrificing Canaanite. But Abraham took the other path, and so God rewarded him as he did, with the promise that his heirs would have the Land of the Canaanites (who would then seduce them into child sacrifice, more law-breaking, ultimately rejecting the Son of God and sacrificing HIM, and then having the Temple and Israel utterly destroyed.)
It wasn't changed at all and it is still intact. But the death of Christ made it obsolete. Unless you consider Judaism to be an equally valid religion to Christianity for purposes of salvation. And you know where that discussion goes. You have to repudiate a lot of Christian doctrine if you go there. The New Testament declares that no one can perfectly fulfill the Law. Only Jesus ever could. But Jesus, by his death, made the Law obsolete. Well, unless you're going to suggest that Jesus didn't have to die for our sins, that we could have just all become Jews instead. In which case, why would God send His Son to die? For what, nothing?
You left out the best part of the story: These indulgences not only bestowed pardon for sins committed already, they were used to license the commission of future transgressions as well. In the classic volume, The Life and Times of Martin Luther, noted historian Merle D’Aubigne relates an amusing episode relative to this practice. A certain Saxon nobleman heard John Tetzel proclaiming his doctrine of indulgences, and the gentleman was much aggravated at this perversion of truth. Accordingly, he approached the monk one day and inquired as to whether he might purchase an indulgence for a sin he intended to commit. “Most assuredly,” replied Tetzel, “I have received full powers from his holiness for that purpose.” After some haggling, a fee of thirty crowns was agreed upon, and the nobleman departed. Together with some friends, he hid himself in a nearby forest. Presently, as Tetzel journeyed that way, the knight and his mischievous companions fell upon the papal salesman, gave him a light beating, and relieved him of his money, apparently taking no pains to disguise themselves. Tetzel was enraged by the foul deed and filed suit in the courts. When the nobleman appeared as the defendant, he produced the letter of exemption containing John Tetzel’s personal signature, which absolved the Saxon of any liability. When Duke George (the judge before whom the action was brought) examined the document, exasperated though he was, he ordered the accused to be released.
I don't count Ishmael as a son of Israel even though he was a son of Abraham. Abraham should have been wiser than to sleep with the hired help. Nothing holy about it.
While the Roman siege and genocide in Jerusalem in 70AD did wipe out the priestly families gathered for Passover with the huge crowds of pilgrims, I find it very hard to believe that the Romans murdered every last member of a priestly family. Surely there was a son or grandson of the Aaronic line studying off in Babylon or one of the many other ancient Jewish schools spread across the region. Or an Aaronic descendant was traveling. Or had taken ill while on a journey and didn't return in time to die in the siege. And there's always the likelihood of some horny young rascal who just happened to be descended from Aaron was off carousing in Rome or other ancient cities and escaped destruction by the Romans.
The "It" was his mission, and some of the things you said. Let's examine seriatim: (1) was the 'it' just his own life? It WAS his own life, but not "just". (2) was 'It' the end of the old covenant. No, Jesus said that the Law (the Old Covenant) could not be changed until the end of the world, and that he was not there to destroy it but to fulfill it. He kept the Law. The Covenant remained, and remains, for the Tribe of Hebrews residing in Israel and keeping all of the law. But 36 years after Jesus' death, God made it impossible for the Jews to keep the law, by removing the priesthood from the world. Unless, of course, the whole business about tracing the Aaronic priesthood through people named "Cohen" is a real thing, in which case God didn't even do that, and the Jews CAN reconstitute the Temple and, as long as they communally keep all of the law - including animal sacrifice for forgiveness of the imputation of individual sins to the Community - then God WILL protect Jews in Israel from all attackers. At that point maybe God can take over and we can get the protection of Israel off of our defense budget. (3) "the end of the Temple veil as a dire warning to Israel and the priests, the end of the ability to use animal sacrifice to expiate sins," - no, it was not the end of any of those things. The Temple remained up for another 36 years, and Jesus did not come to destroy the Torah, which cannot be changed at all until the end of the world. And animal sacrifice did not forgive the man's individual sins before God for the afterlife - only forgiveness of other people can do that, per Jesus (and since Jesus was not CHANGING the law, it is clear that the animal sacrifice was for atoning for the community, so IT would not be smitten by God for the individual sins of people. The Law says nothing about the disposition of individual souls after death, but Jesus does. And Jesus says he is not adding to the Torah or subtracting from it. THEREFORE the animal sacrifice under the old convenant DID NOT expiate personal sins from individuals for the purpose of salvation in the afterlife - there was no salvation at all under the Torah, it was never mentioned, and Jesus gave a DIFFERENT manner for the forgiveness of sins for the individual facing final judgment from God. Sactifice absolved ISRAEL of the sins, it didn't mean the person went to Paradise after death. (4) the end of exclusion of Gentiles from joining the covenant with God? No. The Gentiles were never under the old covenant, and not a letter can be added to the old covenant. The new covenant is for individuals, including Gentiles. It is new wine in a new bottle. The Old Covenant never applied to Gentiles, it does not now, and it never can be made to - it cannot change, at all, until the end of the world. Gentiles are permanently excluded from it...unless they physically move to Israel and convert to Judaism, and the Temple is up and the Aaronic priests are practicing the daily sacrifices. And then, if the Gentiles have sins and do not forgive others, they can make their sacrifices and go straight to Gehenna if they die that very day, because the animal sacrifies have nothing to do with forgiving sins before God for salvation. They only have to do with preserving Israel against divine wrath. To be forgiven personal sin for the purposes of Salvation, because there is an afterlife to be saved for, is the EXCLUSIVE province and EXCLUSIVE revelation of Jesus, in the New Covenant, which is for individuals. The Old Covenant is for Israel, as a tribe, in this life, in that land. It isn't about individuals or the afterlife. New Wine, new bottles. Can't put the new wine into the old bottle - it will burst the old bottle. Paul and the other Jews who tried to make the Torah have a meaning in the New Covenant thought the old wine was mellower, and tried. And they burst the wineskins in the process. The Church is divided because those early Jews SO DESPERATELY WANTED TO BE RIGHT, wanted salvation to be about THEM and THEIR Law. It wasn't, except insofar as it prepared a society into which Jesus could be born, where he teachings would make sense against the backdrop of the Law, and also to provide a written example to the world of 1500 years of error and how tradition can lead men so far astray that they'll try to murder God to protect their personal cultural beliefs. (5) I think that Jesus was not talking about the smaller matter of His own imminent death but about much larger matters. In this, you are correct, but it's not about taking the old wine and putting it into the new bottle - it's that the new wine is new wine, and the old wine is finished and will in fact kill you - the old Law killed Jesus as a blasphemer. The new wine is what gives life. Jesus' death had significance under the old covenant. BECAUSE he was truly the spotless lamb - innocent - but CONVICTED under the Law of blasphemy against God BY the very prophetic source of judgment - the High Priest - it was the final, magnificent failure of the logic of the Temple and its predecessors. The first failure may well have been Abraham's willingness to become a Molechite rather than telling God that what God was asking was wrong.
24Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. 25They asked him, and said to him, “Why then are you baptizing, if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?” 26John answered them saying, “I baptize in water, but among you stands One whom you do not know. 27“It is He who comes after me, the thong of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.” 28These things took place in Bethany beyond the Jordan, where John was baptizing. 29The next day he saw Jesus coming to him and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!
It is a little too clever perhaps. Still, it is a great story. It has been my favorite indulgence joke for many years. Warms the heart of any smug Prot.
Another way to say this is that Jesus FULFILLED the Law...because we couldn't keep the Law...He kept it for us. By our faith in Him, in what He did for us, we are covered from the penalty of those Laws.
I wasn't in those particular disputes, because I think the New Testament is to be read like the Old. In the Old, TORAH (the Law) is the highest authority, the literal commandments of God. Nevi'im - the prophets, is only secondary authority - God sending prophets to remind people of the Torah, and how they are falling short. Kethuvim - the writings, is only tertiary authority. It is always overridden by Torah. It is speculation, prayer, tradition and history. Good for reading, but NOT equal in authority to The Law. In the New, Jesus is the Son of God, and God said "Listen to HIM". Jesus only speaks directly in the Gospels, the first two chapters of Acts, one line of Paul, and much of Revelation. That's the "Christian Torah". The rest - the letters of the apostles and acts - these are writings - inspirational, history, prayer, faithful...but subordinate to Jesus. Paul, James and John each contradict Jesus in some important way. They are not equal to Jesus, and writings are inferior in authority to Gospel. Jesus was the one to whom God said to listen, and God made sure that we have his words, in quadruplicate in many cases. So, I don't dwell on commas, etc. in Romans, because Paul is not authority. He is persuasion and inspiration and history. Jesus alone is authoritative law. Paul conflicts with Jesus on matters in Romans, in particular. Therefore, I completely disregard Paul on matters where what he says disagrees with Jesus, and don't trouble myself further with that. I do not commit the sin of idolatry, pretending that when men have designated as "The Bible" make the Bible a God-maker that elevates mere followers to the status of God's Son, and changing what God said from "Listen to HIM" to "Listen to THEM, and let their words nullify what HE said." No. That's obviously wrong. To me anyway. Gotta take everything off the camel. What Jesus says is always exactly right. What challenges it or queers it is wrong and to be ignored, just like some of the things that appear in the writings that contradict what is in the Torah.
I can get two out of the above...maybe three but that would be stretching it. And I can only do that because there is other Scriptural support. But I'm not a fan of single or few 'proof texting' as that's exegesis' ugly cousin eisegesis. So was the argument that in that one verse we see (1) The one offering for Sin in the Blood of the New Covenant in Christ (2) Perfected forever them, as perseverance of the saints/the pledge or down payment and (3) limited atonement? You said there were three others, but I can't see that.
You know Pauline theology. I don't. I have read Paul's letters, and like them. When I find places that disagree with Jesus, I note that and move on. BECAUSE there are such things there, and BECAUSE the greatest divisions in Christianity are there, I don't quote anybody but Jesus for any of my prospects. I simply do not beleive that Paul is the equal of Jesus, and I do not believe that the tradition of stitching Paul's letters into a single book alongside of Jesus can elevate Paul to the status of God. There is no contest, in my mind. Jesus ALONE is the source of the entirety of my actual theology. I note how much of the rest of Christian theology departs from Jesus, and that it is precisely these departures that give rise to all of the wars and divisions of Christianity. And I note that Jesus' final prayer at the last supper was for Christian UNITY. Therefore, I count Christian division over doctrines that did not come out of the mouth of Jesus as defiance of Jesus expressed wishes, defiance God's commandment "Listen to HIM", and the reason for the destruction of the Church. The Church dies around us because we quarrel.
No. Part of it comes from God - the words spoken by God in the Torah, and the words of Jesus. The rest is inspired by God, but men inspired by God are still using their own judgment, and go astray.
No. The Catholic Church is as guilty of error as the rest. Proof? Look at all of the dead bodies. Any Christian Church that has killed people is by that fact demonstrably wrong. The most pure Christian Church is the Quakers, historically. But today they don't perforce privilege Jesus, and that's their error.
My theology is UTTERLY consistent: JESUS ALONE. HE doesn't contradict himself at all. Paul and James and John, and the Churches, and the Jews, etc. - they conflict with him. But God said: THIS is my beloved Son, listen to HIM. And Jesus said to Satan: Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds forth out of the mouth of God. THE mouth of God is Jesus, nobody else. Nobody else stands on an equal plane, and everything that contradicts Jesus dilutes the words that proceeded forth out of the mouth of God. HE doesn't contradict himself, and HE is all that matters. The camel has to shed that load. The camel owners won't. So bedlam reigns and the Church dies around us, while Islam grows and devours Europe, as disgusted seculars come to be the dominant force in America. So be it. Christians will bend that stiff neck of theirs and follow Jesus, or they will end up being the Shakers.
Already at that time majority of Jews lived in other countries. After the destruction of the Temple the center of Jewish religion moved to Galilee (not affected by uprising) then to Babylonia. To get a feeling how the real Jewish Jews receive the priestly blessing in a yearly solemn ceremony (as opposed to less solemn in a synagogue if a priest is present) see this video.
Needlessly. What was circumcision for? It was a mark given to Abraham and his lineal male descendants that identified them as such, and heirs to Canaan. After Sinai, it expanded to include the lineal descendants of those at Sinai, which included vastly more people than JUST the lineal descendats of Abraham. And what did it MEAN? It means that, if they did that, and followed the rest of the law, they had the birthright to a farm in Israel, in this life, and that God would protect that Israel from all enemies. That's all it ever meant. For Gentiles, it's nothing - a meaningless (and painful) tatoo. It has no religious significance, other than as a form of idolatry if Gentiles THINK it has a significance beyond what is just described. Jews, of course, in their fantasizing and speculating about the importance of their laws and customs, gave it all sorts of additional meanings. Jesus said nothing about it at all, and therefore it is of absolutely no importance in the world now. Especially given that there is no divine protection of Israel now, as the covenant is not being kept by mankind. People want magic. It's not on offer. Cutting off the end of one's dick is at best a primitive tribal sign. At worst, it's idolatry. And it's always painful and potentially crippling. Nobody should be circumcising himself anymore.
So you would believe the claim that, for instance, the Japanese royal family is an unbroken lineage for 6,000 years? I don't. I'll believe it only if they submit to extensive DNA testing and can compare to the DNA of known dead ancestors of their line. Even then, I'd have a lot of doubts. You can be certain they'll never submit to such testing. Nor will Britain's royal family or any of the other surviving members of defunct royal families. I doubt very much if all of these people are who they say they are. I also think there are a lot of unacknowledged and unknown members of royal blood lines which came from promiscuous sex by various princes and kings. Certainly they had heirs which they sometimes decided to legitimize as an heir. Therefore, one can assume that there were probably a much greater number of heirs that they decided not to acknowledge. Who knows, maybe you're related to Charlemagne or something.
Of course they wouldn't! They're still insisting on priestly celibacy (Jesus chose a married man as the first pope), on the necessity of confession for the forgiveness of sin by God (Jesus said to be forgiven you have to forgive others, and he didn't add anything else), on the all-male clergy (JEsus chose St. Photini, the woman at the well, to carry out the first mass conversion of any village in the Scripture, through her teaching them about him). The Church would defend the murder of millions by saying that these were mere "disciplinary matters" - when abstaining from killing was the first general commandment given after the flood, and killing is one of the sins on both of Jesus' lists of sins that will get one thrown into the lake of fire at final judgment if not forgiven. The Church burnt a SAINT alive after a Church trial - St. Joan of Arc. The Church accumulated the wealth to build the towering Vatican by selling indulgences and other corrupt practices. Of course the Church would disagree with me. They want to cling to THEIR doctrines, which didn't come from Jesus. And as they do, they dwindle. But it's the diddling of boys and the interference into the marital bedroom that really is killing the Church. Know what Jesus said about married couples using contraception? Nothing. Therefore, the Church should shut up and stop killing Christianity by asserting things it has neither the authority to assert, nor the right to. The damage these derogations from Jesus have done is massive, and ongoing. And Mary? Well, God DID send her as emmissary, after the Bible, so noting what she had to say is worthwhile. But essentially she exhorted the worship of her son. So the whole Marian business is a tempest in a teapot. Prayers to Mary, to the Saints? Etc.? It's not wrong. Neither are prayers to Jesus or the Holy Spirit. But JESUS taught us to pray to the father. So how about shutting all of our shit traps and just doing it exactly like he said, hmmmm? Or do we really think we know better. (Well, we don't.)
The only one that was important. The only one borne by Sarah, named as Abraham's (true) wife. They're losers. Nobody talks about them. It's one of the few such comparisons that I entertain. It's not as though the Bible is so full of stories about a father sacrificing his own son in a ritual manner that you can't keep track of them all. I always thought part of the purpose in the Binding of Isaac was to prepare Jews to accept as holy the final true sacrifice: Jesus.
Already happening: It's interesting you mentioned Ben Shapiro and how he diplomatically handles Christians. You will like this one. Whether he realized it or not, JM preaches the Gospel to Ben via Isaiah 53 and in his usual manner does so lovingly:
Your "Therefore" is wrong. Jesus' death didn't make him the savior of mankind. It was the fact that he was the Son of God and taught man what man had to do to be forgiven his sins and be acceptable to God - THAT is why Jesus was the savior of mankind, not because arrogant bastards killed him. Had Jesus lived, and been acclaimed the Messiah, he would have been no more, nor less, the Savior of mankind. He saved us from our sins not by dying (that expiated the sins of Israel...which hardly matters because Israel was destroyed 36 years later BECAUSE it killed him), but by teaching us what we have to DO to be acceptable to God. It's not about magic blood or superstition, it's about listening to Jesus and doing what he said to do. "What good does it do you to say you follow me if you do not keep my commandments?" - Jesus.
No, Japan came into being much later. But Jews DID EXIST for more than 3000 years. You tend to reason by ad hoc analogies a little too much.
I have noticed there are churches which people tend to go to just because or they have to go, and there are churches where people go to be with other people because they want to be there with other people who want to be there. You can gauge it really on what ministries the church is truly involved in. If the church is empty most of the week except Wednesday and Sunday, then you have to ask how involved the lay people are in their church.
I am actually doing what Jesus sAID TO DO: LISTEN to HIM, Follow HIM (just him), do the deeds he said to do. I see all of the Churches dying, and I can tell you why. Because they are insisting on taking a camel laden with all of the crap they have piled on top of Jesus over the centuries - to the point that what Jesus SAID TO DO is almost COMPLETELY DISREGARDED. Consider. In Revelations - written AFTER Paul, James, John, Peter, Jude, etc. have had their say, Jesus takes the last word. And he says, over and over again, to the Churches, that he judges men by their DEEDS. Jesus said: I will judge you by what you DO. Which fits hand in glove with what he said before he died: "What good does it do you to say you follow me if you don't keep my commandments." So, is doing deeds WORKS? Well, if it IS, then Jesus has said explicitly that everybody is going to be judged on their works. And if not - if works means specific things under the Jewish law done to get blessings - then in any event Jesus said repeatedly you're judged on what you DO - your deeds - not your thoughts, not your beliefs. Why, then, do Christians argue about this? Because they are arrogant and full of shit, that is why. Christians should SHUT UP and accept that Jesus told them directly they are judged by what they DO. There SHOULD BE no argument about that. The fact that there IS shows you how much crap has been piled on that camel. And why the Church is divided - to the point of having murdered, among ourselves, on the order of tens of millions of Christians in civil wars. And believing that doctrinal purity is more important than human life. Well it is, and the only PURE doctrine is Jesus alone. Anything that departs from what he said, to the left or to the right, is wrong. And stubbornness in that wrong, out of tradition - well, that's the Pharisees. Catholics do it. Protestants do. The Orthodox have made a whole religion out of it. It's all foul. Jesus is the bright morning star, the thing to orient on. Why is that so hard? I'll answer that. Because Jesus calls for some very hard things that men don't want to do. That's why. So they find easier doctrines, and elevate those above Jesus, and justify them - and murder each other.
God's promise was to be a child sired by Abraham from Sarah.
I haven't said anything like that. I am uninterested in the ancient squabbles over false doctrines of dying churches. What Jesus said is true. Jesus alone. Anything that deviates from that, is false. Stubbornness in the false is idolatry. The Church is dying everywhere because of idolatry and OBVIOUS hypocrisy, and the young won't play along anymore, nor will a lot of married people, nor will anybody hurt by the charlatans. The jig us up. Each Church must reform or die. It seems that the Churches are choosing to die. So be it. We still have Jesus, and we know what he said, and that is good enough. It would be easier if we had a community, but wherever there is community, there is the lust for power and command, and people are past that shit. They don't need it. And they won't tolerate it anymore - or pay for it.
Yes it's legend indeed. Luther waxed poetic after a few pints and this just may be part of his "table talk."
You disagree with the Roman Catholic teachings of apostolic authority? That the apostles wrote by inspiration from the Holy Spirit?
My Dutch family line in America is an example of that!
No. Where I disagree is with the notion that "inspired by God" (or the Holy Spirit) means "perfect and without error". Inspiration and perfection are two very different things. The paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel were obviously inspired by God. That doesn't mean that God looks like that.
Ishmael was so important that God made a covenant with Hagar, his mother, respecting him, promising he would be the father of many great kingdoms, and also promising that his descendants and Isaacs would forever be in each other's faces, annoying each other.
God also made a covenant with Hagar regarding Ishmael, and kept it. Muslims count themselves as sons of Abraham, descended from their father Ismail (Ishmael), and the Lord knows they are camped among the tents of Isaac, and they're up against each other all of the time, everywhere, exactly as God promised.
Try telling that to your parish priest when he administers the Eucharist. Your entire Mass is focused on the Eucharist and 'bloodless' re-enactment of the Sacrifice of Christ. Jesus did say: Luke 22: NASB 14When the hour had come, He reclined at the table, and the apostles with Him. 15And He said to them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; 16for I say to you, I shall never again eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” 17And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He said, “Take this and share it among yourselves; 18for I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine from now on until the kingdom of God comes.” 19And when He had taken some bread and given thanks, He broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” 20And in the same way He took the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood.
From that time Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised up on the third day. (Matthew 16:21) Luke 24: NASB 44Now He said to them, “These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” 45Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, 46and He said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, 47and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48“You are witnesses of these things. 49“And behold, I am sending forth the promise of My Father upon you; but you are to stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.”
Luke 22: NASB 14When the hour had come, He reclined at the table, and the apostles with Him. 15And He said to them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; 16for I say to you, I shall never again eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” 17And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He said, “Take this and share it among yourselves; 18for I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine from now on until the kingdom of God comes.” 19And when He had taken some bread and given thanks, He broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” 20And in the same way He took the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood. Yes, Jesus did say that. And there it is, the cup - drink it, it's the new covenant. He did indeed shed his blood for everyone. He didn't retreat, run away. He died bloody, and very publicly - and then rose from the grave two days later. THAT was the event that made him stupendous: the conquest of death. His covenant was about the afterlife - by dying bloody it was clear to all: he was REALLY DEAD. By rising from the dead he did the apparently impossible, and demonstrated he was master even of death. Only then did his cult explode upon the world. The Resurrection is the key, the visible symbol: death is not the end. For him to resurrect, he had to die.
Yes, the Law had to be fulfilled, and it was. But the Law itself was not, and is not, for Gentiles. It is for Israel.
In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, he asserts, “Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures”. (1 Cor. 15:3).
Well, an independent reader might say that both you and I are offering arguments that are too clever by half. What good will the Law do for Jews in or outside of Israel if the primary requirement of animal sacrifice at the Temple is no longer possible? You're not saying anything much different than what I posted: the Law exists but is obsolete. Then why do the churches say outright that the only path to forgiveness is to forgive? It is a noble ideal but I do think people can go to heaven without forgiving everyone who has harmed them. Has anyone ever done anything to you and you don't know who did it? How do you forgive them unless you know who they are, why they did what they did, and confess or compensate? How about if you discover evidence on an X-ray that something pretty bad happened to you in your early childhood but you don't know exactly what it was? What if someone harmed you very badly but you can't remember it at all (PTSD incidents). Can you forgive something you can't directly remember? How do you "forgive" unknown transgressors? Or sins committed against you that you can't recall directly even if there is physical evidence of the sin that was committed? I reject this idea completely. God's purpose with Israel and then with Christians was not to turn us all into passive doormats for aggressors. Simple forgiveness works well for simple sins but the world isn't always that simple. And sometimes there is no target for forgiveness. You can't forgive "someone" who did "something" in vague or general terms. Such forgiveness would be a mockery of real forgiveness. You may as well learn to recite "I forgive everyone for everything for my entire life" over and over. The Catholics could replace their Hail Mary's and Our Father's with this new saying. The Lord's Prayer? Too long and complicated, just replace it with "Iforgiveyou". You could use it like the word aloha, to mean "Hello, I forgive you" and "Goodbye, I forgive you". Then you could dump all this other unnecessary religious crap and replace with an endless refrain of Iforgiveyou's. They could rework that tired old rosary thing too, issue a new design and realize a surefire profit bonanza. No. Just no. In fact, hell no. Certainly, we should forgive others as much as possible but forgiving each other is not the centrality of Christianity teaching nor is it clear that that alone is the single most important criteria God will use in judging us and deciding whether we belong in heaven or hell. You seem to be changing this famous proverb that is part of the Lord's Prayer and it would then be reworded as: "Forgive us our sins but only after we forgive those who trespass against us. Also, we have to forgive others even if they aren't apologizing and make no effort at restitution or contrition." So if you don't forgive the Charlie Starkweather who murdered your parents so he could rape your 14yo sister on an interstate killing spree, then your lack of forgiveness will result in you sharing a flame pit in hell with Charlie Starkweather? How about forgiving a kid who broke your finger scuffling over a soccer ball on the playground back in elementary school, a kid whose name you can't recall (unless you looked it up)? If you fail to forgive that kid, will God refuse to forgive your sins and throw you into hell while perhaps allowing that kid who broke your finger into heaven? Is it really the case that your forgiveness of others is the most important element in salvation? Why is that foremost, even over confessing your sins toward others to them and making restitution? 1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. I still think your central argument goes too far. You're overreaching to try to win your point IMO. You realize this is getting over the line a bit. I would not say that to Jews because I know what they would say in return. The Catholic church has apologized to the Jews for its replacement theology and for all the blame it placed on all Jews for the actions of some conniving priests and a rowdy crowd of Jews when Pilate asked their choice for execution. I don't condemn such discussion but I think there are certain historical aspects we should try to respect. Jews suffered a lot from the Catholic church and over many centuries. As for whether the Aaronic priesthood really was entirely wiped out, well, in the midst of the ruins of Jerusalem, travelers to the site noted that there were a few inhabitants there. Either they played dead and survived or were elsewhere when Jerusalem fell. Or maybe they stabbed a Roman soldier and dragged his body in a dark alley and put on his uniform. It was not utterly impossible that there were survivors and they could be proper priests.
Are you sure? Maybe the Old Testament is actually the story of Islam.
Doesn't surprise me a bit. That's nowhere close to a proper sacrifice. If these were ancient times and non-priests were offering sacrifices in public as proper ritual, they would be slain by the priests and their soldiers. Blasphemers.
I didn't realize you strayed so far afield from Catholic doctrine. Are you sure you're Catholic?
The 6,000 years is the official figure. About 3000-4000 years ago is when the Japs first started creating records and this alleged dynasty was already in the royal mix at that point. What, you only believe Semites, not those wily Asians?
What "line"?
Until the Church says otherwise.
Yep. Well, this subject is exhausted. Time to move on.
I've begun to think some churches are attended by those who only enjoy judging others or being unkind for no good reason. That last church I was in made me very cynical. You could not get those people to pay any attention to scripture, they spread false gossip constantly to tear down the most valuable members (not me certainly), they ran out the primary donor to the church when he was dying of leukemia on the say-so of vicious gossip about him (which I personally knew he was innocent of because the gossip was about him meddling in another church which I was attending at the time he was allegedly making trouble there). When they kicked this dying man out (and his very sweet wife who was in grief over it as she faced losing her husband), they did just keep all the money he had donated, probably almost half the on-hand funds, like $10K-$12K. Oh, and BTW, the woman who was the false accuser? She had managed to get them to admit her husband as a full member of the church when he was unbaptized. In a Baptist church. Does this illustrate what a bunch of complete dumbasses they were? They didn't exactly enjoy it when I kept asking like, "What part of Baptist do you not get?" or "What part of 'Believe and be baptized' is so complicated?" These people had been raised in that church, heard decades of Baptist preaching, and still didn't grasp the most fundamental facts. They stared at you like dumb cows if you said these things. I think most of them couldn't recite or even recognize a single bible verse. My sarcasm was unrelenting until they terminated his membership. The same woman also had made the church dining hall her own distribution center for tapes by that crackpot at Shepherd's Chapel on satellite. They didn't tell me this but I think they had to consult the Baptist General Conference to make sure that people were supposed to be baptized to belong to a Baptist church. I think the only reason I lasted there as long as I did was because I just couldn't grasp how they could possibly be that stupid. And I have considered in the years since that they really just weren't interested in Christianity at all. And I wasn't going to quit once I realized they were plotting against a sick man, the finest member that church had had in many years. When I knew they were trying to expel a dying man, I was not going to abandon him. Oh, not to mention they had a family of charismatics that sat behind me, mumbling in tongues. Well, there are churches for charismatics but Baptist churches are not one of those churches. The charismatic family used to attend a charismatic church an equal distance from their home but decided they wanted to be charismatic at a Baptist church instead. I don't think they were troublemakers at the other church and they were actually very nice people. They were not members (yet) but did attend regularly. But they left Kenneth Copeland literature around and kept talking about how excited they were to attend his next conference, like they were eager to get Baptists to go to these charismatic conferences. I kept taking those brochures home and kept forgetting to put them back in the church so somehow those Copeland brochures didn't last long. I think they were evangelizing, maybe even trying for a takeover attempt, to convert a Baptist church to charismatic. That happened around that time to about a half-dozen small Baptist churches down in Texas and I had read of other attempts in other states. All the charismatics have to do is conceal their affiliation and get half the voting membership of a Baptist church to agree and they can do anything they want, including changing denominations entirely. The result is charismatics who get a free Baptist church and its treasury and can do anything they like. I really should have spraypainted Ichabod over the front door as a safety warning to the general public. As for why I never told the story before, despite people inquiring here, was because I was embarrassed to have ever been in such a church of dumbasses and heretics who seemed to attend mostly to backstab and gossip. I'm not saying they should go to hell. But I think that's their destination. They are cows, plodding along the wide path to destruction, chewing their cud placidly. I quit going the week they kicked him out. I didn't badmouth them around town or spread the accurate story around town because I thought they'd come to their senses. I stopped going to church after that and haven't gone again other than a few clan funerals held at other local churches. I'm more than a little tired of the local Christians. I am avoiding that kind of religion. I never told this before here or at LP and always dodged the question when someone inquired (like watchman who asked me the other day) but I'm tired of hiding their cruelty to him just because someday someone might read this and figure out what church and what people I'm talking about. And, no, I have not forgiven them either. They would first have to confess their cruel sins toward Mel as he was fighting his losing battle with leukemia and make public contrition with his wife, a widow whose heart they broke. And they should return the sizable funds he donated to keep that church open. But Mel did forgive them. Sweet sweet man, a better man than me.
The line against replacement theology. "The Jews killed our savior! HEP! HEP! HEP!" Rome has officially apologized for the doctrine and the results of preaching it over the centuries, I think it was B16 who did it. He was the best bishop of Rome theologically in a long long time. I know JP2 is the fave but he got pretty senile in office and got worse and worse. JP2's great moment was his role in challenging the Soviets and, in his supporting role to Thatcher and Reagan, bringing down the Soviet Union. No one ever talks about it for some reason. It was a great victory. And so many people seem to never have even noticed it.
I think you're saying things here that you wouldn't say in front of other Catholics. I think you're telling us doctrinal ideas that the Catholic church does not teach.
I addressed these fake 6000 years. Please do not distort what I said. Jews are Asians BTW. Arabia is in Asia too. Japanese culture has a little more than 2000 years. Ancestors of Japanese started to arrive about 3000 years ago.
I think the key difference between us on forgiveness is that I only forgive those who ask for forgiveness. It's only happened a few times in my life. It's quite rare actually, at least in the modern era. You insist that we must forgive everyone, contrite or not, whether they ask for forgiveness or not. I'll point out that God does not forgive the sins of anyone unless they have asked for forgiveness. Scripture is uniformly insistent that we ask for forgiveness in order to receive it. But then He guarantees in every passage from every voice in the canon that He will always forgive if asked to forgive. [Except that blaspheming the Holy Spirit. For that sin, there is no forgiveness. Some do argue that only the demon-possessed will blaspheme the Holy Spirit.] Surprising you could study scripture so long and in such detail and never notice this key feature of Christian teaching on forgiveness. Christians aren't supposed to be doormats to all aggressors. But they have to forgive their trespassers' sins against them if asked just as God has to forgive their trespasses against Him. And God does not forgive your sins if you do not ask forgiveness. And God does not forgive your sins if you have not forgiven others who have sought forgiveness from you. This is the by-which-ye-measure-ye-shall-be-measured stuff on which we do agree. You realize that your doctrine requires a Christian to be more forgiving toward others than God Himself is to children of God? Are we really required to be more forgiving toward others than God is toward us, the flock of Christ? Well, maybe when we get to Heaven, we can give some pointers to God on how He needs to be more like us and just forgive every sin even if the sinners don't ask for forgiveness or have any remorse. Then God can be learn to be as forgiving as we are. You are not reflecting the Catholic teaching on forgiveness. You've exceeded it considerably IMO. I've simply never heard a Catholic say such things. I've been trying to be more agreeable nowadays but I just don't agree that unsolicited forgiveness is the very heart and soul of Christian praxis and the measure by which God will judge His children to determine their eternal fate.
I don't think it's worth arguing. There are various claims over arrivals and when the present dynastic line was first established, at some point prior to the first written records. I readily admit that there are at least a few thousand years that are legendary, at or below the standard of Oral History before the Old Testament books were committed to writing. Much of the Old Testament comes to us from Oral History. Setting aside for a moment our natural religious bias in favor of Jewish scripture, is the factual basis for the the Japanese claim to ancient dynastic continuity any less reliable than the Jewish claims to the accuracy of OT books that derived from Oral History? Why do we favor Jewish oral history over Japanese oral history if we are discussing the evidence for or against the claims and merits of either. Of course, we are getting into matters of when a language becomes established and develops, as Proto-Hebrew spread and developed toward more modern forms of Hebrew. And when the language was established and when it came into common use and which versions of the OT books were authorized translations and the timing of these things over the centuries before the birth of Jesus. But I don't want to debate whether the LXX is better than Masoretic text tradition, whether the LXX was authorized for production, the unknown writers of it, etc.
I haven’t posted on FR since 2005.... and then I only posted for a few months. Went several years before I developed an interest in posting again. 2008, was when I started to post on LP. 2012, election night, paranoid schizophrenic Goldi, banned me for no particular post or reason. Because Goldi was strange as fuck, and none in her family would have anything to do with her, she kicked the bucket and not a soul knew, until the heat of Florida caused her to melt into her hardwood floor. I bet that smelled awesome. Anyhow, since she banned me, I would occasionally check in... when I noticed the bitch had died, and her kook forum was gonna shit the bed, I decided to post here, knowing Stone was a little more sane than Goldi-schitzoid. Well, you know the rest of the story... now I mostly lurk here. Try and wait out the impeding doom of all the cop hating, drug loving kooks. Hope I could straighten up some of that fake news you were posting.
Well, the fellow who is staying with me right now is a Catholic, nephew of an archbishop, in fact. We discuss these things nearly nightly. He and I both note the deep decline of the Church, all of its struggles, and discuss why that is. He has his ideas, I have mine. He thinks that some of what I think is "on the fringes of the Church". No doubt. Saturday morning in the men's group at Church we discuss all sorts of things. I focus on what I consider to be most important things, and they focus on other things. They all appreciate my scholarship and singular focus. They don't necessarily agree with me. The priest likes the vigorous discussion. Catholics think a lot of different things. None of my critiques has gotten me asked to stop taking communion.
You've exaggerated what I said. Do you believe that belief that Jesus was God and that his death forgave all of the sins of anybody who believes that is very heart of Christian praxis and the measure by which God will judge his children to determine their eternal fate? ETERNAL fate? Nah, just their fate to a very distant time - "for eons".
And we are not God. But as I said above, we have exhausted this line of discussion, I believe. What you said about the reason you no longer attend church is interesting, and emblematic of why the churches are dying out everywhere. People have not abandoned faith in God, but many are abandoning church attendance. Your story is an example of why.
I only recall that Abraham's father had an idol shop but Abraham left and built a shrine to Jehovah and entered the Old Covenant with God. He did do some idol-smashing a bit later, not that interesting or exceptional really. God was making clear His requirement that the Chosen People would not tolerate graven images. But then, of course He did. Idols were everywhere but they were forbidden by the first of the Ten Commandments. Being the first of the Ten Commandments is comparable to the importance of the First Amendment to all the others which followed in the original Bill of Rights. Well, if He didn't ask Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, I don't think you should worry about this hypothetical, however dramatic. You aren't Abraham. You aren't as beloved to God as the first Jew but you are luckier than Abraham in many ways. This is kind of eisegesis, a way of injecting ourselves into historical events in scripture. "I'd never do that, I'm smarter than Saint So-And-So!" BTW, I thought I'd tell you that I have decided to forgive you for disagreeing with me. I know you didn't ask but I guess I need to forgive you anyway or I'll end up in hell.
I think it was exceptionally bad really. Like a horror movie. You should understand that this was a far more sound church when I was young. And when people were dying of cancer, they didn't get persecuted based on malicious gossip from a newcomer who was distributing Shepherd's Chapel materials in a Baptist church. It would never have been tolerated there when I was young. I really doubt the other local churches are close to as bad but I am very wary now. I keep feeling asking who I feel could be considered brethren in the biblical sense. We are commanded not to forsake the assembly of the brethren since we are expected to support one another and thoughtfully help each other aspire to higher things. But if I don't agree with any local churches on theology and the churches I should find acceptable in theology and conduct simply can't seem to assemble for an hour a week for quiet and edifying worship without finding something to squabble about, then I don't have any local brethren. I did enjoy attending church other than some of the weak substitute preachers they had sometimes, like the one that actually riled me over Isaiah 14 and the lone useage of the term Lucifer in that passage. As you would expect, the guest preacher proceeded to inform the congregation that Lucifer was another name for Satan and, well, yada-yada-yada. I think it has been about 300 years since Rome repudiated this specific reading. Apparently news travels slow. Of course, the passage if read by any literate person understands that Lucifer is a term used to mock the hated king of Babylon, the sole superpower of the ancient world, the destroyer of Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem and the conqueror who carried Israel's people away to captivity in Babylon. And the prophesy against the fate of the mighty kings of Babylon is dire. And it has nothing to do with Satan. I honestly don't think anyone else in that church (other than 1 guy) even knew that Lucifer=Satan is a minority view, to say the least. Literate people seem to realize Lucifer=Nebuchadnezzar pretty easily.
3 spinner.
Taking away from scripture in true fake christian catholic fashion.
Just a tiny little bit. :)
You are right. Vic is making stuff up. He thinks it is because he got a bump on the head.
You don’t need to forgive me for disagreeing with you. My disagreement with you is not an affront to you. If anything, it is an affront to God, if God agrees with the doctrines if the church that you espouse. Of course, if he doesn’t, then there’s no affront to anyone. We disagree, profoundly, on a great many things. We always have, and we always will, I expect. I forgive you, for disagreeing to the point of being disagreeable and taking the argument “to the man”, at times, which is something I don’t do. I severely criticize, even attack and insult, belief systems, be they political or religious, on very specific grounds, and I discuss the motivations of groups of people. What I don’t do, unless provoked to extreme anger BY ad hominem, is take the argument “to the man”. And the two times that I have done that on this site over the years, in both cases, I admitted that I had left the fold of Christian behavior and apologized to the man. (The second time I was not forgiven, by him, but my conscience is clear on the matter, because in neither case did “the man” admit that he had started down that path of personal attack. That seems to be a Christian debate strategy, I have noticed. Catholics and Protestants both, when I press hard on the sins of the church and the places where the church(es) frankly depart from Jesus - quoting Jesus for good measure - get mad at ME, and adopt the strategy that WAS successful for 1500 years: attack the man and obliterate him as an individual, by calling him a heretic and using the armed power of the state to silence him. This left a butcher’s bill for the Christian Churches that, today, is poison at the very root - they can not deny it, and they will not denounce themselves, as churches, for having been violent mass murderers, over the years. They seek to minimize or trivialize the first of the deadly sins, performed over the course of history by them as organized churches, but they focus like a laser beam on my presumed sins and imperfections. Legitimate, factual criticism of historical behavior is met by vicious ad hominem - and that only because the organizations can rip out tongues and burn to silence. What am I trying to do? To point out that the churches are dying -all of them. Pew Research will tell you that. To point out the specific reasons why. And to point to a way of reform that will work. Simply giving up on God and joining the secular society is not the answer, but doubling down on bad old tradition isn’t either. How about actually being Christians - you know, paying attention to CHRIST for a change, just him. That’s not ad hominem. The replies I get when I press it as insistently as Baptists or JWs IS ad hominem, focusing on MY flaws, on MY perceived “heresy”. I used to really fight, just as I did over politics. But I figured out something: the status quo itself is moving inexorably in my favor. We have the general military posture I favor, we’re moving towards the social welfare system I think is necessary, we’ve established a regime of broad socio-legal tolerance. God is still there, as always, but the stubborn, unrepentant historical churches that will not reform towards what Christ actually said are dying fast. So, really, I don’t have to fight at all. I just need to wait. The service I could perform is to give those who are wedded to sinking ships a different way to look at things, that will make the transition to a more Nazarene world less painful for them, to allow them to make it their own. But this is error on my part, according to them. So I’m inclined to just fly away and let their world dwindle and die around them. Two boats and a helicopter...I’m the helicopter.
Died Friday.3 PM. Still in the grave 24 hours later, 3 PM Saturday. Rose somewhere before dawn Sunday, say 4 AM, 13 hours later. Total time dead: 37 hours - a day and a half by the Greco-Roman accounting. Died Friday before Sunset, part of one Jewish day (counted sunset to sunset). Was in the grave sunset to sunset Saturday, one Jewish day. Rose before sunrise Sunday morning. In the grave part of three Jewish days, but not “three days and nights by any accounting. One full day, one full night and most of a second, 3 hours and 10 hours, respectively, of two other days. . It is Saturday noon. By Jesus’ death count, three days and nights from now is Monday morning at 1 AM. Monday morning 1 AM is not “three days and nights” from now in any language except the weird semantic math of Jesus’ resurrection, to try to avoid a discrepancy.
You had to be there. Sometimes someone would investigate whether the KJV or other translators had a particular purpose or subtle phrasing in a key passage. I recall a thing like that and I had posted what I intended to be a witty Wizard of Oz quote, "Surrender, Dorothy". And the cleverest poster, an academic overachiever who was an MD, started pointing out the difference a comma makes. Because "Surrender, Dorothy" is a command to Dorothy to surrender herself but "Surrender Dorothy" is a demand for others to surrender Dorothy. Well, he certainly was right, a very bright man. He pored over text for hidden meanings rigorously. And, as you would guess, he found some doozies. But I raised some objections on going full gnostic about hidden messages in the Bible. Because that was what the gnostics did do. They prided themselves on finding a new and novel doctrine every day, at least according to the bitter complaints of the ancient church fathers about any attempt to reason with them and restrain their wild influence on others. And there are reflections in the text of the NT that indicate an early rise in non-Christians or gnostic Christians trying to enter into the churches as teachers. Certainly, those warnings against false teachers and false doctrines had a source. And, by the time the NT canon was established, they had already had to battle the influence of Marcionism, an attempt by Marcion to establish his own canon in 144AD when the Roman churches lacked any canon of their own. Marcion included the 10 sections of Luke and the Pauline epistles, making 11 books in all. Marcion dismissed the OT entirely and most of the later NT writings and Marcion was more than a little gnostic in philosophy. "Marcionites held that the God of the Hebrew Bible was inconsistent, jealous, wrathful and genocidal, and that the material world he created was defective, a place of suffering; the God who made such a world is a bungling or malicious demiurge." Well, I'm sure you recognize the familiar theme that runs through so many gnostic heresies of the early churches. It was clear that if Rome didn't authorize a canon of scripture, someone else was going to do it for them. Rome shifted into high gear and produced the canon in only 250 years. : ) I'm trying to convey from my experience with the commas and Dorothy that people with a little time and education and a bent for what are, in essence, literary pursuits can find and invent extremely clever interpretations of even slightly ambiguous phrases. We see this in modern books about prophecy or prosperity gospel or charismatic practices. And you can see how bright people can make a mountain out of a molehill, entire doctrines unknown to the ancient churches. Why, these people are clever enough to give Jesus Himself some pointers if He'd only listen to them. When I see people making these novel doctrinal claims or "discovering" new doctrines or that some verse that only needs to hammer home a single doctrine suddenly contains six doctrines, I think it is very clever and I admire their ingenuity. But it is too clever by half. I do agree with this. However, the writers of the Bible have provided doctrinal guidance to isolated communities and a common knowledge and doctrinal base. That is a net plus, as long as people don't fetishize it or endow it with an authority it does not possess. Just as you said.
In 381 AD the Church began to advocate for the torture and death of heretics. The famous St. Augustine, in regard to that very thing, infamously opined "Error has no rights". So, the very ancient church, before its division, even, into Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic, let alone Catholic and Protestant, decided that it had the divine right to call for the bloody death of Arian heretics. The ancient church went off the rails very, very early. If you're killing people in the name of Christ, you've lost the bubble, and there's going to be a lot of poisonous fruit coming from that diseased tree. Claims of the authority of "the Church" fall to mud if "the church" involved has killed people - and that's all of the old ones except the Quakers.
Well, you know why they banned married priests. It led to corrupt practices with bishops giving a lot of church wealth to their children. And any pope in the last thousand years could end the practice. And it is not even consistent. Anglicans, Lutherans and so on can become priests even if married but they cannot remarry. And everyone looks the other way when African seminarians get married before they become priests. Because African societies won't accept an unmarried priest, it seems. The pale white sexless priest is a fetish of European and American believers. Shhh...I didn't think that anyone had noticed yet. The Church burnt a SAINT alive after a Church trial - St. Joan of Arc. The Church accumulated the wealth to build the towering Vatican by selling indulgences and other corrupt practices. You can anticipate all our little Prot arguments in advance. It does show that at least we understand each other. So much better than just talking past each other. If people disagree, let it be over something that matters, not semantics. I always think of the scripture that teaches of how Christ ascended and now sits in the presence of the Father, interceding for our every request. Some people assert the Father could not even hear our requests if Jesus were not present to sanctify our request. I don't want another intercessor trying to tug the Father's elbow and get Him to do something. I want to go straight to the source, Jesus Himself. What else is He going to do there if everyone is giving all their prayer traffic to Mary and other sainted figures? Jesus is the Shepherd and His sheep know His voice. Mary and Joan of Arc are certainly admirable but the NT doesn't endow them with intercession duties and they don't have a flock. Or a bride. Like any Prot, I still think the NT is about Jesus, beginning to end. Anything that diminishes Christ's role in any matter is highly suspect, just as a simple rule of thumb. Of course, us Prots aren't too terribly upset if the Catholics are praying to Mary. It gives us more time to monopolize attention from Christ Himself. And Mary can't tug on Jesus' elbow or on the Father's because she has no throne there. Only the Father does and Jesus has a throne at the right-hand side. There was plenty of ink and paper to write about Mary's throne at the left-hand side of God but no one ever wrote that, probably because it just doesn't exist because Mary is not an intercessor at all. For scripture to claim that Jesus is the sole intermediary necessarily would mean that for Mary to be an intercessor, Jesus' role and authority would be diminished. Jesus' role would be reduced to being a Co-Intercessor. By the time you let all the saints start acting as intercessors, Jesus is just one of thousands of intercessors available, no more important really than Saint Lucifer of Cagliari, my own favorite saint. Well, if Baptists can have favorite saints, he's my pick. A fiery writer who wasn't afraid to tell off the emperor. He must have been a real corker. As you might suspect from an earlier post, having a Saint Lucifer so people understand that Lucifer is not a name for Satan. When the Bible means Satan, it says Satan or the devil. And a Baptist would note that this term, Lucifer, is found only once in the entire Bible. So it fails the two-citations test for doctrinal teaching as well, something for Baptists to feel smug about. And we can point out that the name Lucifer would be largely unknown to modern people were it not for Hollyweird's use of it in various horror movies. They even had a soap opera called Lucifer a few years ago. Naturally, it was a sympathetic portrayal of all the challenges faced by the charming devil. There is one throne sitting next to the Father's. There is one Heir, one Bridegroom, one Shepherd, one Intercessor, one Sanctifier, one Savior. And, according to scripture, they're all named Jesus which is so easy that even a child can remember it. Like that was the intent all along. Scripture does teach this multiple times, enough to make any Baptist satisfied that the doctrine is supported authoritatively.
Well, Lutherans admit that Martin L. made a few errors as well. We are all human and these two writers are not in the NT canon. For a reason. They're clever enough and passionate but they are also sometimes too clever by half, to continue my use of that tortured phrase.
I know you realize I was just trying to rib you from that earlier post about unsolicited forgiveness. Not to entirely minimize or dismiss your concerns for the churches, I would point out that the churches have had some similar periods of mass apostasy that lasted decades. Then people returned to the church when they were tired of living godlessly. Also, if the apocalyptic element is (finally) correct about the approaching Second Coming, the diminution of churches and believers does square well with prophecies in scripture about itchy ears and persecution by your own brethren. Yeah, I think we all like the idea of being in the grandstands for the Grand Finale, that history should end on our watch. It would be satisfying. Until the Tribulation hits.
I'd think that any student of history could only be surprised if it wasn't. Those princes and kings were a horny bunch apparently.
I don't doubt that your language was written well but somehow I didn't get that impression from your posts but perhaps I was being slow or was distracted. I take back (most of) what I said about your posts being too radical for an orthodox Catholic.
Believe me, it is not worth your time. It used to be one of my favorite verses because it crowns the teachings of verses 1-13. The reason it bothers me in part is that Baptists believe in bible study that every important doctrine has at least two witnesses in scripture, that it is a hallmark for bible students to look for. If you think you've found some new doctrine in the Bible, go find confirmation in another passage or preferably from another writer. To put it simply, God know His children don't listen well so He does repeat Himself so we can't ignore Him so easily. I think every parent knows the feeling. And, in the unprofitable dispute over That Verse, the six doctrines that were cited as belonging in that verse were all taught in numerous other passages and by other writers. So what profit is there to imagine five extra doctrines in a short simple verse? Well, none. So we should avoid any disputes with others over such "discoveries". And I still insist that no one ever makes a six-way pun. Or writes or speaks a sentence with six different meanings. After all, if the bright guy who found six doctrines in there was that lucky in his "discovery", why shouldn't I claim there are 30 doctrines in that short sentence? Then I would obviously be at least five times smarter than he is? And, if someone objects that no one can find 30 different complex doctrines into just one verse, I can retort that there is no biblical limit to how many doctrines can dance on the head of a verse. Or is that angels dancing on the head of a pin? Anyway, I continue to assert with my usual charm that virtually all bible verses are written in plain language and their context generally leaves no doubt as to their single doctrinal teaching. I can't think of any good examples of a key verse where you have even dualistic meaning. Of course, it is exciting to grab your fedora and bullwhip and adventure off into the scriptures to make another "discovery" (or six) from ancient times. Perhaps more exciting than just studying scripture for wisdom and doctrine as the Bible itself tells us to do.
Considering that there is no punctuation at all in the original koine Greek, theological disputes over commas really don’t persuade me of anything.
Yes but one could always dispute whether the choice to use an ordinary comma and/or a hoity-toity semi-colons, liberally sprinkled through every chapter, was an effort by translators to convey subtle context. Which really isn't the case. I never found much rhyme or reason to their system.
Died Friday before Sunset, part of one Jewish day (counted sunset to sunset). Was in the grave sunset to sunset Saturday, one Jewish day. Rose before sunrise Sunday morning. In the grave part of three Jewish days, but not “three days and nights by any accounting. One full day, one full night and most of a second, 3 hours and 10 hours, respectively, of two other days. . It is Saturday noon. By Jesus’ death count, three days and nights from now is Monday morning at 1 AM. Monday morning 1 AM is not “three days and nights” from now in any language except the weird semantic math of Jesus’ resurrection, to try to avoid a discrepancy. Nope. Just because you make up some bullshit doesn't make it so. That bump might have damaged your brain permanently.
Well done.
It was okay to convey my point(s) but I always look back at such posts and tell myself that I should have been able to cogently write the same thing in less than half the words that I used. I wish I wrote as well as Vic. I guess those guys do get some tangible skills from law school.
And how would the translators, none of whom are native speakers of koine Greek (there being no native speakers of koine Greek; speakers of modern Greek are as close as one can get, and modern Greek is to koine Greek what Portuguese is to Latin), know that such subtle context was there at all? Did they not, rather, see their theology in certain readings of the text, and supply punctuation to cause the text to read "correctly", by their beliefs. Even a single capitalization changes meaning. It is the difference between helping your uncle Jack off a horse, and helping your uncle jack off a horse.
What did I "make up"? Jesus died "in the ninth hour" during daylight, on Good Friday. That's Friday at 3 PM. He had to be in the grave before sunset (about 6 PM), because the body had to be put away and people stop working by sunset. The Jewish day begins at sunset, and sunset Friday means Saturday, the Sabbath begins at about 6 PM. Jesus was in the tomb all day Saturday, from about 6 PM Friday night - by our calendar, which is the beginning of Saturday by the Jewish reckoning. "Saturday night" by Jewish reckoning, was the night between Friday sunset and Saturday sunrise. When the sun set on Saturday, Sunday night began, circa 6 PM Saturday. It was during Sunday night, before dawn on Sunday morning (circa 6 AM), that Jesus rose from the dead, before the light. So, by the Jewish calendar, Jesus was dead for three hours on Friday, all day Satruday, from sunset Friday until sunset Saturday, and he rose from the dead Sunday night, about 4 AM, before the sunrise on Sunday morning. By the Roman, or our Calendar, Jesus was dead on Friday afternoon at 3 PM, in the tomb before sunset, and still in the tomb at midnight Friday night. That's 9 hours. He was in the tomb all day Saturday, that's 24 hours, and he rose from the dead about 4 or 5 AM Sunday, another 4 or 5 hours, for a total time of 37 or 38 hours, not even two full days (that's 48 hours). By the Jewish calendar he was in the tomb for part of two days - Friday (3 hours), and all day Saturday. He was in the tomb for slightly less than two nights: Sunset Friday until sunrise Saturday, and sunset Saturday until before sunrise Sunday morning. That's 1 and a quarter days, and 1 and 3/4 nights. Jesus was not in the grave three days and three nights by either the Hebrew or Roman recknoning. I'm not making this up. It's just basic math.
Actually, He was...by Hebrew reckoning. "Three days and three nights" is an Hebrew expression which had the same meaning as simply "three days" (see 1 Sam 30:12-13) Also, a part of a day can also be referred to as "a day". If there were any holes in this accounting of Jesus' time in the tomb, the Jews themselves would have used it to tear the whole thing to shreds. They didn't..so obviously they understood very well what Jesus was saying.
I finally conclude they didn't have much of a system. Usually commas in the middle of a verse, semi-colons at the end of a run-on verse to tie it to the next verse. Even a single capitalization changes meaning. It is the difference between helping your uncle Jack off a horse, and helping your uncle jack off a horse. Good rule. I guess I didn't pay attention back in second grade to pick up that handy tip. LOL
Samuel 30:12-13 speaks of a man who had had no water for three days and three nights. That would mean three days and three nights. There's nothing in that passage to suggest any other span of time.
13 And David said unto him, To whom belongest thou? and whence art thou? And he said, I am a young man of Egypt, servant to an Amalekite; and my master left me, because three days agone I fell sick. In v. 12 "three days and three nights" In v.13 just "three days". Yet both speak of the same time frame. There is a wealth of commentary on the key verse Matthew 12:40 I'm not going to plaster this thread with copy and paste from all the rich sources available: Lightfoot, Gill, Torrey... I will paste a bit of Adam Clarke (d.1832) that you might find interesting: And, would you look at that...Clarke agrees with your math!
Of course Clarke agrees with my math. This is called "special pleading" to try to paper over a hole in the evidence. In the case of Jesus the problem is obvious: the math does not work for three days and three nights. This creates a desperate situation. 1 Samuel is proposed as a solution. But just read it: it isn't. We're told that he hadn't eaten bread nor drunk water for three days and three nights. Then "three days agone" - that doesn't change anything. Three days and three nights ago could be Friday daytime, and Friday night, Saturday daytime, and Saturday night, and Sunday daytime and Sunday night. Or we could call that Friday, Saturday, Sunday and not break out the day and night part. That would fit the pattern of Genesis, in which the light part of the day is specifically called day, and the dark part, night, but then the night and the day (the dark and the light) are one day. This is normal use in both Hebrew AND English. The only difference is when the day is measured from. In our, and the Roman calendar, a day is midnight to midnight, comprising the daylight and the nighttime. There could be some ambiguity as to when "Sunday night" is, because with a mid-night division of the day, part of the nighttime was Sunday night, and part of the nighttime was Monday morning. So, was last night Sunday night or was it Monday night, or was it both? Our convention is easy: last night was Sunday night, and tonight is Monday night. In Hebrew this is easy: the night - the dark part of the day - is never split between two days. The day runs sunset to sunset. So, what WE could all "Friday night" is "Saturday night to the Jews". To us, the night comes AFTER the day. To the Jews, night comes BEFORE the day. Looking at Samuel, we see the double use in Hebrew of the word day, to mean both the 24 hour period (nighttime then daylight), and also the daylight part, as distinguished from nighttime (three days and three nights). What we don't see is any reason at all to truncate three days and three nights into a day and a half period. The only reason we strain to do that is because Jesus was clearly NOT in the tomb three days and three nights, so there is a desperate (and dishonest) attempt to square a circle so that a discrepancy in the Bible does not have to be admitted. That section from Samuel doesn't help the case at all, because there's no reason to think that the guy hadn't fasted and thirsted for three days and three nights. But Jesus wasn't in the tomb for three days and three nights.
3 days and 3 nights is Monday. You count Friday as the first day then Friday night as the first night. Then Saturday is the second day and Saturday night is the second night. Then you have Sunday morning which is the third day but you haven't had 3 nights yet dummy. You basically worship yourself and think of yourself as a prophet because you damaged your brain when you hit it. You didn't die. People die one time then they are dead. Tooconservative says you write good but it doesn't count if it is lies and deception.
Yes, three days and three nights IS Monday. Except in Christian math, when Christ was cruficied on Good Friday, and spend "three days and three nights" in the tomb, then rose from the dead on Sunday morning before dawn. That's exactly the problem.
He didn't rise on Sunday morning. Unless you are calling Christ a liar. He rose on Monday morning. You are just trying to make it fit with your Easter Sunday tradition. Show me in scripture where he rose on Sunday morning. You can't he didn't. I will give you one point. It may not have been 72 hours. So you taught me something on that detail. Thank You.
The women went to the grave early in the morning before dawn "on the first day of the week". The last day of the week, to the Hebrews, the Seventh Day, was the Sabbath. Sunday was the First Day of the Week, and that's when the women in the Scriptures went and found the empty tomb. The Christians celebrate Easter on Sunday because the Bible SAYS he rose on Sunday morning - "the first day of the week". Nobody who has tried to fix the problem in the text proposes Monday. Instead, they try to say he was crucified on Thursday. "The first day of the week" language in the Gospel texts fixes the resurrection on Sunday biblically.
This what I believe... Mark 15:42-43 establishes that Joseph of Arimathaea asked for Christ's body on "the day before the Sabbath". Ex. 20:10 tells us that the Sabbath Day is the seventh day and this is when the Jews worship. That would make the day before the Sabbath to be the sixth day, when Jesus was crucified. Jesus' crucifixion on the sixth day works very well, spiritually speaking. The Bible tells us that six is the number of a man. Man was created on the sixth day. That would be in keeping with Christ's death by man and for man...on the sixth day. That would have Jesus lying in the tomb on the seventh day, the Sabbath Day. The number seven is used by God in the Bible to teach a day of rest, as in God rested from His work of creation...on the seventh day. Next would be, of course, the eighth day. The eighth day is the day baby boys are circumcised, speaking of a new life, a new beginning. It is a very important day where God teaches an important spiritual lesson. It is also the day when the the disciples gathered to break bread (Acts 20:7). "On the first day of the week" would be the day AFTER the Sabbath (seventh)...the eight day. This, to me, is the perfect day for the Resurrection, a new life and new beginning! By Hebrew time keeping this would qualify as three days in the tomb. By the same understanding if would even allow for the phrase "three days and three nights". This is about the best I can do at the moment. I think it fits and it encourages my faith, and teaches needful spiritual truths. Of course, there is much debate on this whole matter.
You gotta be kidding me. A Baptist church peddling that bogus and blasphemous "serpent seed" doctrine?
As for why I never told the story before, despite people inquiring here, was because I was embarrassed to have ever been in such a church of dumbasses and heretics who seemed to attend mostly to backstab and gossip. I'm not saying they should go to hell. But I think that's their destination. They are cows, plodding along the wide path to destruction, chewing their cud placidly. I quit going the week they kicked him out. I didn't badmouth them around town or spread the accurate story around town because I thought they'd come to their senses. I stopped going to church after that and haven't gone again other than a few clan funerals held at other local churches. I'm more than a little tired of the local Christians. I am avoiding that kind of religion. I never told this before here or at LP and always dodged the question when someone inquired (like watchman who asked me the other day) but I'm tired of hiding their cruelty to him just because someday someone might read this and figure out what church and what people I'm talking about. And, no, I have not forgiven them either. They would first have to confess their cruel sins toward Mel as he was fighting his losing battle with leukemia and make public contrition with his wife, a widow whose heart they broke. And they should return the sizable funds he donated to keep that church open. But Mel did forgive them. Sweet sweet man, a better man than me. Toxic church. No wonder I encounter previously church attending folks in large numbers at Christian sites. I hear of the same backbiting, gossip and lack of charity when they hit rock bottom. When I did my deacon interview last year, after answering a lot of questions I understood they had to ask, I was asked to ask the elders and pastor questions. Taking care of our own was a main concern. I told them of an elderly man who sat in the back every late service on Sunday morning. I started sitting next to him and formed a rapport. One day he came in tears to tell me that the doctors recommended he go on hospice care. He did have family not far away who were not members. We prayed, already had each other's email and phone numbers and kept in contact. He told me he was a member of the church for "years." After not seeing him for two weeks I called, no answer. Texted email nothing. Last I heard he was going to live with family. Asked the associate pastor to pull his member file so I could go do a hard target search. Nothing in the files. My point to the church leadership was I had the man fill out a "connect" card months before, the pastor did a follow up and nothing after that. The difference with my church is they listened and asked me to work with the senior deacon to shore up our contact with elderly members. My church is young and there are actually not many elderly. But we do now keep a closer eye on the elderly and I offered the pastors, elders and deacons keep up an active hard target search for the elderly. I told them many fall off the grid when they become shut-ins, don't know how to work their computers (some do) to get the service on Facebook. Not only that but the human to human contact is what we should be doing even with the services broadcast. I also offered what Catholics do, bring communion to the shut-ins. Good news is they listened and acted.
Fair enough. It doesn't MATTER to me, because I don't expect the Bible to be letter-perfect history. I think the tradition has it right, and it fits the general story in the Scriptures: Killed on Friday, in the Tomb on Saturday, raised the morning of the First/8th Day, Sunday. That's what the text says, and that's what the tradition says. The only reason it's an issue is because of the "three days, three nights" language. That's not accurate, but it doesn't MATTER to me. It matters to other people, for whom the absolute perfection of the historical record in the Bible is a matter of absolute theological necessity. I'm not someone like that, and if I were part of a Church that demanded that thought, I would either have to leave that Church or, more likely, stick around and just disagree with it. Of course, I were a member of a Church that actually put real pressure on me to give money, I would not be a member for very long!
Jesus died "in the ninth hour" during daylight, on Good Friday. That's Friday at 3 PM. He had to be in the grave before sunset (about 6 PM), because the body had to be put away and people stop working by sunset. The Jewish day begins at sunset, and sunset Friday means Saturday, the Sabbath begins at about 6 PM. Jesus was in the tomb all day Saturday, from about 6 PM Friday night - by our calendar, which is the beginning of Saturday by the Jewish reckoning. "Saturday night" by Jewish reckoning, was the night between Friday sunset and Saturday sunrise. When the sun set on Saturday, Sunday night began, circa 6 PM Saturday. It was during Sunday night, before dawn on Sunday morning (circa 6 AM), that Jesus rose from the dead, before the light. So, by the Jewish calendar, Jesus was dead for three hours on Friday, all day Satruday, from sunset Friday until sunset Saturday, and he rose from the dead Sunday night, about 4 AM, before the sunrise on Sunday morning. By the Roman, or our Calendar, Jesus was dead on Friday afternoon at 3 PM, in the tomb before sunset, and still in the tomb at midnight Friday night. That's 9 hours. He was in the tomb all day Saturday, that's 24 hours, and he rose from the dead about 4 or 5 AM Sunday, another 4 or 5 hours, for a total time of 37 or 38 hours, not even two full days (that's 48 hours). By the Jewish calendar he was in the tomb for part of two days - Friday (3 hours), and all day Saturday. He was in the tomb for slightly less than two nights: Sunset Friday until sunrise Saturday, and sunset Saturday until before sunrise Sunday morning. That's 1 and a quarter days, and 1 and 3/4 nights. Jesus was not in the grave three days and three nights by either the Hebrew or Roman recknoning. I'm not making this up. It's just basic math. Enter Screen Names of recipients separated by commas or semicolons. There are other possibilities to explore examining the pertinent Scriptures. I think the gymnastics used today is try to fit post apostolic "feast days" and calendars in to a 7 day Roman calendar. Jesus said in Matthew 12:40, “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” Those who argue for a Friday crucifixion say that there is still a valid way in which He could have been considered in the grave for three days. In the Jewish mind of the first century, a part of day was considered as a full day. Since Jesus was in the grave for part of Friday, all of Saturday, and part of Sunday—He could be considered to have been in the grave for three days. One of the principal arguments for Friday is found in Mark 15:42, which notes that Jesus was crucified “the day before the Sabbath.” If that was the weekly Sabbath, i.e. Saturday, then that fact leads to a Friday crucifixion. Another argument for Friday says that verses such as Matthew 16:21 and Luke 9:22 teach that Jesus would rise on the third day; therefore, He would not need to be in the grave a full three days and nights. But while some translations use “on the third day” for these verses, not all do, and not everyone agrees that “on the third day” is the best way to translate these verses. Furthermore, Mark 8:31 says that Jesus will be raised “after” three days. The Thursday argument expands on the Friday view and argues mainly that there are too many events (some count as many as twenty) happening between Christ's burial and Sunday morning to occur from Friday evening to Sunday morning. Proponents of the Thursday view point out that this is especially a problem when the only full day between Friday and Sunday was Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. An extra day or two eliminates that problem. The Thursday advocates could reason thus: suppose you haven't seen a friend since Monday evening. The next time you see him it is Thursday morning and you say, “I haven’t seen you in three days” even though it had technically only been 60 hours (2.5 days). If Jesus was crucified on Thursday, this example shows how it could be considered three days. The Wednesday opinion states that there were two Sabbaths that week. After the first one (the one that occurred on the evening of the crucifixion [Mark 15:42; Luke 23:52-54]), the women purchased spices—note that they made their purchase after the Sabbath (Mark 16:1). The Wednesday view holds that this “Sabbath” was the Passover (see Leviticus 16:29-31, 23:24-32, 39, where high holy days that are not necessarily the seventh day of the week are referred to as the Sabbath). The second Sabbath that week was the normal weekly Sabbath. Note that in Luke 23:56 the women who had purchased spices after the first Sabbath returned and prepared the spices, then “rested on the Sabbath.” The argument states that they could not purchase the spices after the Sabbath, yet prepare those spices before the Sabbath—unless there were two Sabbaths. With the two-Sabbath view, if Christ was crucified on Thursday, then the high holy Sabbath (the Passover) would have begun Thursday at sundown and ended at Friday sundown—at the beginning of the weekly Sabbath or Saturday. Purchasing the spices after the first Sabbath (Passover) would have meant they purchased them on Saturday and were breaking the Sabbath. Therefore, according to the Wednesday viewpoint, the only explanation that does not violate the biblical account of the women and the spices and holds to a literal understanding of Matthew 12:40 is that Christ was crucified on Wednesday. The Sabbath that was a high holy day (Passover) occurred on Thursday, the women purchased spices (after that) on Friday and returned and prepared the spices on the same day, they rested on Saturday which was the weekly Sabbath, then brought the spices to the tomb early Sunday. Jesus was buried near sundown on Wednesday, which began Thursday in the Jewish calendar. Using a Jewish calendar, you have Thursday night (night one), Thursday day (day one), Friday night (night two), Friday day (day two), Saturday night (night three), Saturday day (day three). We do not know exactly what time He rose, but we do know that it was before sunrise on Sunday. He could have risen as early as just after sunset Saturday evening, which began the first day of the week to the Jews. The discovery of the empty tomb was made just at sunrise (Mark 16:2), before it was fully light (John 20:1). A possible problem with the Wednesday view is that the disciples who walked with Jesus on the road to Emmaus did so on “the same day” of His resurrection (Luke 24:13). The disciples, who do not recognize Jesus, tell Him of Jesus' crucifixion (24:21) and say that “today is the third day since these things happened” (24:22). Wednesday to Sunday is four days. A possible explanation is that they may have been counting since Wednesday evening at Christ's burial, which begins the Jewish Thursday, and Thursday to Sunday could be counted as three days.
always dodged the question when someone inquired (like watchman who asked me the other day) I didn't see this post until today, TC. I think it is very important to tell these stories...at the right time and when it seems fitting to do so. What you are talking about here in this post...this is an epidemic. It's repeating itself across the nation like the plague. There has been some abatement, but in my opinion...the damage has been done. The salt has lost it's savour and the light has been hid under a bushel basket (often of bile and venom). I have a story. My first church had split just before I was called so I thought, great, the problems had left the church and we could just start over. That first Sunday I looked out in the congregation and realized...it had split again, just after the first split left! But somehow, we grew and grew. All the while seismic plates(!) were pressing against each other. Hugh lava domes were forming. Just as victory was looking so sweet! The volcano erupted. New believers crushed, whole families burned alive. A bedrock church from our nation's history...it was gone for good. That's the thing. The local church IS the bedrock. Its that little community church, in thousands upon thousands of communities and villages, towns and cities. The local church nearest me has taken a novel approach. They tore up their constitution! I figured whatever! If it keeps the doors open and the gospel message going out, I'm all in favor. But as for any serious light emanating, that would breath freedom back into the land...not happening. Long story short, I moved to a cow pasture. Thankful, everyday. It's safe for now but I see the fabric ripping already. Did I mention, we have Somalians walking the country road past my farm. Its the craziest thing. Middle of nowhere, temps hitting 20 below in winter. I'd like to befriend even share the gospel but they are always gone by the time I walk across the field. Still, its unsettling.
And I will return to my own view of all of this. I am TOTALLY INDIFFERENT to the day on which he was crucified, or rose from the dead. It makes NO DIFFERENCE WHATEVER to me, because I'm not superstitious or idolatrous. That something happened on a certain day does not make that day "more extra special", such that it matters before God. IF I were a circumcised Hebrew living in Israel when the Temple was still up and the daily offerings were still being made by the Aaronic priesthood, then the Saturday Sabbath would matter, as would the dates of various moons and seasons. But I'm none of those things, so they are completely, utterly, totally irrelevant, in every single respect, to my spiritual OR physical voyage through this world. They're the badges of a defunct religion that neither I nor anybody in my ancestry back to "Adam and Eve" were part of. I understand very clearly WHY there is such sturm und drang, and effort expended on this very subject: it's a contradiction in the Bible. But I don't expect a collection of copied human scrolls to be perfect, so such contradictions and imperfections are of no concern to ME either. They ARE of concern, very great concern, to those people for whom the Bible MUST be word-and-letter perfect, lest their faith be shaken. I am not such a person - I consider such people to be superstitious at best, and vaguely idolatrous about the Bible, at worst - but their concerns are no skin off my nose, and I'm well content to just let them be - if they let me be also. When they don't, then I bring up obvious issues like this one to repay them for not letting me be by letting them deal with the distress of the obvious imperfections in their book. Perfectionism is not my circus, not my monkey. I do maintain that the Church is fading all around the world IN PART because of piddling little nits like this. We've got Christians being killed for their faith in the Middle East, China and Africa, and 2 million babies a year being killed for convenience in the USA, and we've got staggering poverty and abuse...and THIS is the sort of trivial shit that Christians fight about? It's also fading because of more serious issues, such as unchecked abuse, mistreatment of people, bigotry, attitudes about wealth and power, etc. It's not selling well anymore, at all. My simple, sincere, direct suggestion is: if you want to save the Church, you had better get back to what Jesus himself said, and then insist on DOING THAT. That requires a revamped view of violence, of money, of foreigners, of...everything. It's demanding but consistent. I don't personally believe that the churches are going to be able to survive if they don't do that. And I'm ok with that. All of the dross falls away, and what is left is Jesus - Just Jesus. That's an improvement, to my eyes. It's sincere, clean and uncomplicated. It's real.
Jesus did say the 'sign of Jonah.' In Jonah we see that as three days and three nights. So that is what happened regardless of the days. I thought the Wednesday option had good logic according to the feast days being Sabbath's. Makes sense as we see the women prepare the spices, keep the feast day and then go back before the weekly Sabbath. I don't know, but it is a consideration, that the early church circa early second century when coming up with the liturgical calendar may have made days fit Holy Week.
Well as a Catholic and me Reformed we are creedal. The Creed does not specify days of the week but Jesus was Crucified, died, was buried and on the third day He rose again the third day in fulfillment of the Scriptures.
Apparently people can't gather amicably to worship for an hour or two a week. Maybe they're too busy with their online lives to conduct a real life. Smart move. But Somalians all over? Yeeesh. Can't we attract a better class of migrant? I don't mean whiter. I just mean people more apt to blend in with American ideas. Somalia is barely a country at all.
Neglect is bad enough. Persecuting the dying is just too far over the line. It's a little like the problem with Social Security. When you have a dozen young workers supporting a retiree, then the burden is not so great. When you extend the average lifespan a few decades past retirement age, suddenly you only have 3 workers to support a retiree. And Big Gov wonders why people don't have very many kids nowadays. Hell, they can't afford them and government doesn't do much to help. Government is mostly run by pols who are cashing in with lobbyists. So few have an incentive or desire to simply pursue the public interest on ideologically neutral terms. The natural tendency in recent decades is for churches to turn elderly. Then suddenly it's not so much fun for anyone, it seems. And we haven't seen the full impact of the Boomer retirement quite yet. Maybe the Boomers are going to just kill off the churches completely. The upcoming generation has a deep love for their phones and tats, not for religion.
I like how you attack the problem analytically. But is all this interest in the exact day and hour of Jesus' crucifixion of any great importance. I think it is broadly accepted that Jesus was crucified. Would anyone be a better Christian even if they managed to deduce the exact day, hour, minute and second of the crucifixion of Jesus? It might sell a few books for an enterprising author but does it actually make any real difference? I don't think so. Either you believe that He died or you don't. Since all men die, the only matter here is that Jesus, the alleged Son of God, died a death on this plane of existence, just as we do. The key thing is whether a person believes that Jesus was resurrected, as the Gospels testify. Sometimes, you get into the discussions and passions get a little high and you realize the old proverbs have some wisdom. Far more good is done by an old lady treating a child kindly than by a bunch of men quarreling over the fine points of the law or doctrine. Vic has a certain line on this angle, it seems. The question for anyone is not what you know or what you can argue or what you can do to forward your cause. Sometimes it is just knowing that those pursuits are okay in moderation but it is far far more important what we do than what we say or know.
Not from the pulpit. Just a lady with a complete collection of those cassette tapes who shared with with the church by leaving them laying around to "borrow". You know, it took me a while to realize just how unsound they really were. I really should not have been surprised that it ended badly.
I've come up with a new way to increase Bible literacy and make a tidy sum as well. Publish...the Twitter Bible! Rewrite the entire canon, especially the Gospels, as tweets. Reconstruct the whole thing as a bunch of Twitter timelines. No more dusty chapters and verses to quote, just tweets and DMs. I'd give it a couple of years before someone actually publishes something like that and actually makes money off it.
Yes the Creeds do simplify it for the masses. I just thought the breadcrumbs of one or two Sanbaths that week was interesting. Gives you something concrete to pursue. I think even the most read and accomplished theologians even Protestant don’t want to rock the boat of Holy Week being that one week with Palm Sunday kicking it off. Even the more contemporary Evangelicals are starting or have been observing traditional calendars. Even my church started two years ago running an Advent devotional guide for families. The world is crumbling as Prots become more “catholic.” At my pastors small group this past Wednesday I joked over pizza that now that we have 3 church plants that makes him an “arch pastor” or “arch bishop.” We all had a laugh at that and as the only former Catholic I went further to say “I guess we can see how things got going that way in the 2nd century.”
I'd give it a couple of years before someone actually publishes something like that and actually makes money off it. Well the Babylon Bee is on to something.
Somalia is barely a country at all. Imported en masse, given preferential treatment over the local homeless.
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
(2) 3 church plants that makes him an “arch pastor” or “arch bishop.” We all had a laugh at that and as the only former Catholic I went further to say “I guess we can see how things got going that way in the 2nd century (1) YAY! (2) Now tell him "in five years, we're imposing the celibacy rule on pastors."
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.
That's not the problem. The problem is the salary cap. Most people pay Social Security tax, of 6.2%. on up to the first $132,900 of salary - with no deductions whatever - the very first dollar of wages is taxed at 6.2% (this is also true for Medicare, and there's no cap). The employer also pays the same 6.2% Hence, the maximum amount of the employee's and employer's Social Security tax for each employee in 2019 is $8,239.80 (6.2% X $132,900) each, for a total of $16,479.60. Note, please, that if there were no such tax, the employee might earn the employee portion of the tax, but the employer would not be paying the employer that tax. The average Social Security beneficiary receives $1422 per month, which is $17,064 per year. I currently pay the top bracket, so essentially my employer and I, with my combined Social Security "contributions", pay for one average retiree. Of course, Social Security is a brutally regressive tax. (The source of the following data is the Statistical Atlas of the United States) Now, the average income of the top 20% is $200,000 per year, and the average income of the top 5% is $358,300 per year. Now, the top 20% of the income earners earn 51% of the income earned by everybody in America, and the top 5% earn 23% of the income. To make the numbers simple, 28% of income earners average $200,000 per year, and 23% average $358,300 per year. Now let's look at what this means for Social Security. 80% of the population pays Social Security taxes on 100% of their wages - but those wages constitute less than half of the wages in America. 20% of the people earn 51% of the money, but their wages are taxed by Social Security only up to $132,900. With a little more math, we see that 28% of the income earned in America should be taxed an average of an additional $4160.20 per year, and 28% of it should be taxed an additional $13,974.80 a year for Social Security, then double those amounts for the employer contribution. There is no "Social Security crisis" in America. There is a stubborn unwillingness of the rich, who control the levers of government, to pay the SAME proportion of taxes on their wage income as everybody else. Of course if we look higher up the chart, things get really out of whack. The top 1% earn $718,000 per year or more, and THEY are a full 13.4% of wages. And the top 0.1% belt begins at $2.757.000 per year, and THEY earn 5.2% of all wages. And this is just wages. The well off (top 1%) on average earn only 51.2% of their income in the form of wages. 48.8% of their income is in the form of capital income (profits, dividends, interest, rent and capital gains). But in the top 0.1%, only 30% of what they earn is in the form of wages. 70% is from capital income, which is not (currently) subject to the income taxes or payroll taxes at all. I will repeat: there is no Social Security crisis in America. There is simply a political unwillingness on the part of the rich to be taxed at the SAME rates that everybody below them pays. It's not because it would break them - the Social Security tax doesn't break the people at the bottom, and they are taxed on their entire salary. It's because they have had the political power to impose taxes in ways that prevent the well-off from becoming truly rich, and to push the costs of governance downward on everybody else. I do not advocate for massive progressivity in the tax code. That's Bernie Sanders. What I insist upon is absolute FAIRNESS. It is not FAIR that the poor, working and middle class pay a flat tax without deduction on all of their income, while the rich do not. Everybody should be paying that same tax on every dollar of income, from whatever source derived. Do just that and there would be no Social Security crisis, no Medicare crisis, and we would have a budget surplus. Consider redleghunter's math. If I were required to pay social security under the tax code as I have suggested, I would be paying $31,000 per year, and my employer would be matching. $62,000 per year would be supporting 3.6 average retired workers. There is no Social Security or any other fiscal crisis in America. There is a stubborn unwillingness to be FAIR. We strongly favor the super rich (not the merely rich, but the super rich), and in doing so, we shift the burden of government onto the middle class, and allow the rich to get much richer, must faster. Nothing about this is fair, or necessary.
Publish...the Twitter Bible! My Bible rewrite is this: First, acknowledge right up from that there are multiple canons of the Bible, and that, while there is much overlap, there is divergence on the fringes. Choose the LARGEST canon: the Ethiopian Orthodox longer canon, which includes everything in any other canon, plus additional books. THAT will be the canon. All of those books will be translated and bound together. The order of the presentation of the books will be in accordance with the largest denomination - the Catholics - but where there are additional books or parts of books from various Orthodox canons, those will be inserted at the appropriate places in the Orthodox canons. Each book will note on its opening page for which denominations it is canonical. This convention will allow everybody to see all of the books of all canons, and allow people to simply skip over the books they do not want to read (because it's not "canon"), without moving books around in a way that positively denigrates those books. NOBODY's tradition will be completely respected, because non-canonical books will be here for all, but canonicity will be noted. Next, we must ADDRESS WHAT, exactly, is translated, and from what language. The age of computers allows us to do something brilliant. Different religions insist that different manuscripts and languages are THE correct ones to use. Others do not, but want things "scholarly". A key question is whether you translate ONE manuscript, or you translate a scholarly recension of manuscripts. There are pros and cons of each. In the age of the computer, you don't have to finally decide. You can, rather, translate each source and then overlay the texts, in the original languages and in English, to demonstrate the differences. Some logical bases: the oldest complete Bible (Codex Vaticanus) in Greek. Also Codices Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus, side by side. The oldest complete version of the Vulgate. The oldest complete Peshitta. And...and...and...who cares? TL; DR Only a billionaire could commission it done right, and no matter what you do people will squabble anyway. It's a pit of quicksand.
Well, I was using an analogy. My point to redleghunter was that it is a lot easier to take care of the elderly in your church when you have a small number of elderly and a lot of younger people. More people to share the burdens. We've already drifted from college QB's with bird poop (or cocaine) on their car to religion. I'm trying to resist moving on to the Social Security issue as well. : ) Still, you made a good post on S.S. in general.
Different religions insist that different manuscripts and languages are THE correct ones to use. Others do not, but want things "scholarly". A key question is whether you translate ONE manuscript, or you translate a scholarly recension of manuscripts. There are pros and cons of each. In the age of the computer, you don't have to finally decide. You can, rather, translate each source and then overlay the texts, in the original languages and in English, to demonstrate the differences. 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.
Because this is one of my "If I will the big lottery" projects, I guess I will go o go on. The manuscripts I want translated are: Codex Vatica go o go on. The manuscripts I want translated are: Codex Vaticanus - Oldest Complete Bible, in Greek. Codex Sinaiticus - 2nd Old almost complete, Greek Codex Alexandrinus - 3rd oldest mostly complete, Greek. Vulgate - oldest version of Latin text. Peshitta - oldest Aramaic Bible. Codex Leningradensis - oldest complete Hebrew text (1010 AD). Aleppo Codex The "traditional Jewish text". Patriarchal Text - THE official Byzantine Type text according to the Patriarch of of Constantinople in 1904 (Greek) Textus Recept of of Constantinople in 1904 (Greek) Textus Receptus - The Byzantine Type text beneath the King James Version. The Westcott-Hort Recension The Nesle-Aland Recension And then, going forward, every fragment in order of date, the Dead Sea Scrolls. Ultimately, ALL of the manuscripts and fragments need to be in the database, with "Lo with "Look and see for yourself" pi with "Lo with "Look and see for yourself" pictures of the actual texts, all pages. Those are the textual bases. 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. What that does is allow a search using English to find each instance of a word in in the original languages. in in the original languages. The problem comes when one crosses languages between the testaments, between the Hebrew and the Greek. Which is "original"? Sure, the Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew, but the oldest complete Old Testament is in Greek, from circa 350 AD. The oldest complete Old Testament in Hebrew is from 1010 AD, 660 years later - and 660 years into the Christian-Jewish dispute. 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. Different religions are very partisan for specific manuscript, and have great pile piled wedding c pile piled wedding cakes of logic to support their view. I think that most of those logi logical piled logi logical piled tartes are creampuffs of special pleading. Since I do not beli believe any of the arguments are very good, I want to see all of it, side by side side, with d side side, with dates of sources, to decide for myself what the differences are, and thei their impli thei their implications. With the Vulgate we have a Latin translation, both testaments, with the word ch choices of Jerome for the same words in Greek or Hebrew, as rendered in Latin. With the Codices Vaticanus, Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus, we have the LXX word ch choices for the Hebrew OT that are then used in the New Testament. We don't ha have to ACCEPT these word choices, but we can choose to. Deciding that old testament wind/breath/spirit (ruach) is the same as New Te Testament wind/breath/spirit (pneuma) has major theological implications. Be Being able to SEE these choices is critical. Of course, by granularity of this degree, all sorts of traditions are subject to collateral attack - which is one of the points for my doing it: to use superior scholarship to quell inferior scholarship and traditions.
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.
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. :)
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: Church of England staring at oblivion as just 2% of young Britons say they identify with it But good news Vicomte, the Roman Catholic church in England is holding steady. That's what happens when you stick to your guns.
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. 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.
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.
Must of forgot I offered "math" on this thread. Will have to look back.
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.
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.
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.
That had mostly been done by conquering Muslim regimes. Wait, what did Europe just do with Muslims again?
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.
It's what happens when lots of Italians and Poles migrate into England thanks to the EU.
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.
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.
But it's not mechanically translated, and that's the KEY to exegesis, from my perspective. Finally, I'd have the Torah read hieroglyphically.
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 stand corrected. Sorry.
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.
You are an interesting person to talk to. But you were quite serious at the time.
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.
By traditional estimation. Yes you are right. Why I mentioned the liturgical calendar may have crammed in one week the Passion events.
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.
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.
Ever see the hyper-Calvinists explain how "world does not mean world" in John 3:16? There's some real textual acrobatics. The list of examples could drag on and on.
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.
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.
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.
World does not mean world. The word is "Kosmos". 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.
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?
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.
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. WHAT more?
Join with us in Spirit, Vic. Ye must be born again...born of the Spirit.
Ye must be born again...born of the Spirit. Do you think I'm not?
But Jesus did succeed. Just not in the exact way that was expected even by his own disciples.
Nice KJV-style prose there. Maybe you don't need a mechanical translator all that much.
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.
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.
You have answered your own question.
My question was WHY you think that. I can’t read your mind, so I have no idea. But it isn’t really important, why you think that, so I’ll just drop the line of questioning and steady on.
Elijah did not die in the text. He was taken away bodily in a chariot of fire. Similarly, Enoch was “translated”. There is no indication that either died at all. There is no Old Testament reference to life after death or judgment until Hellenic times. It was then, heavily influenced by the Greeks, that the Jews began to intuit life after death and judgment, and God began to give them revelation in that regards. 1 Maccabees contains a clear reference to offerings and prayers for the dead in consideration of the resurrection. So, by that time, inchoate notions of life after death and judgment began to enter into Jewish theology, but unstructured, and without direct revelation as to the mechanism. The Sadduccees rejected these ideas as Greek imports and fables. The Pharisees believed them. It wasn’t until the Revelation to John that God fully revealed the apparatus and the structure of it all. Jesus revealed that it was, and the ways to please God to have a good outcome, but only in Revelation did Jesus really spell it out.
Daniel 12 King James Version (KJV) 12 And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book. 2 And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. 3 And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever. 4 But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.
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. The famous Good Shepherd discourse, Jesus indicates He has other sheep that will be brought into the fold: John 10: NASB 11“I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. 12“He who is a hired hand, and not a shepherd, who is not the owner of the sheep, sees the wolf coming, and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. 13“He flees because he is a hired hand and is not concerned about the sheep. 14“I am the good shepherd, and I know My own and My own know Me, 15even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep. 16“I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd. 17“For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life so that I may take it again. 18“No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from My Father.”
For words and phrases you can when you have thousands of manuscripts of the NT. Not to mention manuscripts of other texts of the era. Part of your software for the mechanical translation will have to include this scholarship over almost 2000 years. If not we will be reading into the text 21st century thoughts. I have to ask. If you have a mechanical Bible translation program created which Lexicons, multilingual, and interlinear will you use? Or is it your intent to provide your own translation from the original manuscripts. If the latter, I’d recommend looking at the detailed works of Robert Young, compiler of Young's Analytical Concordance to the Bible and Concise Critical Comments on the New Testament.
I don’t think John was considering Mosaic ordnances but the moral law of the Decalogue which was in effect written on the hearts of mankind before Sinai. We know at least murder, adultery, idolatry, bearing false witness and probably theft were all punishable prior to Sinai. Not to mention John in his gospel and epistles spends some ink on the laws Christ commanded. .
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 agree. It means in the context of John 3 all peoples. Because in John 10 Jesus speaking to Jews said He had other sheep that needed to be brought into the fold.
Plenty of breadcrumbs in the OT. Several of Job’s dissertations mention the afterlife and resurrection. Explicit. We see in Daniel chapter 12. Not to mention the author of Hebrews in chapter 11 sure did make the point the OT saints were looking for a better city and held out Hope for Messiah.
Yes, from the Babylonian Aramaic and Greek period. Not from the Torah, the Law. The Jews place Daniel among the Writings, not the Prophets, precisely because of its late provenance. Life after death and resurrection are not part of the Law. The ideas came into the religion after contact with foreigners who already had an inkling about it,
You have little faith. That is your problem. Little tiny bits of faith. You are wise in your own mind. You think God is to weak to give his word to his people. That he is to weak to preserve it. That he lied when he said it would spread through the whole world.
Certainly, the concept of an afterlife did exist at least as a popular notion among the people of the OT. Whether the priests ever gave any sympathy to such views or the dominant social and religious leaders is another question. Just because the priests didn't favor the notion doesn't mean it didn't exist. Another passage that points up there was at least some expectation of an afterlife by some Jews. So we can conclude the idea of an afterlife was part of Jewish spirituality and not some alien concept from another extant culture of the era. I see what Vic is driving at though. Official Jewish doctrine in the modern era does attempt to represent that in Judaism, there is no heaven or hell and further that there never was any concept of a Jewish afterlife which is clearly not true. I've often wondered whether that is merely reactionary, a rejection of anything that those darned Christians believe. And I do think they are a little willing to go so far in contrarianism to spite us. And maybe we shouldn't blame them for that, given how Europe treated them over the centuries. They can't help but have a very hardnosed attitude, given their knowledge of history and of persecution of their race/religion/culture. I think Vic is a little like Martin Luther, re-arranging the books of the NT canon to try to demote certain books which ruined Luther's notion of a perfect Christian systematic theology. Vic also enjoys a certain amount of intellectual derring-do and he is obviously qualified to do so and has considerable family history to apply. And he is a lawyer, which means certain things. Jean Chauvin was also a lawyer and he did like to present his theological constructs as well. I think Vic is denying any notion of Jewish afterlife simply because it conforms to his own systematic theology. He is aided in this by Jewish religious figures who also deny a Jewish afterlife for their own reasons. I have to admit, he argues his case well and at considerable length, indicating his sincerity. But I'm afraid he wouldn't want me on his jury because, while his argument sounds so good and he does have a certain amount of evidence to present, it is perhaps...too clever by half. [What a stupid phrase, I keep using it lately for some reason.] I do admire Vic's tenacity in presenting his argument even if I can't quite agree with his conclusion. I expect that you do too.
None of those things are true. I simply see things differently from the way you do.
At some point, certainly. But the important thing is WHEN. NOT at Sinai or in the Desert or during the entrance into Canaan, or in the time of the Judges. There's not a word of it. It's important, because man lives on every word that proceeds forth out of the mouth of God, and the Torah is chock full of those words, what God said, directly out loud, to Moses and to the Hebrews. He never said a thing to them about the afterlife, or final judgment, and The Law does not refer to it and isn't ABOUT that. The Covenant of Sinai is not about going to Heaven. That's not in the contract. It's "You do this, and I give you farm in a stable Israel in THIS life." That's the promise. It's not for everybody, it's specifically for the Hebrews at Sinai - the former slaves of Egypt (which included the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but also included many more people who had been slaves alongside of Jacob's descendants) - who follow the law and are circumcised and living in a covenant-keeping Israel. God's promise of Israel to them is conditional: IF you do this, I will give you that, but IF you DON'T, I will take it away and hammer you. Now, the Jews themselves, later, in the writings, turned a conditional promise into "God will never take Israel away". That's in the Bible, but those words don't proceed forth out of the mouth of God, but out of the mouths of people. They are a prayer, not a promise. God didn't promise what the Jews insisted he promised. We have the record of what he said. The afterlife concepts don't start cropping up until the Jews have already been hammered and broken, lost the Northern Kingdom, been carted off to Babylon to live under different kings and gods, returned, and then had the whole place overrun by Greeks with their Hades, Elysian Fields, afterlife, judgment, etc. After the Hellenic invasion, you start to see the more direct references to the afterlife, judgment, resurrection, etc., notably in 1 Maccabbees (which recounts the Jewish revolt against the rulers of the Seleucid successor state.
The Sadduccees were the priests - the keepers of Torah - written AND Oral - and final judges. THEY did not believe in an afterlife. The Pharisees were the scholarly lay men. the legalists. They DID believe in an afterlife. Paul was a a Pharisee.
NOT at Sinai or in the Desert or during the entrance into Canaan, or in the time of the Judges. There's not a word of it. I think it is a mistake to expect the popular notions extant today to make us believe that these ancient accounts include every minor nuance of everyday life. Maybe the formal theology was never to emphasize the afterlife but it was tolerated for the common folk to believe it. No doubt, there was more variety of belief on the part of individual Jews of the era than what is reflected in the text. So many OT accounts contain quite brief summaries of historical events with a vast sweep and it does so abruptly. Some of these accounts do not capture the everyday life of the people, their cultural habits and views, other elements of popular culture, etc. Given the flimsiness of our knowledge about the lives of ordinary people in the region during the era, we can be more confident about what we knew was being taught by the circulation of OT books. The OT books are interesting in terms of history, told from a certain viewpoint. However, there must have been a lot more going on in so many of the major events described in the books of the OT. The OT has such a long historical scope. Anyway, I just think there were more factors involved in the major events of the OT that are not something that we know or understand fully. The descriptions in the text and the narrative just don't tell us enough because they are often so brief. The ancient peoples were different from us in more ways than we can readily imagine. And scripture is written from the viewpoint of ancient peoples. We don't catch the nuances or grasp all the elements of everyday life in the era just from reading the text. And so much about daily life in the ancient world is simply unknowable to us, even among the Jews who have some of the most extensive and well-preserved ancient traditions and writings.
Well, as a simple matter of fact, the nation of Israel was punished many times by God for being disobedient and the text mentions this in many major events. Much of the OT is about why God is punishing mankind for sins. So even if the priests were pious and maintained official doctrine consistently, that doesn't mean that lay people among the Jews all exhibited exactly those same prescribed values and behaviors that the priests demanded. Often in the Bible, only a small minority is behaving righteously and the majority gets punished harshly by God. Anyway, that's a consistent theme of the Old Testament books.
I think Vic is denying any notion of Jewish afterlife I try not to make these posts about myself. I try to talk around that. But this time I think it will be more straightforward to explain exactly where I am coming from, instead of taking each of many points and explaining why I'm not coming from there. The first thing is: I do not come from a religious tradition. Yes, I was baptized as a baby, but I was not brought up in the Church, not catechized. I had a rudimentary understanding of Christianity based on the holidays and their decorations, but did not grow up with a traditional set of beliefs. So, I'm not operating from any childhood programming. When I was 11, I dove into a lake alone, broke my neck, and was saved from death by God in a major miracle. After that, I understood that there IS God, but there was no theological content to God. I was a student, particularly enamored of science and history, and God, to me, was the mind behind the physics. Christianity was a pleasant myth. I had no passion for, or interest in, myths. To study God, I studied the physics, chemistry, biology. Religious people, when I heard them at all, were complaining about things like sex (fussbudgets) or evolution (backwards thinkers). I spent my teenage years and twenties as a "religious" person, in the sense that I thought about God a great deal (as you might imagine, given what had happened to me), but the theological synthesis I was doing was stitching together the fact of the physics and evolutionary biology with the mind and myth. My belief about God would be described today as "pantheism". The only moral thing I was PASSIONATE about was not killing people and not oppressing them. So the "don't dance, don't drink, don't smoke, don't eat shrimp, don't eat bacon, don't have sex (!), don't gamble, go to Church and pay your tithe sort of religion" and religious person was annoying to me (WHY would people believe that nonsense?), but that annoyance was easily avoided by the fact that I didn't hang around such people. But when it came to KILLING people, and oppressing them - there I had a very clear, sharp moral view, and filled up with righteous wrath against killers and oppressors. My religious focus was on World War II - the necessity to crush the Nazi and Japanese fanatics who killed so many, the Cold War - to crush the Communist oppressors who killed over their politics. My intolerance for slavery and slavers, abortion and abortionists. THAT was the religious passion that drove me into the Navy at 18 as a Cold Warrior, with the determination to make a career of it (ergo, the decision to go through Annapolis instead of ROTC). The Pax Americana that I advocate with such religious zeal is NOT about the glory or wealth of the United States, it is about breaking oppression, making people free and safe, "filling full the mouth of famine, and bidding the sickness cease". So, then, you can understand my disgust at the traditional religions, and at the belief that some mere religious doctrines - the imaginings of vainglorious minds - justified KILLING people over "God" - the depths of my antipathy for that cannot be plumbed - it is a bottomless abyss of blackness. To me, all killing in the name of religion is murder in service of a fairy tale, and it raises a righteous wrath in me - for justice - and to DESTROY the fanaticism that can believe such nonsense at its very root. You understand, then, the adamancy with which I go after all religions that have killed people in the name of their beliefs. To do that is to self- evidently be a "servant of Satan", a declared enemy with whom I will never have peace. ALL of the old religions of the past were murderous. All of the Christian sects of any size - the Catholics, the Orthodox, the Lutherans and Anglicans, Presbyterians, Baptists, etc. They all have blood and oppression all over their hands, as do the Jews (Exhibit A: the Book of Joshua; Exhibit B: the State of Israel), and the Muslims. I never cared about the religions of the far East (Hinduism - because it's obviously just the old gods polytheism nonsense; Bhuddism, because there's no THERE there, it's just a philosophy; Shintoism, because emperor-worship is ridiculous - I am impressed with the Jains: they don't kill animals, and I appreciate Hindu vegetarianism because they take care to not kill animals - I wish that our own tradition had more concern for the lives and suffering of animals). Catholicism as a tradition, namely, a place where I could sing in a choir, at Mass - that was tolerable, but I was there to sing, not to actually spend time on the theology. The history is notoriously bad, and the badness extends into the present, with the incessant rape of boys flowing, as surely as night follows day, from an arbitrary rule of celibacy. The Catholic Church is repentant for the bloody past, but it won't admit THEOLOGICAL ERROR. And for me, that's a deadly sin. If you're killing people over doctrine - I don't care what the doctrine is - you are committing an unforgivable THEOLOGICAL ERROR. If you're too stupid or too stubborn to see that killing people is different, and crosses a line that cannot be waved away with words, then you're too stupid and too stubborn for me to learn anything from you - you are a brute beast who should be silent and learn from me - you have nothing to say that I want to hear. Repenting of the murder and rape is good, but not good ENOUGH, because there was THEOLOGY that justified all of that, and that was USED to justify all of that, and I'm a historian, and I've READ all of that inflammatory crap expounded by the high theologians of the past. If you want ME to contribute any money to your organization, or for me to take your theology SERIOUSLY (I'm always happy to sit in the choir loft and SING, because I ENJOY that), then you have to face the theological errors of your past and ADMIT THEM. Not all of them - the ones I care about are the ones that were so bad that you were able to maneuver your way around God's prohibition - and my own natural abhorrence - of KILLING PEOPLE, or ENSLAVING them. If you want to talk to me about your religion, you MUST CONFESS THE THEOLOGICAL ERROR That let your organization believe that it had the right to kill and to enslave. If you're too stubborn or too stupid to understand that killers are servants of Satan, not God, then you have nothing to teach me that I want to learn. To me, if you can't admit that the doctrines that justified murder in the name of God were THEOLOGICAL ERRORS, then you have no standing to speak about theology in my court AT ALL. I just don't listen, don't care. You're AUTOMATICALLY REJECTED, and I don't think about what you have to say. That's the problem with Catholicism, traditional Protestantism (which is most of it), Orthodoxy: the past. History. That history didn't just happen. It was committed by people as adamant about religion as people are today, but THEY managed to take that book and their beliefs and turn them into a THEOLOGICAL JUSTIFICATION for their "Church militant" to go kill people and enslave them, not a few people, tens of millions of people. And that is unacceptable to God and to me. So, you see, that is where I'm coming from. I know history. I know the past. And I judge the tree by its fruit. I adhere closely to what Jesus said: I judge the tree by its fruit, and I look to repent and forgive my sins, and I look for the same in sinners. I do not just the sinners of the past, the killers, as worthy of Hell, etc. - that judgment is up to God. But I DO judge the rotten fruit, unrepented by the present day admission of THEOLOGICAL ERROR on that account by that Church, as being rot in the fruit that renders the tree an unreliable source of any knowledge. I will not learn from teachers who are obviously not as attuned to the basic commandment not to kill as I am. The problem is that if the THEOLOGICAL ERROR is not admitted, then there is no honesty. There is pride, defending the indefensible. And once again, it causes me to reject that tree for its fruit. Now, when I pick up the Bible, I do not come at it with the near-worshipful status of this book as "The Word of God". Men say that - because their Churches teach it - but those Churches murdered people, so why should I trust them on this? A Physics book - THAT actually teaches about how God is. The Bible MIGHT, but God railing on eating oysters? And not lighting a fire on Saturday? That would have never worked for MY people where they came from. Man evolved from primates on a very old earth, probably, so if that fact causes a religion to shatter, there wasn't anything there of use to me in that religion, was there? God grabbed me and started to talk to me out loud when I was 38. That converted my pantheism to theism. But when God and I have talked, we talk about what is of concern to me - things are cast in terms of the physics, life, death, etc. I've never discussed theology with him. When I read through the Bible, what Jesus said comports to what I feel in my bones to be true, and I find that all of the unacceptable crap in the Bible and in the religions all calves away when I focus on Jesus. So I focus on him. Then I don't have to deal with shrimp and oysters, tithes and genocides, and I do have to concern myself with the suffering of others, to focus on charity and peace - which is what I want to do anyway. That singular focus on Jesus, as the only character in that Bible whose words I TRUST fully, seems to really, REALLY annoy the religious of various denominations. Seems to me that it SHOULDN'T annoy them as much as it does, if they really claim he was God, but it DOES. I get judgmental words thrown at me, and - interestingly - I frequently read "what I think" told back to me in terms that I do not recognize, because that's NOT what I ACTUALLY think, but a hobbyhorse that my interlocutor wants to ride. What I ACTUALLY think is that if your denomination is one that ever killed people or supported their enslavement, in support of its theology, then your denomination was SHIT, and a rotten tree. Did the tree heal? (They can.) Well, do you - as the modern day representative of your denomination - admit that your church was THEOLOGICALLY WRONG in its justifications of murder and slavery. If you don't, or won't, then YOUR theology is shit, and your church is still shit, and you really have nothing to teach me at all about God, but should shut up and learn from me. If you WILL fully acknowledge the THEOLOGICAL ERRORS of your church that justified killing and slavery, THEN we can talk, because you see the truth and acknowledge it. In doing so, you are admitting that your Church and its theology, however firmly believed, CAN be wrong, because it WAS DEFINITELY WRONG before. That is the price of being able to try to teach me. The Quakers and the Jains are the only two religions who pass that bar, and only one of them is Christian. So talking denominationally to me doesn't work. You can teach me with Jesus. Him, I will listen to. I see the errors in the Churches. I see the errors in Paul, James and John, and given that I have Jesus, why should I dilute him with people who are wrong? THAT is exactly where I am coming from. I don't deny that the Jews believe, or don't believe, in an afterlife - I don't CARE. Theologically, they don't have Jesus, and the only one I am going to listen to is Jesus. Obviously I don't think highly of theology that grants some mythical RIGHT of Jews to go carve out a colony in the Middle East at the cost of great bloodshed. But nor do I think highly of a theology that grants some mythical right of Muslims to kill Jews forever just because they are THERE. Both of these beliefs are crazy, and they're not what Jesus believes. So I'm opposed. In terms of the Christian stuff...well, if we want to talk specific denominations, let's get past the hurdle of murder, rape, slavery in the past and the THEOLOGICAL ERRORS that justified it. Then we can talk. If you expect me to DEFEND the Catholic Church for its past and present evils, you haven't been paying attention. There, that answers a great number of things. So, now you understand why I always ask the question: To what denomination do you belong? Because if you want to talk to me about religion - if you want to PREACH at me about your religion - I'm going to hold you accountable for your religion's bad fruit, and you're going to have to show me that your church's rotten tree has healed from its THEOLOGICAL ERRORS of the past. (Which means you will be conceding, that, because your church was CLEARLY wrong theologically in the past, it MAY be today also.) I believe that a very fruitful conversation about God can be had by focusing on Jesus. But Christians don't seem to want to do that. So we can talk about your religion, if that's what you have to do. But if we do that, we have to start with its bloody sins and its errors. Otherwise, there's no point in the discussion at all.
Ah, well, it's interesting to see how you arrive at your overall spiritual conclusions. But to relate to the matter at hand, the point is that you seem to be placing a certain emphasis on the lack of an official doctrinal belief in an afterlife. And the OT text does indicate there were a sizable number of ancient Jews who were aware of the idea of an afterlife and may have believed in it, no matter what the priests off in Jerusalem insisted. You also have contemporary sources, like Ben Shapiro who describes himself as a modern Orthodox Jew - which he probably is - and he says that there is no heaven/hell in Judaism. Yet I don't believe that Ben Shapiro is the Jewish pope and entitled to speak for all Jews. And, of course, among contemporary Jewish young people, there is a pretty strong tide toward secularism and intermarriage with Gentiles, not so different than seeing cradle Catholics marrying Protestant types. Since the OT text indicates a Jewish belief in an afterlife, then we can understand certain Jewish traditions better: It is probably fairer to say that Judaism has no dogma of a heaven and hell (as Christianity does) but it does insist that men have an eternal soul that transcends death. But how many contemporary people who identify as Jewish hold any particular set of ideas about an afterlife or about heaven and hell, well, who knows?
That sounds about right for Jews. Now, add in this fact: the place of purification the Jews call "Gehenna". Gehenna is a parched place of fire - Hell, if you will. Jesus spoke of Gehenna, without defining it (he didn't need to: the Jews already knew what it was). In the parable of the unforgiving servant, the king throws the unforgiving servant into prison to be tormented "until the last penny is paid". Jesus promises that your heavenly Father will do the same to do unless you forgive others. This prison where one is tormented "until the last penny is paid", is Gehenna. That's where sins that are not forgiven are paid. Jewish tradition limits the time there to one year. More logically, the maximum time there would be 6 years, or perhaps 49 - given the forgiveness of debt in the 7th year, and the Jubilee of the 50th year. Some theologize that the King would keep the unforgiving servant there FOREVER and torment him FOREVER and create a doctrine of an eternal hell from that, but that ignores that God's law cut off all debt in the 6th year, and even cut off foreign slavery in the 50th year. So, Gehenna is Purgatory, and it's not forever. The Catholic theologians resist this, saying that Purgatory "is not in the Bible directly" (yes, it is: it is called Gehenna), that Purgatory is arrived at through reason (no, Jesus revealed it directly), and that Purgatory is only for believing Catholics, and only for the purification of venial sins (two things made up out of wholecloth that not only have nothing to do with anything Jesus said, but rather contradict it - and therefore are to be discarded as erroneous without further discussion). Other Christians say there is no Purgatory, or Hell, and it's eternal. This contradicts Jesus and is therefore to be discarded as erroneous without further discussion.
Maybe you honestly believe that. Maybe you just think that but it isn't true. Did a doctor examine you? I don't doubt miracles happen. I just doubt yours. Even if you are sincerely believing it.
The way I see it is that when your faith falters. You say the Bible isn't perfect and it is flawed. You are like a man who says look at my holy book. It us flawed and full of errors wont you join. Then they give you a strange look and say if it is full of errors why would we believe it. Hence saying you have little faith.
This notion is something that Jews say that early Christians and contemporary Christians misunderstand about Judaism. It certainly does have parallels to the ideas of the Roman empire's state church and how it promoted ideas about a doctrine of Purgatory. I think it is likely mistaken to insist that all Jews of the ancient era believed with absolute uniformity in certain of these doctrines in the same way that they believed in and uniformly practiced circumcision or key dietary restrictions like consuming delicious bacon or shellfish or cleanliness rituals. For those, there was no deviation for anyone who called themselves a Jew. I think there was a lot more variety on matters of lesser doctrine like the particulars of the afterlife or what kind of heaven (or hell or purgatory) might be expected after death. There are serious and fundamental doctrines that no religion allows any real challenge to. So Jews might hold some considerable differences in their beliefs about the particulars of the afterlife, unlike their insistence on certain basic doctrines on the required religious practices of all Jews since ancient times like the avoidance of pork or the use of circumcision to bring infants into the Abrahamic covenant with God.
I don't dispute what you wrote. There are different views on Gehenna/Purgatory in the Talmud - how long does one stay there, etc. The key point that I was trying to make was that in Jesus' time, Gehenna was so popularly understood among Jews that he could use it in his teaching, without having to explain anything about it, without having to define the word. So, while certainly all Jews didn't believe it existed, the whole crowd knew what it WAS (whether they believed in it or not) and understood what he was talking about. That's why he could just use the word referring to the place without definition, without explaining himself. When he spoke of Gehenna, he was not revealing something new to the crowd - that was not his point. Gehenna was the backdrop for the moral lessons he was teaching. Sort of like "confession" when speaking to a non-Catholic Christian. You may not actually HAVE the practice in your denomination, or believe that it's good or wholesome, but EVERYBODY knows what Catholic confession IS, more or less - it's part of the popular culture, in the movies, etc. Nobody has to define what he means by saying "going to Confession", because the society knows what that is. In a similar vein, Jesus could just use Gehenna as a literary device for audiences of peasants and fishermen all over Palestine, because the average person know what that was. That's what I meant. By saying that Jesus "revealed Gehenna", I am pointing to the fact that Jesus is the Son of God, and before him, while there are hints at life after death and the possibility of punishment, when he speaks and simply uses the term, it's the first time that the Mouth of God RATIFIES the concept, revealing it as a real waystation on the road of life and afterlife. Before Jesus, there were the popular beliefs in life after death, etc., but with Jesus explicitly teaching on that basis, folk religion moves up to being direct divine revelation from the very mouth of God - which is an entirely different and surer thing that it was before. The Gospels present a divided Jewish community, with the priestly Sadducees not believing in resurrection, and the Pharisees believing in it. For all of the "clarity" supposedly in the old testament about resurrection, the priestly class did not see it...meaning that assertions of clarity or very much overblown. The family hand-picked by God to serve in the role of oracle and keeper of the sacred, to minister at the altar - they somehow missed the "clear" references to the resurrection in the OT (because it's not there clearly, my point yesterday). The Pharisees clearly saw the whispers and shadows of it there in the OT, and believed in it. But God did not reveal it directly until Jesus, who answered the question: Yes, there's an afterlife, Purgatory, Paradise, a resurrection a final judgment, the City of God and the Lake of Fire - precise revelations of what, where, when, how and who. Nothing like that existed before. THAT was revealed by God, directly, in personam Christi. The Jews did not have that information directly revealed by God. THAT is a feature of the New Covenant - that it is about the Afterlife, primarily, not this life (though what one does in this life determines the disposition of things then later.)
I can't deny your point. It's the same one that redleghunter and I were using to try to establish that ancient Jews were familiar with some notion of heaven/hell, whether the priesthood in Jerusalem agreed or not. Turns out those priests were #FakeJews, to use a Trumpian turn of phrase. Just don't turn me in to the SPLC. LOL The Pharisees clearly saw the whispers and shadows of it there in the OT, and believed in it. For all the descriptions of Pharisees and Sadducees in the NT, I have never felt very confident that I grasp their most passionately held religious doctrines. It's that thing I mentioned a few posts back about how different we are from the ancient peoples, even from those for whom we have considerable textual description, like the Pharisees in the NT. We know what we are told in the NT but I always suspect there has to be The Rest Of The Story. I think it was you who mentioned some posts back that the Sadducees were the real and most dangerous enemies of Jesus, not the Pharisees. Yet it was the Pharisees who tried to catch Jesus in tricky arguments or violating Jewish practice, to the point where He cursed them all as vipers, making any who followed them twice as fit for hell as they were themselves. Matthew 23:15 KJV [Yep, the KJV translators used 'hell' but other versions use 'gehenna'.]
It wasn't me who said that the Sadduccees were Jesus' greater enemies. I don't se se se see in the text any basis on which to make that assertion. Certainly the Sadduccees, with their non-belief in the resurrection, would have had greater theological distance to Jesus than the Pharisees, but I think all of them were offended by the assertions of Jesus' divinity.
Admittedly. Good quotes. I'm sure Vic likes the red text; the red verses are his favorites.
Nice use of scripture, I hadn't noticed it before. I always like religious threads with more scripture quotes. They do tend to settle arguments and people seem less likely to throw mud at each in close proximity to a scripture quote.
Or God’s Sovereign progressive revelation.
Same thing.
No Vic it sounds like you are saying that the people who wrote the Bible made it up because they encountered some foreigners and adopted their beliefs.
#2. To: Gatlin (#1)
#3. To: misterwhite (#2)
#4. To: Gatlin, misterwhite (#1)
The officer tested the powder, and it tested positive for cocaine with two different kits …
#5. To: Tooconservative (#4)
What, did the cop think that the QB had, in the process of being pulled over,
#6. To: Tooconservative (#4)
to be so unaware of the properties of crystal cocaine and how it looks if exposed to moisture.
#7. To: Tooconservative (#4)
The officer tested the powder, and it tested positive for cocaine with two different kits …
Yes, he did. Which is essentially your admission that drug tests conducted by police departments are either completely corrupt or completely incompetent.
“Essentially” – No. I can't quite imagine how big a dumbass any cop would have to be to be so unaware of the properties of crystal cocaine and how it looks if exposed to moisture. What, did the cop think that the QB had, in the process of being pulled over, thrown his coke stash forward (into the wind) onto his windshield and then tried to wash it away with wiper fluid?
I can’t imagine either – but I must readily admit, I have never tried to imagine it. There is no other way to read this. Corrupt lab and/or corrupt cops. Probably both.
Uh, how about one other way – just maybe “faulty field test kits” or “improper officer training” in the interpretation during their use. But, shit – why should we try to be objective when there is a chance to cast disparity on cops? Oh, look. It's a black QB. Let's just frame his black ass with phony drug tests that make any pile of poop test positive for cocaine.
That is a possibility – it has happened. Thanks for playing. If you were a decent human being, you'd be ashamed of what you've posted here.
That gratuitous remark was uncalled-for, it is unfair, rude, unkind and therefore it was unnecessary. It does matter to have a black man falsely accused of narcotics and to have such an arrest on his record …
Yes, it does matter. … Like you even care about this victim of false arrest.
That gratuitous remark was uncalled-for, it is unfair, rude, unkind and therefore it was unnecessary. I hope he can sue their asses off for defamation of character.
The lawyers are probably already working on this. He should never have been charged with cocaine possession without a full lab test.
How would you want to work that?
#8. To: misterwhite (#6)
It could have been wet/damp powdered cocaine.
#9. To: Gatlin (#7)
That gratuitous remark was uncalled-for, it is unfair, rude, unkind and therefore it was unnecessary.
#10. To: misterwhite (#5)
At least he wasn't shot. And no dogs were shot.
#11. To: Tooconservative (#9)
But you didn't care at all about this falsely accused man …
How do you know this?
#12. To: Gatlin (#11)
#13. To: Tooconservative (#8)
He was trained. He has no excuse for being so ignorant.
#14. To: Tooconservative (#12)
But you didn't care at all about this falsely accused man …
Let me see now – “because none of my remarks focused at all on the injustice that was done to this victim of false arrest” means to you that “I didn't care at all about this falsely accused man.”
#15. To: Gatlin (#14)
It is amazing that you are such a good “diviner” sometimes.
#16. To: Tooconservative (#15)
(Edited)
I stand by my (accurate) observations.
#17. To: misterwhite (#13)
What's he supposed to do when the substance tests positive -- twice? Let the guy go because he's black?
#18. To: Gatlin (#16)
How are you on picking lottery numbers?
#19. To: misterwhite (#13)
(Edited)
What's he supposed to do when the substance tests positive -- twice? Let the guy go because he's black?
#20. To: A K A Stone (#19)
#21. To: Gatlin (#20)
#22. To: Tooconservative (#17)
Every police department using such faulty tests
#23. To: A K A Stone (#19)
Why didn't the police know the drug test was inaccurate, don't they test them?
#24. To: Gatlin (#20)
The Texas police departments stop using the drug-testing kits a couple years ago because of the false positive results.
#25. To: A K A Stone (#19)
Should the police department keep using these field tests since they have been proven to give inaccurate results?
#26. To: misterwhite (#25)
#27. To: A K A Stone (#26)
It makes you happy putting innocent people in jail without due process. Why is that?
#28. To: misterwhite (#27)
#29. To: misterwhite (#25)
That should make you happy. Freeing guilty people.
#30. To: A K A Stone, misterwhite (#19)
AKA to whitey: Do you go down on cops?
#31. To: A K A Stone (#28)
For the record it is noted that you did not dispute that putting innocent people in jail makes you happy.
#32. To: Tooconservative (#29)
Even so, this is what presumption of innocence means and where it comes from.
#33. To: Tooconservative, A K A Stone (#30)
Not wanting to intrude here but I thought I'd pass along this ugly rumor.
#34. To: misterwhite, Tooconservative, A K A Stone (#33)
(Edited)
Do you go down on cops?
Tooconservative to A K A Stone: I heard he does suck a few nightsticks. Not wanting to intrude here but I thought I'd pass along this ugly rumor.
Misterwhite to Tooconservative, A K A Stone
I say that you are absolutely correct on the defamation lawsuit if you cared to file one.
#35. To: Gatlin, A K A Stone, Tooconservative (#34)
I say that you are absolutely correct on the defamation lawsuit if you cared to file one.
The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning.
Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.
#36. To: misterwhite (#33)
I'd say I have an airtight defamation lawsuit. Or at least enough to get you kicked off this forum.
#37. To: Gatlin (#34)
I also heard he once went down on a state trooper for a gallon of gas but that could just be an ugly rumor someone here at LP made up.
#38. To: Deckard (#35)
Gatlin: I say that you are wrong about ever getting Stone to kick TC off this forum.
#39. To: Deckard (#35)
(Edited)
Yeah good luck with that Parsons.
#40. To: Gatlin (#39)
“Fingers crossed.” This is more of a casual alternative to “Best wishes.”
“Hope it goes well.” If you want to stick with the traditional meaning of ‘I want the best,’ you can stick with saying “hope (whatever it is) goes well.” You can also say “Wish you well.” “Don’t fuck it up.” If you’ve got an asshole streak and a charming disposition, this is definitely the funniest option.
#41. To: Gatlin (#39)
Why are you appealing to a nonexistent ‘luck’ when it is God who directs the events of the world?
#42. To: watchman (#41)
#43. To: watchman (#41)
I sometimes find myself saying "good luck" to the unbeliever...because that's about all they have...time and chance.
#44. To: Tooconservative (#43)
Isn't that just some variety of "Good luck on your little path to hell"?
#45. To: watchman (#44)
And, your feelings about the church's condition...is it anguish for something you love?
Now, you've told me the symptoms, but can you pinpoint the exact cause? (I can)
#46. To: Tooconservative (#45)
Let's hear it. Offhand, my guess is you'll offer a prophetic note, the church falling away from sound doctrine as the Second Coming becomes imminent and Christians face persecution before the appearance of the False Prophet and then the Antichrist. Itchy ears, rejecting sound teaching, the takeover over churches and government posts by those who will be the accusers of the brethren during the Tribulation.
#47. To: watchman (#46)
*He got the brains, I got the girls, then, he then got the mansion, I got the...drafty frame house in a cow pasture. Talk about rotten luck!
The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning.
Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.
#48. To: watchman (#46)
Because I'm the guy who just wants to know. The "let's hear it" guy with hardly any skin in the game, unlike the actual patient and the patient's loved ones.
#49. To: Deckard (#47)
Some might say you got the better deal.
#50. To: watchman (#49)
(Edited)
Cattle. They are the measure of wealth in the Bible. That's why AOC and her ilk want to take them away from us (all the while themselves dining on good ole hambugrers)
#51. To: Tooconservative (#50)
Perhaps you are not directly acquainted with the realities of owning and caring for cattle in the modern era.
#52. To: Tooconservative (#50)
#53. To: watchman, A K A Stone, GrandIsland, You two just gotta read watchman's reply to Tooconservative (#51)
(Edited)
Perhaps you are not directly acquainted with the realities of owning and caring for cattle in the modern era.
#54. To: A K A Stone (#52)
Your posts are a pleasure to read.
#55. To: Gatlin (#54)
#56. To: A K A Stone, watchman (#55)
I didn't see watchmans response as a put down.
That is why it was so GREAT. Maybe I'm missing something.
You were. Watchman is a blessing to have here.
Absolutely !!!
#57. To: A K A Stone, watchman (#55)
Watchman is a blessing to have here.
#58. To: watchman (#51)
Just for now please know that there is a huge smile on my face reading the quote I pulled from your comment. My CATTLE would totally agree with you! At this very moment they are telling me I had better get acquainted with the reality that their stomachs are empty and their udders are full!
#59. To: A K A Stone, Vicomte13 (#52)
Your posts are a pleasure to read.
#60. To: Gatlin, A K A Stone, hondo68, misterwhite, GrandIsland, Deckard (#53)
While history has been filled with crushing zingers and fantastic comebacks that have made us go “whew” – yours here to Tooconservative will live in the diary of history in my mind as the best way I have seen anyone to ever tell someone “to shut the fuck up and leave me alone for I have no time to listen to you.” I thought I was good at put-downs, but you have truly set a new high standard and I will now focus my attention and dedication towards learning to match your ability to respond to someone who thinks he knows all there is to know about everything.
#61. To: Tooconservative (#60)
What's clear is that you are desperately hoping for someone to insult me or to have some incident on the board where you can get Stone to kick me out. Your recent posts indicated that you and misterwhite want me gone along with Deckard.
The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning.
Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.
#62. To: watchman (#51)
While that rich milk is flowing I will be considering all that you have said!
The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning.
Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.
#63. To: A K A Stone (#55)
Watchman is a blessing to have here.
#64. To: Deckard (#61)
Sounds like a sinister conspiracy to turn this place into an echo-chamber.
#65. To: Tooconservative (#64)
As you probably know, you are their #1 target to eliminate, hondo was #2 (he got banned or restricted due to some friction with Stone), and I am target #3.
The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning.
Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.
#66. To: Tooconservative (#60)
where you can get Stone to kick me out.
#67. To: Deckard (#65)
#68. To: Tooconservative (#64)
#69. To: A K A Stone (#21)
So they knew but they kept using them. Or they are just dumb.
#70. To: watchman, Too Conservative (#44)
Now, you've told me the symptoms, but can you pinpoint the exact cause? (I can)
#71. To: Tooconservative (#60)
Your recent posts indicated that you and misterwhite want me gone
#72. To: misterwhite, Tooconservative (#71)
Your recent posts indicated that you and misterwhite want me gone
The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning.
Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.
#73. To: Tooconservative (#60)
he got the types of troublemakers like you that only post on a forum to disrupt it
#74. To: A K A Stone (#55)
...a blessing to have here
#75. To: misterwhite (#73)
#76. To: Gatlin (#57)
I Had the distinct feeling the he was Bucky
#77. To: Deckard (#62)
do you sell raw milk to willing buyers?
#78. To: Tooconservative (#50)
Cattle. They are the measure of wealth in the Bible.
#79. To: misterwhite (#71)
Your recent posts indicated that you and misterwhite want me gone
#80. To: watchman (#78)
Did you say you are 6 ft/145 lbs. Slender Man! So it's not a myth!
#81. To: Tooconservative (#80)
6 ft/145 lbs.
#82. To: watchman (#78)
(Edited)
And rightfully so. Everything about a cow is, well, delicious. There is no other meat like beef (that is available to the common man). The same with their milk. Not to mention their gentle natures and their calming affect on the stressed out soul.
#83. To: Tooconservative (#82)
#84. To: watchman (#81)
(Edited)
Those are some enviable ratios.
#85. To: watchman (#83)
What made you give up farming, I mean, aside from the obvious cow-in-tree situation.
#86. To: watchman (#83)
(Edited)
#87. To: Tooconservative (#84)
(Edited)
I did weigh as little as 120 when I got mononucleosis
#88. To: watchman (#87)
If someone really wants to get thin (not you TC), just get a good dose of giardia.
#89. To: Tooconservative (#85)
It was his farm, not anyone else's in the family.
#90. To: watchman (#87)
#91. To: Tooconservative (#88)
you manage to find a new worm for me to worry about. Thanks a lot!
#92. To: watchman (#89)
Sounds like it just wasn't in the cards for you to farm.
#93. To: watchman (#91)
Giardia...it ain't no worm!
#94. To: Tooconservative (#93)
Giardia...it ain't no worm!
#95. To: watchman (#94)
#96. To: A K A Stone (#66)
I don't see that happening. Despite my mistake in the past.
#97. To: Vicomte13 (#70)
But being that I'm Catholic, all past experience has taught me that we have to re-fight the Reformation to even get to the beginning of the conversation, and that all such re-fights (which happen a million times a year all over the world) never result in getting to the beginning of the conversation. (Which is one of the reasons why the Church continues to die at an accelerating clip.)
Truth is, Christians would rather that the Church die and not exist in two or three generations, then compromise on anything, let alone admit they are wrong. Therefore, the Church is almost dead in Europe, is dying in North America, and has begun to die in Latin America.
#98. To: A K A Stone, hondo68 (#68)
I will put him on full right now. Just let him know to be honest and not stretch the truth so much.
#99. To: watchman, Too Conservative (#87)
#100. To: Tooconservative (#97)
#101. To: Tooconservative (#97)
But when you get right down to it, do Jews or even Christians want to see animal sacrifice on altars in the Mideast? I think most of them would hate the idea.
#102. To: Tooconservative (#98)
#103. To: Vicomte13 (#99)
That little tidbit let's me tell my story in the absolute worst way possible.
#104. To: Vicomte13 (#101)
Given what I said above, if I saw it happening again I would denounce it as blasphemous and idolatrous, for the priests are not descended from Aaron.
#105. To: Vicomte13 (#100)
The truth about rebuilding the Temple is that it will end up just being the sin of I of Israel if they do it.
#106. To: Tooconservative (#102)
#107. To: watchman (#105)
According to the Bible, Israel will revive the sacrifices.
#108. To: Tooconservative (#104)
Otherwise, they have a hopelessly dead religion with no qualified persons to administer the sacraments. And no fulfillment of the messianic prophecy. It does little good for a messiah to finally appear (or appear for the second time) if there's no way to conduct the decreed religious rituals.
#109. To: Vicomte13 (#102)
(Edited)
On the whole, there is a really stubborn strain on Judaizing in Christianity whose origin I understand.
#110. To: Vicomte13 (#108)
I think Christians are going to stick with the traditions made by their own hands and simply die out.
#111. To: All (#107)
#112. To: Tooconservative (#110)
#113. To: watchman, redleghunter (#105)
According to the Bible, Israel will revive the sacrifices.
#114. To: Vicomte13 (#112)
They will will simp will will simple starve the church for funds by not coming anymore. ... they'll be be stron be be strong for awhile ... That's never ch chan ch changed, and it never will.
It will eventually die there too for exactly the same reasons.
#115. To: Vicomte13 (#111)
(Edited)
The Christians focus on sexual issues with a judgmentalism that exceeds Jesus, but prefer Reagan and Mi Milton Friedman, and Ayn Rand, in their economics over Jesus.
#116. To: Tooconservative (#109)
I have known a few people who never quote anything but Old Testament, never seem to read or study anything else. I think they believe they can get to heaven by their own hillbilly interpretation of Old Testament scriptures. You see they have a secret, a gnosis, of The Hidden Truth.
#117. To: Vicomte13 (#108)
The messiah was for the Jews - not the Gentiles.
#118. To: Tooconservative (#114)
Of course, we are the rich men the Bible is talking about.
#119. To: Tooconservative (#115)
#120. To: Vicomte13, redleghunter, watchman (#116)
Read the Torah with fresh eyes. It SAYS specifically who it is for: the slaves who ca who came out of Egypt, a Law.
And what does the Law PROMISE? Life after death? It never says a word about that that. Paradise? Hell? Neither of those concepts ever passes the lips of YHWH YHWH. It's not ABOUT life after death, jud that that. Paradise? Hell? Neither of those concepts ever passes the lips of YHWH YHWH. It's not ABOUT life after death, judgment and eternal life. You will be judged by the me measure by which you judged.
#121. To: Tooconservative (#117)
The messiah was the final royal leader of Israel. And Israel would become under his leadership a light to the world, a source of enlightenment and wisdom.
#122. To: Tooconservative (#120)
But Jews would argue that it was applicable to all their descendants as well. And the Jews who founded the early churches would insist that Jesus taught that it applies to them because these churches are a graft onto the vine of Judaism.
#123. To: All (#122)
#124. To: Vicomte13 (#107)
the sacrifices cannot ever be rightly resumed
#125. To: Vicomte13 (#119)
The Ayn Rand issue is not HER. It's the whole insane idea that social welfare - - the use of tax - - the use of taxes to help the poor - is unchristian.
#126. To: Tooconservative (#125)
#127. To: Vicomte13 (#124)
If they can't determine the Aaronic priesthood, they'll come up with something that works for them.
#128. To: Vicomte13 (#119)
Ayn Rand's view is synonymous with those who oppose social welfare, but who pr propose nothing realistic in its place.
#129. To: Vicomte13, watchman, redleghunter, A K A Stone, Deckard (#126)
(Edited)
The tithe was a tax on crop produce, not all money. It was specifically for feeding the poor and the Levites.
It's a great fundraising verse for any religion. Give all you own to us and God (or some government) will take care of you forever and you go to heaven. It works better for some churches than others. If you have a pope with the apostolic power of binding and loosing, he can just write you a guarantee of salvation if you give everything 41And He sat down opposite the treasury, and began observing how the people were putting money into the treasury; and many rich people were putting in large sums.
42A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which amount to a cent.
43Calling His disciples to Him, He said to them, “Truly I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the contributors to the treasury;
44for they all put in out of their surplus, but she, out of her poverty, put in all she owned, all she had to live on.”to him to God. And if the pope guarantees it, then God must honor the pope's promises. This is why the pope is God's boss and can make God do anything the pope wants. The pope can loose and bind God to back up papal promises. Very handy for fundraising when you want to hire some gay homo artists like Michelangelo to paint some fancy murals at the Vatican and elsewhere. After all, how else can you buy your relatives out of Purgatory and game the system so your kids can buy you out of Purgatory when the time comes? Not everyone was rich enough to endow a monastery with the funds needed to support a group of monks who prayed daily for decades or centuries for the souls of the dead, begging every saint in the Catholic pantheon for intervention to get them into heaven. A great many monasteries and monastic orders would not exist but for this practice. Luther objected to a saying attributed to Johann Tetzel that "As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory (also attested as 'into heaven') springs."[35] He insisted that, since forgiveness was God's alone to grant, those who claimed that indulgences absolved buyers from all punishments and granted them salvation were in error. Christians, he said, must not slacken in following Christ on account of such false assurances. 
The tithe was a tax on crop produce, not all money. It was specifically for feeding the poor and the Levites.
#130. To: Tooconservative (#129)
...a diseased beggar crawling on the floor scavenging crumbs when they dine with their family or throw a party for their friends
#131. To: watchman (#127)
#132. To: A Pole (#128)
Well, Ayn Rand opposed social welfare for the little people. But when she needed it, she took it.
#133. To: Tooconservative (#129)
#134. To: Tooconservative (#129)
#135. To: watchman (#130)
(Edited)
PS,I could use a little of that subsidy you mentioned. Do you think they'd send me a check or something...
#136. To: Vicomte13, watchman (#131)
Sanhedrin have no more power to make new priests than Jeroboam, king of Israel, did.
#137. To: Vicomte13 (#133)
I don't know. I have a homeless man living in my house right now, in the spare bedroom. If he really wanted to eat out of the garbage, I wouldn't stop him, but he doesn't need to, thanks to food stamps, and the fact that I'm perfectly willing to share my food with him. Last night I came home and he had cooked dinner, which I appreciated because I was tired and would have probably just eaten a bowl of Cheerios and gone to bed.
#138. To: Tooconservative (#136)
#139. To: Vicomte13 (#134)
Seems to me that the key complaints of prophets such as Amos and Malachi is that the laws of God were structured in such a way that there would be neither poverty nor permanent slavery in Israel, given that every Israelite had an inalienable piece of property, and every foreign slave could obtain freedom by conversion. There would be no debt slavery or grinding debt or homelessness either, because of debt remissions and Jubilees.
#140. To: Vicomte13 (#138)
(Edited)
I also know, that we have no way of knowing who is a descendant of Aaron.
For my part, it's perfectly clear that there is nothing in the Old Testament for me after the laws given by God to Noah and his family after the Flood. After that, it's all the story of Abraham and his descendants, which I am not.
#141. To: Vicomte13 (#138)
I know that the early Christian Jews - notably James, John and Paul - were very much into their "Jewishness" and worked very hard to synthesize the two convenants, because they just couldn't believe that the Old had nothing to do with life after death - they were very impressed with their Jewishness.
#142. To: Tooconservative (#137)
(Edited)
Homeless as in an old bud who needed a place to stay when his wife kicked him out or homeless homeless like a wino or meth head street person?
#143. To: Vicomte13 (#138)
I also know, that we have no way of knowing who is a descendant of Aaron.
#144. To: Tooconservative (#141)
I can't imagine how you can seriously say that Paul was very much into his Jewishness. Exactly the opposite according to the New Testament and his writings.
#145. To: Vicomte13 (#142)
Not a drug addict or alcoholic. Unmarried, without children. Simply a man for whom life has been very hard (and quite unfair, in truth), who was otherwise sleeping in his car.
For my part, I have a house with spare room, and an old Catholic man who can use some help, and a wife and daughter who temporarily live a couple of hours away for school and work, so there is no skin off their nose except on weekends, but then I just go down and stay with them.
#146. To: A Pole (#143)
Actually you can. Many Jews from the priestly families have the same Y chromosome.
#147. To: Tooconservative (#145)
#148. To: Tooconservative, watchman, Vicomte13 (#113)
Mmm...subtle. So Israel might build a Temple and restart sacrifices but it would still not be pleasing to God as He had not ordained it. So you think it possible that Israel will revive the sacrifices in a rebuilt Temple while the Antichrist institutes the abomination of desolation inside the Third Temple leading to the final dramas of the Tribulation. I think the usual view is that Israel will reclaim the Temple Mount and rebuild a legit Temple. But maybe I've just made that assumption with no proof. Vic may have a point. I can't think of any objection from the usual prophecies. Anyway, an interesting angle that you offered.
#149. To: Tooconservative (#114)
So maybe the pendulum will swing back and it will suddenly be hip for young people to abandon Facebook and focus on studying scripture and evangelizing. I can't be much surprised at anything these Millennials do any more.
#150. To: Tooconservative (#115)
I have never heard any Christian preacher or teacher approvingly quote Ayn Rand. Or even seem to know who she is. No, really. Her name just never comes up. Reagan gets mentioned, mostly for standing up to the godless Soviet commies and bankrupting them with his arms buildup. I don't recall any discussion of Milton Friedman either. Maybe sermons at the Catholic churches are much different than I imagine them to be. : )
#151. To: Vicomte13 (#146)
(Edited)
If family legends about themselves can be believed.
#152. To: A Pole (#151)
#153. To: Vicomte13, redleghunter, watchman, A Pole (#144)
Paul goes on and on about how Jesus is the perfect unblemished lamb of sacrifice, to save "us" from our sins.
Paul did not really accept this. Rather than accept Jesus' formula for forgiveness of sins: which was exclusively that one must forgive others their sins for God to forgive them, and that one would be judged by God using the standards by which one judged other men: the merciful with mercy, and the merciless without mercy. "You shall be measured by the measure by which you measured." ... There is absolutely none of this in Paul. Paul either discarded Jesus, or never knew that Jesus taught that (the Gospels having not been written), and instead extended the Jewish Law of sacrifice to make Jesus "the perfect sacrifice" for all the sins of his followers, such that, according to Paul, the blood of Jesus washes away all sins of all followers of Jesus, and the consequences of sin.
Paul's theology annuls Jesus's teaching about the forgiveness of sins, and substitutes the Torah blood sacrifice of animals - in this case Jesus - for the forgiveness of sins of individuals with regards to the afterlife.
But Paul was wrong about that, dead wrong. It's a lovely story, but it was neither true for the Jews nor for the Gentiles. Animal (and human) sacrifice never forgave Gentile sins, and while Jesus - the perfect lamb of God - his sacrifice DID cover the sins of Israel theretofore, and DID serve to allow Israel to proceed forward blamelessly under the Torah - but Israel pitched headlong into the sin of its high priesthood having killed him - an innocent man - to get there, and then having rejected Jesus' message along with him.
Paul the Pharisee was proud of his Judaism, and desperately sought to give a significance to it under the New Covenant.
It is, I'm sure, going to be at the very heart of the division between you and me. And it ultimately comes down to a matter of authority: Jesus or Paul, or some blend of the two.
Had Jesus NOT died on the Cross, had he been accepted, the same rule would apply:
Paul says differently, because Paul is a Jew, and cannot let go of the idea of animal sacrifice for the forgiveness of PERSONAL sin, vis a vis the afterlife. He's simply wrong, and he's wrong because his Jewishness won't let him simply segregate the Old Covenant and the New.
John 1:29: The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.
John 1:36 And looking upon Jesus as he walked, he saith, Behold the Lamb of God! The Reformation itself was in large part fought over this very issue.
#154. To: Vicomte13 (#147)
The house has toxic mold in it thanks to a flood last year that I haven't had the resources to abate.
So we got a tiny apartment down in the City for them to stay in until school is done and the mold is cleaned up. That will be next year.
So the fellow has a year to try to make something work.
#155. To: redleghunter, A K A Stone (#148)
The other observation I think you make is, if this second temple is just the re- institution of the sacrifices and feast keeping...and of course would not be ordained by God as Jesus is the once for all sacrifice for sins...and the man of sin (aka anti-Christ) somehow creates an abomination there, then what is the significance of a non God ordained temple being desecrated.
#156. To: redleghunter (#149)
I am constantly amazed with the young families in my church.
#157. To: Vicomte13 (#134)
Seems to me that the key complaints of prophets such as Amos and Malachi is that the laws of God were structured in such a way that there would be neither poverty nor permanent slavery in Israel, given that every Israelite had an inalienable piece of property, and every foreign slave could obtain freedom by conversion. There would be no debt slavery or grinding debt or homelessness either, because of debt remissions and Jubilees.
#158. To: A Pole (#151)
This is a wrong analogy. Yarn of hillbillies is one thing, but in a close knit traditional society, where the respectable families are watched, admired and have ritual functions and obligations, where everyone knows their ancestors, it is quite hard to insinuate oneself into aristocracy.
"Almost two out of three modern European men (64 per cent) were descended from just three Bronze Age males"
#159. To: Vicomte13 (#152)
But the Jews believe it is real, and you are right that, if they were to reconstitute a Temple, they would use that as the basis to re-establish the "Aaronic priesthood" - and there would be many idiot Christians cheering them on too.
#160. To: Tooconservative (#153)
I see your point. My first impulse would be to argue that when God decided to enlarge His plan of salvation from His Chosen People to all mankind but He had to keep faith with His former requirement for expiation of sin by blood sacrifice. So to include all of the non-Chosen People (Gentiles) while abolishing the Temple system, He had to replace it with a one-time all-encompassing sacrifice, a perfect sacrifice, the same sacrifice He had demanded of Abraham in the sacrifice of Isaac: the sacrifice of his only begotten son as a blood sacrifice for sin. God stopped Abraham since such sacrifice would have frustrated God's plan for Israel but it foreshadowed the eventual sacrifice of Jesus as the one-time perfect sacrifice to suffice to expiate the sins of all mankind under the New Covenant. And it ultimately was justification of His pardon of the sins of faithful Jews prior to the time of Christ who had never known or believed in Christ Himself but only in the popularly promoted idea of the Jewish messiah to come.
#161. To: Vicomte13 (#152)
Nobody remembers family lines back to the Roman Empire
#162. To: Tooconservative (#153)
the same sacrifice He had demanded of Abraham in the sacrifice of Isaac: the sacrifice of his only begotten son as a blood sacrifice for sin.
#163. To: Tooconservative (#158)
(Edited)
A lot of people claim ancestors based on dusty scraps of paper.
I think there is a lot more promiscuity and marital infidelity than that.
#164. To: Tooconservative (#153)
He had demanded of Abraham in the sacrifice of Isaac: the sacrifice of his only begotten son as a blood sacrifice for sin.
#165. To: Vicomte13, watchman (#160)
To which Jesus would answer: 'Not a letter nor a penstroke of the Law shall be changed until the end of the world.'
#166. To: Tooconservative (#129)
Luther objected to a saying attributed to Johann Tetzel that "As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory (also attested as 'into heaven') springs."[35] He insisted that, since forgiveness was God's alone to grant, those who claimed that indulgences absolved buyers from all punishments and granted them salvation were in error. Christians, he said, must not slacken in following Christ on account of such false assurances. ... Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz and Magdeburg did not reply to Luther's letter containing the Ninety-five Theses. He had the theses checked for heresy and in December 1517 forwarded them to Rome.[50] He needed the revenue from the indulgences to pay off a papal dispensation for his tenure of more than one bishopric. As Luther later noted, "the pope had a finger in the pie as well, because one half was to go to the building of St Peter's Church in Rome".[51]
Pope Leo X (A.D. 1475-1521) commissioned John Tetzel, a Dominican monk, to travel throughout Germany selling indulgences on behalf of the Church. Tetzel declared that as soon as the coins “clinked” in his money chest, the souls of those for whom the indulgences had been purchased would fly out of purgatory.
#167. To: Vicomte13 (#164)
He said to Abraham "Because you obeyed me in this thing" (offering up a child of his, not his firstborn, as a sacrifice, like the Canaanites all around did), "I will give you this land."
#168. To: A Pole (#163)
Most of Americans do not understand traditional societies that lasted for many centuries. They move, break contacts, mix and forget.
#169. To: Tooconservative (#153)
Tell me, when Jesus died on the cross after He said, "It is done.", was the 'it' just his own life? Or was 'It' the end of the old covenant so the new covenant could begin, the end of the Temple veil as a dire warning to Israel and the priests, the end of the ability to use animal sacrifice to expiate sins, the end of exclusion of Gentiles from joining the covenant with God? I could go on but you get my point. I think that Jesus was not talking about the smaller matter of His own imminent death but about much larger matters.
#170. To: Vicomte13 (#144)
Paul's theology annuls Jesus's teaching about the forgiveness of sins, and substitutes the Torah blood sacrifice of animals - in this case Jesus - for the forgiveness of sins of individuals with regards to the afterlife. Jesus never taught anything like that. It is an example of Paul straining really hard to synthesize a Judaism that his Pharisaic heart loved with Jesus and the New Covenant. But Paul was wrong about that, dead wrong. It's a lovely story, but it was neither true for the Jews nor for the Gentiles. Animal (and human) sacrifice never forgave Gentile sins, and while Jesus - the perfect lamb of God - his sacrifice DID cover the sins of Israel theretofore, and DID serve to allow Israel to proceed forward blamelessly under the Torah - but Israel pitched headlong into the sin of its high priesthood having killed him - an innocent man - to get there, and then having rejected Jesus' message along with him.
John 1: NASB
#171. To: redleghunter (#166)
A certain Saxon nobleman heard John Tetzel proclaiming his doctrine of indulgences, and the gentleman was much aggravated at this perversion of truth. Accordingly, he approached the monk one day and inquired as to whether he might purchase an indulgence for a sin he intended to commit.
#172. To: Tooconservative (#165)
But Jesus, by his death, made the Law obsolete.
#173. To: Tooconservative (#153)
So I think you are accusing Paul a bit much on a thin basis. I don't think he missed the mark by that much. But then, I once got into a dispute back at FR on those endless Calvinism threads where we debated Hebrews 10:1-13 and especially verse 14, the center of the dispute. You understand that we debated things like the placement of a comma or semicolon in the vernacular translations. We got far down into the weeds, what should be properly termed as "unprofitable disputes".
#174. To: Tooconservative (#153)
Hebrews 10:14:For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.
#175. To: Tooconservative (#153)
And I didn't think you should condemn someone like me who just thought such claims were overblown and ridiculous and led toward a view that one could "discover" a half a dozen doctrines in any verse of the Bible. But that's just me. So you picked an example of Pauline theology that you probably can never sell me on
#176. To: Tooconservative (#153)
So, scripture is infallibly inspired or not?
#177. To: Tooconservative (#153)
Can you cite any Catholic doctrinal source that says the same things you are saying here?
#178. To: Tooconservative (#153)
Are you with Luther in attitude toward some books of the canon and perhaps want to move all the Pauline writings to the back of the canon to make them quasi-apocryphal writings? So it would make your own theology more consistent?
#179. To: Tooconservative (#168)
(Edited)
I find it very hard to believe that the Romans murdered every last member of a priestly family.
#180. To: Tooconservative (#153)
I would say that Paul took considerable risks as the major leader who advocated for inclusion of Gentiles in the New Covenant and resisting requirements of Old Covenant law such as requiring circumcision of converts (since all the apostles and leaders of the early church(s) were Jewish and circumcised). This was a bit of an issue even before the time of Jesus. Circumcision and uncircumcision were both fiercely debated over the centuries.
#181. To: A Pole (#161)
This is tedious, but I will try to explain. It is not needed to remember the whole line over many centuries. It is enough to keep it continuous in the community.
#182. To: Tooconservative (#153)
You go almost to the point of the secular scholars who claim that Christianity's distinct doctrines are entirely due to Paul, not to Jesus or the other disciples. I don't agree. But the Bible was created by Roman bishops and certified by the popes over the centuries. If you have an argument with the infallibility of scripture, you have a much bigger problem with Rome than with me. I'm still not confident that Catholic theologians would agree with you.
#183. To: Vicomte13 (#162)
Isaac was not Abraham's only begotten son.
And after Sarah died, Abraham took another wife, and begat six more sons by her: Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak and Shuah.
The Christian tradition that puts Abraham and Jesus in parallel is simply bunk.
#184. To: Tooconservative (#155)
Ben Shapiro might say yes but I think a lot of modern Jews would not enjoy the question or answer it. Who wants to wind the clock back 1951 years and restart a religion of animal sacrifice? I sure don't want to sacrifice a chicken or goat or lamb in a church. Being a Baptist type, I say we slaughter the animals elsewhere, then bring the carcasses to the church to cook up for a nice potluck supper for the retirees and children. A choice of vegetable, a few fruit-and-jello salads, and a nice mint-and-nut cup on the side with big piles of sweets to finish. But no slaughtering on church property, please.
#185. To: Tooconservative (#153)
if Jesus hadn't been crucified and had just died of old age or disease and therefore was not the savior of mankind
#186. To: Tooconservative (#181)
So you would believe the claim that, for instance, the Japanese royal family is an unbroken lineage for 6,000 years?
#187. To: Tooconservative (#156)
Around here, they're a lot more likely to want to get tattooed than baptized. It's a little surprising to see how fast it has changed over the last decade or so. But then, they're dumbasses so that's just how it is.
#188. To: Tooconservative (#153)
I really do think you are robbing Jesus of his role as savior to a certain extent with this line of argument.
#189. To: Tooconservative (#167)
I don't count Ishmael as a son of Israel even though he was a son of Abraham. Abraham should have been wiser than to sleep with the hired help. Nothing holy about it.
#190. To: Tooconservative (#153)
His desire to be glorified by men with all their hearts. So please don't suggest that Jesus was only supposed to save Jews in ancient Israel and it's all Paul's fault that us nasty rebellious Prots split off from the corrupt popes
#191. To: Tooconservative (#171)
It is a little too clever perhaps. Still, it is a great story. It has been my favorite indulgence joke for many years. Warms the heart of any smug Prot.
#192. To: Vicomte13 (#173)
Paul, James and John each contradict Jesus in some important way. They are not equal to Jesus, and writings are inferior in authority to Gospel. Jesus was the one to whom God said to listen, and God made sure that we have his words, in quadruplicate in many cases. So, I don't dwell on commas, etc. in Romans, because Paul is not authority. He is persuasion and inspiration and history. Jesus alone is authoritative law. Paul conflicts with Jesus on matters in Romans, in particular. Therefore, I completely disregard Paul on matters where what he says disagrees with Jesus, and don't trouble myself further with that. I do not commit the sin of idolatry, pretending that when men have designated as "The Bible" make the Bible a God-maker that elevates mere followers to the status of God's Son, and changing what God said from "Listen to HIM" to "Listen to THEM, and let their words nullify what HE said." No. That's obviously wrong. To me anyway. Gotta take everything off the camel. What Jesus says is always exactly right. What challenges it or queers it is wrong and to be ignored, just like some of the things that appear in the writings that contradict what is in the Torah.
#193. To: Tooconservative (#181)
I also think there are a lot of unacknowledged and unknown members of royal blood lines which came from promiscuous sex by various princes and kings.
#194. To: redleghunter (#192)
(Edited)
You disagree with the Roman Catholic teachings of apostolic authority? That the apostles wrote by inspiration from the Holy Spirit?
#195. To: Tooconservative (#183)
The only one that was important.
#196. To: redleghunter (#189)
God's promise was to be a child sired by Abraham from Sarah.
#197. To: Vicomte13 (#185)
Your "Therefore" is wrong. Jesus' death didn't make him the savior of mankind.
#198. To: Vicomte13 (#188)
I am actually doing what Jesus sAID TO DO: LISTEN to HIM, Follow HIM (just him), do the deeds he said to do.
#199. To: redleghunter (#197)
Jesus did say:
#200. To: redleghunter (#198)
#201. To: Vicomte13 (#185)
He saved us from our sins not by dying ...
#202. To: Vicomte13 (#169)
(2) was 'It' the end of the old covenant. No, Jesus said that the Law (the Old Covenant) could not be changed until the end of the world, and that he was not there to destroy it but to fulfill it. He kept the Law. The Covenant remained, and remains, for the Tribe of Hebrews residing in Israel and keeping all of the law. But 36 years after Jesus' death, God made it impossible for the Jews to keep the law, by removing the priesthood from the world.
And animal sacrifice did not forgive the man's individual sins before God for the afterlife - only forgiveness of other people can do that, per Jesus (and since Jesus was not CHANGING the law, it is clear that the animal sacrifice was for atoning for the community, so IT would not be smitten by God for the individual sins of people.
Paul and the other Jews who tried to make the Torah have a meaning in the New Covenant thought the old wine was mellower, and tried. And they burst the wineskins in the process.
BECAUSE he was truly the spotless lamb - innocent - but CONVICTED under the Law of blasphemy against God BY the very prophetic source of judgment - the High Priest - it was the final, magnificent failure of the logic of the Temple and its predecessors.
#203. To: redleghunter (#189)
God's promise was to be a child sired by Abraham from Sarah.
#204. To: redleghunter (#184)
Already happening:
#205. To: Vicomte13 (#185)
Had Jesus lived, and been acclaimed the Messiah, he would have been no more, nor less, the Savior of mankind. He saved us from our sins not by dying (that expiated the sins of Israel...which hardly matters because Israel was destroyed 36 years later BECAUSE it killed him), but by teaching us what we have to DO to be acceptable to God.
#206. To: A Pole (#186)
No, Japan came into being much later. But Jews DID EXIST for more than 3000 years.
#207. To: Tooconservative (#202)
You realize this is getting over the line a bit.
#208. To: Tooconservative (#205)
Are you sure you're Catholic?
#209. To: Tooconservative (#202)
No. Just no. In fact, hell no.
#210. To: redleghunter, watchman, Vicomte13, A K A Stone (#187)
I have noticed there are churches which people tend to go to just because or they have to go, and there are churches where people go to be with other people because they want to be there with other people who want to be there.
#211. To: Vicomte13 (#207)
What "line"?
#212. To: Vicomte13 (#208)
Are you sure you're Catholic?
#213. To: Tooconservative (#206)
(Edited)
What, you only believe Semites, not those wily Asians?
About 3000-4000 years ago is when the Japs first started creating records
#214. To: Vicomte13 (#209)
Well, this subject is exhausted. Time to move on.
#215. To: A Pole (#213)
Japanese culture has a little more than 2000 years. Ancestors of Japanese started to arrive about 3000 years ago.
#216. To: Tooconservative (#60)
And you are, like GI, posting at FR.
#217. To: Tooconservative (#212)
#218. To: Tooconservative (#214)
I've been trying to be more agreeable nowadays but I just don't agree that unsolicited forgiveness is the very heart and soul of Christian praxis and the measure by which God will judge His children to determine their eternal fate.
#219. To: Tooconservative (#214)
And God does not forgive your sins if you do not ask forgiveness.
#220. To: Vicomte13 (#164)
We don't know what God would have said to Abraham had he not made the decision to become a Molechite because God tested him by asking him too. We don't know if Abraham PASSED the test, only his choice and what God gave him.
If he ever asked me to sacrifice my daughter to him, I would tell him no, that would be wrong. If he wants her, he can take her himself. I'm certainly not going to do it."
#221. To: Vicomte13 (#219)
(Edited)
What you said about the reason you no longer attend church is interesting, and emblematic of why the churches are dying out everywhere.
“How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!”
#222. To: Vicomte13 (#199)
grave two days later.
#223. To: Vicomte13 (#218)
ETERNAL fate? Nah,
#224. To: GrandIsland (#216)
knowing Stone was a little more sane
#225. To: misterwhite (#201)
He saved us from our sins not by dying ... In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, he asserts, “Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures”. (1 Cor. 15:3).
#226. To: Tooconservative (#220)
#227. To: A K A Stone (#222)
#228. To: Vicomte13 (#173)
So, I don't dwell on commas, etc. in Romans, because Paul is not authority. He is persuasion and inspiration and history. Jesus alone is authoritative law. Paul conflicts with Jesus on matters in Romans, in particular. Therefore, I completely disregard Paul on matters where what he says disagrees with Jesus, and don't trouble myself further with that.
I do not commit the sin of idolatry, pretending that when men have designated as "The Bible" make the Bible a God-maker that elevates mere followers to the status of God's Son, and changing what God said from "Listen to HIM" to "Listen to THEM, and let their words nullify what HE said."
#229. To: Tooconservative (#228)
entire doctrines unknown to the ancient churches
#230. To: Vicomte13, redleghunter (#182)
Of course they wouldn't! They're still insisting on priestly celibacy (Jesus chose a married man as the first pope), on the necessity of confession for the forgiveness of sin by God (Jesus said to be forgiven you have to forgive others, and he didn't add anything else), on the all-male clergy (JEsus chose St. Photini, the woman at the well, to carry out the first mass conversion of any village in the Scripture, through her teaching them about him).
Know what Jesus said about married couples using contraception? Nothing.
The Church would defend the murder of millions by saying that these were mere "disciplinary matters" - when abstaining from killing was the first general commandment given after the flood, and killing is one of the sins on both of Jesus' lists of sins that will get one thrown into the lake of fire at final judgment if not forgiven.
Prayers to Mary, to the Saints? Etc.? It's not wrong. Neither are prayers to Jesus or the Holy Spirit. But JESUS taught us to pray to the father. So how about shutting all of our shit traps and just doing it exactly like he said, hmmmm? Or do we really think we know better. (Well, we don't.)
#231. To: Vicomte13 (#229)
The famous St. Augustine, in regard to that very thing, infamously opined "Error has no rights".
#232. To: Vicomte13 (#226)
You don’t need to forgive me for disagreeing with you. My disagreement with you is not an affront to you.
That seems to be a Christian debate strategy, I have noticed.
What am I trying to do? To point out that the churches are dying -all of them. Pew Research will tell you that.
used to really fight, just as I did over politics. But I figured out something: the status quo itself is moving inexorably in my favor. We have the general military posture I favor, we’re moving towards the social welfare system I think is necessary, we’ve established a regime of broad socio-legal tolerance. God is still there, as always, but the stubborn, unrepentant historical churches that will not reform towards what Christ actually said are dying fast.
#233. To: Vicomte13 (#193)
My Dutch family line in America is an example of that!
#234. To: Vicomte13 (#200)
Yes, the Law had to be fulfilled, and it was. But the Law itself was not, and is not, for Gentiles. It is for Israel.
#235. To: redleghunter (#174)
So was the argument that in that one verse we see (1) The one offering for Sin in the Blood of the New Covenant in Christ (2) Perfected forever them, as perseverance of the saints/the pledge or down payment and (3) limited atonement? You said there were three others, but I can't see that.
#236. To: Tooconservative (#228)
#237. To: Vicomte13 (#236)
Considering that there is no punctuation at all in the original koine Greek, theological disputes over commas really don’t persuade me of anything.
#238. To: Vicomte13 (#227)
Died Friday.3 PM. Still in the grave 24 hours later, 3 PM Saturday. Rose somewhere before dawn Sunday, say 4 AM, 13 hours later. Total time dead: 37 hours - a day and a half by the Greco-Roman accounting.
#239. To: Tooconservative (#230)
#240. To: A K A Stone (#239)
Well done.
#241. To: Tooconservative (#237)
...effort by translators to convey subtle context...
#242. To: A K A Stone (#238)
(Edited)
#243. To: Vicomte13, A K A Stone (#242)
Jesus was not in the grave three days and three nights by either the Hebrew or Roman recknoning.
#244. To: Vicomte13 (#241)
Did they not, rather, see their theology in certain readings of the text, and supply punctuation to cause the text to read "correctly", by their beliefs.
#245. To: watchman (#243)
#246. To: Vicomte13 (#245)
12 And they gave him a piece of a cake of figs, and two clusters of raisins: and when he had eaten, his spirit came again to him: for he had eaten no bread, nor drunk any water, three days and three nights.
If you number the hours that pass from our Savior's giving up the ghost upon the cross to his resurrection, you shall find almost the same number of hours; and yet that space is called by him three days and three nights, whereas two nights only came between, and one complete day. Nevertheless, while he speaks these words, he is not without the consent both of the Jewish schools and their computation.
#247. To: watchman (#246)
#248. To: Vicomte13 (#247)
(Edited)
#249. To: A K A Stone (#248)
#250. To: Vicomte13 (#249)
#251. To: A K A Stone (#250)
Show me in scripture where he rose on Sunday morning. You can't he didn't.
#252. To: Vicomte13 (#251)
And now when the even was come, because it was the preparation, that is, the day before the sabbath, Joseph of Arimathaea, an honourable counsellor, which also waited for the kingdom of God, came, and went in boldly unto Pilate, and craved the body of Jesus. Mark 15:42-43
#253. To: Tooconservative (#210)
The same woman also had made the church dining hall her own distribution center for tapes by that crackpot at Shepherd's Chapel on satellite.
#254. To: Tooconservative (#210)
I really should have spraypainted Ichabod over the front door as a safety warning to the general public.
#255. To: watchman (#252)
#256. To: Vicomte13, A K A Stone, TooConservative (#242)
What did I "make up"?
#257. To: Tooconservative (#210)
As for why I never told the story before
#258. To: redleghunter (#256)
#259. To: Vicomte13 (#258)
And I will return to my own view of all of this. I am TOTALLY INDIFFERENT to the day on which he was crucified, or rose from the dead. It makes NO DIFFERENCE WHATEVER to me, because I'm not superstitious or idolatrous. That something happened on a certain day does not make that day "more extra special", such that it matters before God.
#260. To: Vicomte13 (#258)
And I will return to my own view of all of this. I am TOTALLY INDIFFERENT to the day on which he was crucified, or rose from the dead. It makes NO DIFFERENCE WHATEVER to me, because I'm not superstitious or idolatrous. That something happened on a certain day does not make that day "more extra special", such that it matters before God.
#261. To: watchman (#257)
I have a story. My first church had split just before I was called so I thought, great, the problems had left the church and we could just start over. That first Sunday I looked out in the congregation and realized...it had split again, just after the first split left! But somehow, we grew and grew. All the while seismic plates(!) were pressing against each other. Hugh lava domes were forming. Just as victory was looking so sweet! The volcano erupted. New believers crushed, whole families burned alive. A bedrock church from our nation's history...it was gone for good.
Long story short, I moved to a cow pasture. Thankful, everyday. It's safe for now but I see the fabric ripping already. Did I mention, we have Somalians walking the country road past my farm. Its the craziest thing.
#262. To: redleghunter (#254)
Toxic church. No wonder I encounter previously church attending folks in large numbers at Christian sites. I hear of the same backbiting, gossip and lack of charity when they hit rock bottom.
My point to the church leadership was I had the man fill out a "connect" card months before, the pastor did a follow up and nothing after that. The difference with my church is they listened and asked me to work with the senior deacon to shore up our contact with elderly members. My church is young and there are actually not many elderly. But we do now keep a closer eye on the elderly and I offered the pastors, elders and deacons keep up an active hard target search for the elderly.
#263. To: redleghunter (#256)
Therefore, according to the Wednesday viewpoint, the only explanation that does not violate the biblical account of the women and the spices and holds to a literal understanding of Matthew 12:40 is that Christ was crucified on Wednesday. The Sabbath that was a high holy day (Passover) occurred on Thursday, the women purchased spices (after that) on Friday and returned and prepared the spices on the same day, they rested on Saturday which was the weekly Sabbath, then brought the spices to the tomb early Sunday. Jesus was buried near sundown on Wednesday, which began Thursday in the Jewish calendar. Using a Jewish calendar, you have Thursday night (night one), Thursday day (day one), Friday night (night two), Friday day (day two), Saturday night (night three), Saturday day (day three). We do not know exactly what time He rose, but we do know that it was before sunrise on Sunday. He could have risen as early as just after sunset Saturday evening, which began the first day of the week to the Jews. The discovery of the empty tomb was made just at sunrise (Mark 16:2), before it was fully light (John 20:1).
#264. To: redleghunter (#253)
A Baptist church peddling that bogus and blasphemous "serpent seed" doctrine?
#265. To: redleghunter, Vicomte13 (#260)
#266. To: Tooconservative (#263)
Either you believe that He died or you don't. Since all men die, the only matter here is that Jesus, the alleged Son of God, died a death on this plane of existence, just as we do. The key thing is whether a person believes that Jesus was resurrected, as the Gospels testify.
#267. To: Tooconservative (#265)
(Edited)
Rewrite the entire canon, especially the Gospels, as tweets. Reconstruct the whole thing as a bunch of Twitter timelines. No more dusty chapters and verses to quote, just tweets and DMs.
#268. To: Tooconservative (#261)
But Somalians all over?
#269. To: redleghunter (#260)
#270. To: redleghunter (#266)
(1) The world is crumbling as Prots become more “catholic.”
#271. To: redleghunter (#266)
Even my church started two years ago running an Advent devotional guide for families. The world is crumbling as Prots become more “catholic.”
#272. To: Tooconservative (#262)
t's a little like the problem with Social Security. When you have a dozen young workers supporting a retiree, then the burden is not so great.
#273. To: Tooconservative (#265)
I've come up with a new way to increase Bible literacy and make a tidy sum as well.
#274. To: Vicomte13 (#272)
That's not the problem. The problem is the salary cap.
#275. To: Vicomte13 (#273)
The age of computers allows us to do something brilliant.
#276. To: Tooconservative (#275)
#277. To: Vicomte13 (#269)
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
#278. To: Vicomte13 (#270)
Now tell him "in five years, we're imposing the celibacy rule on pastors."
#279. To: Tooconservative, Vicomte13 (#271)
You're more sensitive to that than the rest of us cradle Prots.
#280. To: Vicomte13 (#276)
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.
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.
#281. To: Tooconservative (#271)
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.
#282. To: Vicomte13 (#272)
Consider redleghunter's math.
#283. To: Tooconservative, Vicomte13 (#275)
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.
#284. To: redleghunter (#279)
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:
#285. To: redleghunter (#281)
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.
#286. To: Tooconservative (#284)
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.
#287. To: redleghunter (#277)
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.
#288. To: redleghunter (#279)
But good news Vicomte, the Roman Catholic church in England is holding steady. That's what happens when you stick to your guns.
#289. To: Vicomte13 (#287)
Three days and three nights can't be gotten out of the text with a Sunday resurrection and a Friday execution.
#290. To: Tooconservative (#280)
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.
#291. To: redleghunter (#283)
So Vic a lot of what you may want to do, may already be at your finger tips as a start.
#292. To: A K A Stone (#289)
You claim you were raised from the dead. Delusional.
#293. To: Vicomte13 (#292)
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.
#294. To: A K A Stone (#289)
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.
#295. To: Vicomte13 (#294)
#296. To: Vicomte13 (#290)
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).
#297. To: Vicomte13 (#287)
#298. To: Vicomte13 (#290)
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.
#299. To: Vicomte13 (#291)
But it's not mechanically translated, and that's the KEY to exegesis, from my perspective.
#300. To: redleghunter, Vicomte13 (#299)
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.
#301. To: Tooconservative (#300)
Ever see the hyper-Calvinists explain how "world does not mean world" in John 3:16? There's some real textual acrobatics.
#302. To: redleghunter, Vicomte13 (#301)
Redeeming the Gentiles was always part of the plan.
#303. To: redleghunter (#301)
(Edited)
#304. To: redleghunter (#302)
#305. To: watchman (#298)
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.
#306. To: redleghunter (#299)
#307. To: Tooconservative (#302)
#308. To: redleghunter (#301)
#309. To: Vicomte13 (#305)
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.
#310. To: watchman (#309)
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!
#311. To: watchman (#309)
Vic, why don't you set aside your arguments and join with us.
#312. To: Vicomte13 (#311)
Seriously, what does "join with us" MEAN, concretely?
#313. To: watchman (#312)
Join with us in Spirit, Vic.
#314. To: Vicomte13 (#307)
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.
#315. To: Vicomte13 (#311)
Am I not, then already with you, and you with me?
#316. To: Tooconservative (#314)
But Jesus did succeed. Just not in the exact way that was expected even by his own disciples.
#317. To: Vicomte13 (#316)
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.
#318. To: Vicomte13 (#313)
Do you think I'm not?
#319. To: watchman (#318)
#320. To: Tooconservative (#317)
#321. To: Vicomte13 (#320)
There is no Old Testament reference to life after death or judgment
#322. To: Tooconservative (#302)
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."
#323. To: Vicomte13 (#306)
Nobody knows what the authors "intended". That is the great big hole into which the translator pours his own theology.
#324. To: Vicomte13 (#306)
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).
#325. To: Vicomte13 (#308)
World does not mean world. The word is "Kosmos".
#326. To: Tooconservative (#317)
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.
#327. To: redleghunter (#326)
Explicit. We see in Daniel chapter 12.
#328. To: Vicomte13 (#327)
#329. To: redleghunter, Vicomte13, watchman (#326)
Plenty of breadcrumbs in the OT. Several of Job’s dissertations mention the afterlife and resurrection.
Not to mention the author of Hebrews in chapter 11 sure did make the point the OT saints were looking for a better city and held out Hope for Messiah.
#330. To: A K A Stone (#328)
You have little faith. That is your problem. Little tiny bits of faith. You are wise in your own mind. You think God is to weak to give his word to his people. That he is to weak to preserve it. That he lied when he said it would spread through the whole world.
#331. To: Tooconservative (#329)
Certainly, the concept of an afterlife did exist at least as a popular notion among the people of the OT.
#332. To: Tooconservative (#329)
Official Jewish doctrine in the modern era does attempt to represent that in Judaism, there is no heaven or hell and further that there never was any concept of a Jewish afterlife which is clearly not true. I've often wondered whether that is merely reactionary, a rejection of anything that those darned Christians believe. And I do think they are a little willing to go so far in contrarianism to spite us.
#333. To: Vicomte13 (#331)
At some point, certainly. But the important thing is WHEN.
#334. To: Vicomte13 (#332)
The Sadduccees were the priests - the keepers of Torah - written AND Oral - and final judges. THEY did not believe in an afterlife.
#335. To: Tooconservative (#329)
I think Vic is a little like Martin Luther, re-arranging the books of the NT canon to try to demote certain books which ruined Luther's notion of a perfect Christian systematic theology. Vic also enjoys a certain amount of intellectual derring-do and he is obviously qualified to do so and has considerable family history to apply. And he is a lawyer, which means certain things. Jean Chauvin was also a lawyer and he did like to present his theological constructs as well.
#336. To: Vicomte13 (#335)
THAT is exactly where I am coming from. I don't deny that the Jews believe, or don't believe, in an afterlife - I don't CARE. Theologically, they don't have Jesus, and the only one I am going to listen to is Jesus. Obviously I don't think highly of theology that grants some mythical RIGHT of Jews to go carve out a colony in the Middle East at the cost of great bloodshed. But nor do I think highly of a theology that grants some mythical right of Muslims to kill Jews forever just because they are THERE. Both of these beliefs are crazy, and they're not what Jesus believes. So I'm opposed.
According to Jewish tradition, the soul must spend some time purifying itself before it can enter the World to Come. The maximum time required for purification is 12 months, for the most evil person. To recite Kaddish for 12 months would imply that the parent was the type who needed 12 months of purification! To avoid this implication, the Sages decreed that a son should recite Kaddish for only eleven months.
#337. To: Tooconservative (#336)
#338. To: Vicomte13 (#335)
When I was 11, I dove into a lake alone, broke my neck, and was saved from death by God in a major miracle.
#339. To: Vicomte13 (#330)
None of those things are true. I simply see things differently from the way you do.
#340. To: Vicomte13, redleghunter (#337)
Now, add in this fact: the place of purification the Jews call "Gehenna". Gehenna is a parched place of fire - Hell, if you will. Jesus spoke of Gehenna, without defining it (he didn't need to: the Jews already knew what it was).
#341. To: Tooconservative (#340)
#342. To: Vicomte13, redleghunter, watchman, A Pole, A K A Stone (#341)
The key point that I was trying to make was that in Jesus' time, Gehenna was so popularly understood among Jews that he could use it in his teaching, without having to explain anything about it, without having to define the word. So, while certainly all Jews didn't believe it existed, the whole crowd knew what it WAS (whether they believed in it or not) and understood what he was talking about. That's why he could just use the word referring to the place without definition, without explaining himself. When he spoke of Gehenna, he was not revealing something new to the crowd - that was not his point. Gehenna was the backdrop for the moral lessons he was teaching.
The Gospels present a divided Jewish community, with the priestly Sadducees not believing in resurrection, and the Pharisees believing in it. For all of the "clarity" supposedly in the old testament about resurrection, the priestly class did not see it...meaning that assertions of clarity or very much overblown. The family hand-picked by God to serve in the role of oracle and keeper of the sacred, to minister at the altar - they somehow missed the "clear" references to the resurrection in the OT (because it's not there clearly, my point yesterday).
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.
#343. To: Tooconservative (#342)
#344. To: redleghunter, Vicomte13 (#322)
The famous Good Shepherd discourse, Jesus indicates He has other sheep that will be brought into the fold:
#345. To: A K A Stone (#321)
2 And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
#346. To: Vicomte13 (#327)
Life after death and resurrection are not part of the Law. The ideas came into the religion after contact with foreigners who already had an inkling about it,
#347. To: redleghunter (#346)
Or God’s Sovereign progressive revelation.
#348. To: Vicomte13 (#347)
Or God’s Sovereign progressive revelation. Same thing.
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