Touch of grey, please read The Case for Christ, by Lee Strobel. 🙏🏻
WATCHTOWER JAN 2025: WHY IS THE WATCHTOWER OBSESSED WITH THE RANSOM?
by raymond frantz 75 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Touchofgrey
I started a thread about a month ago.
What is the evidence is there for a biblical jesus?
So l have a reprobate mind, that's judgemental of you. Just because I did some independent research into the bible including the gospels as not being eyewitnes accounts and written by unknown authors many decades after the so called events and then followed the facts.
You sadly are being controlled and manipulated by religious beliefs into what you are told to believe and failings to do logical research with a open mind and then following the evidence to the conclusion that the bible is a creation of man to control and manipulate and extorted time and money from its followers.
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Touchofgrey
Biahi
I read a review of that book, and he believes that the four gospels are eyewitnes accounts that's false, they were written by unknown authors many decades after the so called events so not eyewitnes accounts, so there is no evidence that a miracle worker called jesus ever existed.
Please do some independent research yourself into the evidence or lack of evidence into jesus and the bible in general.
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KerryKing
Touchofgrey I agree, and the Bible translations we have are indeed unreliable at best, and open to the worst of interpretation, as history proves so clearly. That's why I've come to the conclusion that no body is actually able to or authorised to 'explain or teach' the Bible meanings.
If God or Jesus meant us to worship them by means of the interpretation of scripture, I am 100% sure they would have at least provided us with a fool proof manual or set of instructions. They did not, so we're obviously looking in the wrong place and arguing over nothing.
Whether Jesus actually walked the earth or not, we probably can't prove it without a shadow of a doubt. The fact that the man (or idea of him) has been worshipped, adored, died for, during the past 2000 years makes me think someone like that did inspire people around him enough to cause the flame he stirred to still exist today.
We could choose to focus on the evils of Christianity, the crusades, the wars, the oppression and cruelty done in it's name, or we could look at the basic teachings attributed to a man called Jesus, and think about how, if we lived by those, what would the earth be like?
Organised religion, religious corporations, and anyone else who preaches and prophesies AND asks for money to do so, by my personal deliberations, gets the no confidence vote. Any one who lives by the two commandments, to Love God and Neighbour (my belief is that to love God means to also love everything God entrusted to our care ; earth and animals), is part of the greater good, some call that the Fifth Dimension, others call it God's Kingdom. If everyone lived by those two teachings, this earth would be pretty amazing.
It's actually that simple. Whoever you believe wrote those two teachings first, Moses, Jesus, whoever, was onto something.
It's up to us to choose if we want to be a part of the solution, to love, or a part of the problem, to fight, argue and hate. Arguing over the details that are in the Bible has been done for 2000 years, it will never be resolved, because us being right or wrong isn't the point. Being motivated by love or by self, THAT is the point and the choices we have.
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Sea Breeze
we could look at the basic teachings attributed to a man called Jesus, and think about how, if we lived by those, what would the earth be like?
That's the problem, we can't.... that's why we need Grace, a new spirit and a Personal Savior.
Here's a quick vid on the early Christian leaders taught by the apostles. There simply was no JW wackiness back them among them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ci0mYcnlwSQ&list=PLhdOSGGHjmrAzG-Vi8Bp3kam9XiwC4NhL
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Beth Sarim
All carrot and stick mentality.
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Sea Breeze
What Jesus offers is the opposite of a carrot and stick:
BY THE WORKS OF THE LAW SHALL NO FLESH BE JUSTIFIED. - Romans 3: 20
YOUR WORKS ARE QUITE IMPORTANT......JUST NOT FOR SALVATION
if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. - Romans 10: 9
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Touchofgrey
Sea breeze
you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. - Romans 10: 9
Is this the same jesus/god who killed millions of men women and children and animal's in the bible flood story because they took no note and just lived their lives.
Killed the firstborn in Egypt which would have included babies and children.
Who ordered the genocide of nations so Israel claim the promised land.
Who allowed slavery?
Who allowed Israelite soldiers to abuse and rape captive young girls?
And will soon ride forth on a white horse with his armies and kill men women and children which will include those who have never heard about his forgiveness of sins and his grace because they have been born and raised in the wrong part of the world.
Did you have a look at the topic regarding if there is any evidence that jesus existed etc ,interested to read any evidence you can provide.
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peacefulpete
Christians had better start 'working' to make this a kinder more compassionate world because their God has made empty promises to help for thousands of years.
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peacefulpete
I'll just say that regarding the "ransom" concept. Early Christians did not share a consistent view. The death had no redemptive value for many believers, rather it was understood as a model of selflessness or whose return to life amounted to victory over death, which gave him power to do the same for others. Anyone who reads the Anti-Nicene Fathers comes away with a distinct impression no one had a clear answer, and many theories were framed. This one of the arguments used by those who insist upon an historical Jesus. They argue that the crucifixion defied expectations and required a creative explanation. I'm not convinced of this, as I said, many early Christians perceived the drama as non-transactional but christologically relevant.
It might be said the root of the problem was readers getting hung up on the use of the Greek word for ransom. In the LXX the verb 'ransom' is used many times to simply means rescue, with no hint of suggesting an exchange of tit for tat as creative thinkers like Origen supposed.
e.g. EX6:6
Go, speak to the children of Israel, saying, I the Lord; and I will lead you forth from the tyranny of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from bondage, and I will ransom you with a high arm, and great judgment.
Speaking about Origen, (Philocalia of Origen) he had an enlightened take of the OT and Gospels:
1,16. If the use of the Law had been everywhere made perfectly clear, and strict historical sequence had been preserved, we should not have believed that the Scriptures could be understood in any other than the obvious sense.69 The Word (Logos) of God therefore arranged for certain stumbling-blocks and offences and impossibilities to be embedded in the Law and the historical portion, so that we may not be drawn hither and thither by the mere attractiveness of the style, and thus either forsake the doctrinal part because we receive no instruction worthy of God, or cleave to the letter and learn nothing more Divine. And this we ought to know, that the chief purpose being to show the spiritual connection both in past occurrences and in things to be done, wherever the Word found historical events capable of adaptation to these mystic truths, He made use of them, but concealed the deeper sense from the many; but where in setting forth the sequence of things spiritual there was no actual event related for the sake of the more mystic meaning, Scripture interweaves the imaginative with the historical, sometimes introducing what is utterly impossible, sometimes what is possible but never occurred. Sometimes it is only a few words, not literally true, which have been inserted; sometimes the insertions are of greater length. And we must this way understand even the giving of the Law, for therein we may frequently discover the immediate use, adapted to the times when the Law was given; sometimes, however, no good reason appears. And elsewhere we have even impossible commands, for readers of greater ability and those who have more of the spirit of inquiry; so that, applying themselves |18 to the labour of investigating the things written, they may have a fitting conviction of the necessity of looking therein for a meaning worthy of God. And not only did the Spirit thus deal with the Scriptures before the coming of Christ, but, inasmuch as He is the same Spirit, and proceedeth from the One God, (as emanation of God) He has done the same with the Gospels and the writings of the Apostles; for not even they are purely historical, incidents which never occurred being interwoven in the "corporeal" sense; nor in the Law and the Commandments does the Spirit make the reasonableness altogether clear.
IOW, the stories were meant to be understood on two levels. Those with 'less ability' or conviction would understand them as literal, the more gifted and determined would see the 'spiritual' meaning behind the narratives.