I agree with AK jeff 100%
Are You Paul or are you Saul?
by reniaa 347 Replies latest jw friends
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reniaa
actually I applaud ak-Jeffs honesty the hardest thing I find on these forums is seeing condemnation in witnesses what they accept elsewhere. When people go against leadership and the leaders God given right to lead I often think to myself "how would you manage under God rule rather than men?" if God is clearcut on no fornication and adultery would you kick against it like you do when the gb are strict on it? Wasn't the whole law on the jews God setting a morale standard they had to live too? and wasn't jesus even strictor because he counciled against even thinking wrong things?
If a christian religion softens on things like fornication homosexuality despite the bible strict stance on it aren't they setting their flock up for a fall?
The bible is very uncompromising and black and white, and while Jesus allows forgiveness it comes with repentence and giving up the sin not accepting it as okay now?
Reniaa
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Pistoff
Reniaa: PLEASE answer this point.
As an advocate for the witnesses, who take the Bible at face value, do you believe that Jesus walked on water and performed miracles?
If so, why does Paul NEVER mention the miracles, or for that matter, ANY teaching of Jesus? Was Paul more interested in using Jesus as a martyr base on which to build a religion?
I am very interested in your answer.
P
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isaacaustin
actually I applaud ak-Jeffs honesty the hardest thing I find on these forums is seeing condemnation in witnesses what they accept elsewhere.
My reply: Not at all true. The only reason condemnation seems more apparent to witnesses is because they have a sense of arrogance in thinking they are better than all others.
When people go against leadership and the leaders God given right to lead I often think to myself "how would you manage under God rule rather than men?"
My reply: We are only told to submit to our Christian leaders where their leadership is in line with the word of God. The Wt chock full of false prophecies and wrong teachings would not qulaify as Christian at all.
if God is clearcut on no fornication and adultery would you kick against it like you do when the gb are strict on it? Wasn't the whole law on the jews God setting a morale standard they had to live too? and wasn't jesus even strictor because he counciled against even thinking wrong things?
My reply: My chuurch is against it as well. The controlling and shunning used by the WT to combat it is not scriptural.
If a christian religion softens on things like fornication homosexuality despite the bible strict stance on it aren't they setting their flock up for a fall?
The bible is very uncompromising and black and white, and while Jesus allows forgiveness it comes with repentence and giving up the sin not accepting it as okay now?
My reply: Agreed. The Wt is not unprecedented in being against sin...only in their unscriptural reaction to it.
Reniaa
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awildflower
To Pistoff: I JUST had the same thought this morning and was talking to a friend about it. I said to her the whole account of Saul getting stopped on the road, the donkey talking, the Lord Jesus coming before him and giving him an assignment.....doesn't that sound familiar to a lot of religious leaders today say: "the Lord came to me with a vision or words to say and things to do", etc......? Before Paul there was no 'religion'. He was dragging Christians (for lack of a better word) out of private homes. Then all of a sudden he changes and with him begins this 'organized religion' based on Jesus! I know a lot of JW's who have always felt funny about Paul and I have to and I think I know why. His ego began to take over him as soon as he got popular and started 'organizing' things. If Jesus wanted some organized religion why on earth did he not take time to teach one of his original 12 apostles exactly what he wanted done? He didn't because his intent was never on an organized anything! But here comes Paul to capitolize on this man and his followers. People never really talk about the 300 years BEFORE the organized church, but everything we have today seems to start with Paul? Any thoughts on that?............wf
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Pistoff
Reniaa said:
"When people go against leadership and the leaders God given right to lead I often think to myself "how would you manage under God rule rather than men?"
Reniaa, how do you know that God has given the GB the right to lead? What evidence is there for this? If I said that I was given the right by God to lead, how would you know if it was true?
AND: Why did Paul not mention Jesus' miracles? Please respond.
P
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Pistoff
Wildflower:
Christianity is what it is today because of Paul, both his zeal for making congregations and the adoption of his rigid stance about morality that is the foundation of fundamental belief.
Whether or not that is a good thing, or was ever something Jesus intended is a good question to keep considering here.
Paul was very ambitious; true believers would say that Jesus led Paul to do what he did, but how do we know that? Jesus' sayings take power away from religious structure, but Paul's sayings are all about building communities that Jesus would likely have lampooned as he did the communities in Galilee.
Jesus speared the self righteous; who today is more self righteous that fundamental believers, including Jehovahs Witnesses? They are rigid and focused on rules of behavior, believing that they alone will gain the prize, that all others will have their dead flesh eaten or will rot in hell. Jesus talked to the Samaritan woman, the equivalent today of what, an Iraqi, an atheist? The hero in one of his parables was a Samaritan, not a priest or a Levite.
Among fundamentalists, only one's own brand will gain the prize; all the rest, so the witnesses believe, are tools of Satan.
So Saul or Paul; NO THANKS to being either one. What Jesus stood for, I love; what Paul preached was a message of exclusion and sexual restriction very reminiscient of the Essenes of his day. In all of what Paul actually wrote and also the books attributed to him, there is no interest in the teachings of Jesus, only Jesus' role in a cosmic struggle between good and evil, a theme found in many of the sects present before, during and after Jesus death.
Paul is everything about Christianity that is repulsive to me.
P
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reniaa
hi pistoff
sorry about the delay got distracted on another thread.
Yes I do think Jesus walked on water and performed miracles, I accept the WHOLE BIBLE and all it's books including Paul's as inspired of God once you start picking and choosing according to your own opinion you may as well make up a God and call it 'Bob' because it will be still your own creation and nothing to what the whole bible actually teaches.
Paul wrote about what he knew, he would have been lying if he talked on Jesus's miracles since he never saw them first-hand other than Jesus's appearance to him.
I think rejection of Paul's word is another sign of Jesus worship. Wanting it all to revolve around Jesus and leave nothing to the firstfruits and co-heirs with him.
Renuaa
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AK - Jeff
I accept the WHOLE BIBLE and all it's books including Paul's as inspired
I believe you do. But would you mind telling me why?
There were literally hundreds of 'books', 'letters', and accounts written by persons contemporary with Jesus, who laud him and his God, and accepted him as something akin to God, at least as a Savior of some sort. Yet, in examining them, little in common with the beliefs set out in the Bible Canon is found. The canon itself was determined by men who were clearly biased - and they were Catholic. Why should anyone besides Catholic people accept the canon they approved?
Biblical experts have shown that most of the 'gospels' were written by a single author, parts of that were parsed to form the books of Matthew and Luke. Most scholars don't attribute the gospels to the claimed authors at all.
Why should someone accept those little 66 books - hand picked by the clerical body of the catholic religion - to be of higher value than those rejected?
Certainly one would be in doubt as to the claims of it's inspiration and accuracy when it is determined that not a single word of it likely was penned until 20 or 30 years after the death of Jesus? I am absolutely positive - that had I lived and seen Jesus, believed him to be the literal son of God - you better believe I would have written about what I saw - Right then and there! I cannot concieve of any reason that I would wait 30 years to write down what he said and did - unless of course I wanted to make sure that what I wrote agreed with all the other so called 'eyewitness' claims.
As far as Paul's letters are concerned - what if the catholic Bishops were wrong about them being 'inspired'? If we dropped all the letters of Paul - and founded a religion without them - would it be Christianity at all? I think what most people call Christianity is really Pauline Doctrinalism.
Jeff
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UnDisfellowshipped
Reniaa said:
"I think rejection of Paul's word is another sign of Jesus worship. Wanting it all to revolve around Jesus and leave nothing to the firstfruits and co-heirs with him."
My Reply:
That's one of the most false statements I have ever seen in my life.
Paul is the one who taught that EVERYTHING (I mean everything in the Universe) revolves around CHRIST!
I recommend you re-read these verses:
Philippians 1:21 (NWT): For in my case to live is Christ, and to die, gain.
Philippians 3:7-8 (NWT): Yet what things were gains to me, these I have considered loss on account of the Christ. Why, for that matter, I do indeed also consider all things to be loss on account of the excelling value of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. On account of him I have taken the loss of all things and I consider them as a lot of refuse, that I may gain Christ
Colossians 1:16-20 (NWT): because by means of him all [other] things were created in the heavens and upon the earth, the things visible and the things invisible, no matter whether they are thrones or lordships or governments or authorities. All [other] things have been created through him and for him. Also, he is before all [other] things and by means of him all [other] things were made to exist, and he is the head of the body, the congregation. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that he might become the one who is first in all things; because [God] saw good for all fullness to dwell in him, and through him to reconcile again to himself all [other] things by making peace through the blood [he shed] on the torture stake, no matter whether they are the things upon the earth or the things in the heavens.
Galatians 2:20 (NWT): I am impaled along with Christ. It is no longer I that live, but it is Christ that is living in union with me. Indeed, the life that I now live in flesh I live by the faith that is toward the Son of God, who loved me and handed himself over for me.
Ephesians 1:19-23 (NWT): ...It is according to the operation of the mightiness of his strength, with which he has operated in the case of the Christ when he raised him up from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above every government and authority and power and lordship and every name named, not only in this system of things, but also in that to come. He also subjected all things under his feet, and made him head over all things to the congregation, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills up all things in all.
2nd Corinthians 5:10 (NWT): For we must all be made manifest before the judgment seat of the Christ, that each one may get his award for the things done through the body, according to the things he has practiced, whether it is good or vile.
2nd Corinthians 5:14-15 (NWT): For the love the Christ has compels us, because this is what we have judged, that one man died for all; so, then, all had died; and he died for all that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died for them and was raised up.
Paul said that life was all about Christ, our relationship to Him, and pleasing Him. and nothing else is important. If you do not have a relationship with Jesus, you are on very shaky ground, you are building on quicksand, and you need to remember that you will one day stand before HIS Judgment Seat.
Are you honoring The Son just as you honor The Father? (John 5:23)