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:40222 Comments:348
Georgia Southern QB Shai Werts has been suspended following an arrest earlier in the week.
Werts was arrested following a traffic stop on Wednesday night in Saluda, South Carolina. According to reports, Werts was originally pulled over for speeding. When the officer attempted to pull him over, however, he kept going and reportedly called 911 to explain that he wasn’t pulling over in a dark area. After reaching town, Werts then pulled over and was arrested for speeding.
The QB was then asked about the white powder on the hood of his car, and he claimed it was bird poop that he tried to clean off at the car wash. The officer tested the powder, and it tested positive for cocaine with two different kits and in two different places on the hood of the car.
“Everything about him and inside his vehicle made him appear as a clean person but the hood of his car was out of place,” the police report states.
Werts denied any knowledge of the origin of the cocaine. The officer wrote that the powder appeared to have been “thrown on the vehicle and had been attempted to be washed off by the windshield wipers, and wiper fluid as there was white powder substance around the areas of the wiper fluid dispensary.”
In addition to speeding, he was charged with a misdemeanor possession of cocaine.
This is all really bad news because Georgia Southern plays LSU Week 1.
Al Eargle, the Deputy Solicitor for the 11th Judicial Circuit which includes Saluda County, told Werts’ attorney, Townes Jones IV, that these kinds of charges would not be pressed on “his watch,” Jones said.
South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) tests were conducted on the substance samples collected from the hood of Werts’ 2016 Dodge Charger, but the results confirmed that no controlled substance was present in the samples.
“I have not seen (the SLED results) yet,” Eargle said on a phone call Thursday night. “But I was informed that the test did come back and that there was no controlled substance found.”
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
#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.
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?
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 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.
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. : )
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.
If family legends about themselves can be believed.
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.
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.
#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.
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.
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.
I do agree with Paul but then that's pretty convenient, eh? No great leap for a Prot type.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Paul the Pharisee was proud of his Judaism, and desperately sought to give a significance to it under the New Covenant.
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.
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.
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.
Had Jesus NOT died on the Cross, had he been accepted, the same rule would apply:
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
The Reformation itself was in large part fought over this very issue.
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.
The house has toxic mold in it thanks to a flood last year that I haven't had the resources to abate.
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.
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.
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.
So the fellow has a year to try to make something work.
Or just find work in the sticks where he can afford rent. Of course, he has to know your charity isn't permanent.
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.
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.
I am constantly amazed with the young families in my church.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Nobody remembers family lines back to the Roman Empire
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?
A lot of people claim ancestors based on dusty scraps of paper.
Most of Americans do not understand traditional societies that lasted for many centuries. They move, break contacts, mix and forget.
I think there is a lot more promiscuity and marital infidelity than that.
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.
He had demanded of Abraham in the sacrifice of Isaac: the sacrifice of his only begotten son as a blood sacrifice for sin.
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.)
To which Jesus would answer: 'Not a letter nor a penstroke of the Law shall be changed until the end of the world.'
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?
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]
You left out the best part of the story:
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.
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.
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."
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.
Most of Americans do not understand traditional societies that lasted for many centuries. They move, break contacts, mix and forget.
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.
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.
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.
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
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!
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.
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.
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".
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.
Hebrews 10:14:For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.
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.
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
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.
Can you cite any Catholic doctrinal source that says the same things you are saying here?
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.
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?
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.
I find it very hard to believe that the Romans murdered every last member of a priestly family.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
