Results 4041 - 4060 of 4325
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Results from: Notes Author: Hank Ordered by Verse |
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Results | Verse | Author | ID# | |||
4041 | Jesus descend into hell | 1 Peter | Hank | 201588 | ||
Brad, while it can be said that there are some points of debate on the subject of hell, it can also be said that there is much ignorance and misunderstanding of it. Please permit my use of a personal example as an illustration. For many years I was a Presbyterian. During all those years I sat with my fellow worshipers in the pew and every Lord's day we "said what we believed" by repeating the Apostles' Creed. I was either a slow learner or a lazy one, because even though I said the words "He descended into hell" in unison with the other worshipers every Sunday, I didn't understand what I was saying. And neither did most of the other worshipers in the congregation, as I found out later. ...... It's truly amazing how one can repeat words that he has been taught and have virtually no more idea of what he is saying than a parrot does. ...... I sat in on a Bible study class one day and at the end of it the leader said to the students, "Let's close by SAYING the Lord's Prayer." So everyone joined in and in a sing-song monotone that would put the most dedicated insomniac to sleep, they SAID the Lord's Prayer. ..... So, if there is a point to this post, it would be this: That merely SAYING what we believe or SAYING a prayer without understanding and fervor is pretty drab business. Even a parrot can do that. --Hank | ||||||
4042 | Why can we not just be Christians? | 1 Pet 1:2 | Hank | 151611 | ||
Ray, please, please -- you've been requested again and again and again -- when you quote a passage from Scripture, quote it EXACTLY as it is written in the particular translation you're quoting from. Please STOP inserting your private symbols, such as parentheses, asterisks and diagonal marks. When you write at the bottom of your Bible quotations, "The parentheses are mine for comparisons," no one knows (or really cares) what you are talking about. Once more I ask you, "Ray, is it impossible for you to copy a text exactly as it is written." If you want to mark up your copy of the Bible with your own brand of hieroglyphics, that's your business. When you quote a passage of Scripture on this Forum, it becomes our business. Please quote it verbatim and leave your personal markings where they belong, at home tucked away in your personal copy of the Bible. Please don't force members of this Forum to take sterner measures against the content of your postings than have already been taken. Do you understand what I am saying to you? --Hank | ||||||
4043 | Why can we not just be Christians? | 1 Pet 1:2 | Hank | 151624 | ||
And, Ray, where were you when, during the course of the last four years, many of your peers on the Forum have expressed their displeasue at your relentless pursuit of your obsessional theories of capitalization, your "divisible by three" theory of pronouns, your "holy spirit" heresy, and your adulteration of quoted Scripture by the insertion of private symbols which are meaningless to the readers of this Forum? There is a saying to the effect that a word to the wise is sufficient, but your response to my post and many others by various members of this Forum is clearly indicative that in your case many words including an official warning are not sufficient. Make no mistake about it. The time to fish or cut bait has come. --Hank | ||||||
4044 | Why can we not just be Christians? | 1 Pet 1:2 | Hank | 151836 | ||
Aixen7z4 quote: "Someone will say we cannot let false doctrine go unchallenged. But the challenge before us is to find the part that we agree on, and focus on that." .... Is it? Does it measure up to God's command to believers in 1 Thess. 5:21: "Test all things; hold fast what is good"? There is a smattering of truth in all religions, but believers are never commanded to focus on partial truths and half truths for unity's sake. Scripture says that followers of Christ are to test all things. Yes, doctrine divides. Sound doctrine always separates the sheep from the goats. Pray tell me how it can do otherwise. The challenge before us is NOT "to find the part we can agree on, and focus on that." The challenge before us is to preach the word! The challenge is to be ready in season and out of season, to convince, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and teaching (2 Timothy 4:2). The Christian may be able to agree with, for example, a Jehovah's Witness on some things. Is he therefore, for the sake of unity, supposed to focus on those things and never mention that the Watchtower Society denies the Deity of Jesus Christ? Unity sought at the expense of sound doctrine is a vain, pointless and ignoble pursuit. --Hank | ||||||
4045 | What is meant to be baptized by fire? | 1 Pet 1:7 | Hank | 15066 | ||
1 Peter 1:7 clearly does not refer to Acts 2 in which Luke speaks of the tongues as of fire appearing at Pentecost. In this passage Peter is speaking of the trials of faith as being essentially productive and to illustrate his point he is referring to the common practice of subjecting gold to intense heat to refine and purify it. Thus, when trials and difficulties assail the life of the believer, he is made purer by the testing. This analogy has absolutely nothing to do with the subject of Acts 2. --Hank | ||||||
4046 | What is meant to be baptized by fire? | 1 Pet 1:7 | Hank | 15068 | ||
The New Testament speaks of four kinds of baptism. (1) The baptism of repentence performed by John the Baptist (2) The baptism of fire, meaning judgment (3) The baptism of the Holy Spirit which comes to every believer at the time of his salvation and has nothing to do with speaking in tongues, and 4) water baptism, or believer's baptism, which is in obedience to Christ's command and is the result and manifestation of salvation, not the means of it. --Hank | ||||||
4047 | Fear God! | 1 Pet 1:17 | Hank | 35694 | ||
Tim, blessings to you, bon ami, bon frere! Jonathan Edwards' most famous sermon perhaps was "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." How would a sermon like that fly in most church houses today? Would the "unfearful" parishioners throw the sermon out the nearest window and the preacher out the back door? We have domesticated God. We have taken away His wrath and judgment and turned Him into that Great Loving Fuzzy-wuzzy Teddy Bear of the Skies. We the faithful have done this. Secular humanism has done more. It ignores God as if He had been but a chalk image on a blackboard that was easily removed by one swipe of a felt eraser. It is much in the vanguard today to commit to the ideological funny farm any notion that the whole duty of man is to fear God and keep His commandments. --Hank | ||||||
4048 | Fear God! | 1 Pet 1:17 | Hank | 35808 | ||
Wak, your observation on the 80/20 rule may well apply to who sells the most widgets, but can you honestly apply it as a guideline for Christian shepherds whose command to feed His sheep comes from none other than the Lord Jesus Christ? (John 21:17) Paul's word to Timothy was "Preach the word!" (2 Tim.4:2). In this there can be no 80/20; it must be 100/0. God's message doesn't "need to be balanced," wak. It is already perfect (Ps.19:7) Our burden is not to decide how much emphasis we place on love and how much on fearing the Lord. Our burden is to preach the word in its perfection and in its completeness without fear or favor. Any attempt to filter out what we don't like to hear and rivet attention only to the things we do like to hear is to distort the full message of God. It is not a proper handling of the word of truth. (2 Tim.2:15). --Hank | ||||||
4049 | Fear God! | 1 Pet 1:17 | Hank | 35821 | ||
Joe, your treatise in defense of the Puritans is both germane to this thread and clearly something that needs to be brought to light in any discussion involving the history of the church in America. Morever, you gave what I believe is a fair and realistic assessment that stands in contrast to popular (erroneous) belief about them. In this context, would it be going too far afield to observe that the disdain with which the Puritans are typically held in our time is not altogether different from the way that we "right-wing radical fundamentalists" are viewed? Oh, but I hope I'm wrong! --Hank | ||||||
4050 | Fear God! | 1 Pet 1:17 | Hank | 35828 | ||
If such fate befalls us evangelicals of today who are "wimpier" than the Puritans were (and I concur with that), one would dread to address the question of how the poor Puritans would fare in the society of our time! Ostracized, severely persecuted, drawn and quartered are words that come swiftly to mind. --Hank | ||||||
4051 | Fear God! | 1 Pet 1:17 | Hank | 35851 | ||
Wak, you are no doubt quite right. The church has never walked in the pure and perfect steps of Christ purely and perfectly in all its days. And, as you say, it should, and because we miss the mark so often and so far excuses us not in the least to cease to "press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." (Phil.3:14) | ||||||
4052 | Fear God! | 1 Pet 1:17 | Hank | 35854 | ||
Ed, very excellent thoughts and worthy of every Christian's careful and serious consideration. Perhaps it is partly because of the church's fear of offending the world that it has so extensively compromised with it, and in so doing lost much of the positive influence that our Lord clearly commanded it to have when He used the words 'salt' and 'light.' Our salt is leaching out and our light is flickering. There's simply too much of the middle-of-the-road approach in modern Christendom. It painfully reminds one of the old adage, He who stands for nothing will fall for anything. And, yes, while the Amish may be the brunt of an occasional joke or jibe, even the jokers deep down have respect for them. But who respects hypocrites? --Hank | ||||||
4053 | Fear God! | 1 Pet 1:17 | Hank | 35856 | ||
Joe, unless the trend abates, the tide turned, these United States -- this "Christian" nation -- may well see the day when freedom will be denied those who proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. There are ominous loomings in the horizon even now. --Hank | ||||||
4054 | "The word of the Lord endureth for ever" | 1 Pet 1:25 | Hank | 131252 | ||
"The word of the Lord endureth forever." Amen, Kalos, amen! ..... Your post caused me to reminisce -- at my age almost anything causes me to reminisce -- and in recalling the works of literature I studied in school, which were then "required reading," I was astonished by how many of them are no longer read widely if at all. Of all the many books that have won either the Pulitzer Prize or the Nobel Prize for literature over the years, a mere handful remain in print. The majority are practically unknown today, even among folks who are supposed to be educated. And in the main the blockbusters of today, those for which readers readily shell out 25 or more dollars, very soon will end up in the bargain bin of used booksellers who will be happy if they fetch a dollar apiece. I've browsed bookstores, chiefly used ones, for decades. Increasingly do I find more space devoted to New Age than New Testament, to gay and lesbian studies than resource materials on the history of the Church, to Harry Potter than Apostle Paul, and to how to live longer on this earth than how to live eternally in Christ Jesus. ...... I don't know but I do wonder what the ratio is among professing Christians between the hours they spend reading secular works, the most enduring of which are essentially ephemeral, and the word of the Lord, which "endureth for ever." --Hank | ||||||
4055 | How can God let us go through pain? | 1 Pet 2:24 | Hank | 42875 | ||
Joe! When you wrote "that's real solid theology!" surely you meant to say "forumology" -- the kind of convoluted stuff that has become the hallmark of this web site. --Hank | ||||||
4056 | How can God let us go through pain? | 1 Pet 2:24 | Hank | 42961 | ||
Tim, what you say is regretfully true. While I personally consider myself singularly blessed to be a member of a sound church body that exalts God's word, teaching and preaching it without fear or favor, I nevertheless see enough on TV religious programs and elsewhere to convince me that Christianity is in deep trouble. It is easy enough to draw an inference that many of these far-out programs being aired daily are but a microcosm of what is happening to sound Christian doctrine round the country and indeed the world over. Churches today who uphold sound doctrine find themselves in the ignominious position of being under attack not only by strong forces from without but also from within, even by groups who profess to be members of the body of Christ. The situation is nothing short of being deplorable, but we need fear no power but the power of God, so long as we maintain an unwavering trust in Him, His word, and in His eternal promises. Tim, I'm thankful for you and your fine contributions to this forum. You and a few others have become a solid core of heralds of biblical truth on this forum, without whose steady hand and guiding light this forum would have long since floundered in a tempestuous sea of rancor, discord, and heresy. --Hank | ||||||
4057 | How can God let us go through pain? | 1 Pet 2:24 | Hank | 43047 | ||
There is no scene that I could ever imagine more dreadful than coming face to face with the Sovereign Lord of heaven and earth (as someday I shall) carrying the awesome burden of having to confess to Him: "Lord God, those were some great Scriptures, but I just didn't believe them." --Hank | ||||||
4058 | How can God let us go through pain? | 1 Pet 2:24 | Hank | 43121 | ||
Your statement in reference to Revelation 21:4 is the only statement in your post that I can identify as being biblically based. I have no idea where your other statements came from or on what they are based. Do you? --Hank | ||||||
4059 | How can God let us go through pain? | 1 Pet 2:24 | Hank | 43410 | ||
Excellent series of posts, Joe, in which you allowed the Bible to speak its eternal truth plainly and forcefully about the nature of the sovereign and transcendent God. Having been a Christian for more than five decades, I have seen not only the brands of error being dispensed by electronic media charlatans of our day -- the Brother Bennies and the Sister Joyces -- but I have also seen the seen error, by a different name perhaps but error just the same, being promulgated in a by-gone time in tent meetings and sawdust revivals. We called them the Elmer Gantrys back then. It is painfully obvious to me that the thirst for a feel-good, non-biblical burlesque version of pseudo-Christianity that existed five decades ago exists still. The itching ears of yesteryear that gave audience to false teaching continue to itch still. The need to preach the word was a crying need then and is a crying need still. Joe, the things you have said in this series of posts may fall into disfavor and be called merely your spin or opinion, or your faulty interpretation or your own pet doctrine that somehow is viewed as being under the private ownership of apologistics such as we whose aim it is to direct the searchlight of the truth of God's word to expose the error of man's opinion. In this endeavor I consider this series of your posts a noteworthy monument. --Hank | ||||||
4060 | How can God let us go through pain? | 1 Pet 2:24 | Hank | 43412 | ||
Lest somone may not understand my meaning in the previous post, _apologistics_ should read _apologists_ and for that error I apologize. --Hank | ||||||
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