Understanding the holy scriptures is impossible unless God gives you the interpretation

[Ajax]

Evidently you know nothing about Christian understanding before Jesus' death and after Jesus' death.

Really? Did Jesus change his mind after death and said different things to Paul or did the disciples and Barnabas taught him differently?

Well, I'm waiting for you to teach me then..

 

[Eli G]

Really? Did Jesus change his mind after death and said different things to Paul or did the disciples and Barnabas taught him differently?

Well, I'm waiting for you to teach me then..

Sure.

Before Jesus' death there were not gentiles in the Christian congregation. I guess you can realize all the changes that came after that. Acts 15 can give you some input.

 

[Sgt. Pepper]

No, I'm not wrong.

For the LORD your God [is] God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty, and a terrible, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward:
Deuteronomy 10:17, KJV

No, you can't be wrong because, as a Christian, you have the Holy Spirit, who gives you spiritual discernment to properly understand the Bible. Surely this is correct, as we've repeatedly been told in this thread: Christians have spiritual discernment from the Holy Spirit in order to properly understand the Bible.

As it has been repeatedly and smugly asserted in this thread, "The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit" (1 Corinthians 2:14). Therefore, since you are a Christian and have the Holy Spirit, you can't possibly be wrong in your interpretation of the Bible. Do you believe this is correct? Well, it must be because apparently it is strongly believed enough to be written in a personal signature, which has also been mentioned several times in this thread. Ad nauseam.

 

[Ajax]

Sure.

Before Jesus' death there were not gentiles in the Christian congregation. I guess you can realize all the changes that came after that. Acts 15 can give you some input.

So what? What does that prove? Gentiles should also abide by the Law. Unless it was the wrong marketing for spreading the religion...

Jesus words are above any disciple or apostle, let alone a "fake" one who contradicts himself, like salvation is a) predestined by God before world began b) the doers of the law who will be justified c) is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ.
The salvation by faith only and the abolition of the Law was the bait for the Gentiles to be converted. You don't have to be an Einstein to realize that.

Can you also reply to my first question to you please?

A lot of people suggest that the Bible was inspired by God. How exactly did He inspire the people's writings and how do we know that this inspiration really happened? For example do you consider a dream or a vision a valid form of inspiration?

 

[Trailblazer]

Again, at the end of the day, it comes down to the following:

If you are right and the Christian is wrong, both end up dead
If Christian is right and you are wrong, you end up dead and Christian lives forever!

Again, at the end of the day, it comes down to the following:

If @shunyadragon is right and the Christian is wrong, both end up dead because all physical bodies die at the end of this life.

If @shunyadragon is right and the Christian is wrong, the Christian ends up spiritually dead and @shunyadragon lives forever.

“Incline your ears to the sweet melody of this Prisoner. Arise, and lift up your voices, that haply they that are fast asleep may be awakened. Say: O ye who are as dead! The Hand of Divine bounty proffereth unto you the Water of Life. Hasten and drink your fill. Whoso hath been re-born in this Day, shall never die; whoso remaineth dead, shall never live.” Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 213

“O My servants! Whoso hath tasted of this Fountain hath attained unto everlasting Life, and whoso hath refused to drink therefrom is even as the dead.” Gleanings, p.169

So the Christian is the only one who wins actually.

The Christian does not win since Christianity as believed by most Christians is a false religion, so utterly false.
Imo.

 

[Ebionite]

No, you can't be wrong because, as a Christian

SMH

I'm not a Christian.

 

[Trailblazer]

I think his posts reek with self-righteousness and are the polar opposite of "let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven" (Matthew 5:14–16).

His posts are also the polar opposite of:

Matthew 7:3-5 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

 

[Trailblazer]

Well the person who started this thread says it is impossible to understand; I'm only responding in the context of what he believes.

The OP says:
1 Corinthians 2:14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

So the claim was that the natural man cannot understand but those who have spiritual discernment can understand them.

But the hundred-dollar question is" Who are those with spiritual discernment?

So why have scriptures if God can just tell hes messengers and they can give his message?

The messengers give God's message in scriptures.
How else could the messengers get the message out to all of humanity?

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgment.

That last part is probably incorrect.

Regarding human judgment, you've indicated that you aren't interested in the judgments or opinions of others that don't agree with you. You don't mind causing others to disrespect your religion more than they did before reading your opinions, which is what @Sgt. Pepper was referring to with her comments and song link.

What the Christians have taught me is that too much religion is harmful to them and to their neighbors. The spectrum of Christians runs from what I call the theistic humanists, who basically share the atheistic humanists' values, but say they believe in a god and maybe feel comfortable in Christian culture, so they put up Christmas lights, go to church, but their religion doesn't appear to affect their lives much otherwise.

But they're not zealots. Once that starts happening, people go off the reservation, and we see the threats of hellfire and creationist threads. These people are generally steeped in ignorance, tribalism, bigotry, and hypocrisy. Not a pretty picture. How many have told you this, but you're above that, right? You don't listen to them. You put them on ignore and go on seeing yourself as holding the moral high ground certain that you are correct.

Take a look at this thread to see some of what I'm talking about, where they fabricate a war on Easter and describe Biden as attacking Christianity, which is all quite ugly in my estimation: President Joe Biden Declares Easter Sunday As Transgender Day Of Visibility

I've told you before that YOU'VE made a contribution to my education being one of those data points.

You live in a world of deceit, murder, pillaging of the environment ...and you think Christians are to blame?

Not ONLY Christians. What I'm blaming Christians for lately is diminishing rights for women in America, besetting LGBTQ+, book banning, and disproportionately, electing Trump in 2016. They are also trying to make mifestiprone difficult to get, and they want to end same-sex marriage.

I think the evidence is against you being happy

Really? I'm pretty happy, have been for a long time, and expect it likely that I will remain so until I die or lose my wife.

whats next for the atheist after they die?.

The same as for you. Nobody knows. I'm expecting that we return to the unconscious state from which we awakened, but am prepared to be pleasantly surprised if an afterlife awaits us. If so, nobody knows what that will be yet nor what it would be like. There's no reason to expect judgment or the stratification of individuals into the rewarded and punished.

You know one thing I've noticed about forums...people here debate as if they are making a difference. Given almost no one appears to ever change their minds, even i must admit, these are really just platforms for seagull sqawking.

I'm not expecting to make a difference with the faithful, just with other critical thinkers, and my hope is that many of them will do the same for me.

But that's not my principal reason for being here. The greatest benefit has been to observe a large cross-section of believers and unbelievers to get a panoramic view of the effect on the religions on people, the atheistic humanists serving as the control group. I'm fond of calling this humanist school, complete with both lecture and lab section, which correspond to these two paragraphs.

 

[Sgt. Pepper]

SMH

I'm not a Christian.

My mistake. I assumed you were because you quoted the Bible with precision and your chosen DIR is the Abrahamic religion.

 

[Trailblazer]

I'm not expecting to make a difference with the faithful, just with other critical thinkers,

But you have made a difference with some of the faithful, I being one of the faithful.
I am still one of the faithful, yet I see the validity of non-belief because of atheists like you.

 

[Ebionite]

My mistake. I assumed you were because you quoted the Bible with precision and your chosen DIR is the Abrahamic religion.

I identify as a comparative theologian. My pronouns are 'sir' and 'he who shall not be corrected'.

 

[YoursTrue]

Well that was good for Daniel and John, but for everyone else being told to preach a gospel that is impossible for them to understand, it sounds like everyone else should be given the opportunity David and John were given.

Not really. But it depends on one's inclination, meaning who do they think is inclined to have a proper interpretation of the scriptures. I do not want to give my opinion of that, because that belongs to God and Jesus, but from my experience, having been exposed to the thoughts of various religious orders, I am inclined to recognize one road as the one I am to travel upon. www.jw.org

 

[YoursTrue]

First of all you start on a wrong foot. There was never an Adam and Eve. Man has been around for at least 200,000 years. According to the Bible the universe was built in 6 literal days.

There is no contradiction if you don't need faith (and/or works) but you were predestined to be saved before the world began? And even worse, because you were not predestined, you will end up in hell? What kind of justice is this in a religion?

Talking of being saved which of the three is valid?
1) Rom 2:13 "For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified."

2) Gal 2:16 "(We) who know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ"
Eph 2:8-9 "“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God not by works, so that no one can boast.”

3) James 2:14 "What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?...24 You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone....26 For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead."

In reference to your first comment about Adam and Eve, and the compendium of opinion about that, I realize that many of the early Christians were persecuted by religious people who firmly disagreed with them. So what does that mean? That opinions are just that. And if you believe scientific propositions or premises about life starting from one cell and burgeoning further over the course of time to what we have now, that's up to you. And others, of course. It is not something I see in the actuality of historical biological data. Meaning from the first cell onward. Also from fossils, no matter how connected they seem to be, that does not validate without exception the theory of evolution. It may seem to, but that is because there is no room for doubt in scientists' minds who believe in the theory in between the organisms. Including Tiktaalik. It came out as whole, not in part as if developing legs. It was already developed. Now unless you feel that fish are now developing legs and can show it, there is nothing other than the fossils scientists have decided to fit into the theory.

 

[Kfox]

The messengers give God's message in scriptures.
How else could the messengers get the message out to all of humanity?

Giving his message to his messengers himself! Or better yet, God himself getting his message out to humanity. If God can do anything, he should have no problem delivering his message to his creation; don't cha think?

 

[Kfox]

Not really. But it depends on one's inclination, meaning who do they think is inclined to have a proper interpretation of the scriptures.

I'm not talking about interpretation of scriptures, I'm talking about getting the message from the source; IOW getting the message directly from God himself.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

I've also asked several about what motivates them, but none have answered. My leading hypothesis is that their martyring themselves. None have affirmed or denied this, which I take as tacit assent. Here's the "martyr" search:

They definitely crave and frequently assume martyrdom.

 

[shunyadragon]

Where?

Pentateuch. The accounts of ancient mythology without provenance of time written or authorship in complete contradiction with what we know of science and history today. These contradictions are up front and extreme, need not address at present the problems of contradictions in the text that other people play with in long contorted threads.
Waiting for your to respond.

 

[shunyadragon]

You live in a world of deceit, murder, pillaging of the environment ...and you think Christians are to blame? I think the evidence is against you being happy, given once you die its kaput is it not? Tell me, philosophically whats next for the atheist after they die?.

The happiest countries if the world are the most secular in Scandinavia

 

[Trailblazer]

Giving his message to his messengers himself!

God did give His message to His messengers Himself.
Then the messengers gave the message to humanity in scriptures.

Or better yet, God himself getting his message out to humanity. If God can do anything, he should have no problem delivering his message to his creation; don't cha think?

I guess you mean God delivering his message directly to each and every person on earth, all 8 billion people?
It is irrelevant that a God who can do anything could do that. God could also eradicate all of creation in one split second. Should God do that?

The relevant questions are as follows:
1. Why should God do that?
2. What would happen if God did that?
3. Why would that be 'better' than giving the message to the messenger, who gives it to all 8 billion people?