examine the following statements and tell me if you think the wts is irresponsible in its furtherance of religious hatred which is an evil plaguing the world today.. 1 article 1. of the un declaration of human rights.
all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.
they are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.. .
So, who is making the judgment now? I don't have to read what you wrote, I have read the Bible, all of it, many times. And I repeat that the God of the NT is the same as the God of the OT. Jesus called Him "Father," not hateful Despot. Much of what Jesus taught is definitely grounded in the OT. Are you suggesting that when Jesus quotes or alludes to the OT that it is just stuff put in his mouth by the Gospel writers?
What did Jesus say of the OT? "Your word is truth." Look it up.
examine the following statements and tell me if you think the wts is irresponsible in its furtherance of religious hatred which is an evil plaguing the world today.. 1 article 1. of the un declaration of human rights.
all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.
they are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.. .
You should read the December 15, 2001 Watchtower. It's all about Jesus. Feature articles. Study articles. Jesus is alive and well within the covers of the Watchtower.
There is no difference between the God of the OT and the God of the NT. People who say that are obviously not very familiar with either "Testament." Jesus quoted from the OT exclusively, since that was the only one in existence when he was on earth. If it was so much a message of a hateful God, why did the loving Carpenter from Nazareth appeal to it so much?
well, we had our radio show on sunday with the jehovah's witnesses and i don't think it went all that well, namely because it turned into a game of rhetoric.
(if you listened, i would love to hear your thoughts).. .
2 tim 2 :14 says- keep reminding them of these things.
Stephanus, 'Shut up, you lost' sounds like sour grapes to me, and the response of someone who really has no response.
Alf3831 is correct in what he has said.
If anyone wants to make a case based on English usage, they should do so with a work written originally in English. Otherwise, we are comparing apples and oranges here.
Strange that people would ask for dialogue and then get upset when the dialogue does not go their way, or as they expected.
But I will have no more to say on this subject. The Bible does not teach a Trinity, but it does teach that Jesus is the Son of God, and our Exemplar. My personal concern is with trying to live like Jesus, not with arguing about him.
well, we had our radio show on sunday with the jehovah's witnesses and i don't think it went all that well, namely because it turned into a game of rhetoric.
(if you listened, i would love to hear your thoughts).. .
2 tim 2 :14 says- keep reminding them of these things.
That is something with which I can agree: "When Jesus Became God," by Richard E. Rubenstein (Harcourt Brace & Company, 1999) is an excellent book.
well, we had our radio show on sunday with the jehovah's witnesses and i don't think it went all that well, namely because it turned into a game of rhetoric.
(if you listened, i would love to hear your thoughts).. .
2 tim 2 :14 says- keep reminding them of these things.
Again, you are dealing with English language generalities, whereas the passage in question is from the Greek Bible. You are also dealing with an expression, "monos alethinos," "only true ___" that appears only once in that Greek Bible, there at John 17:3, so there are no other Biblical examples to show you. Examples of a non-biblical nature are useless in this instance.
But still, we have to go to how the Bible uses a term, and not rely merely upon an English definition. And in the Bible, "only" is not always used in an entirely exclusivistic sense. A brief case in point is Revelation 15:3, 4, which says of the "Lord God Almighty," that "Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name? for thou only [Geeek text, "monos"] art holy." (KJV)
But does the Bible teach that "only" God is holy? Or, when Jesus said of his Father that there is "none good but one, that is, God" (Mark 10:18, KJV) was he saying that nobody else is good? The Bible clearly at times makes relative what you are trying to make exclusivistic.
Argue all you want on the basis of English usage, but that will not lead to understanding. The Bible was not written originally in English. Understanding the Hebrew and Greek are relevant. And most important is seeing how the Bible itself uses the language.
well, we had our radio show on sunday with the jehovah's witnesses and i don't think it went all that well, namely because it turned into a game of rhetoric.
(if you listened, i would love to hear your thoughts).. .
2 tim 2 :14 says- keep reminding them of these things.
But you cannot argue only on the basis of English meanings of words, when the Bible was written originally in Hebrew and koine Greek. It is necessary to consider how the word "true" is used in those languages, and whether it is in the exclusive sense implied by the English word. In such a case, a word's actual usage in the Bible has to carry more weight.
You cannot argue on the basis of the Bible's use of the word "true" that calling the LORD (Jehovah) "the only true God" makes Jesus a "false" God. It simply doesn't work that way. There are too many cases that prove otherwise, that "true" is not necessarily the opposite of "false." The context governs.
For example, when the writer of Hebrews (at 8:2, NASB) calls Jesus "a minister in the sanctuary and in the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, not man," he is contrasting this "true tabernacle" of Jesus with the tabernacle Moses pitched in the wilderness. But that tabernacle of Moses was also, according to the Bible, the Lord's true tabernacle, otherwise it would not have been used for worship. Was Moses' tabernacle therefore a "false" tabernacle? The Bible nowhere indicates this. Clearly, calling the symbolic tabernacle in which Jesus serves a "true" tabernacle does not mean that the tabernacle of Moses was a "false" one. There are many, many such examples of the actual use of the word "true" in the Scriptures.
I did not hear the program of which you speak. But if the objective was to somehow prove the Trinity from the Bible, it was doomed from the beginning. The LORD (Jehovah) is the only true God who must be worshiped. But Jesus is also a true god in that he is truly of divine nature and possesses the true attributes of divinity. It is not an instance of one postulate being "true" and the other being "false." Regardless of English usage, when dealing with the Bible, we have to look at instances of the Bible's usage.
matthew says that judas hanged himself, while the writer in acts says that he fell and his guts spilled out.
both of these accounts cannot be true.
either one is, or neither is, and this means that the bible is not error-free.
Joseph, you must know that there are many scholarly works -- not just by fundamentalists, but by conservative Christian scholars -- who see the glass as half full rather than half empty in this instance. That Christian traditions are reported in different form and manner may as well reflect reports that are complementary rather than contradictory. It is a stretch to argue on the basis of our rationale 2,000 years after the fact. To me, it's like those guys who want us to believe they know what Jesus really said, 2,000 years down the line, as opposed to the testimony of people who actually lived in the time of Jesus, or shortly thereafter. The "Jesus Seminar" reconstructionists are doing a hatchet job on the Gospel of Christ, but what standing do they have to give us a better reading of what Jesus taught?
There are many so-called hard sayings and apparent contradictions in the Bible. Conservative scholars and Evangelicals believe that they can be resolved in a number of ways. To some who are more critical, such resolution may not be enough. To each his own.
Obviously, those who do not wish to hold the Bible as divinely-inspired will not do so, and those who do so wish, will. What remains certain is that we, today, do not have all the facts and the evidence at our disposal, and whatever arguments we come up with, on either side, will be neither proof positive, nor final.
if the author of the book of matthew can be believed, jesus left no doubt about when the apocalypse would occur.
it would be before all of jesus' disciples died, even before his disciples would be able to spread the good word to all of the cities of israel.
since all of the disciples are dead and the apocalypse hasn't occurred, we must conclude that matthew was wrong and that the bible is in error.
Well Joe, for all I know those Muslims who sacrificed all, bismillah, did go to Paradise to be with the beautiful Houris. I can't prove that one way or another, but it is not for me to judge their faith. As for the followers of David Koresh, at least they had no doubts that the man David Koresh actually existed, whether he was Jesus Christ or not.
The thing about Jesus, though, is that his disciples and apostles were eyewitnesses of the man, and Paul of the resurrected Christ. It is also interesting that the ancient Jewish writers in the Mishnah and Talmud never doubted the existence of Jesus of Nazareth. In fact, they accepted that there was a Jesus, Yeshu bar-Maryam, "Jesus the son of Mary," just that he was not the Son of God. It does not surprise that secular records make no mention of Jesus, since to them he would have been just another wild visionary or Jewish revolutionary among hundreds of the time. The world is concerned with its own affairs at all times, and seldom with the affairs of God.
S-S, I really can't treat your reply with any seriousness. The nature of faith is belief in the unseen. Even scientists believe in the unseen, and several theories of physics are based on the unseen. It is irrelelvant that I have not personally seen Jesus. I believe in Jesus. And the resurrected Jesus in whom I believe is reported to have said to a disbelieving disciple: "Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed." (John 20:29, NASB)
if the author of the book of matthew can be believed, jesus left no doubt about when the apocalypse would occur.
it would be before all of jesus' disciples died, even before his disciples would be able to spread the good word to all of the cities of israel.
since all of the disciples are dead and the apocalypse hasn't occurred, we must conclude that matthew was wrong and that the bible is in error.
As a student of historical critical writing and form criticism from a Biblical perspective, I am well aware of past and modern authors who wish to write Christ out of the Gospel, and to trash most of what he is reported to have taught and done. Nothing new here, this has been going on since the 18th century.
However, we should remember that those early believers in a supposedly "phantom" Jesus were willing to do all and risk all for their belief. While many may be content to spin fabulous stories, not many are willing to die for those fables. Christianity has been from the beginning a religion that people were willing to make great sacrifices for, and to practice altruism and philanthropy for.
I prefer to think it was for more than for "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
If you would accept the word of the critics, none of the important people mentioned in the Bible ever actually existed. No Abraham, no Jacob, no Moses, no Joshua, no Saul, no David, no Isaiah, no Jesus. Strange, then, that this book and its heroes of faith have spawned a nation, several religions, and an ethical flowering of humanity. All on the basis of unrealities? If that is the case, unrealities must be more real than reality itself.
Over the centuries, archaeoligists have found physical verification and memorabilia of many people mentioned in the Bible, who were previously thought to be have been non-existant. Just a few years ago, there was found the tomb of the high priest Caiaphas, who presided over the trial of Jesus. Before this find, the critical scholars were as certain that there was no such person as Caiaphas as they are presently certain that there was no such person as Jesus. In fact, so often have the "missing" people of the Bible been verified, that it is really a dangerous thing to assert that they did not exist, simply because we have not "found" them yet.
And Jesus? He lives in the hearts of millions. Not bad for a phantom.
if the author of the book of matthew can be believed, jesus left no doubt about when the apocalypse would occur.
it would be before all of jesus' disciples died, even before his disciples would be able to spread the good word to all of the cities of israel.
since all of the disciples are dead and the apocalypse hasn't occurred, we must conclude that matthew was wrong and that the bible is in error.
Brother Joe,
This sounds like so-called higher criticism to me. In reality, if we are to conclude that "Matthew" lied, he was only reporting the words of Jesus. Thus, we must conclude also that Jesus lied, his apostles lied, and those who reported the words of the apostles lied. Ergo, Christianity is a lie, the resurrection is a lie, and we are all just animals awaiting that part in the circle of life which is death.
Nihilism or Christianity...which one shall it be?
