The Difference Between Reading the Bible and Meditating on God’s Word

There always has to be a good reason to read the Bible. Even

“simply wanting to know what all the hoopla was about and why people were so hyped up on it”

could already be a good reason to start reading the Bible. From that point of view, it could give some good idea of what others are saying, what would or would not be in Scripture.

Best is to read the Bible to study it and to gain more knowledge of what is written inside it. Then it will give also a good idea of what others, like clergy, are insinuating what would be standing there in those 66 books of the Book of books, the Bible, and coming to see what is really written in it.

When

“in no way shape or form, did reading the Bible had anything to do with God.”

then it would be a very difficult start, already closing some gates to receiving knowledge or to coming into conversation with God. Reading the Bible is namely like being present by someone, listening to what He has to say. Reading the Bible also gives an opportunity to come into conversation with the Divine Creator of heaven and earth, the God of gods. When starting to read what He has to say, there has to be a willingness to listen to Him.

For sure, several people coming to read the Bible,

“some of their reasons aren’t particularly holy.”

Several people want to find reasons and words to attack those lovers of God, who find those words in the Bible sacred.

Sometimes, as the article writer mentions, coming to read the Bible is

“done out of curiosity”

as her friends in school did for religious studies

“and other times it’s for understanding the religion better.”

And that is a very good reason, more people should consider why reading that book is as important as reading other basic scriptures of certain religious groups.

All people should learn about the different religions and have to go through their basic scriptures. When the reason to read the Bible is to debunk the Bible, like some atheists and other (religious) people do they would often be surprised where they end up. More than once, an atheist or even a Christian or other religious person came to see the truth and came to look for a church that is living according to those Words of God.
That

“they use part of the bible to show why other Christian religions are wrong”

is not such a bad idea, when they do it with the right intention and lovingly, to bring people closer to the One and Only Real God, the God of Israel, the Elohim Hashem Jehovah, Who is One and not two or three.

Too often, people who call themselves Christian, do not dare to open their ears fully to those words of God, but prefer to be chained to the doctrinal teachings of their church, be it a Catholic or Trinitarian Protestant Church, instead of trying to read and understand the words like they are written black on white.

When there is a willingness to listen carefully to God’s Word as presented in the Bible, the reader shall be surprised how a whole new world might open up before him or her. But then it becomes most important also to accept those Words from God and to act to the received new insight. And that last bit is one of the very difficult parts when one has lived for several years in a certain Christian denomination. Often it is easier for an atheist to become a true Christian than for a Christian to become a real follower and believer in the son of God, Jeshua or Jesus Christ. Most people coming from a certain denomination have difficulties changing their lives and changing church, after they discovered that there are differences in the teachings of their familiar church and the contents of the Bible.

The difficulty for reading the Bible is that it has to be done with an open mind geared toward spiritual growth and with a willingness to change.
The writer of this article still has to go a long way, because she writes

“After all, the time He walked the earth stone was the paper of choice”

giving an indication that she still considers Jesus to be God instead of him being the son of God. God never walked this earth. God is an eternal Spirit Being (meaning having no beginning or birth and no end = no death) no man can see. Clearly, the writer of this article is still confusing and mixing two different Biblical characters. This comes perhaps because she is so clinched or stuck by her Catholic upbringing, where they worship a Trinity and other gods and saints.

We can only hope that those who read the Bible also one moment come to listen more carefully to the Words of God and start meditating on them as well, giving a two-way communication platform to the Author of the Book of books, so that more insight and wisdom will come to them.

The writer of this article (Marita) ends very nicely but also hits the nail when she writes

“Basically, meditating on God’s word is supposed to bring about change. Change in you and the world around you.”

And changing direction and adapting their belief unto what is really written in the Scriptures is one of the most difficult tasks for people who grew up in a Christian church tradition and who have come to read the Bible more thoroughly.
And the Bible deserves a thorough reading and study to be moulded by God and filled with biblical clarity rather than church indoctrination.

 

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Preceding

People Seeking for God 1 Looking for answers

People Seeking for God 2 Human interpretations

God of gods

The Almighty Lord God of gods King above all gods

Is reading the Bible necessary?

Being in tune with God

How Social Media is Shrinking the Bible

Ways to Approach Difficult Bible Passages

Followers, protestors and reformers

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Additional reading

1. Bible
2. Unread bestseller
3. What Is: The Bible as Originally Written
4. Bible Word from God
5. Word of God
6. Bible Inspired Word of God
7. Today’s thought “Word of the Only One God – To be read and listened at” (November 21)
8. Bible Word of God inspired and infallible
9. Moshe Rabbenu and Torat Moshe
10. Bible in the first place #2/3
11. Appointed to be read (Our World) = Appointed to be read (Some View on the World)
12. Best to read and study the Bible
13. Not studying an abstract and arcane text of the ancient world
14. Best intimate relation to look for
15. No other god besides Jehovah who gives all explanation
16. Main verses in the Bible telling us Who God is #8 Some more attributes of God
17. Today’s thought “Jehovah God makes us dwell in safety and confident trust” (January 02)
18. Fill your hands with the Lord’s work
19. A living Word giving confidence
20. Praying and acts of meditation without ceasing
21. Trusting, Faith, calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #3 Voice of God #6 Words to feed and communicate
22. Pray that we will make the time to listen: listen to God and listen to each other
23. Today’s thought “On the eternity of God” (December 17)
24. Today’s thought “Ability to circumcise your heart” (May 13)
25. Conversations that Matter
26. Necessity of a revelation of creation 10 Instructions for insight and wisdom
27. Necessity of a revelation of creation 12 Words assembled for wisdom and instruction
28. Fear of God reason to return to Holy Scriptures
29. From nothingness to a growing group of followers of Jeshua 3 Korban for God or gods
30. Making time for God is crucial
31. 500 years of a provision of the Word in the language of the peoples
32. A special anniversary for the Church where Catholics and Protestants find common ground
33. Accuracy, Word-for-Word Translation Preferred by most Bible Readers
34. A Bible Falling Apart Belongs to Someone who isn’t

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Related

1. Are you making time or making excuses?
2. Practical Christianity: Give Your Time
3. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom
4. Seeking God’s manna
5. The Book
6. Our Amazing Bible
7. The Original Biblical Writings
8. Scriptures
9. Purpose of Scripture
10. God breathed
11. Bible Reading Discovery
12. Conversation between God and Me
13. How to Begin Conversations with God
14. Conversations with God part 2
15. Talkative God
16. Confirms the Word
17. The Word, Faith, and Testing
18. The Word – Good News and Bad News
19. Believing God
20. A way to look for Christ, the Bible, Word of God
21. Light Unto My Feet
22. Practical Christianity: Don’t Be A Jerk
23. When My Mental Health is Suffering
24. Bad News and Good News
25. How Do I Read the Bible?
26. How to Interpret Scripture
27. Book: How (Not) to Read the Bible
28. Read the Bible in a Year
29. The Bible Tells Me SoFall in Love With Reading the Bible: 10 Tips to Keep You Motivated & Passionate
30. The Not-So-Quiet Time

Seeking Redemption

To those now deep into biblical scripture you are probably aware of the difference between reading the bible and meditating on the world. Naturally, like many young Christians, I had assumed that once you read the bible, and you knew God’s words and it was enough. But I kept hearing about ‘meditating on the word’ and never understood what it meant. Until over a decade later when I began meditating on God’s word.

“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and, training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work,” 2 Timothy 3:16-17

2 Timothy 3:16-17

Reading the Bible

I’ve read the bible twice, decades ago and still could quote a single lick of scripture. I read it just like I did with any storybook. Enough to know all the main characters and get a clear…

View original post 1,410 more words

A broken spirit

What do you think of this?

“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” (Psalm 51:17)

This verse is so familiar to us that we may not really think about it very much any more. But let’s take a minute and actually think.

Is a “broken spirit” a good thing or a bad thing?

David seems to think it’s a good thing, in fact necessary if we are to come to God. What does our culture think? Being “spirited” is a good thing: it means we’re ambitious, we’re achievers, we stick up for ourselves and don’t let anyone put us down. Being broken in spirit is the opposite: in our culture it means we’re passive, we won’t stick up for ourselves, in fact it may mean we’re damaged emotionally.

Yet another way in which God’s ideals and standards are at odds with the world’s.

It’s clear which side Jesus comes down on.

““Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:3)

The word Jesus chooses to use for “poor” means abjectly poor, a pauper with no recourse but begging. So, broken indeed.

Our culture simply reflects our nature. We humans really can’t stand to be broken in spirit. To us, that equals being totally defeated, stripped of respect including self-respect. Depending on the circumstances, we view it as contemptible, or pitiable, or outrageous. We strenuously object to being broken in spirit!

We should recognize that we might be dealing with “broken” in two different senses of the word. One refers to being damaged so as not to work properly. The other is to be subdued, tamed, to have wildness trained out. I think in these scriptures we are seeing both.

To arrive at the point David says we must, in order to approach God, we must have our pride and our willfulness subdued. That will never happen while we still proclaim,

“I am whole, I am capable, I am my own master.”

That attitude is the wildness, part of our nature, that has to be trained out of us. And if we don’t get there until we come to a key realization: we are indeed broken— damaged, non-functional, infirm, in need of healing.

It’s sin that has broken us. And the solution to sin, David teaches, is entirely dependent of us realizing how broken we are. Then we can come to God, to His mercy, and seek to be repaired, healed. Then, Jesus teaches us, we’re on the path to the Kingdom.

The world despises the broken, looking down on us in either pity or contempt. They cannot see that they themselves are the ones truly broken, that their claims to be whole are lies. We, on the other hand, who confess ourselves to be broken, are the ones—now healed—who have been made whole at last.

Love,

Paul

We are living in a time of “universal deceit”

From Bible in the news

Honest Reporting recently rounded off an examination of instances of YouTube banning content by saying:

“To paraphrase a quote wrongly attributed to Orwell but which resonates strongly today as we seemingly edge towards the dystopian society that he predicted: ‘In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.’”

We are living in a time of “universal deceit”, this is exactly what the Lord Jesus said it would be in Revelation 16. Jesus specifically warned his servants who would be living just before his coming, that it would be a time of deceit and falsehood.

Media Bias and against Israel

The protest staged for the media near Nablus.

 

An image of the staged protest available on Getty Images.

During the recent war when Israel was attacked by Hamas in Gaza, there were many examples of deceit in the media. The mainstream media as usual, emphasized Israel’s operations in Gaza against the terrorist organization Hamas, over the 4300 + rockets fired by Hamas at Israeli civilian centres. Here are some examples of deceptive media reports during the conflict.

A CNN analysis was entitled

“Hell has been unleashed in Gaza”

and is typical of the type of the reporting on Israel in the mainstream media. Reading the analysis any logical person would think that Israel had unleashed hell on Gaza. However, Hamas had started the war and by the time of the “analysis” had fired well over 1000 missiles targeting Israeli civilian centres. In order to find this out, you have to read to about halfway through. Seeing that on average only 16% of people read a webpage word for word and seeing that readers will on average only read 20% of the text on a page, most CNN readers will never know this. The analysis does state near the beginning that,

“Since Monday evening, Israel’s aerial operation has left more than 60 Gazans dead, militants among them, but more civilians, according to figures from the Gaza-based Palestinian health ministry. More than a dozen of them were children.”

A few crucial pieces of information are missing from this sentence. First the “Gaza-based Palestinian health ministry” is operated by the terrorist group Hamas — their numbers simply cannot be trusted. Secondly at least half of the quoted number of casualties of children were killed by a rocket fired by Hamas that didn’t reach its target. The Al Mezan Center for Human Rights in Gaza documented a Hamas rocket that fell short of its target and killed 8 civilians including 6 children.

Another one of the images from the staged protest on Getty, notice the ambulance in the background taking away the “wounded”.

Seeing that the terror organizations fire their rockets from civilian areas away from the periphery of the region, the rockets have to travel over civilian areas in Gaza before reaching Israel. During the war in Gaza, Hamas and Islamic Jihad fired, as already stated, 4,300+ rockets, targeting Israeli civilian centres. 680 of these misfired and exploded inside Gaza, killing and injuring the civilian population of Gaza.

The analysis also misrepresents the blockade of Gaza, stating,

“Cut off from the rest of the world by an Israeli blockade of Gaza’s land, air and sea dating back to 2007, many of Gaza’s inhabitants are dependent on foreign aid to survive.”

It is true that Israel blockades Gaza to stop them acquiring arms, and the tools and materials to manufacture rockets. However, Gaza borders not only Israel but also Egypt. Egypt imposes the same blockade on Gaza. Israel lets a constant stream of aid material into the strip.

The New York Times is an influential newspaper with a circulation of about 375,000. On May 28 the cover of the New York Times featured pictures of children that were killed in the Gaza conflict. The headline was “They Were Just Children”. The introductory text reads,

“At least 67 people under age 18 in Gaza and two in Israel were killed during this months conflict according to initial reports. They had wanted to be doctors, artists and leaders. Read their stories.”

How much information the New York Times had unearthed to report on their stories is doubtful. The third picture on the top row featured a picture of a little 6 year old girl. However, doing a search by image on Google of her returned results back in 2018 when she had apparently been killed also. The anonymous girl has been used countless times to falsely accuse Israel of killing children. Again one of the main sources for the article was the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. One of the “children” was a 17 year old fighter in the Hamas terror organization. Not readily apparent, but once again, a number of the victims were killed by Hamas terror rockets that did not make it. There is only one answer for such shoddy biased reporting and that is that it is not shoddy, but carefully crafted in a way to make Israel into the aggressor.

During the recent Gaza conflict there were demonstrations elsewhere in Israel in support of Gaza. Two Christians who do a podcast called the Joshua and Caleb report came across and documented a staged demonstration near the large Palestinian city of Nablus. There were a couple of Israeli soldiers quite far away casually watching, but otherwise there was no Israeli presence. Only a number of the press and many protesters throwing rocks at no one except an empty road. Yet there were constant “protesters” being taken away in Ambulances. The pictures from this staged protest are now available for sale on Getty Images, one of the largest suppliers of news images in the world. The Getty caption says,

“Palestinian protesters confront Israeli troops at the Hawara checkpoint south of Nablus city in the occupied West Bank on May 18, 2021, during a demonstration in support of those under bombardment in Gaza.”

This is a total fraud. There were no Israeli troops being confronted. There were no Israel defence forces or riot police to hurt protesters, yet the “wounded” were being taken away in ambulances. The press knew this was the case, but reported a complete fraud.

At the root of this bias is a believe that the Palestinian Arabs have a moral right to the land of Israel. That justice is on their side. It is believed that the Jewish state is a result of “colonialism” and that the Jewish people have no right to the land. Any historical connection of the Jewish Hebrew people to the land is denied. This is in effect calling the God of Israel unjust, unjust for bringing the Jewish people back to their ancient land. This is the spirit will bring the nations to Armageddon.

The trending hashtag on social media during the conflict was #freepalestine. What this means as seen on placards at demonstrations all over the world, is to “free Palestine from the river to the sea”. This is a call for the total destruction of the state of Israel. It is in effect a call for another Holocaust of the Jewish people. It is the hashtag of Armageddon.

This has been David Billington with you for this week’s Bible in the News. Come back again next week God willing to www.bibleinthenews.com

 

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Related

1. Revelation 16
2. It Is Done – Revelation 16
3. Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell
4. A Past Future Dystopian Society Is Now Our Reality, Kind of.
5. Writing Fiction in a Dystopian Reality: How 2020 has Lost the Plot
6. How to Respond to Cataclysmic Events
7. The Ministry of Intercession
8. Priests, Prophets and Kings
9. Israeli forces kill Palestinian in West Bank: health ministry
10. Palestinian teen shot dead in clashes with Israel army: medics
11. ‘Israel’ to expand illegal settlement unit in Nablus
12. Israeli occupation forces deliver stop-building notices for almost 20 houses in Rujib town, east of Nablus
13. Settlers, govt strike deal on West Bank outpost
14. More than 60 Palestinians injured in IOF quelling of night protests in Beita, south of Nablus
15. Horde of Israeli settlers destroy various type of trees south Nablus
16. Analysis: Israel/Palestine
17. Nine out of 10 children in Gaza Strip suffer some form of conflict-related trauma after Israeli attack
18. A Closer Look at Corruption, Hamas, and Violence in the Gaza Strip
19. Gaza reconstruction clouded by dispute over Israelis held by Hamas
20. Hamas sends rockets deeper into Israel after Gaza airstrikes as conflict spirals
21. Israel strikes Hamas site in Gaza
22. Israel again strikes Gaza in response to launching arson balloon
23. Hamas aims to kill as many Israeli civilians as possible, but its rockets place both Israelis and Palestinians in peril; 680 misfired and exploded inside Gaza
24. Now Over 3,500 Rockets from Gaza
25. Israel, Palestinian groups, agree Gaza ceasefire
26. Netanyahu vows ‘whole new level of force’ if Hamas breaks cease-fire
27. “By supporting the plight of the Palestinians, China is cynically stoking the most emotional issue in Middle Eastern politics in order to distract Muslim nations from its own campaign against Uyghurs”
28. Israel must stop all settlement activities to prevent more Palestinian conflict: Garneau
29. After the ceasefire, I struggle to imagine what is a normal life
30. Jewish and Arab Israelis in Lod live under threat of future violence – BBC News
31. Gaza’s only Protestant church, damaged in latest Israel/Hamas conflict, carries on
32. Will You Be Ready?

Known and unknown things

For ages, man has been confronted with loads of questions. Millions of people tried to find answers but never got to the point where they could say they were satisfied.

There are things that we think we do know. But often when we grow up we come to see we did not know it really. And there are things that we know that we don’t know. Looking at this world and outer space there are so many things that we don’t know, that we don’t know. Those things that we don’t even know enough to know that we don’t know lay so far outside of our existing frame of reference that we can’t even imagine them. They are too far out of our box to hold in mind.

Most of the time we are already so busy with coping about the things we do seem to think are there in the unknown, that we do not have time to think further about those things which are the very far unknown. Lots of things are also matters we do not understand or do not seem to get a grip on to have a good view of them.

Many philosophers were busy with the unknown and wanted to have a clear view of the known. The American philosopher William James was fascinated by the unknown unknowns and assumed that what we knew about reality (and even what we can imagine to be true about reality) is always a tiny fraction of the totality of what is. Question also should be “what is reality”. These days people are confronted a lot by things which are not at all true. The greatest caller and accuser that others are fake is mostly presenting the world with a lot of fake news and very dangerous ideas. (Even when he, as 45th president of the U.S.A. is proud to tell the world he takes this or that product to avoid having Corona, and brings others in danger when they follow him.)

James was a free thinker who held loosely to what he thought was true and assumed that whatever seemed true now would yield to much bigger and more encompassing truths soon. Rather than defend what we know and expand on it slowly, he wanted to inquire directly into what we don’t already know by focusing on the anomalies and oddities that don’t fit into our current understanding.

James felt that our attention should be on the outer fringes of what we know. The next big idea doesn’t come from the center. It comes from the dim outer edge where the light of what we currently know fades into the blackness of the unknown beyond. James risked his career and his reputation as a scientist to study things that others thought were absurdities. As the president of the American Psychical Society he studied spirits, mediums, and life after death. Most scientists felt this was worthless, but James felt that it was out there on the fringes that we would find our way to new and unexpected vistas of truth.

{Jeff Carreira, How to Move Beyond Vicious Intellectualism}

For mankind has been created by an invisible Source, which is the Being. Without that Being there is no being at all. And that seems very difficult for lots of people to cope with. They want to have something they can touch and see. That is why so many people took themselves some visible god or gods, be it Jesus, cows or other animals or trees.

The two originators of the philosophy of Pragmatism – Charles Sanders Peirce and William James – were both very concerned with unknown unknowns. Both realized that human beings find it very difficult to even imagine that there could be things that we don’t know that we don’t know. Sure we know that there are things that we don’t know. I don’t know lots of scientific and cultural facts, the distance to the nearest star, the president of Monaco and so on. But I know there are such facts that I don’t know. (The film maker and columnist Errol Morris has written for the New York Times recently on the concept of unknown unknowns.)

{Vicious Intellectualism and the Reality of the Unknown, Jeff Carreira}

We all should know that there is so much that we even do not know, which is a manifold of what we know. Are brain is just too limited to cope with everything there is and exists. Bounded unto this earth there is also space which goes beyond our dreams and far away from our own capacity to understand and know what is all there.

Problem with man is also that he thinks to have enough knowledge to understand or to analyse the things in the known and unknown.

Jeff Carreira writes

Those things that we don’t even know enough to know that we don’t know lay so far outside of our existing frame of reference that we can’t even imagine them. They are too far out of our box to hold in mind. What endears me to Pragmatism more than anything else is the respect given to the existence of truth beyond our current ability to imagine. James and Peirce both assumed that what we knew about reality (and even what we can imagine to be true about reality) is only a tiny part of the totality of reality. And they envisioned a way of going about philosophy in light of this. They created a form of inquiry and a philosophical attitude that was militantly open ended. “Never block the road to inquiry” was Peirce’s motto. And William James railed against what he called vicious intellectualism.

{Vicious Intellectualism and the Reality of the Unknown, Jeff Carreira}

Every day we are requested to look around us and to recognise the truth and untruth, the known and unknown. Each day we have to examine how we want to look at things, because that is going to decide if we are going to be able to go further to understand the unknown as well as the truth or reality.

We must take steps to dare to go out of our comfort zone to come to new visions and coming to known more unknown things. We have to dare to step outside of our own frame of reference. If we are consciously or unconsciously assuming that what we think is true actually is true and negates all other possibilities, our inquiry proceeds by expanding on what we already know. There is the trap for mankind that we focus on what we know and not many try to push at the borders, “creeping slowly out into the vast oceans of unknown that surrounds our small island of known”.

If we want to come to a better world we should dare to look at the darkness and see the light the divine Creator offers the world. He has also given His Word to look into and to find answers. Though not many people take the effort to read that Book of books and come to see more clearly in so many matters that bother us every day.

Danger also for mankind is that people are often so sure that what they think is the truth. Many dare not to question their own value or their own way of looking at things and their own analysation of matters. We should dare to question how we want to look at things. Certainly for looking at things we do not really understand we should consider which glasses we want to use.

James and Peirce wanted our thinking to be free. They wanted to hold on loosely to what we think is true by assuming that whatever we think is true now will yield tomorrow to a much bigger and more encompassing truth. Rather than defend what we know and expand on it slowly they wanted to inquire directly into what we don’t already know by focusing on the anomalies and oddities that don’t fit into our current understanding.

James felt that our attention should be on the outer fringes of what we know. The next big idea doesn’t come from the center. It comes from the dim outer edge where the light of what we currently know fades into the blackness of the unknown beyond. James risked his career and his reputation as a scientist to study things that others thought were absurdities.
{Vicious Intellectualism and the Reality of the Unknown, Jeff Carreira}

It is not that we have to know how it really is to come to believe. It can very well be that we do not know all the  facts, but may consider that there is some truth or some existence of that what we assume there to be. We have our own sensations and thoughts and can listen to others their thoughts, combining those ideas to form some other ideas, transpiring to come to certain conclusions. Though often we still can’t be sure we would have made the right conclusion.

People should know that even if we cannot point to direct irrefutable evidence of something we should not be afraid to believe in it. As such the belief in God is grounded.

Michael Shermer in his book “How We Believe” describes the mind as a “belief engine” that is constantly creating patterns of belief. From fractured information and sense impressions the mind weaves together plausible pictures of reality that we believe in.
{Belief and Fact, Jeff Carreira}

Question is also

How do we want to believe?

and

In what do we want to believe?

Most often man only wants to believe in what he can see and feel. For going to believe in certain matters, he wants direct irrefutable evidence. For the matter of God, the divine Creator that is very difficult. To explain God there are also not always common sense definitions. We must be honest, in the God matter, we mostly cannot point to direct irrefutable evidence. To convince others about the existence of God it is also difficult to give really direct evidence.

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Perhaps the following articles can make you think about the matter

1. 3rd question: Does there exist a Divine Creator
2. Looking for answers on the question Is there a God #1 Many gods
3. Is there no ‘proof’ for God? (And why that statement is not as smart as you might think.)
4. Nature Is A Reflection Of God
5. Looking for answers on the question Is there a God #3 Transcendence or Surpassing other gods and man
6. Looking for answers on the question Is there a God #4
7. 4th Question: Who or What is God
8. A 1st reply to the 4th Question Who is God 1 A Creating Being to be worshipped

History’s Most Famous Execution

David Matthew a committed Christian since the age of twelve who reached the blessed age of 77 and was a schoolteacher for 14 years, then went into the Christian ministry, to be by now still very much on a journey of faith having become now a lot less dogmatic on doctrinal issues than he used to be, and a lot more Jesus-focused, always tried to keep up with current thinking on evangelical Christianity and wrote about it.

He has been disturbed to keep coming across once-keen Christians, including some church leaders, who, in the face of the challenges of raising questions about traditional views or proposing new ways of looking at certain biblical passages, have lost their faith altogether. He therefore wrote a.o. the book: “ A Poke In The Faith: Challenges to evangelical faith and how to survive them”.

He also looked at “Did God Kill Jesus?: Searching for love in history’s most famous execution by Tony Jones (HarperOne, 2015).” and asks “What happened to the cross“.   He also made a very nice “synopsis of the book” in which we found the following text we do like to share with you:

We should be clear on the basics about Jesus. Born in 6 or 4BCE, he was reared in Nazareth, in the fairly prosperous region of Galilee. He was, like Joseph, a tekton, ‘craftsman’ — not necessarily a carpenter. At the age of 30 he merged from obscurity into his public ministry. The core of his message was:

‘A new age is dawning — the rules by which followers of Yahweh lived their lives, while not irrelevant, are in need of

a serious overhaul; the spirit of those rules has been forgotten amid the attempts to keep those rules; I’ve come to redefine the relationship between God and humanity.’ (p70)

The ultimate rule, he taught, is love —which should extend even to one’s enemies.

The apocalyptic aspects of his teaching (a common and popular genre at the time) were directed chiefly at the political situations of his day. His miracles were not primarily to show his deity but to demonstrate God’s rule and show how it reaches out to the marginalised in society.

Jerusalem, where Jesus headed at the end of his ministry, was the centre of Jewish religious life. The Gospel writers focus on his last week there. Each of the four has its own angle on it. They focus on his trial, sufferings and death.

The Gospels show little interest in who actually killed Jesus (or, indeed, in what his death accomplished), but together they portray him as crucified by the Romans at the instigation of the Jewish leaders.

His resurrection led his followers to see his death cosmically and theologically, as an act of God.

At a human level, the early church put the blame chiefly on the Jews, while later centuries blamed them entirely, on the basis of Matt 27:25 — a verse which has had a terrible anti-Semitic legacy. The Gospels do tie Jesus’ death to the Passover. His passion takes place during the build-up to Passover. His last act is to eat the Passover meal with his followers. Like the original Passover lamb, the blood of Jesus liberates the people.

Paul, however, takes this much further…

Paul’s Cross-Centred Life

Paul got to know the Jesus story backwards: starting with the resurrected Lord. He never heard Jesus teach, nor witnessed his miracles (note of the editor: he might have witnessed some miracles, but we do not know that, but for sure he would have heard about them from first hand witnesses) , and never mentions his life — the focus is on his death and resurrection.
He sets these in the context of Israel’s story, a key feature of which was the law. Paul concludes that the law killed Jesus (Gal 3:13).

‘The cross’, for Paul, means ‘the gospel’, and it is the lens through which he interprets everything else. He opens up his thinking on it chiefly in Romans 3, and Romans 7 – 8. In Rom 3 God is faithful, and it is through Jesus, the faithful Israelite, that he fulfils his covenant promises. Jesus is the ‘sacrifice of atonement’ — literally the place of atonement, or Mercy Seat. In other words, he sums up everything that has gone before in Israel’s history. In Rom 7 – 8, all of human sin is concentrated in Jesus, and in him on the cross all sin is condemned.
If the Gospels show Jesus as the Passover sacrifice, Paul presents him as the Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) sacrifice. Both are valid emphases, but different.
According to Paul, in the cross God showed himself to be on the side of all human beings, Jews and Gentiles alike, and through the cross he shows us how to live right, recognising that we have been crucified with Jesus. We are called to live out the example that God set on the cross: self-limitation, humility and submission.

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Preceding

Review: What happened at the cross?

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Additional reading

1. Christian values, traditions, real or false stories, pure and upright belief
2. The saviour Jesus his human side
3. Redemption #4 The Passover Lamb
4. Death of Christ on the day of preparation
5. Hebraic Roots Bible Matthew Chapter 28
6. In the death of Christ, the son of God, is glorification
7. Glory of God appearing in our character
8. Hebraic Roots Bible Book of The Acts of the Apostles Chapter 2
9. Matthew 2:7-12 – Pawns of Herod, the Magi Find the ‘Child’
10. Anointing as a sign of Promotion
11. Preparing for 14 Nisan
12. 14 Nisan a day to remember #1 Inception
13. 14 Nisan a day to remember #4 A Lamb slain
14. A Messiah to die
15. Lost senses or a clear focus on the one at the stake
16. Jesus the “God-Man”: Really?

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Related

1. Events That Changed History
2. The Outrageous Story
3. The Trivialization of Christianity
4. A New Angle
5. No Cross, No Christianity: The Truth of the Cross
6. Torsten Jantsch on Jesus, the Savior: The Soteriology of the Lukan Doppelwerk
7. Jesus Led The Way
8. We Preach Christ Crucified …
9. Did Jesus Christ die on Good Friday or not?
10. The Mathematics of Caiaphas and Christ
11. A New & Glorious Morn
12. No Sweat, No Thorns, in New Jerusalem (2)
13. The One You Pierced!
14. Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
15. When God seemed to be an atheist
16. No Need for Sleep in New Jerusalem
17. Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me? … by Alice ..
18. ”Moksha With Jesus Christ”
19. Sermon: The Atoning Death of Christ on the Cross
20. The Need to Preach the Atonement By the Death of Christ
21. The Irrationality of Unbelief

Review: What happened at the cross?

We never hear such thing as people having an “idea that God killed Jesus”, but with trinitarians such ideas are possible, the same as they think God gave Himself on the cross for the sins of the people.

Naturally when a church creates all sorts of false teachings, starting with making Jesus in their god, they continually have to create new false teachings, like Jesus having a mother than God would have to have a mother a.o..

It is curious to see how different protestant groups handle with the atonement and do not see that Jesus did not do his own will (what he would have done if he is God) but did the will of God, and as such gave himself as a ransom for all.

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To remember

Jesus is the most fully realized revelation of God that we’ve got, and what we can see of God in the life of Jesus is the perfect example of self-limitation and humility. (p238)

• many Christians naively believe that the Payment Model (or penal substitution theory) = commonest view in Western world =  only one => ‘atonement wars’
  
• Tony Jones, associated with the ‘emergent’ stream of Christianity, his book sets out all the major (plus a few minor) theories of the atonement and tries to reach a balanced assessment of each one.
• God’s with us, expressed in the cross, => ours with him. = what the atonement is really all about.
• Trinitarians must believe God is by nature self-limiting, choosing to use his sovereign freedom to unite himself to humanity in the person of Jesus, and especially in the sufferings of Calvary.
• Some believe that the frequent emphasis on a bloodthirsty God, marked by punishment and sending folk to hell, is one reason for the decline of Christianity in some of its historic bastions.
• rivalries developed, leading to violence. Sacrifice developed as a safety-valve: violence was perpetrated on an innocent victim, making everyone feel better, at least for a while. Meanwhile, the person sacrificed was perceived as almost divine, because their death had had such a powerful violence-quenching effect on the society
• Nowhere does the OT law explicitly condemn child sacrifice (the closest it comes is Lev 18:21), though the practice was common among Israel’s neighbours.
  But Israel did not practise it (Jephthah’s killing of his daughter is a rare exception).
  Animal sacrifice, by contrast, soon became an integral part of Israel’s worship, and it was the blood that made it valid
  (Lev 17:10-16). Two kinds of blood sacrifices were seen as appeasing God: the guilt offering and the sin offering (the kind offered at Yom Kippur). These continued through the desert years, and continued when the Israelites were settled in the land, becoming more elaborate, in spite of the prophets’ condemnation (e.g. Hos 6:6). Their practice continued into the time of Jesus.
• So God took something that humans were already doing — being violent and shedding blood — and made it sacred. He
  went along with them where they were at, but did not see it as the ideal, and he took human sacrifice out of the picture.
  The sacrificial system controls violence, giving it boundaries.
• occasional verse talks of God’s anger at particular sins or human behavior that God considers an abomination, > overarching message of scripture is clear = God created us, God loves us, + God wants the best for us. => Bible = rife with stories of God going out of his way to set people on the right path — despite our failures, despite our sins.
• A lot of us have grown increasingly uncomfortable with the regnant interpretation of Jesus’ death as primarily the propitiation of a wrathful God. 1. we don’t experience God as uber-wrathful toward us. 2. it simply doesn’t make sense that God would game the whole system so that he has to kill his own son just to vitiate this wrath. It just doesn’t smell right. (p26)

• Calvin + others upped the ante from Anselm => not just that Jesus made our payment for us, = he pays a penalty on our behalf — a penalty that we cannot pay. In theological jargon, this is how it goes from substitution to penal substitution, the “penal” connoting the penalty. This change happened during the Reformation, and it remains popular today. (p113)

• supposed to learn about love from God => idea God predestined us to sin = results in our eternal damnation + requires God’s Son to die on the cross, teaches very little about love. (p132)

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Additional reading

1. Atonement And Fellowship 6/8
2. Atonement And Fellowship 7/8
3. In the death of Christ, the son of God, is glorification
4. Omniscient God opposite a not knowing Jesus
5. Redemption #2 Biblical solution
6. Redemption #4 The Passover Lamb

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Further related

1. 15/01/2018: Atonement 10
2. Facets Of Redemption
3. Mimesis and atonement
4. A better way to view the atonement of Christ: Christus Victor
5. Athanasius as Interpreter of the Trinity: Why the Nicene Creed and Penal Substitution Are Incompatible, Part 2 | New Humanity Institute
6. Thinking Outloud: Atonement
7. Triune Atonement in Westminster
8. How to Understand the Once for All Sacrifice of Jesus Christ
9. What the crucifiers didn’t understand
10. Penal Substitutionary Atonement Exemplified In Film
11. Irenaeus and the Problem of (Greater) New Testament Wrath
12. Penal Substitution is good news
13. Penal Substitutionary Atonement – a myopic narrative.
14. Review: Tom Wright on the Crucifixion
15. Why you should read Ian McEwan’s ‘Atonement’

Dave's Deliberations

This book’s title may mislead you. It is really an examination of the main theories of the atonement; the idea that God killed Jesus on the cross is just one aspect of the Payment Model of the atonement. The book is:

Did God Kill Jesus?: Searching for love in history’s most famous execution by Tony Jones (HarperOne, 2015).   

The ‘atonement wars’ are raging right now, in spite of the fact that many Christians naively believe that the Payment Model (or penal substitution theory) that they have been taught—and which remains the commonest view in the Western world—is the only one there is. Jones’s book sets out all the major (plus a few minor) theories of the atonement and tries to reach a balanced assessment of each one.

The major ones he designates the Payment, Victory, Magnet, Divinity and Mirror models. He assesses each against the answers it offers to…

View original post 3,084 more words

Many were made sinners through one man and justified by one man

All our sins are our own, but for salvation purposes, as Paul says, God

“calleth the things that are not, as though they were.” (Romans 8:17)

And, it is Paul who also wrote:

“through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners.” (Romans 5:19)

In context, “the many” is in reference to all of Adam’s descendants, in contrast with Adam, who is only one person. In God’s sight, the many were made sinners through one man, so that

“through the obedience of one man the many will be justified.”

While justification [being made straight, righteous] is now reckoned through faith in the sacrificed blood of Jesus, justification will, in the age to come, be reckoned, or counted, to all who died while unjustified, otherwise there would be no resurrection of the unjust; there would be no resurection of judgment. (John 5:28,29; Acts 24:15) All unbelievers in this age would remain dead for all eternity. However, because the sacrifice of Jesus to God for the sin of world provides the price to ‘ransom all from the power of sheol,” and ‘redeem all from death’ (Hosea 13:14), not just those justified by faith in this age will be raised in the last day, but all the dead in the sea, death and hades (sheol of Hosea 13:14) will be raised. (Revelation 20:13) In this way, Jesus died for the sins, not just for those who believe in this age, but the whole world, thus releasing them from the condemnation of death, so that they may be raised in the last day. — John 1:19; 4:42; 12:47,48; 1 John 2:2; 4:14.

If, however, the final judgment upon mankind is due to each individual’s sin in this age, this would mean that the one sinless man, Christ Jesus, could in no way satisfy God’s justice, for every man would be under a separate condemnation for his own sin, and thus if there have been 40 billions sinners, there would have to be 40 billion non-sinners to sacrifice themselves to offset the wages of sin for those 40 billion sinners. By condemning all in one man, only one sinless man is needed to provide a sacrifice to God so that God “would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” — Romans 3:26.

See the study on Ronald Day Senior website:
Divine Economy in the Ransom
http://ransomforall.blogspot.com/2017/05/economy.html

As there is a lot of division in Christendom there is too in Judaism

After a three week period of mourning during which the Jews remembered the series of events that led to the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem and the destruction of God’s people’s first Temple on that date in the year 586 BCE. we still do not have any reason to be very happy.

The last few days we could take some time to remember also the year 70 CE when the Roman legions pushed through the crumbling defences of Jerusalem to desecrated and destroy the rebuilt second Temple, as they crushed a rebellion that shook the heart of the Empire and drove the Chosen people of God into exile, but also to remember many of the most painful moments Jews had to undergo in camps and pogroms.

Many lovers of God showed their faithfulness to the Most High Elohim. They did everything to join with brethren and sisters and feel united in the family of the Patriarch Abraham.

On Tisha b’Av, many Jews felt most keenly their sense of powerlessness and their feeling of separation from their spiritual centre in their ancestral homeland. It was the day on which we acknowledged the emotional and spiritual pain of God’s people‘s exile.

Today, no longer in exile, when there is such an opening to see the Holy Land becoming a reality, so many Jews having returned to the Eretz Ysrael or Land of Israel, it looks like there is even more division than in the previous times of worries.

There are some groups who consider it not necessary any more to remember all the evil that has happened to the Jewish people. Even in the light that many may see a brighter future we should know and keep remembering what happened in the past. Jews and real lovers of God should understand that despite the many setbacks the Chosen People underwent, their struggles, their real loses and deep suffering, the Jewish people, have overcome the obstacles fate has set before them.

The Fast of the Ninth of Av should in a way stay a day of mourning to commemorate the many tragedies that have befallen the Jewish people, many of which have occurred on the ninth of Av.  But in these times we also should open our eyes and receive a ‘slap in our face’ because there is something going on in this world by those who call themselves Jew. As in this world where we see many who call themselves ‘Christian‘ calling themselves names and fighting against each other, we can find also persons who call themselves Jew doing things against the Will of God, like creating hate between people or excluding people as if they are the pest.

Rabbi Ruth Adar, or the Coffee Shop Rabbi, has her eyes also open, seeing the division in the Jewish communities she also felt sick at heart this Tisha B’Av.

The people’s spirit might have gone in so many varied directions whereby some of them might have us wonder if they are not going away from the path laid in front of them by the Most High Elohim.

The Coffee Shop Rabbi writes

” The Jewish community is horribly divided. We are divided in many ways, and we poke many fingers at one another, scolding.

Some Haredim see the Kotel as their synagogue. From their point of view, whatever they need to do to maintain the sanctity of that place as they define sanctity is justified.

Some other Jews believe that the Kotel belongs to all Jews everywhere and because the Haredim have said and done ugly things, whatever they say about the Haredim is justified. {Sick and Tired}

The world has come to know so many different Judaic groups and various movements with very different ideas. Years ago between Jews there was a feeling, a sense, a rich swirl of emotion, a deep notion of Jewish communality. This is what the Talmud means when it says,

“all Jews are responsible one for the other” (Shavuot 39a).

But today it looks more that there is egotism and greed that has darkened the hearts of many Jews, not willing to be open for others. Perhaps today only a few (or more?) Jews are swimming upstream and striving for peace between all people living around Jerusalem, which in the end shall have to become the capital of the Holy Land, for all those who love and go for the Divine Creator. It was the wish of the Bore and it shall become so, whatever man wants to go against it.

In Israel there are Jews living who have put aside their faith in God and have become atheists calling other Jews to fight against the enemies of their state. In Israel as well as in other places around the world we also, strangely enough can find Jews who have taken a three-headed god as their god. Though they take Jesus (Jeshua) as their god, they clearly do not follow the teachings of that Nazarene rebbe who taught peace and tolerance. We can wonder if one may call such ‘Messianic Jews‘ really Jews. Opposite to them are real Messianic Jews, who stay faithful to the Jewish belief in One True God, the God of Israel, Jacob, Isaac, Jesus and his disciples, but have taken Jesus as the Messiah. But they are ‘shredded’ and hated by the trinitarian ‘Jews’ and ‘Christians’. By other Jews they are spoken of as traitors to the faith. Others speak about the Conservative Jews as the wrong believers, whilst others talk about the Reform, the Orthodox, Ultra-Orthodox Jews, the Liberal or other sorts of Jews, as if they are “monsters”.

Some Jews act as if Jews of color don’t even exist.

Some Jews think other Jews don’t “look Jewish enough.”

Some Jews say Jews who became Jewish as adults aren’t really Jews. {Sick and Tired}

We can see that Judaism has become sick in the same bed as Christendom. There too has come such a shims that several groups claim the other group may not call themselves Jew. It has even come so far that Israel’s rabbinical authorities have compiled a blacklist of overseas rabbis whose authority they refuse to recognize when it comes to certifying the Jewishness of someone who wants to get married in Israel.

Israel’s Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef (L) and Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi David Lau. Moti Milrod – The Chief Rabbinate having released a list of foreign “kosher” rabbis whose conversions it recognizes and whose signatures it accepts on documents attesting to various aspects of personal status.

The Christian community and the Jewish community should remember

However, considering that the people during the Second Temple period were engaged in Torah study, observance of mitzvot, and acts of kindness, why was the Second Temple destroyed?

It was destroyed due to the fact that there was baseless hatred during that period. This comes to teach you that the sin of baseless hatred is equivalent to the three transgressions: Idol worship, forbidden sexual relations and bloodshed. – Yoma 9b {Sick and Tired}

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Preceding article

Women their education and chances to become a parliamentary

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Additional reading

1. Converso Involvement in the Sabbatai Zevi Movement
2. Difference between a Messianic Gentile, a Messianic Jew and a Christian
3. The modern Messianic Jewish movement
4. Today’s thought “Ability to circumcise your heart” (May 13)

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Further reading

1. Synagogues and Sanctuary: It’s Time to Get Politicized
2. On anti-Semitism, anti-Islam and fictitious alliances in U.S.
3. UK’s chief rabbi: Labour ‘failed Jewish community’ with Livingstone suspension
4. Happy Passover – Celebrate freedom
5. The Insults Are No Accident
6. Mimouna night in CSL
7. Remembrance: Candle Lights For Fallen In Holocaust
8. Canada’s oldest Jewish community welcomes new addition – a history museum
9. Now Available: Wrestling in the Daylight 2.0!
10. Cote Saint-Luc Rabbi represents Canada at Conference of Cardinals, Bishops and Rabbinic Leaders
11. Israel must honor God or the Rule of Law is meaningless
12. Jewish Security Funds In State Budget Leave Others Feeling Excluded
13. New Holocaust museum will preserve lost Jewish identity and history in Thessaloniki
14. Economic roots of Jewish persecutions in Medieval Europe
15. B’nai Brith recognizes Cote Saint-Luc in fight against racism, anti-semtism, discrimination
16. A Community for Secular Jews
17. Marking the Boundaries
18. The Real Wall Problem: When Will Diaspora Jews Fight For Palestinians?
19. God-Optional Judaism
20. Incredible speech in UN: “Where are your Jews?”
21. What is Yom Yerushalayim and what does it consist of?
22. #Navarra University listening to the GM of Spain Jewish Communities Council(#
23. #Jews in #Zimbabwe
24. Toledo: Sephardic Culture at the University
25. Israeli Blacklist of US Rabbis Points to Widening Rift — The Rabbis Deemed ‘Kosher’ for Conversions by Israel’s Rabbinate: The Full List
26. El Tribunal Superior de Justicia de Madrid rechaza el Boicot contra Israel
27. Macabiah: The Zionist Olympics
28. Malaga will have more than two years with a museum devoted to Spanish Jewish thought.
29. The invisible Jewish population of Udine
30. “Qualitavely Jews are not a minority”
31. Potential new location found for CSL synagogue
32. The Small But Mighty Greek Jewish Community of Thessaloniki -The Forward
33. Chechnya’s Jewish community is angry at Israel… but doesn’t seem to exist
34. French Jews ‘will have to give up dual Israeli citizenship’ if Marine Le Pen wins presidential election

Certain Catholics claiming that the power of the priest is equal to that of Jesus Christ

Unbelievable what we encountered to day at some websites to which was reacted, by repeating it

The power of the priest is equal to that of Jesus Christ.

At the particular website (reacting to it) they also quote some text where it is said that

the priest, reaches up into heaven, and brings Christ down from his throne and places Him upon our alter to be offered up again as the victim for the sins of man. {Catholic Mass vs Biblical Salvation}

We never would think people could be so pretentious to think they have more power than Jesus and can bring him down form heaven.  Though it looks like the people writing at that website sincerely mean what they are writing. Even when they think Jesus is God they think they have so much power, not to say even more power, than their god, able to bring him down and to be equal to their god. They even go so far to consider it possible and righteous that their god would bow down for them.

The priest brings Christ down from heaven and renders him present on our alter as the eternal victim for the sins of man….not once, but a thousand times. Christ, the eternal omnipotent God, bows his head in humble obedience to the catholic priest. {Catholic Mass vs Biblical Salvation}

They even have no scruples to say

Lets compare this breathtaking scenario to what the bible says;

Who needeth daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins and then for the people, for this he did ONCE, when He offered up Himself. {Catholic Mass vs Biblical Salvation}

They do seem to miss the point that it was man, Jesus Christ, who offered himself up. they, who take Jesus as their God, do not seem to understand what it meant for Jesus not to do his own will, but to do the will of his heavenly Father, the God of Abraham, Who is a singular eternal Spirit.

Though they themselves quote the Bible saying

But this MAN, after He had offered one sacrifice for the sins of man forever, sat down at the right hand of God forever. {Catholic Mass vs Biblical Salvation}

They do not seem to see nor understand that Jesus is now made higher than angels, having been lower than angels before, and now been taken up into the heavens to sit next to God and not in God His place, not having taken over from God but been authorised to act in the name of God, like he was authorised before here on earth.

They also seem to miss the point that

11But when Christ came as high priest of the good things that have come, He entered the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made by hands (that is, not of this creation).

They also seem to miss the point of Jeremiah writing down that this sent one from God was going to cleanse the world from all its iniquity by which man have sinned against the Most High Elohim, and that it is the Most High Divine Maker Who will pardon all their iniquities by which they have sinned against Him and by which they have transgressed against God. {Jeremiah 33:8}

It is incredible that those Catholic priests may think they are able to be equal to Christ who appeared as a high priest of the good things to come and entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation. {Hebrews 9:11}

 

They may think that in their temples or churches, made with human hands, they have a building from God, but they do forget The God does not like to see any graven images of Him nor other gods where people bow in front of them or which are worshipped.  How then can their church be a temple for or of God?

We do know they like their churches decorated with saints and so called religious pictures.

The richness of the atmosphere, packed as the building is, with imagery of biblical scenes and saints, both oil paintings and murals, together with vast amounts of gold and silver (in colour, but I suspect real metal too, in leaf form), and the music – taken together it overwhelmed me. {Being Catholic}

writes Struans.

They are proud to have a

Romanish practice of bringing down Christ from heaven to sacrifice him again and again in order to relieve those in attendance from their sins means the Romanish religion says that Christs sacrifice on Calvary wasn’t enough.

but do not seem to fully understand the implications of them not accepting that Jesus ransom offering would not be good enough for God and that they as priest can make such better offerings each time over and over again.

Though he considers that priests are also Christs who can equally forgive sins (forgetting that it was not Jesus who forgave sins but his heavenly Father). He further writes

Cultural conditioning did not stop Our Lord from doing anything during His incarnation on earth nor has the Holy Spirit moved the Church to change what Christ established in His male-only priesthood. That which was begun in the OT Church and perfected in His NT Church is the Will of the Father and instituted by Christ Himself. {The Male Priesthood: Culturally Conditioned?}

Philip Augustine writes

we, the Charity of Christ do not invent our own faith–which is what someone is doing with “I” statements. We receive it from God, and we do so through the Church that Christ founded. Many will reject this sentiment, but it is because just like the Hebrews in the desert calling to go back to Pharaoh, they prefer the chains of slavery–the chains of the world–rather than the liberation of the God the Father Almighty.

On which Jamie Carter reacts

Jesus chose twelve men, mostly from around the Galilee, mostly fisherman, though one was a tax collector and a doctor, I think. They were all Jewish. If you’re saying that because Jesus chose men that only men may serve as priests, then you need to remember that he chose Jewish Galileans who spoke with distinctive accents. If you’re saying it’s not necessary that priests be Jewish Galileans with accents, then I’d agree that it’s not necessary that they be men either.

Grandpa Zeke finds

to insist that the priesthood is limited to males, as the Catholic Church does, is not limiting the power of God’s word and is possible to implement, no matter the ethnicity or language of the priest.

God himself differentiates between men and women, in Genesis 2 for instance. It might be worth a re-read of Gen 2 in light of this discussion. This does not demean women, it merely faces the reality, both physically and spiritual, that God created men and women equally in His image, but different. (We are not all clones of each other, every individual human being is different and still a child of God made in his image.)

But the priests also made in the image of God may not consider themselves to be Christs nor to be equal to Christ and most of all certainly not to be equal to God.

 

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Additional reading

1. When not seeing or not finding a biblically sound church
2. Which Christian sect is the only true Christian church?
3. Not everyone in the churches of Christ are “ungodly”
4. Church has to grow through witness, not by proselytism
5. Hello America and atheists
6. Engaging the enemy

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Further reading

1. Who Is Melchizedek | Bible Question
2. Jesus Christ’s High Priesthood was of the Order of Melchizedek
3. Gospel Doctrine 2017 – Lesson 25: Priesthood: “The Power of Godliness”
4. Responses to Jesus Christ’s High Priesthood
5. What is your vocation?
6. “Lord Jesus, Grant Us More Priests!” – Homily by Fr. Nathan
7. Ordinations, or the lack thereof – an update
8. Ordinations: Good men so happy to be of service to the Holy Family
9. Are All Christians Priests? The Biblical Evidence for Priests Separate from the Laity
10. Jesus & triple-taps on a priest’s day off
11. Catholic Priest By the Side of Congressman Scalise
12. Ye Shall Have Power – Moroni 2:2
13. The Branch — Zechariah 6.
14. A Friar Life: Fr. Joe
15. Eye on the Sparrow
16. original therapy
17. Abram and Lot Part
18. What a difference a year makes…
19. Priestly Ordination of Deacon Dennis
20. Pop Goes the Bubble
21. Prophets have Melchizedek Priesthood
22. Lines of Authority
23. Jesus Overthrows a Corrupt Priesthood
24. This Catholic priest’s Glock 19 target practice: Rope swinging video
25. A Royal Priesthood?
26. Saturday Sermon and a Special Mass
27. Bruce R. McConkie Explains The Revelation On The Priesthood
28. What Will Endure?
29. Men Raised Up
30. “The Latin Mass Has Made Me a Better Priest.”
31. 14 June: An Inconsiderable unit
32. 20 Years as a Catholic Priest! Catholic Inspiration
33. Healings, Heroes, and Heartaches
34. Baptist Church Problems with Race
35. Congratulations to Newly Ordained Priests
36. 7 7 7 – Summorum Pontificum: the 10th anniversary in Lourdes. “Just wear dental guards, Father George!”
37. A Heroic Priesthood 
38. BBC’s #Broken: 5 things it revealed about Christianity and Faith
39. The search for shephers: Challenges
40. Voices and Faith of Women
41. Women and the Priesthood
42. She’s my vicar
43. Sustaining Church Leaders
44. Famous Exorcist Fr. Gabriele Amorth on How ‘Smoke’ of the Devil Entered the Church

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Related articles

• Pope Summons Imo Catholic Priests For Rejecting Bishop
• Thursday, 6 July 2017 : 13th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Maria Goretti, Virgin and Martyr (Gospel Reading)
• Talks between Muslim leaders, terrorists ‘not sanctioned by gov’t’
• This 12-year-old’s viral coming out is the latest example of queer Mormon resistance
• Microphone cut after Mormon girl reveals she’s gay at church
• Step down
• Mormon church now allows female employees to wear trousers
• Once Saved, Forever Saved?

Dying for or instead

Tragically, the simple words “Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8) have been grossly misunderstood as meaning that Christ died instead of us.

There are a number of connections between Romans 5 and 1 Cor. 15 (e.g. v. 12 = 1 Cor. 15:21; v. 17 = 1 Cor. 15:22). “Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8) is matched by “Christ died for our sins” (1 Cor. 15:3). His death was in order to make a way whereby we can gain forgiveness of our sins; it was in this sense that “Christ died for us”. The word “for” does not necessarily mean ‘instead of’; Christ died “for our sins”, not ‘instead of’ them. Because of this, Christ can “make intercession” for us (Heb. 7:25) – not ‘instead of’ us. Neither does “for” mean ‘instead of’ in Heb. 10:12 and Gal. 1:4.

Jesus is Our Representative Not Our Substitute

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X5DZ9PbMMVE

– Peter Foster

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Related articles

• Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
• Let Us Rejoice
• Position Yourself to Receive from God
• Your Cursed Curses Are Useless
• Each gift is given by the Holy Spirit
• Diana’s Testimony
• Justification – salvation is by grace through faith – JI Packer
• Faith itself not the cause of justification – Louis Berkhof
• Additional comments to the 3rd Letter to the Romans
• How exactly does Jesus pay for our sins? (if he is not God)