It seems he saved that for Pharisees who felt they were the righteous ones.
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Ouch. Direct, but true.
This to me is not a my scripture beats your scripture fight. It is a fight of trust in God. If a person begins to doubt God because mans knowledge tells him they can declare what happened billions and billions of years ago because of bones, rocks and star dust, then what was it that harmed his faith. So to help turn that doubt into faith I make the assumption from what Jeremy said that he should know the scriptures. So since he is familiar with the scripture he or anyone like him should have the knowledge of what prophecy is. So if doubt in God comes by believing a certain sect of science (since the are many sects or denominations of scientific theories and understanding) than God wants to direct him back to Him. So God has spoken and declared the future through the scriptures, that is FACT. He did it so when it happened no one could claim it was any other god but Him. So logically if a person use to believe but doubt has entered, it is best to direct him back to the FACTS. Since a person who is familiar with the scriptures knows it’s not just one big book written at one time, the concept of God foretelling the future through multiple prophets over many years should be well understood. So 1+1=2,
1 prophecies about Jesus + 2 Jesus fulfills prophecies = The Father of Jesus is the True and Living God. Reading the FACTS plus believing the FACTS equals FAITH.
Nothing I said was with the intent of twisting a knife in his side. Here is one time when Jesus was dealing with some doubting, depressed, sad, disciples. Look how he rebuked them and then led them to the words of Moses and the Prophets and explained to them what was in the scriptures about him.
Luke 24:19About Jesus of Nazareth," they replied. “He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. 20 The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; 21 but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place. 22 In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning 23 but didn’t find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive. 24 Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see.” 25 He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” 27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.
We are told encourage one another daily, Heb 3:12 See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. 13 But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. 14 We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first."
So with a person in Jeremy’s situation (like I have been), knowing that he should be familiar with prophecy and the fulfillment of it and if a person is truly a child of God, then it will be the Spirit of God, by the Word of God, that will work within that person to bring them back to trust in God, unless their heart is set on sin.
So if I doubt that the Father is the True God and Jesus is Lord, then Jesus could say to me,
How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!
But it’s NOT fact. That’s your hubris making you believe that you can’t be wrong.
So what do you say Forum People? Is Jesus the promised Savior? Is Jesus the one who was foretold that would deliver us from our enemy? Is Jesus the one that God declared, “You are my Son”? Is Jesus the one that Moses and the Prophets spoke about? Is Jesus the one that God said He would set on Davids throne? Is Jesus our High Priest after the order of Melchizedek? Is Jesus even a real person. Is God really the one and only true god? Is there even a God?
However, no amount of establishing the historicity of Jesus or even the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection gets you to “Jesus was God and his death and resurrection takes away my sin, unites me to God and gives me eternal life.” So, there’s that.
Why not? If God raised Jesus from the dead but all this other stuff wasn’t true, why would He let it result in a religion that deceives billions of people?
If you want to be convinced of the historicity of the resurrection, check out this video by InspiringPhilosophy.
So now we determine the truth by putting it to a vote?
Cody, not everyone can just say the science is of the Devil and then ignore it. I prefer to believe that all truth is God’s truth.
I am sure that you are well intended, but by your posts I am reminded of this pithy piece by Piet Hein
As Pastor X steps out of bed
he slips a neat disguise on:
that halo round his priestly head
is really his horizon.
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Would you be kind enough to respond to my last post?
Yes to all.
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Thank you for the response.
What’s that got to do with anything?
Simply, is it fact that the true God declared in the scripture the coming of Jesus.
No Cody it isn’t. If we are honest. But Jesus believed it or at least made it so. And if He were God incarnate, then He was right to do so, even if He isn’t there. He was right for the wrong reason. He acted in divine faith in human ignorance and confusion[, human ignorance and confusion] in divine faith. Which adds to His credibility.
I’m gathering here that faith wasn’t harmed by reality (God’s truth), but by what certain people (in this case YECs) were falsely trying to claim about reality. When known falsehoods are tightly bundled together with all Christian faith, there is an understandable credibility problem that comes home to roost as soon as a person becomes aware of the truth. Even if YECs could make every opposing voice just “go away” so that they, and only they were in charge of all education, media, and research, they would still have the problem of needing to avoid the actual truth which never goes away. Silence us all, and the rocks would still cry out their praises for the creator. Truth has a way of persisting even while we ignore or deny it.
Yes - very good, and thanks. That is indeed a good example of a place where Christ makes use of scriptures (to the couple traveling on the road to Emmaus). And your example reminds me of one other (Philip with the Ethiopian eunuch) where scriptures are studied and used. In these cases people were already acquainted with scriptures (or the expectation that they should have been was fair game) and so the problem wasn’t that they were now doubting scriptures themselves, but were trying to make sense of the current situation. What we have here is scriptures having been discredited by people trying to make the Bible falsely teach science it doesn’t teach, and so that stumbling block needs to be removed. That’s what we attempt to do around here so that we can come closer to understanding scriptures aright - and more importantly then, know and be known better by Christ.
To answer your subsequent questions: Yes - Christ is the true focus of our faith. And he is what our faith is about. Not your (or our) particular understandings of Genesis.
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Thank you Mervin. But would you please clarify something? Did God actually declare in the scriptures that Jesus would come?
I have no interest or intention of playing prolonged ‘gotcha’ games to see if my understandings of end times matches yours. Like you said, this shouldn’t be a fight over scriptures, and does not belong in this thread in any case. You can start a new thread somewhere else if you wish to dicker over various scriptural understandings, or perhaps better yet, just private message me so that we don’t clutter the forum with peripheral stuff, and I may or may not correspond more as the Spirit leads.
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Its not a gotcha thing, its did God tell of the coming of Jesus through Moses and the Prophets. It may be of benifit to Jeremy.
He has already bluntly informed you that your approach is not helpful to him. Take a person at their word in that respect. The evangelical (maybe by definition) tendency to talk and not listen, is what drives a lot of people from the church.
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