It makes a huge difference: you cast God in the role of possessing someone the way a demon does, overruling personality and mind. And I lean towards agreeing with those in the early church who considered that to be heresy because the Word of God is always incarnational.
I’m not mixing up anything. Scripture defines sin in a number of ways. The Hebrew word for sin means missing the mark. Sin is defined as rebellion against God, which is a broader definition than “transgression of the law”. The apostle tells us that whatever is not of faith is sin, another broader definition.
They only had one “law”: not to eat of a specific tree.
Oh, if only! There are times when there are no good choices, and there are times when the only choices available are in a gray area.
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because we have a book called the Bible. Thats the entire point of having it. You can read cant you? Obviously because you respond to forum posts. If you can read, you can understand language…if you can understand language, how is it you have trouble with knowing which is demonic and which is Godly?
“Your guess” Whos guessing…we don’t need to guess anything. You have to stop making up stuff just to try to win an argument and actually read and reference what you read. You have written pages of responses there, most of which is human morality and reasoning without even checking to see if it aligns with scripture.
I respond to your personal opinions with actual biblical references, and you have the audacity to make the claim that they are lies? That’s absurd. Read the texts…i didn’t write them, so if you are calling me a liar for posting them, you are calling God a liar for inspiring men to write them.
If one is going to follow a philosophy, one must actually know what the writings and beliefs actually are. You cant just make ■■■■ up. Merely putting a Ford badge on a chunk of steel doesnt make said chunk of steel a Ford…or even a car for that matter!
you are arguing against the point I made by defending it. Im not sure what the point of that actually is there St Roymond?
But hey, ill jump on that merry go round…
Bible reference for that personal opinion you have there?
I only ask because Revelation puts a very different spin on it…
Revelation 3
To the Church in Laodicea
(Colossians 2:1–5)
14To the angel of the church in Laodicea write:These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the Originatore of God’s creation.
15I know your deeds; you are neither cold nor hot. How I wish you were one or the other! 16So because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to vomit you out of My mouth!
A vast number of American Christians have that problem, especially those who vote for politicians who claim this is a Christian nation but legislate things that are incredibly unchristian.
You have this habit of misdirecting things, deflecting from the fact that your presentation of biblical references support your own views. The response above shows exactly what he was talking about: you agree with what aligns with your own interpretations and never bother to ask the source of those interpretations – which is pretty alarming given that the denomination you belong to rests on the works of a false prophet. You then make it worse:
Sounds like the pope in Martin Luther’s time.
I’m not defending it, I’m pointing out that it is incorrect because it is a limited definition and you are saying it’s universal.
LOL
Thanks for the verse that makes my point: there is a lot of “lukewarm” in between your “binary choices”.
The only trouble is knowing how adamjedgar justifies his abuses. There certainly was nothing about guessing how to distinguish between the two, since I answered the question quite clearly above by agreeing with C. S. Lewis. My guess was about how HE (adam) distinguishes between them and obviously my guess was a bullseye.
I point out that the devil is a liar and can thus promise anything and adam sees that as accusing himself of being a liar. I didn’t know I was talking to the devil – good to know.
@adamjedgar & @St.Roymond have basically got away from me in terms of any discussion that Iwas involved in. I caould not possibly quote all that could be addressed or contested.
If God taking possesion of someone would make Him a demon then God must be a demon. Most people who speak in tongues admit that the words are not theirs and that they are taken over by the Holy Spirit. My experience was a little different as it involved Him preaching a sermonfor me.I am sure i have recounted this previously but the point to make here was that at the time I was fully corpus mentus and aware not ony of what i was saying but of the world around me, however, to this day , I have no idea what i actually said.
The net result is that it is not the taking over that is demonic but the consention or even welcoming of it. I needed God to preach for me because, despite several weeks of trying the words would not come. Whether that was also due to God is a mute point that I do not wish to discuss the moralities of. Speaking in tongues is voluntary. I refuse it. and God does not enforvce it, which is why speaing in tongues is not a test of baptism in the Spirit.
So, yes God could have taken over Paul when he was writing, but it doesn’t take much to see that there is much of Paul in his writing. It is not about whether God
does anything. God could have made the universe in six days. It doesn’t mean that He did…
Annanias and Sapphira? That is a very difficult narrative to preach from or draw conclusions from. It is a side of God that makes us uncomfortable and is not revealed very often… The important factor here was honesty or not. God has always taken a dim view of blatent dishonesty or deception which is illustrated in the garedn also.
The point is not whether God will imediately punnish or condmen dishonesty but that He will not tolerate it forever. If your reson d’etre for following Him is selfish then you are being dishonest. I will leave it at that.
As for defining sin? The simplistic, disobeying or acting against God is almost certainly insufficient, but that is not the point of forgiveness.
The point here is God’s overall vision of what He intended of us. If you think that God’s intenton was to breed follwoers and worshippers then you will follow the traditional Christian doctrine of “Follow or else”. If you beleive that God did not want to impose Himself on His creation, backed up by the fact that He refuses to be “proven” scientifically at least? Then your veiw of the necessity of religion, any religion, includng Christianity, will temper.
And that is the underlying concept I have been trying to establish almost as long as I have been here.
Demanidind allegiance… Demanding acceptance… Demanding worship. They are not what God wants and that can be seen in Scripture if you look for rit. How God treate thiose who either claim or feel entitled to His blessings and Heaven, that is much more robustly covered by Scripture, but it assumes that you have that either need or assumption.
Why did God choose one race? favouritism? that is a human failing. What it demonstrates is the expectations God has of those whor either choose,to be, or in the case of the Jews,are His followers and worshippers. Paul is primarily concerned with the church and thise who are int it. Annanias and Sapphra were supposed to be in the church.
IOW Scripture is for the faithful, or to make faithful, it is not for be imposed on the world. Jesus stands at the door and knocks He dos not claim
“Open up or I will blow your house down!”
Christians take the Grand Commission as a licence to impose God onto the world. It is not.
Fogiveness of sins is not a method of recruitment. Nor is it a criteria for judgement. Forgiveness of sins is preciesely that. forgiveness of sins. All the rest is Human vaniy or greed.
I beleive God wats us to live life on earth with a freedom to follow or not and that there is no punnishment for saying no. Many religions impose a human ordered regime of self sacrifice and punishemnt that God does not require or ask for, hence the “Actions not required” doctrine. So why are people trying to impose Christian etheics and standards onto others! (Yes that is rhetorical)
Richard
The story of Ananias and Saphira has popped up several times in a simplistic way, so I want to comment on that story.
We are not told much of these persons, just what happened when they were asked about the money they got from selling their property and making a false claim that they had given all the money to the apostles. There were probably also other people who had lied in some detail but we are not told that any of them dropped dead like these two persons. That hints that there was more to the story than what is written in Acts 5.
First thing to note is that the group of believers was in a sensitive phase of development. It was forming to a community of believers, later to become the church, but it was still just a group of believers who gathered to listen to the teaching, praying, participating in the breaking of bread, etc. Whatever happened or formed to a habit at that stage would have long-lasting consequences and could even destroy the unity of the community. I assume that God was directing the development more closely than in the later stages of church formation.
Second, what was the motive of Ananias and Saphira? If they wanted to spare their own money as a security for future, they could have done that openly and nobody would have questioned their right to do it. They could even have gained thanks from others for giving part of their money.
Acts 4:36-37 hints that those who sold their property and gave the money to the apostles were respected. My guess is that what Ananias and Saphiora did was an attempt to gain respect and possibly also future influence among believers (in other words, a dishonest political move). If they would have been respected members from the start of the movement, who knows how influential positions they could have gained.
Third, what Ananias and Saphira did was a planned betrayal. It involved several steps starting from the initial idea, through all the stages of selling and then finally planning what to say to the apostles and other believers. Who knows what had happened before the moment that is recorded. Dishonesty in this matter hints that the planned betrayal was the top of a longer history of bad behaviours, like dishonesty. We can only speculate because what happened earlier is not told.
What happened to Ananias and Saphira was something that shaped the future of the Jesus movement. It showed that God is the Holy One, dishonesty had no room among those who were close to God. The fear this event created among those who heard of the case worked for the benefit of both individuals and the community. Two potentially influential persons were removed and that removed the possibility that they could have had influence on what happened later in the history.
To conclude, the short story in Acts 5 is just the top of long personal histories and at the same time, God’s act to protect and shape the future of the Jesus movement.
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“it’s also possible that at one time El and Baal was synonymous.”
That’s a complex issue for multiple reasons. “El” means god/God; “Baal” means “lord/Lord”. Thus, the words could be used somewhat flexibly for top deities in the polytheistic cultures. As in Hinduism, there tends to be a lot of variation and syncretism in the ancient Near Eastern religions. El seems to have particularly designated the ancient head of the pantheon, and Baal particularly referred to his son, the storm god. But over time, some of El’s attributes get attributed to Baal. So, in the surrounding culture, there is mixing between El and Baal, in addition to lots of individual variants on the particular versions of El or Baal.
How does this relate to the biblical picture? Taking people from this polytheistic culture and trying to convey monotheism was a challenging task. “God is Lord” “Oh, El is Baal! Great, let’s have a fertility cult party.” Hence Hoshea predicting the abandonment of the name Baal, and Samuel-Kings tending to replace -baal in names with -bosheth (shame). The Bible gives no support to the idea that the concept of YHWH evolved out of the pagan deities. Such claims are quite popular, along with similar unfounded assertions about how cultures and ideas must evolve (e.g., Marx, Hegel), but they do not reflect the reality that people can come up with new ideas and don’t always follow fixed patterns. Rather, the biblical picture is of God working to convey to people His character and directions, reaching to where they are at but pushing them to deeper understanding.
Hinduism is extremely complex, with several distinctive variants. Historically, some of the long-established Christian groups in India have been treated culturally like a distinct caste and tolerated, similar to the treatment of various animist groups. The version of Hinduism promoted by the BJP is rather militant and hostile to Christians and Muslims, but not particularly inclined to help the low-caste within Hinduism. Hare Krishnas are not the same as standard Indian Hinduism. (Some young-earthers [particularly Carl Baugh] have collaborated with Hare Krishnas to promote silly claims about traces of humans in pre-human geological layers, though the Hare Krishnas are claiming this proves that humans have been reincarnating for hundreds of millions of years. Ironically, that’s close to what Hutton and many other “Enlightenment” thinkers believed; modern geology was perceived as supporting the Bible against such speculation.)
There are two intertwined but distinctly different questions. What will God work with in a person? What is theologically correct? Elisha told Naaman that having to bow to Rimmon was tolerable. None of us are perfect, and someone in a Hindu culture (whether living in south Asia or in a family that has moved elsewhere) has to find the best way to navigate being respectful to those around without compromising faith. At what point is there a claim to be a rival god, which must be opposed? We don’t need to be paranoid about meat from the market, but should avoid the appearance of endorsing pagan deities by eating particular meat, as Paul discussed. C. S. Lewis brings up these issues in The Last Battle.
Christianity affirms that there are no other gods, and that we are saved from our sins only by the work of Jesus. It would be just to condemn any human for the wrongs we have done; in principle anyone could trust in Christ’s atoning work.
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One reason I keep harping on reincarnation and called it central (despite the claim that 60% of Hindus don’t believe in it) is because it is immediately in your face as a basic assumption when you read the Bhagavad Gita. So I did some more fact checking this morning on the other scriptures of Hinduism. I found this is a central topic in the Upanishads, but is only hinted at in the earlier scriptures - the Vedas.
Obviously the whole gods issue seems like a red herring to me because I see no way of making a clear distinction between worshipping other gods and simply having a different word for God Himself (as well as different experiences and stories about God). I would go with Paul in simply dismissing other gods as things which don’t exist or seeing them as referring to God as He does with “the unknown God” of Acts 17:23. To be sure when other gods/names are specifically condemned in the Bible (or if the god is typically identified with something in nature like the sun, moon, plants, or animals) then that is a different matter.
Then there is testimony of @knor (2nd post of the thread) of a distinction made in practice, where baptized Christians are asked to openly reject other gods of Hinduism. This makes a pretty sharp distinction. Though I would like to look at the precise words of this rejection, I am inclined to bow to the opinions of those who live in India and face this question constantly.
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You realise what this means@
it means that God ignored everyone except the Israelites for several thousand years and only allowed in any gentiles when Israel shunned His son.
What does that make God?
It makes Him a shepherd of His own flock who would not help another flock, even worse, would condemn them.
I don not care how you arrived at your faith, but you should thin carefully about the character of the God you have identified, and decide whether He can be seen from another angle, in a different culture, with a different name, even a different concept of His make up and being.
It is not my place to say that you are wrong. I am just witnessing to what i have learned and know.about God.
Richard
It means the opposite. Did you not even read the second part of this statement you quoted? All I said was that God is the only god which is real. Are you claiming that there has to be more than just one God in order for God to pay any attention to any people other than the Israelites? It doesn’t even make sense. And then there is the context of everything else I wrote which contradicts your bizarre reaction. Weird!
Obviously. I explained it many many times, but apparently you don’t even care enough to pay any attention to it. I think the problem here is that you are not paying much attention to anyone but your own personal soapboxes. And this makes what you say contradict itself – saying God must care when you obviously do not.
LOL LOL LOL
I HAVE looked at God and gods from many many many angles myself, so I don’t need to even imagine the possibility let alone consider it. LOL I think you are the one lacking in this area, not me. Today I was watching a favorite TV show for something like the 10th time called “Kami-chu.” It is about a Japanese HS girl who became a god one day – one of Japan’s innumerable gods.
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forget it.
Richard
IOW There is only one God and people may have used different words for this same God, telling their own stories of their experiences with this God. In fact I think this is one likely origin of polytheistic societies, that different people with their own word for God became united under one government/empire/culture, and these different names and ideas about God became a collection of different gods. This doesn’t preclude many other possibilities as well, such as some people just making stuff up. Thus you can have different names for the same God as well as false gods in nasty religions made up by people for their own nefarious purpose. Some of the Roman emperors declaring themselves to be gods would be an example of the latter, right?
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No – as Paul puts it, the spirit of a prophet is subject to the prophet. That means the Holy Spirit does not take someone over; the person can always refuse to speak. As a great preacher once put it, the Holy Spirit is a gentleman.
Exactly – the Holy Spirit does not take over, He provides.
Or as Augustine put it, God could have made the universe with a single thought, in a mere moment.
Depends on how you define “demand”: pointing out that allegiance to God is what we were made for and without it we can never reach our full potential can be seen as a demand, but it is actually beneficial advice. If you define it the way some rock stars do, as though their fans should/must be willing to do anything asked, that’s different.
It also depends on how you fine “worship”, which in its original meaning was much like declaring to someone, “Dude, you are awesome!” That’s how John presents it in Revelation:
“You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being…Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise…"
He actually chose one man and made a people, and the reason is clear: to have His own “portion” among the nations, and with them to prepare for the Incarnation.
Because they have failed to understand the Gospel, failed to listen to Jesus. And since the natural inclination of the human heart is towards law, the result is to want to impose what they see as “Christian” standards by coercion, instead of doing what a Franciscan theologian once said, “Do good to others, then get out of the way – let God’s word do its work”.
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The reason is free will and the nature of life itself. It is the nature of life that change starts with one individual and it multiplies. And for God to speak to everyone would be micromanagement and control – it would be overwhelming. And I frankly think it would create repressive societies with no creativity or innovation – the problems of religion magnified without bounds.
BTW This is not to say that God does nothing with other nations and cultures.
Good call. We find in the Bible that Yahweh is elohey of elohim, “God of gods”, but also “אֲדֹנֵ֖י הָאֲדֹנִ֑ים”, Adonai of the Adonim" or “Lord of lords”, a phrase that in nearby ANE languages was “ba’al of ba’ali”, also “Lord of lords” – and a Babylonian who turned to Yahweh would use the latter phrase since that was his language. Others would have said “El of elim”, also “God of gods”, or “*Bel of beli” (not sure of the plural form for this Akkadian phrase) which is also “Lord of lords”.
In ANE usage one could speak of the “El” of Israel, the “Elohe” of Israel, the Ba’al of Israel, the “Adon” of Israel, or the "Bel of Israel, and it would not mean that they saw a half-dozen different gods, they were just using their own terms for “god” or for “lord”.
trivia: in the old ANE “god” referred to authority in the spiritual world while “lord” indicated rule over territory. I think that lasted also in Hebrew right into the time of the Judges but not much later – so when Moses calls Yahweh “God of gods and Lord of lords”, he is asserting that Yahweh is master of all that is spiritual and all that is earthly.
And we find that very confusion! It’s how the northern kingdom got away with building their own temple and having a calf in the holiest place – “Ba’al is just a title for Yahweh, folks!”
I’m recalling a -baal name changed to -zion, but I can’t remember if it’s in scripture or some other ancient document.
Nor does anything else, despite claims (unless there have been discoveries I’m not caught up on).
Which really pissed some people off when Jesus reminded them of that at synagogue!
A Hindu turned Christian at my university got flak from both sides when she continued to wear the red dot but framed it with four mutually perpendicular bars to show a cross: Christians jumped on her for “compromise” and Hindus . . . I’m not sure, but to both she said the red mark still reminded of spiritual awareness through the day but now also meant the Blood of Christ and the Cross reminded of Him to whom that spiritual awareness was to be aimed.
There’s a shift that people don’t see when they read pure monotheism back into the Old Testament scriptures: early on, YHWH-Elohim is one elohim among many, but rather than being just one of them He was master over them; then YHWH-Elohim was stated to be utterly different because all other elohim were entities He created, then the other elohim are portrayed as only a little above humans and so vastly below YHWH-Elohim as to not really count as elohim at all.
And then in the New Testament, Paul informs us that we shall judge “angels”, which rendered backwards includes those very elohim who aren’t Yahweh! It’s quite a picture, beings that were supposed to guide and rule humans ending up judged by humans.
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That’s an issue in reading ANS literature as well.
That’s a fun ‘rabbit trail’ in second-Temple Judaism, how all the other elohim went from being on YHWH-Elohim’s council to being nothing – though the shift isn’t total; Paul uses a fair number of words that refer to spiritual beings that would have been called elohim in the past, e.g. “principalities and powers”.
Only if you read shallowly. If you pay attention in the first seven books in the OT writings it’s evident that the point of having His particular people (His “portion”) was to set things up for bringing all the nations back to Him.
Which is where I find the idea that those who never hear the Gospel are doomed to be a foolish one: God’s goals aren’t limited/restricted by time, so if He was aiming to gather all nations via the Messiah, it stands to reason that this also includes everyone who never even heard of Moses or Abraham, let alone of Jesus.
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That really doesn’t stand up under the archaeology I’m aware of. It seems more likely that early people saw God acting in one way and then in another and decided it must be different entities; for example in the early ANE at least it would have been utterly illogical for a god of fire to also be a god of water since those were opposites, or for a god of the sun to be also the god of night – or for a god of life to also be god of death!
That explains what has been called the Greek view of gods that came about as different cultures in the Mediterranean bumped into each other: that all the different war deities weren’t different gods at all, they were all the same, and similarly for all the other gods.
Not originally. The idea came from the east where kings were considered divine; in supposedly ‘republican’ Rome that took hold slightly differently: some emperors could be divine, but it took the Senate to determine who was. Things did go downhill from there into “nefarious purpose”, though, once living emperors could be gods, not just dead ones, and when the Senate either voted a new emperor to be a god or have their ranks thinned and replaced.
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