Posted on 06/24/2014 2:13:28 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
All interesting questions, and I appreciate the sense of genuine inquiry. It’s good every now and then to get past talking past each other.
However, I am at work, and tapping out answers on my droid is painfully slow, so I can only give the most cursory answers, for now. Perhaps more later.
1. Everyone who loves Jesus wants to do good. So Rev 22 seems applicable, especially in context of being descriptive rather than prescriptive. The chief commandments are love for God and neighbor. Will God hold us to account for not eating kosher or holding temple service, complete with sacrifice? That is not the focus of Rev 22. Personal morality, integrity, honesty, all are in view. But descriptively. What Protestants reject is not the need for personal holiness, but that we can take any credit for personal righteousness that follows our salvation, or that the final outcome is not under Gods control, but the fallible, fickle will of fallen sinners. He justifies us with no condition imposed other than faith, and that itself is gift from Him. Then He molds us into the righteous people He always planned for us to be. And if that true change of the inner man to love God and neighbor does not happen, that person has reason to fear the description of those lost souls found outside the gate on that final day.
2. The fire spoken of by Paul that consumes our wood, hay, and stubble is not literal suffering in the netherworld, as if the suffering of Christ was not enough, or could be added to. It is as much a metaphor as the wood and hay etc. I take it to mean the measuring if our deeds against the holiness of God. Whatever we have done inconsistent with that, though covered by the blood of Christ and so not due cause for purgatorial suffering, is nonetheless a loss to us, a failure to make the most of the opportunities to live well as God defines it. So the many warnings have multiple purposes, with much Scripture to describe it. But Paul is not wrong. We will not enter into the Gospel by the sealing of the Spirit, then finish by deeds of the flesh. Any view that fails to account for the completeness of the redemption provided in the death of Christ is a partial gospel at best.
3. I am not able to speak to the eternal state of someone like the pastor you described. Reformed folks like myself view OSAS in terms if the “perseverance of the saints,” that salvation is not some automatic effect of saying a ritual prayer, but a true heart conversion that fills one with the Holy Spirit and a keen desire to please Him in every way possible. Whether this pastor is genuinely saved but living a life of wood, hay, and stubble, or whether he is self-deceived and lost as can be, is above my pay grade. That’s between him and God. My advice to him would be to forsake every trace of sin in his life, returning to his first love, no matter the cost, thereby making his calling and election sure.
Out of time.
Peace,
SR
14Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless. 15And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you; 16As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction. 17Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own stedfastness. 18But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen.
I think you may given me the straw that broke the camels back reason to dump my dumb phone and replace it with a smart phone.
I was doing the Divine office for quite a while, but had trouble carrying the book around in my daily routine.
I keep getting an error message from this site. It is either 100% or they can’t call themselves conservative. They are hedging their bets.
That free program is probably the most important app on my phone. If you’re going to buy an iphone wait a couple months, the 6 should be out soon and the 5s will be cheaper. I’m all about saving money. :)
I am actually leaning toward a Samsung. I was forced to use an apple Mac for a semester after 10 years on a PC and have pretty much sworn off anything Apple
I don’t know that brevmeum is available on the android side of things, as far as I can tell it’s an iphone app only. I’ve been using iphones since they came out in 2007 and an android tablet for a couple of years... get the iphone. :)
If only you people would read the scriptures before you go off the deep end with craziness like this...Of course Paul spent time with Jesus, face to face...The RISEN Lord Jesus...
So then, you can't reconcile the scripture I posted with the scripture you posted...Why didn't you just say that??? How can you with a good conscience expound on any scripture when you have to reject other scripture???
Of course they do...God wrote it for us...It's called the bible...
Breviarium Meum HDAbout.com Reader's Choice Finalist 2012Breviarium Meum allows you to pray the traditional (1962) Latin breviary of the Catholic Church wherever you go. Just pull out your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad, select the hour to pray, and begin. You can download the texts up to a week in advance, so you can pray even when you don't have a network connection. So if you’re on a mountain top making a retreat, or down in a valley to celebrate Mass in an isolated village, you can still keep up with the office, even if you left your printed breviary at home.
What if you lose the iphone while on the mountain??? Apparently you lose all contact with whoever it is you are praying to...
Then God is obviously punishing you.
>> “Paul said that ANY other gospel than the one he preached is an accursed gospel” <<
.
Yes, he did.
He also said that the gospel that he preached is the very same one that Moses preached in the desert. That is the gospel of obedience to the commandments spawned by belief and love for our Creator and Savior.
The gospel you promote here is another gospel, and cannot be found anywhere in the word of God.
Grace is not imputed to those that do not believe fully in the words of our Savior. Nor would such grace produce an eternal contract for salvation in one whose faith waxes cold at a later date, as Yeshua has plainly stated: “The faith of many shall wax cold...”
An earnest reading of Hebrews 3 and 4, and 1John 2, should do wonders for any that think otherwise.
.
Still promoting your high carb poison I see.
Had you referred back one chapter to Romans 2, you would have seen that the righteousness that derives through having Torah written on our hearts is the sole avenue for sinful man to achieve eternal life.
Paul does not contradict himself from chapter to chapter; but the conniving mind of sinful man does twist his words aided by a poor Greek translation of his words that fails to differentiate man's law and Yehova’s law.
.
“And that’s the very grovelling I have no intention of doing.”
You should look up the definition (and spelling) of the word “groveling.”
“Where God opens up an opportunity to share the Gospel”
You’re not sharing the Gospel. You’re just repeating some very wrong-headed, wrong-hearted misinterpretations of the Bible.
“Besides, you crashed my conversation, not the other way around.”
If you want private conversation, don’t post it in public areas. I’ll go one better than that; if told that a conversation is private, I’ll withdraw.
“but your “arguments” consist[-p] of “shut up” and “grrrr.” Is that all you’ve got?”
How interesting it is that conservatives who argue the wrong side of an issue argue it like a liberal, and not like a conservative.
Here you deny that I have posted hundreds of words of reasoned argument over the past few days. For whose sake do you do this? Not mine, because I know that I posted them. I guess it could only be an attempt to deceive yourself or others. Don’t know; don’t really care.
“I am sorry for you.”
No, you’re not. You are just trying to come up with things to say that will make me feel bad. Boring.
“If you had some killer argument that established transubstantiation as truth, that card would have been played by now.”
I guess that scripture does not count as a killer argument for you. Anyway, I told you that you can discover the truth of the matter for yourself, and you never have replied to that.
“Instead, its all about psyops.”
Every time somebody is arguing against the truth, they come up with that kind of argument sooner or later. BTW, the contraction of “it is” is “it’s,” not “its.”
“And I’m pretty sure making it personal, even if used as an avoidance tactic, is contra forum rules.”
Somebody call the waaambulance.
“There’s a good reason for that.”
That would only be true if the rule were applied intelligently. Instead, you can get away with all kinds of personal insults, just so long as you do a good enough imitation of Oscar Wilde.
You can’t say, “You are a dolt,” but you can say something like, “I would never make a personal comment about an FR poster, but if someone else said “x,” it would be clear that such a person is a coprophagic catamite who is addicted to many disgusting perversions and has the intelligence of a garden slug.” It is clear to everyone that you are indeed talking about a specific FR poster, but because you phrased it in that way, it passes muster. The policy has the benefit of preventing some of the worst excesses, but it does not prevent one from “getting personal,” de facto.
You have gotten personal with me in this oblique manner, and I let it go, so I am not inclined to take your whining seriously.
“Do you feel you are beyond such limitations?”
What would matter to me is what I thought, not what I felt, and what I think is set forth above.
“Just curious.”
Nonsense. You are offended by my apparent belief that I am right and you are wrong, and that if you achieve a better understanding of these matters you will come to agree with me. That’s why you can’t let it go.
“And well enough He didn’t say it that way. It would be passing strange to explicitly label an obvious metaphor so awkwardly and academically”
At the very least it was translated from Greek or Aramaic to Latin, then to an antique form of English.
I was a professional translator for over 20 years, and I have seen how the translation of even a commonplace idiom can become very strange, particularly if a committee is working on it.
It’s not strange that the phrasing is stilted; in fact, I would be suspicious if it were not. These words were chosen because they best transmit the intended meaning, stilted or not. Clarity, not poetry.
“and quite alien to Jesus’ style of communication”
So, you guys were hanging, shooting the bull in Aramaic, were you?
“I’m not the one to blame for the existence of direct metaphors.”
So, many of His disciples fled and never came back because they suffer from a morbid fear of direct metaphors?
“Paul does not contradict himself from chapter to chapter; but the conniving mind of sinful man does twist his words aided by a poor Greek translation of his words that fails to differentiate man’s law and Yehova’s law.”
Kind of makes it tough, doesn’t it? I really wish I had learned those languages.
We are all made victims of the nicolaitans that feed us the false gospels.
Thank you for demonstrating Verga's Theological truth #2 Protestantism is an intellectual vacuum that few are able to crawl out of.
LOLOL...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.