The true essence of the Bible—there is some problem with it?!

by venus 18 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  venus

  In the famous Aesop Fable, we read about a fox who unsuccessfully tried to get some grapes, but at last had to give it up, and walked away with his nose in the air, saying: “I am sure they are sour.”

  Someone made a second part to this story. Fox did some rehearsal in the night and came on to the scene next day, and jumped with difference and got the grapes from the vine tree, and he began to eat to his full capacity. To his surprise, he found that “yes grapes are really sour.”

  Similarly, many have termed John 3:16 as the essence of the Bible which says God sent his only-begotten son to die for our sin as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). So he came, and died for our sin. This is the first part of the episode.

  Second part can be discerned from looking at the world condition after Jesus’ sacrificial death. Sin still rules the lives of many people as it was before the sacrifice. Since sin’s effect started immediately after the original sin was committed, it is inevitable that effect of ransom sacrifice (antidote to sin) should have started immediately after ransom sacrifice is performed.

  If this teaching was true, sin would have disappeared from earth!
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  venus

  Sin did not only decrease, but only increased to the level apostle Paul lamented of a sin being practiced within the congregation which he described “of a kind that even pagans do not tolerate.” (1 Corinthians 5:1, 2) And situation is not different even after 21 centuries.
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  smiddy

  Doesnt the bible state that the wages of sin is death ?

  And that sin was because the first humans disobeyed God ?

  So sin came into the world because the first humans disobeyed God.

  And death therefore free`s humans from the sin Adam and Eve committed.The Adamic death.

  So my question is why were people who were resurrected from death who had already payed the penalty of the sin of Adam by dying ,why did they ever have to die again ?

  Their are a couple of accounts where people were resurrected in the Bible.

  They had paid the price for sin of the Adamic death ,why did they die a second death ? and isnt that the one where there is no resurection from ?

  such as lazarus ?

  Did lazurus and others commit other sins that God is not telling us about that is going to result in our deaths ?

  Where does that leave the rest of humanity ?
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  venus

  smidy, that's an interesting point I never thought of.

  That means none of them were actually resurrected--must be fabricated story. If they were really resurrected by Jesus who had "authority on earth to forgive sins" (Mark 2:10), they had never had to die again for sure.
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  venus

  smiddy,

  to add one more thing:

  If people were really resurrected, all those who were resurrected ones such as daughter of Jaiurs, and Lazarus would have been here on earth in eternal youthfulness which would have proved beyond any doubt that Christianity is true, and the whole world would have automatically been converted into Christianity by seeing eternally living young people like Lazarus.
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  smiddy

  venus , I know ,just hang on to all the rebuttals.that will come forth .Like you I will be interested in what they say.
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  Half banana

  Religions are castles of sand built on sand! Nearly all of the Bible is borrowed from earlier literature nearly always from other cultures. The sacrifice of Christ the son of the Sun God was a trope of the pagan saviour cults from Asia, North East Africa and the middle East.
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  venus

  Half banana,

  You are right. Things were borrowed and thoughtlessly incorporated so that analytical minds get stumble on each points. No wonder, the word for world in some languages (such as Arabic, Persian, Dari, Pashto, Urdu ......) is duniya which means no law or logic.
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  stuckinarut2

  Good point smiddy!
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  David_Jay

  The problem with this argument is that it is looking at Scripture backwards, from the present, and it makes the same mistakes we condemn the Jehovah's Witnesses for making.

  1. Original Sin is a post-Biblical concept introduced by Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon of the 2nd century. You have to read that into Pauline theology as it is not native to it. There is no "original sin" native to Scripture without Irenaeus and the Catholic Church.

  2. The "Bible" is not one "book." It is the library of two separate religions who use it for two separate purposes and have two different and very unique interpretations of the Hebrew portion of the text (which is the majority of the Bible). One therefore cannot claim there is any particular "theme" or "essence" without first supplying a Jewish or Christian background for the assemblage of the separate canons: the Old Testament on one side and the Tanakh on the other.

  Even from my Jewish point of view, the New Testament is not claiming that Jesus has ransomed people from death by his own dying. This is a peculiar Watchtower teaching taken from Adventist ideas. The New Testament is teaching that Jesus has offered his Divine Life as "food" not to God but to humanity, much like God offered manna from heaven to people, to supply "divine life" to those who partake of his sacrifice as a communion or Passover meal.

  The ransom idea of the Watchtower is an odd focus and holdover from Russell's era. The word does occur in the Greek text but it is a play on the Hebrew word "redeem" in reference to the Exodus. The Jews were redeemed from slavery, figuratively "purchased" from one sovereign by another. The "ransom" was the miraculous hand of God and the events of the Exodus that redeemed the Jews from slavery.

  This is the meaning of Christ's "ransom" in the New Testament, a redemption from slavery to sin's captivity to death. The Watchtower theology is a twisting of this that is sometimes found in other Adventist branches but never in Catholicism, Orthodoxy, or mainstream Protestantism. One would even be hard-pressed to find the Watchtower view in Fundamentalist churches.

  The Watchtower teaches that a life was offered to God to balance the scales of justice. The New Testament teaches that Jesus sacrificed his life as an offering for humanity, that they might partake of it and gain the eternal life that it is endowed with and he gives to any who eats of it.

  Like the Jewish prophets of the Hebrew Bible stated, God does not require the blood of sacrifices or needs to be appeased with any gifts any human can offer God because everything already belongs to God.