Why Christianity today is divided

TBax · King Kong Joined: 24 Oct 2005 Posts: 2131

Colter,

Hi, Very Happy

True Christianity isn't divided. There are both true Christians and false Christians. People would call Jesus Lord yet Jesus wouldn't recognise them as his own because they didn't discern or do his Father's will.

Matt 7:21 “Not everyone saying to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter into the kingdom of the heavens, but the one doing the will of my Father who is in the heavens will. 22 Many will say to me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and expel demons in your name, and perform many powerful works in your name?’ 23 And yet then I will confess to them: I never knew YOU! Get away from me, YOU workers of lawlessness.

True Christians recognise the Bible for what it is, the word of God. False Christians make excusses so as to not apply scripture in their lives. They lean upon their own understanding.

Prov 3: 5 Trust in Jehovah with all your heart and do not lean upon your own understanding. 6 In all your ways take notice of him, and he himself will make your paths straight.

I am sorry, but much of your responce seems to be you leaning upon your own understanding. If you disagree with something the Bible says you feel justified to just ignor it or dismiss it as mere human thinking. I cannot agree with that. I believe the Bible is God's word, and trust it as such. God gave us His word to set things straight. If you don't trust it you can pretty much believe anything you want and pretend you are pleasing God. But are you really? Remember what some will hear?

I never knew YOU! Get away from me, YOU workers of lawlessness.

Later. Very Happy

_________________
Agape,
TBax

Colter · Rabid Pit Bull Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 409

TBax · King Kong Joined: 24 Oct 2005 Posts: 2131

Colter,

Hi, Very Happy

Colter · Rabid Pit Bull Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 409

TBax,

You have set up the false dichotomy of Bible worship and are then implying that because I see the scriptures as faulty and human in origin that something is wrong with my relationship with Jesus. Jesus taught that we are saved by faith/grace. He said nothing about worshiping the Bible written by men.

In Jesus own words which you have quoted:

And yet then I will confess to them: I never knew YOU! Get away from me, YOU workers of lawlessness.

....it's I never knew you not the Bible never knew you.

We have a relationship with Jesus and the Father. Lacking the visible presence of Christ people are tempted to make the Bible into an idol instead of seeking Gods will in our daily lives. It then becomes a matter of replacing that relationship between the believer and God and substituting the Bible as law.

Jesus instructed us that when Gods will become our law then we are hardly in the kingdom.

To your questions:

TBax · King Kong Joined: 24 Oct 2005 Posts: 2131

Colter,

Hi, Very Happy

Yes you answered most of my questions. Thank you. Very Happy

It appears my assumptions about you were correct, as well as my "accusations". Sad

Considering the Bible as God's word is not worshiping the Bible, but appreciating this gift God gave us so we can gain accurate knowledge of both God and Jesus, and learn what is required of us. I believe to deny the Bible as God's word is to disrespect God who gave it to us. That's just how I see it.

2 Tim 4:3 For there will be a period of time when they will not put up with the healthful teaching, but, in accord with their own desires, they will accumulate teachers for themselves to have their ears tickled; 4 and they will turn their ears away from the truth, whereas they will be turned aside to false stories. 5 You, though, keep your senses in all things, suffer evil, do [the] work of an evangelizer, fully accomplish your ministry.

Bye. Very Happy

_________________
Agape,
TBax

Rocket · House Cat Joined: 10 Dec 2006 Posts: 160

TBax I agree that most people who disagree with the Bible being God's word just don't want to follow it's teachings.

I do not agree with your line of thinking on womens rights. Women were looked down on because of Eve's sin in the garden. The question here is, is the story of Adam and Eve true. I have read that this was a story passed down from generation to generation so people could understand what sin was.

I believe that God created the heavens and the earth and not Yeshua/Jesus. I believe that God brought Abraham to be leader of His people. I believe the 12 tribes were the direct descendants of Abraham and that today only one tribe remains, the tribe of Judah, or Jew.
The rest were spread all over Europe and many Christians today descend from one tribe or another.

I believe that Yeshua/Jesus was sent to save God's people by being the living sacrifice and dying on the cross as that sacrifice. I believe that through that sacrifice we are saved.

The putting down of women is not part of the picture. Men put women in subservant positions, Yeshua/Jesus did not.

Ryck · Lion King Joined: 05 Dec 2002 Posts: 1094

TBax · King Kong Joined: 24 Oct 2005 Posts: 2131

Rocket,

Hi, Very Happy

Colter · Rabid Pit Bull Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 409

lone-traveler · Posted: Sun Mar 25, 2007 4:54 pm Post subject:

Colter · Rabid Pit Bull Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 409

lone-traveler · Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2007 6:48 am Post subject:

God told Noah to take into the ark 2 of everything.. Wink

clean and unclean.

There's a lot of leaven in the OT that's for sure.
Who was in the ark? Did the whole entire human race become destroyed? Was all evil banished from the face of the earth?

Who are the animals that are brought into the ark two by two? And they went out and repopulated the earth.
They're not all the same breed of animals, they are all different in characteristics.

Jdg 1:21 And the children of Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites that inhabited Jerusalem; but the Jebusites dwell with the children of Benjamin in Jerusalem unto this day.

Jdg 1:28 And it came to pass, when Israel was strong, that they put the Canaanites to tribute, and did not utterly drive them out.

Jdg 1:32 But the Asherites dwelt among the Canaanites, the inhabitants of the land: for they did not drive them out.

I believe the animals represent nations languages and tongues. That there are remnants of each who were faithful to God. Because God sent them all to Noah to be saved.

Consider the ark of Noah and what diversities there was within it...

Isa 65:25 The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock: and dust [shall be] the serpent's meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the LORD.

Who are the sons of God? They are those that are created in His image and likeness. They have His spirit within them. Who are the daughters of men. Men are as beasts. They are the daughters of hmm..snakes and dogs.
When sent on a commission to preach to the world, we go among the beasts of the earth:

Mar 16:15 And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.

1Ti 4:4 For every creature of God [is] good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving:

Rev 5:13 And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, [be] unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever.

Yet there are warnings about marrying women from the gentile nations around them.

Jdg 3:5 ¶ And the children of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites, Hittites, and Amorites, and Perizzites, and Hivites, and Jebusites:
Jdg 3:6 And they took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their daughters to their sons, and served their gods.
Jdg 3:7 ¶ And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD, and forgat the LORD their God, and served Baalim and the groves.

I believe the entire bible is prophecy. It was delivered to mankind by the spirit of prophecy himself. And was given to us to know what had come before, what is happening now, and what will be in the future.

Rev 19:10 And I fell at his feet to worship him. And he said unto me, See [thou do it] not: I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus: worship God: for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.

Gen 1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

God has been telling the same story and the same truth since the beginning of time. He doesn't always use the same names and places, but the foundational truth never changes. We do good, we get taken to a nice place to hang out for awhile. We mess up, we get sent to the dog house. When we appologize and life starts getting tough living out in the cold and eating scraps, we begin to cry and we are allowed back in the house.
While your in the doghouse you have to share the night with other creatures that hang out at night. And it gets scary, you have to be on the defensive. You get hungry enough you start getting growly. Until you just don't want to be in the doghouse anymore. So you humble yourself, go wimpering back to the master, and he brings us back inside again..until we do it again. Then come the pups which will have to go through the same thing the parents did. Because that's how animals are trained. You do good, you get treats. You do bad, it's out to the doghouse, until you get it right.

1Cr 13:11 When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

This same case scenerio is played out from Genesis to Revelation. It is a true prophecy and we have proof because we watch with our very own eyes history repeating itself.

Ecc 1:9 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.

Colter · Rabid Pit Bull Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 409

Hi Lone,

Your sharp as a tac!, I like the expance of your scriptural knowledge, in particular your insights into the absorbtion of the Cannanites by the Hebrews:

Jdg 3:5 ¶ And the children of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites, Hittites, and Amorites, and Perizzites, and Hivites, and Jebusites:
Jdg 3:6 And they took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their daughters to their sons, and served their gods.

The Hebrews did not defeat the Canaanites, they all mixed together. LOL!

An alternative explanation about Noah form the Urantia Revelation 1955:

THE FLOODS IN MESOPOTAMIA
The river dwellers were accustomed to rivers overflowing their banks at certain seasons; these periodic floods were annual events in their lives. But new perils threatened the valley of Mesopotamia as a result of progressive geologic changes to the north.

For thousands of years after the submergence of the first Eden the mountains about the eastern coast of the Mediterranean and those to the northwest and northeast of Mesopotamia continued to rise. This elevation of the highlands was greatly accelerated about 5000 B.C., and this, together with greatly increased snowfall on the northern mountains, caused unprecedented floods each spring throughout the Euphrates valley. These spring floods grew increasingly worse so that eventually the inhabitants of the river regions were driven to the eastern highlands. For almost a thousand years scores of cities were practically deserted because of these extensive deluges.

Almost five thousand years later, as the Hebrew priests in Babylonian captivity sought to trace the Jewish people back to Adam, they found great difficulty in piecing the story together; and it occurred to one of them to abandon the effort, to let the whole world drown in its wickedness at the time of Noah's flood, and thus to be in a better position to trace Abraham right back to one of the three surviving sons of Noah.

The traditions of a time when water covered the whole of the earth's surface are universal. Many races harbor the story of a world-wide flood some time during past ages. The Biblical story of Noah, the ark, and the flood is an invention of the Hebrew priesthood during the Babylonian captivity. There has never been a universal flood since life was established on Urantia. The only time the surface of the earth was completely covered by water was during those Archeozoic ages before the land had begun to appear.

But Noah really lived; he was a wine maker of Aram, a river settlement near Erech. He kept a written record of the days of the river's rise from year to year. He brought much ridicule upon himself by going up and down the river valley advocating that all houses be built of wood, boat fashion, and that the family animals be put on board each night as the flood season approached. He would go to the neighboring river settlements every year and warn them that in so many days the floods would come. Finally a year came in which the annual floods were greatly augmented by unusually heavy rainfall so that the sudden rise of the waters wiped out the entire village; only Noah and his immediate family were saved in their houseboat.

These floods completed the disruption of Andite civilization. With the ending of this period of deluge, the second garden was no more. Only in the south and among the Sumerians did any trace of the former glory remain.

The remnants of this, one of the oldest civilizations, are to be found in these regions of Mesopotamia and to the northeast and northwest. But still older vestiges of the days of Dalamatia exist under the waters of the Persian Gulf, and the first Eden lies submerged under the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea.

Colter
_________________
Micah denounced "the rulers who judge for reward and the priests who teach for hire and the prophets who divine for money." He taught of a day of freedom from superstition and priestcraft, saying: "But every man shall sit under his own vine, and no one shall make him afraid, for all people will live, each one according to his understanding of God."

Colter · Rabid Pit Bull Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 409

An interesting article apeared in the Times on the 13th

The New York Times (13 March 2007)

Philistines, but less and less Philistine

In recent years, excavations in Israel established that the
Philistines had fine pottery, handsome architecture and cosmopolitan
tastes. If anything, they were more refined than the shepherds and
farmers in the nearby hills, the Israelites, who slandered them in
biblical chapter and verse and rendered their name a synonym for
boorish, uncultured people.

Archaeologists have now found that not only were Philistines
cultured, they were also literate when they arrived, presumably from
the region of the Aegean Sea, and settled the coast of ancient
Palestine around 1200 BCE.

At the ruins of a Philistine seaport at Ashkelon in Israel,
excavators examined 19 ceramic pieces and determined that their
painted inscriptions represent a form of writing. Some of the pots
and storage jars were inscribed elsewhere, probably in Cyprus and
Crete, and taken to Ashkelon by early settlers. Of special
importance, one of the jars was made from local clay, meaning
Philistine scribes were presumably at work in their new home.

The discovery is reported by two Harvard professors, Frank Moore
Cross Jr. and Lawrence E. Stager. In the report, the two researchers
said the inscriptions "reveal, for the first time, convincing
evidence that the early Philistines of Ashkelon were able to read and
write in a non-Semitic language, as yet undeciphered. Perhaps it is
not too bold to propose," they wrote, "that the inscription is
written in a form of Cypro-Minoan script utilized and modified by the
Philistines - in short, that we are dealing with the Old Philistine
script." Dr. Cross said the script had some characteristics of Linear
A, the writing system used in the Aegean from 1650 BCE to 1450 BCE.
This undeciphered script was supplanted by another, Linear B, which
was identified with the Minoan civilization of Crete and was finally
decoded in the mid-20th century.

The two researchers and other scholars said it was not
surprising that the Ashkelon inscriptions were in an Aegean type of
writing. The biblical Philistines are assumed to have been a group of
the mysterious Sea Peoples who probably originated in the Greek
islands and migrated to several places on the far eastern shores of
the Mediterranean.

The locally made storage jar, bearing seven signs, was found
several years ago buried under debris of a mudbrick building, which
appeared to date to no later than 1000 BCE. After the 10th century,
the Philistines borrowed their Israelite neighbors' Old Hebrew script
and alphabet then evolving from Phoenician writing. By then, the
Philistines and Israelites had been in such close contact that they
appeared to have reached some degree of amity, though tradition never
forgot Goliath as the bad Philistine.

Colter
_________________
Micah denounced "the rulers who judge for reward and the priests who teach for hire and the prophets who divine for money." He taught of a day of freedom from superstition and priestcraft, saying: "But every man shall sit under his own vine, and no one shall make him afraid, for all people will live, each one according to his understanding of God."

lone-traveler · Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2007 11:19 am Post subject:

Hi Colter,
You wrote: