What does it matter if they agree with me???
Let them wrestle with the two texts I cited -- 1 Peter 2:4-9 & Rev. 1:5-6.
God isn't going to hold them accountable as to whether or not to agree with me; I am not Lord of their lives.
However, He will hold them accountable if they take an eraser to those passages; clip them out; and live as if they don't exist.
The Scriptures are not authority, there are a number of different translations and versions and interpretations that make it impossible to settle many questions.
You know we're awfully glad that Jesus didn't take your same sorry attitude toward the Old Testament as you do toward the Bible...and here -- to strengthen the NEW Testament even more are His very words strewn all about & thruout it!!! (Gospels; Acts; Revelation)
I don't ever find Jesus using this sorry excuse about the Old Testament that you use: "Oh, there's different OT interpretations...and there's the Septuagint vs. the Tanahk..." Not at all. He quoted it constantly. Before referencing a passage, He would ask, "Have you not read...?" or He would say, "You have heard it said..."
The apostle Paul did the same thing in Acts 17:11 by commending the Bereans as "noble" because they took the new revelations and compared them to the existing ones (the OT) to see if they were so.
Paul didn't say to them, "Oh, yeah...you don't have a way of confirming what I'm saying 'cause the Prophets and the Psalms and the wisdom books and the Pentateuch are unreliable."
...if as you say all believers in Christ have the priesthood then the Mormons have it too because they certainly believe in Christ.
Why do you assume every "Christ" identity out there is the same or is THE genuine article?
Are you so easily fooled as a world traveler whenever a street peddler offers you a high-end brand-name watch? Are you that dupe-able?
Jesus said: "4 Jesus answered: “Watch out that no one deceives you. 5 For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will deceive many." (Matthew 24:4-5)
To hear you tell it, every false Messiah group that comes along -- the ones Jesus references here -- would somehow be "Messianic" (Christian) -- just because they believe in a "Messiah" with symbolism attached to the Christ of the Bible.
The "Christ" of the Marharishi of Transcendental Meditation is a Jesus who never suffered -- at odds with the cross.
The "Christ" of Guru Maharaj Ji supposedly merged with Krishna, Ram and Buddha -- at odds with the uniqueness of Jesus.
The only difference between the Moonie "christ" and the rest of us, said, Sun Myung Moon, is that Jesus had no original sin nature.
The "christ" of Christian Science think of themselves as "Christian," yet they don't believe Jesus is God.
The "christ" of the Jehovah's Witnesses is not Almighty and is "a god," but not "THE" God; nor did He bodily resurrect.
The "christ" of many gnostics would in no way incarnate a human body -- because that to them would be too "corrupt" of a thing to do.
The "christ" of Brigham Young was one redeemer-savior among who knows how many? "He was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. On every earth. How many earths are there?...Consequently every earth has its redeemer..." Brigham told us (Journal of Discourses, Vol. 14, p. 71, 1870) [Not exactly a "unique" redeemer among a slew full of them!]
The "christ" of Mormonism is a pre-existent spirit-creature; a son of a God-man whose next-in-line brother is "Lucifer/Satan" -- a "Jesus" who had to work out his own salvation; and whose blood didn't cover all of our personal sins (thereby rendering him as an incomplete, inadequate "savior").
Can somebody tell us: How can all these "christs" be one-in-the-same?
Can you answer that, JA???
Are you that easily duped?
Would you believe EVERY CHARACTER wanting to buy your used car (or house) with cash that looks a little fishy?
I find it odd the Romans tells us the scriptures are hard to interpret but when it comes to stones and keys and Peter those verses are crystal clear and literal.
Indeed. The argument from ambiguity has 2 forms which are use. That of using ambiguous statements to support a doctrine, as RCs with Purgatory, and that of dismissing what Scripture most clearly states by claiming all Scripture has a level of ambiguity, or is cultural, and which attempt i just dealt with.
The late prohomosexual apologist Walter Wink exampled this, arguing "he crux of the matter, it seems to me, is simply that the Bible has no sexual ethic. There is no Biblical sex ethic." And which specious argumentation is refuted here by God's grace.