Don't know what you're talking about. - LatinThunder
Are you associated with the Brahma Kumaris?
How do believers defend a god who is going to murder billions and pin it on them?
by tootired2care 327 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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cofty
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slimboyfat
This thread makes the assumption that God is scrutable. That may not be, how do we know?
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tec
When you wrote "ME", are you referring to "yeshua"?
Christ, yes, as He is the one who said it.
If so, when I read something ridiculous in the book, like when Jesus foretell what would happen to the stars in space, “And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind” (Revelation 6:13). Or some verses like Mark 5 1-20, Luke 4:31-37, Acts 16, that today are clearly cases of mental illness. These verses are not inspired.
Some things in Revelation are symbolic; some things are described as they appeared to the one receiving the revelation. (this, for instance, though... IS an example of scripture - inspired - because John was IN THE SPIRIT... and received what he later wrote down, FROM the Spirit)
As for your examples from Mark, Luke, Acts... mental illness is not usually cured by a command for demons to come out of a person. But Mark, Luke, Acts... are witness accounts, recounted from what was seen and heard... whereas scripture is written from what is given and received from the Spirit.
From Revelation:
"On the Lord's Day, I was in the Spirit, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet, which said: "Write on a scroll what you see and sent it to..."
All that John was given, that he wrote, was given to him as he was in the Spirit.
He was even TOLD to write it down.
Now a specific writing not being inspired (given in spirit) does not mean it is not true. All that Christ spoke IS true, as Christ spoke as He heard and learned from God , and people later gave written accounts of what HE spoke and did. (though He still speaks)
How do I pick one from the other? Do you have a personal inside that non of us have?
You may not all hear the Spirit (though you could if you had faith to ask); but you all DO have access to the same writings as I do.
In those writings, Christ is the Truth. God has said "Listen to Christ." Christ is the Teacher and the Truth. So even if you cannot hear Him (or recognize Him) in spirit (yet), you DO have all that He is written to have said and done. So even if you go purely by what is written, Christ being the Truth, the One we are told to listen TO... would you not listen to Him first and foremost? Why would you listen to anyone/anything over Him?
Nothing else is stated to be the Word, Image, Truth of God.
"Scripture is, as Paul said, "God-breathed". Inspired. (in the spirit, from the spirit) Like the book of Revelation. But Paul could not have been referring to the whole bible, as the whole bible did not exist at that time. Nor is it all scripture, given by God, in the spirit (like Revelation). Some is simply a recording of things that happened; history and such. Like the book of Luke."
Now you are just making things up as we go along.
If something I have learn from this place is that you have to back up your words with the bible. Where are the scriptures to back up your last statement?
okay.
I showed you where John makes the statement about being in the Spirit. (In fact, if you read the prophets - you will find phrases such as "I saw visions of God; the Spirit lifted me up; the word of the LORD came to (whichever prophet), and told him to say to Israel)
Whereas Luke says in his opening:
"Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the Word. Therefore since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an ordely account for you, most excellent Theophilus so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught."
It's a bit different than the accounts where the Prophet was in the Spirit and told to speak or write of what he saw while in the Spirit, or what he received as the word of the LORD came to him, right?
But these... the prophets, Moses, the Psalms... all point TO Christ, as witnesses to Him... and those who knew/know Him ALSO witness to Christ.
Hope that helps a bit.
Peace to you,
tammy
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MadGiant
"In 2 Tim 3:16 Paul was giving us the specifications for true scripture. If a certain grouping of texts prove NOT to be useful in "teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousnes" then they're not "God-breathed." God is the source of competency, therefore His works will be fully competent." Why are there clouds in the sky? Nahum 1:3 Why are some people blind, deaf, dumb or handicapped in some other way? Exodus 4:11, Luke 1:20 What causes thunder and lightning? Job 37:2-3 Why do we sometimes see rainbows? Genesis 9:13-15 What causes tornadoes to form? Jeremiah 30:23, Isaiah 40:24 Why are some women unable to have children? Genesis 20:3, 18. Samuel 1:2, 5 What causes earthquakes? Isaiah 13:13, Psalms 18:7 Why are some men afflicted with hemorrhoids? Deuteronomy 28:27, 1 Samuel 5:6 So, you are telling me that 200, 300 years ago, all this verses answered this questions and where inspired. Today they are not. What going to happens when men keeps finding answers, more verses will turn to be "not inspired"? How do I know one from the other? All that's make sense today is inspired, all that doesn't make sense today is not inspired? The day after tomorrow we will see what happens? Ismael
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latinthunder
But who determines which scriptures lend to teachings that are righteous? It is all in the eye of the beholder.
I used the physics book example because scripture works in the same way. When you are done learning from a physics textbook and are left with nothing of use, it was not a physics textbook. That's not in the "eye of the beholder" it's the scientific method. Billions of people all around the world stand by the usefulness of their ancient texts for the training of righteousness. Scripture is distinguished from non scripture by it's usefullness especially across generations.
Of course, I'm sure you've got it all figured out.
Not quite, I still have a ways to go.
Are you associated with the Brahma Kumaris?
Never heard of him.
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adamah
Adamah said:
After making mankind, God declared ALL of his handiwork as "very good". If so, and humanity and the animals/plants got so off-track in such a short period of time after creating them, then God is not a good judge of His own work, as he's seemingly unable to quality-check his own work?
Latin Thunder said-
The serpent in Genesis is one of the "wild animals" you are referring to (the wisest of them). According to Christian theology, as per the Book of Revelation, the "dragon" is the "original serpent" of Genesis. Therefore, if you are a Christian, you believe that the serpent in Genesis is a spirit creature because the devil is a spirit. How then, is a spirit creature called a "wild animal"?
You, as well as many Christians today, have incorrectly identified the "animals of Genesis" as the ancestors of our modern day animal kingdom. The "animals" of Genesis are at least in part, spirit creatures. What are spirit creatures? That is a subject under intense debate.
OH, I BET!! Why am I reminded of the 'intense debates' said to have occurred in the Middle Ages amongst priests over the burning issue of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
My point being that if you think that the "animals" of genesis represent animals of today, you are following a false trail setup by packs of decievers. The Garden of Eden is a spiritual place, not physical which is why it's described in allegory.
God and His Divine Counsel are the only "packs of decievers" (sic), since God insists on inspiring His Divine Will using the twisted tongue of a serpent with non-stop use of parables, allegories, metaphors, symbology, word play/puns, etc. As I pointed out in my response to Caliber, the HALLMARK of a great leader is the ability to communicate in terms that make their goals easy for others to understand and follow, not to speak in riddles.
BTW, talking animals were a commonly-used literary device in the ancient World to indicate that whatever follows is a FANTASY, a fable (eg Aesop's Fables, from Greece), much like the modern fairy-tale opens with those magical words, "Once upon a time".
But I'll play along with your allegory defense, but you now have the burden to explain what the allegory represents (and yes, that's basically an invitation to engage in MORE wild speculation, AKA eisegesis). What you're suggesting is a commonly-used defense tactic of Bible defenders, with more and more of the Bible claimed as allegorical, as science proves more and more of the Bible as ludicrious, if read as literal.
Sooo, let's start with an easy one:
We KNOW there's not a solid half-dome covering the Earth to which distant stars and the Sun and Moon are attached: so, the firmament is allegorical, you say? Fine, so then what role does the 'firmament' serve, as an allegorical device? What solid dome exists above which the great stores of the waters falls from heaven (rain), etc?
And how do we decide which parts of the Bible are literal, and which are allegorical? Perhaps Jehovah is allegorical (as the gnostics believed, where the REAL God is inside of each of us)? Or perhaps God is an aardvark, or even a panda (and that WOULD explain the Panda Petting deal in the New System? God would be more lovable and cuddly, if he took the form of a panda, right)?
(Not this guy, though, as he's clearly a PAGAN GOD PANDA!)
(Nice touch, with the bamboo candles on the cake, LOL!)
Nope, you don't understand what sin is, AND you don't understand the theological concepts of Divine Will vs mankind's free will, as understood by most theologians, since the act of eating the fruit WASN'T a choice made by exercising free will. In fact, it was the ONLY action they could've done in the Garden which WASN'T a free will choice, since God had already told them, "Thou Shalt Not Eat of the Fruit of the TOKOG&E".
Adam and his wife always had free will from the moment they opened their eyes, as the "image of God" they were designed with it.
You DO realize that the term "free will" doesn't appear ANYWHERE in the Bible, OT or NT, so it's anachronistic to insert it into the story of A&E, right? The term is a LATE development of philosophers, although the underpinnings do extend back to early Greek philsophers.
But anyway, you seem to mistakenly believe the phrase "created in the image of God" has something to do with the Divine Authority issue presented in the Garden of Eden account, and it doesn't. The central issue is not whether A&E had the CAPABILITY to eat of the fruit (using their own free will), but whether they had God's PERMISSION to do so (and they clearly DIDN'T: God had expressly forbid them from doing so, and hence why eating the fruit was defined as a 'sin', a violation of the Divine Will).
So the whole defense of, "But God didn't want to be like robots who HAD to obey him, so God gave them free will" is a red-herring argument, since God HAD prohibited them from eating the fruit, which they did, although they didn't have PERMISSION to do so. It wasn't even a "free will" issue, but rather a "freedom of choice" issue (and even that's is a questionable statement, since there were other issues of whether they were EQUIPPED by God with the capability to MAKE an informed decision, in the first place: that's the Adam and Eve paradox, as discussed in my blog).
(BTW, it's one of the areas where I give WTBTS props for getting it CORRECT: they differentiate between the phrase, "freedom of choice", and "free will", precisely to make it clear that the former carries consequences for choosing to disobey, whereas the latter phrase suggests being free of CONSEQUENCES, which obviously wasn't the case for A&E.)
Nonsense. The Genesis account specificially describes Noah as a "righteous" man, not WICKED, since he was hand-picked by YHWH to institute the first system of justice upon the Earth, after the Flood. The humans who were wiped out in the Flood were described as 'wicked' and 'with evil in their hearts', but killing them was just the first step of God's solution of the Flood.
The account explicitly states that ALL humans on earth were wicked which would include Noah. Then it goes on to say that Noah was righteous in that he was "blameless among his people." The writers are giving us a definition of a righteous person which is determined by how they measure up with their contemporaries. Noah WAS wicked as Genesis states that all humans are evil from birth, which would include Noah (Genesis 8:21).
Noah "walked with God" too: does Jehovah consort with the wicked evil-doers? Hebrews 11 specifically mentions the righteousness of faithful Noah who was hand-picked by God for the job. Odd that I don't remember reading the account of Latin Thunder's famous deeds of faith arguing with atheists on JWN mentioned anywhere in the Bible? I'd be careful who I go around declaring as "wicked", if I were you, LOL!
(Oh, don't answer that first question about God consorting with wicked evil-doers: I just remembered that Satan was a member of the Divine Elohim in the Book of Job, so the answer would be "yes"!)
Oh, and thanks for bringing up Gene 8:21:
Genesis 8:21
The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: "Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.
And note the reason God gave for WHY the Flood was needed in the first place, back in Genesis 6:5:
Genesis 6:5
The LORD saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.
So, it seems God finally decided to throw in the towel after figuring out there's nothing more He could do about the "evil in the hearts of men" defect, despite having just drowned the ENTIRE population of the World (and animals/plants). God seemingly says, "Oh, well, it's just the way it is...." and accepts the defect as it is, where humans just seem to have an intrinsic inclination for evil and there's not a dol-gurn thing omnipotent God can do to fix it!
As I explain on my blog article, that WOULD be the case, if one overlooks the fact that the Flood account contains a three-pronged solution to the "evil inclinations in the hearts of man" problem, which is NOT just limited to the mass drowning event. 99% of Christians miss the MOST IMPORTANT PART of the story, the SOLUTION that explains why God carried out the Flood (the two other non-obvious answers are contained in the Noahide Covenant in Genesis 9).
Like I said, you need a lot more study, you have drawn conclusions without doing any real research.
Yeah, thanks Champ! I'll get right on it!
But since you're so familiar with the account of Noah, perhaps you can explain the significance of Noah's name, and the scripture that points to the fulfillment? I'm SURE you know all about THAT one, right?
Oh, and then you perhaps could explain why God didn't get around to prohibiting bloodshed until AFTER the Flood, and not before? It seems as if God bears SOME of the responsibility, since God kinda forgot to do that, even AFTER seeing Cain kill his brother (and he paradoxically PROTECTED Cain by giving him a protective mark, and Lamech even bragged about killing TWO people and being protected 77-fold by God!).
Adam
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adamah
Cofty said-
Are you associated with the Brahma Kumaris?
I'm not seeing any of that kind of Eastern mysticism thing, or broken Pakistani: why would you suspect BK?
The "test it" bit above suggests someone more-aligned to TECs group who claim to "hear the voice of Jesus".
Not that it matters: it's a form of an ad hominem to challenge other posters by questioning their motives for posting, rather than to simply deal with the arguments they bring to the discussion.
Adam
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cofty
He/she hinted at belief in reincarnation yesterday and obfuscated about being a christian.
No introduction post anywhere and god knows how many of RoseMary's cult buddies posting under her username which I called her out on a couple of days ago.
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tec
How do you guess which books/chapters/verses of the Bible are inspired and which ones aren't?
Well, you don't guess. But they do usually say, themselves...and Christ said that these scriptures testity to Him (Moses, Prophets, Psalms)... so the intros go something like this: The word of God came to me; the Spirit took me up; the Spirit spoke to me; I was in the Spirit; God said, "tell these people"... etc, etc.
Even Paul made a differentiation here between something from the Lord, and something from him (1Corinthians 7:10, 12):
To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord)...
To the rest I say this (I, not the Lord)...
But even all of that (what is scripture, what is inspired, what do you listen to?) is a distraction from simply listening to Christ, the Truth, Image and Word of God.
Simple.
So simple.
Too simple for some to accept.
Peace,
tammy
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adamah
Cofty said-
He/she hinted at belief in reincarnation yesterday and obfuscated about being a christian.
No introduction post anywhere and god knows how many of RoseMary's cult buddies posting under her username which I called her out on a couple of days ago.
Gotcha, I must've missed the reference, but the "testing it" bit and denial of being a Christian (rather, they believe they're followers of Jesus HIMSELF!) is consistent with TECs group of voice hearers she's mentioned before. Not that it matters, as the more, the merrier; more opportunities to demonstrate the folly and narcissism of telling onesself that everyone is free to create and customize their personal God experience, as they wish (Judges 21:25, "every man did what was right in their own eyes")!
MadGiant,
TEC doesn't feel that 2 Tim 3:16 applies to her, since she marched into his office and demanded Jesus have a personal relationship with her, and he said she's exempted from following the Bible now since she goes straight to the source to get the pure unadulterated Word of Jesus.
TEC said-
But even all of that (what is scripture, what is inspired, what do you listen to?) is a distraction from simply listening to Christ, the Truth, Image and Word of God.
Simple. So simple. Too simple for some to accept.
Tell you what:
How about rather than always acting like you are BFF with Jesus, doing something useful and productive out of love for your fellow believers, and perhaps transcribing an official list as heard from Jesus that describes exactly WHICH PASSAGES in the Bible are inspired, and which are not?
How hard could THAT be?
Adam
