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Results from: Answered Bible Questions, Answers, Unanswered Bible Questions, Notes Ordered by Verse | ||||||
Results | Verse | Author | ID# | |||
1 | Apocrypha or Dead Sea Scrolls Helpful? | Rom 9:13 | Ted546 | 128444 | ||
This is going to sound like a stupid question. I have been studying predestination and free will. Now, that's been beat to death here, so I do not want an answer to it. What I have begun to notice is more worrying to me. When I stepped back it suddenly became clear that there was no answer. Or, more correctly, as I studied, the Bible contains no clear answer to this. As I begun to study some other classic arguments it was clear they persisted because they too lacked answers, not because one side studied less or did not get it. It should have been obvious to me before, but there it was. The Bible was inerrant, but must be incomplete for doctrine. Why else would such devout and faithful people disagree about so many basic issues? So, I wanted to know if anyone else has found any other things that have helped them, like the Apocrypha or Dead Sea Scrolls. I feel like I just need more information. Any recommendations on where to go now? | ||||||
2 | Apocrypha or Dead Sea Scrolls Helpful? | Rom 9:13 | BradK | 128445 | ||
Ted546, You're right that the topic of Calvinism and Arminianism has been beat to death. The argument has not been resolved over the past 500 years of debate and the consensus here was that we would not resolve it either:-) May I offer some help in the form of reposting the words of the late and emminent C.H. Spurgeon: "DO NOT IMAGINE for an instant that I pretend to be able thoroughly to elucidate the great mysteries of predestination. There are some men who claim to know all about the matter. They twist it round their fingers as easily as if it were an everyday thing; but depend upon it, he who thinks he knows all about this mystery, knows but very little. It is but the shallowness of his mind that permits him to see the bottom of his knowledge; he who dives deep, finds that there is in the lowest depth to which he can attain a deeper depth still. The fact is, that the great questions about man's responsibility, free-will, and predestination, have been fought over, and over, and over again, and have been answered in ten thousand different ways; and the result has been, that we know just as much about the matter as when we first began. The combatants have thrown dust into each other's eyes, and have hindered each other from seeing; and then they have concluded, that because they put other people's eyes out, they could therefore see. Now, it is one thing to refute another man's doctrine, but a very different matter to establish my own views. It is very easy to knock over one man's hypothesis concerning these truths, not quite so easy to make my own stand on a firm footing. I shall try to-night, if I can, to go safely, if I do not go very fast; for I shall endeavour to keep simply to the letter of God's Word. I think that if we kept more simply to the teachings of the Bible, we should be wiser than we are; for by turning from the heavenly light of revelation, and trusting to the deceitful will-o'-the-wisps of our own imagination, we thrust ourselves into quags and bogs where there is no sure footing, and we begin to sink; and instead of making progress, we find ourselves sticking fast. The truth is, neither you nor I have any right to want to know more about predestination than what God tells us. That is enough for us. If it were worth while for us to know more, God would have revealed more. What God has told us, we are to believe, but to the knowledge thus gained, we are too apt to add our own vague notions, and then we are sure to go wrong. It would be better, if in all controversies, men had simply stood hard and fast by "Thus saith the Lord," instead of having it said, "Thus and thus I think." I trust that this will be of help. BradK |
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3 | Apocrypha or Dead Sea Scrolls Helpful? | Rom 9:13 | Ted546 | 128446 | ||
Thanks BradK. I think Spurgeon is very insightful. But my question is now a little different. I do not think the answer is in the Bible. If it was we would know. But I have hope that clues to this and other problems might lie elsewhere in other things that were once considered scripture. So, I was really wondering if anyone had opinions of these other books. | ||||||
4 | Apocrypha or Dead Sea Scrolls Helpful? | Rom 9:13 | Hank | 128464 | ||
Ted, what other books are you talking about? There are literally tons of "other books" besides the Word of God, but God did not write them, did not reveal Himself in them, and they are not "given by inspiration of God" and therefore are not "profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteous, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work." [2 Timothy 3:16,17. The Word of God (the Bible) is the only authority for faith and practice. And anyone who thinks this Word is incomplete and that he must search elsewhere for truth is deceiving himself. "For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword..." [Cf. Hebrews 4:12]. ..... You asked for opinons of these other books and I will give you mine. I base this opinion on many years as a Christan who has made some effort to know God's word by reading and studying it -- for some 55 years, in fact. Don't waste your time on counterfeits that have been rejected for centuries as spurious fakes, unreliable and uninspired. I don't know your age, but if you happen to be, let's say, 30 years old, and lived to be 969 years old like Methuselah did, and if during those 939 more years, you devoted yourself with diligence and much zeal to the study of God's word, chances are great that you would know it considerably better than you do now. But the chances are even greater that at the end of those 939 years you would not have begun to come close to exhausting its riches. Stay with the word of God, friend. Don't presume to nourish your soul by drinking at the fountain of stale second-rate rejects when you can drink freely at the fountain of Living Water. And please don't presume that any of these "other books" are capable of giving you reliable answers to your spiritual questions. They were written by men who may have less spiritual insight than you do. ....... You have questions about divine election and predestination? So does everyone else who is wise. The answers to all these tough questions are in the mind of God, and only fools presume to know everything about the mind of Almighty God. The proper measurement of human wisdom is less in what one knows and more in his realization and acceptance of what he does not know and, because of his finite, human limitations, what he can never know, at least as long as he walks the earth on feet of clay. Again, in summation, I sincerely say to you that if you do not find all the spiritual answers to all your spiritual questions in the Bible, the complete and inerrant word of God, you most assuredly will not find them anywhere else under the sun. But by all means go to the Word and drink of it deeply. You will find answers to all the spiritual things you need to know, and even though you will not find answers to all that you now think you want to know but cannot know or perhaps should not know, your study of God's word is capable of empowering you with the wisdom to know the difference. --Hank | ||||||