Results 61 - 77 of 77
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Results from: Answers On or After: Thu 12/31/70 Author: jonp Ordered by Date |
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Results | Verse | Author | ID# | |||
61 | sermon on the mound | Matt 5:1 | jonp | 183907 | ||
Hi The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus' detailed instructions on what is required of those who have been blessed by God and are thus His saved ones. For a full and detailed treatment of the Sermon go to http://www.angelfire.com/planet/matthew1/index.html Best wishes jonp |
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62 | insight on Romans 12:5-9 wanted | Rom 12:5 | jonp | 183892 | ||
Hi, This passage refers to God's gifts to members of His church through The Holy Spirit because each of us have a different function in the church. Each receives gifts in accordance with God's purpose and love. These include speaking in the power of the Spirit (prophecy), the comparative success of which will depend on faith, teaching with the guidance of the Spirit, exhorting and encouraging others, serving the church or others in differing ways through the Spirit, Christian giving which is to be done liberally, helping others which is to be done zealously, performing acts of compassion, which is to be done cheerfully, and so on. The important thing in each case is that the heart is in it. It is to be done for Christ in genuine love. Best wishes jonp | ||||||
63 | What is the IMAGE of the Glory of God | 2 Cor 3:18 | jonp | 183888 | ||
Hi the knowledge of the glory of God is found in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Corintians 4.4-6). You can find it by reading the Gospels and becoming fully acquainted wih Jesus Christ, and as you do so your life will slowly change. Best wishes jonp | ||||||
64 | Isaiah 7:14 | Is 7:14 | jonp | 183886 | ||
Hi. The problem with the words bethulah (Hebrew)and parthenos (Greek) is that they are both used of 'virgins' who were very far from being virgins. Thus Anath the sister of Baal in the Baal myths was called a bethulah and she was the goddess of reproduction!! The Greek temple prostitutes were called 'virgins'. When the word bethulah is used of a virgin in Genesis 24.16 the words have to be added that she had also not 'known' a man,suggesting that a bethulah was not necessarily a virgin. There was in fact only one Hebrew word in which meant virgin and that was 'alma which meant 'a young woman of marriagable age who was not yet married' (and was therefore assumed to be a virgin. In Greek the nearest was parthenos, even though it was not perfect Best wishes jonp. | ||||||
65 | Where I can find documentation | 2 Tim 3:16 | jonp | 183876 | ||
Hi. Phew! Three books required all at once. For the Jewish canon may I suggest you read 'The Canonisation of Hebrew Scripture' by A C Sundberg. But of course we have clear evidence of the final decision of the Scribes in the Jewish Scriptures as contained for example in the Massoretic Text, and as accepted by the Jews today. The Jews of Alexandria, who were very liberal, incorporated the Apocryphal book into the Septuagint, but it is significant that no Hebrew versions of these books were preserved. They were not seen as Scripture by the vast majority of Jews. And this is confirmed by the resurrected Jesus in His definition of the Scriptures as the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms (Luke 24.44). He thus excluded the Apocryphal books You are quite right in saying that no person, church or council has the right to declare which books are the inspired word of God. However, apart from in the initial stages when all was overseen by the Apostles there was never a time when there was 'one church on earth' in an hierarchical sense. The church was one spiritually and looked on themselves as one body, but they certainly did not all look to Rome. Had you gone to Alexandria or Antioch around say 300 AD and said to them 'You are in submission to the see of Rome' you would have been lucky to escape with being tarred and feathered. Naturally the great cities began to be looked to as places which could settle disputes, for they had the largest churches and attracted the most prominent persons (including at first the Apostles). In the early church the see of Antioch originally held the position of primary see on prestigious grounds, although not as having authority over the remainder. It gained this privilege from its ancient heritage (Acts 13.1-2). Gradually the see of Alexandria began to claim prime importance. But neither paid any heed to Rome except as fellow brethren. Indeed the first weak attempt of Rome to claim primacy was at the Council of Nicea in 325 AD and that was firmly put in its place, even in spite of the support of Constantine the Great who was trying to insist on it. (Which was why they tried it in the first place). This is all well documented. In fact there has never been a time when the sees of Antioch or Alexandria genuinely accepted the priority of Rome. Of course Rome tried its best and having (a thousand years after the time of Christ) brought the leaders of Alexandria and Antioch together forced them to submit at the point of the sword (a truly-Christ like action) but they rejected it as soon as the sword was removed from their necks. Such a submission under duress meant nothing, except that they were cowards. So you see there never has been one hierarchical church. Of course the Roman Catholics are a denomination (given a name to disinguish them from the others) as are the Eastern Orthodox. More to follow later about the canon, but you might like to consider this bit first. With all best wishes. Jonp |
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66 | When does one receive the Holy Spirit? | 2 Cor 1:22 | jonp | 183800 | ||
Hi The work of the Holy Spirit commences in us before we become Christians. We are elect according to the foreknowledge of God through the setting apart work of the Holy Spirit to obedience and the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus (1 Peter 1.2). But we can only be said to have received the Holy Spirit when we truly believe. At that moment we become His, and if any man has not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His (Romans 8.9). At that point we are drenched in the Spirit into the body of Christ (whether we are baptised in water or not) - 1 Corinthians 12.12-13). From then on we can experience the working of the Spirit in our lives in different ways. He gives His gifts as He wills (1 Corinthians 12.11). And by looking to Christ and walking with Him we can drink of the Spirit and thus be 'filled with the Spirit' (Ephesians 5.18; John 7.37-39). In order to maintain this we must walk step by step with the Spirit, crucifying the flesh with its affections and desires (Galatians 5.24-25). How full we are will depend on how close our walk with Christ. In the early days of the church everyone who believed was immeduately baptised with water. The message was 'believe and be baptised'. Now that baptism does not occur at the time of believing it ceases to be the time at which the Spirit is received. Although that being said it can result in spiritual blessing through the Holy Spirit. | ||||||
67 | evolving or devolving? | Matt 16:28 | jonp | 183798 | ||
Hi stjohn You can read your Bible because you learned the meaning of words through secular history and because secular history developd writing. You use a dictionary produced by secular history. Without realising it you are using secular history all the time in order to understand the Bible. Archaeology illuminates the Bible. But of course God arranged it all. Thus it becomes spiritual history. The Bible is full of secular history and if you are going to fully understand it then you need to know about secular history, otherwise you can interpret it in your own terms. But the Bible shows how God arranged secular history to make it spiritual history. If you did not have definitions of common words supplied by secular history you could not even begin to understand much of the Bible. Understanding how numbers were used in secular history is important because all the Bible writers emerged from secular history and used numbers in the way that their contemporaries did. Much of your interpretation of the Bible arises from your own secular background. In fact of course no history is in the end secular because God is involved in it all. So I do not understand your problem. If you are saying that I believe that knowing the thought forms of the societies from which the Bible writers came helps me to understand what they meant you will be quite right. They wrote in those thought forms. If I interpret them in the light of my own thought forms then I am likely to distort them (as so many do). Of course the message of salvation can come through even if I interpret some things wrongly. But it is spiritually lazy not to try to understand the Bible against its background. Best wishes jonp May I suggest that email is better for questions like the one you asked. Unlike you I give my email address. | ||||||
68 | leviticus and hebrews | Bible general Archive 3 | jonp | 183791 | ||
Hi Leviticus oulines the sacrificial system and the activities of the priesthood, together with the details of the Day of Atonement. Hebrews reveals how all these were fulfilled by Jesus Who as God's High Priest offered Himself up as a sacrifice for us all. | ||||||
69 | The Passover Celebration | John 6:53 | jonp | 183742 | ||
In context in John 6.35 Jesus described what He meant by eating and drinking. 'He who comes to Me will never hunger, and he who believes on me will never thirst. So we eat of Jesus' body and drink of His blood by coming to Him as the One Whose body was broken for us and by believing on Him as the One Whose blood was shed for us. We do celebrate the Passover but the Passover lamb is now Christ our Passover who was sacrificed for us (1 Corinthians 5.7), the Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world (John 1.29). Jesus was partly using Old Testament pictures which depicted killing people in term of eating bread (or flesh) and drinking blood. In order to fully appreciate this we need an awareness of vivid Jewish imagery. In the Old Testament the Psalmist spoke of those who ‘eat up my people like they eat bread’ (Psalm 14.4; 53.4), and Micah describes the unjust rulers of Israel as ‘those who hate the good and love the evil --- who eat the flesh of my people’ (Micah 3.3). Thus ‘eating flesh’ or ‘eating people’ signified killing them or doing them great harm. In Zechariah 9.15 the LXX speaks of the fact that the victorious people of God ‘will drink their blood like wine’ signifying a triumphant victory and the slaughter of their enemies, and David used a similar picture when three of his followers had risked their lives to fetch him water. He poured it out on the ground as an offering to God and said, ‘shall I drink the blood of the men who went at the risk of their lives?’. Isaiah brought both metaphors together when he said of the enemies of Israel that God would ‘make your oppressors eat their own flesh, and they shall be drunk with their own blood as with wine’ (Isaiah 49.26), signifying that they would destroy themselves. Thus in Hebrew thought drinking a person’s blood meant killing someone or benefiting by their death. This can be paralleled elsewhere in the New Testament for in Matthew’s Gospel the people said of their 'fathers' that they were 'partakers in the blood of the prophets’ (Matthew 23.30), because they contributed to their deaths. Thus when Jesus spoke of ‘eating my flesh and drinking my blood’ He was using easily recognised metaphors which signified the fact that He must be violently killed and that the benefit of His death must be received by believing on Him.. |
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70 | Why God did not accept Cain's offering | Gen 47:1 | jonp | 183740 | ||
Cain's offering was not accepted because he had not 'done well. Sin lay at the door (Genesis 4.7). See free commentary on http://www.geocities.com/genesiscommentary/ | ||||||
71 | Why is the Catholic bible different? | 2 Tim 3:16 | jonp | 183695 | ||
Hi, The books you mention were not part of the Jewish canon and Jesus laid His seal on the Hebrew canon (Luke 24.44 - 'Psalms' covered the the other sacred writings) but not on anything outside it. Thus we only have Jesus authority for the three groups of book in the Hebrew canon. On a practical level while Maccabees is of value historically it is clearly in some parts unreliable. Martin Luther was his own man. His decisions about the acceptability of books is not reliable. He was an evangelist and preacher not a Biblical scholar. If he did not think that a book fitted into his ideas her simply discarded it. By all means read Maccabees as a history book which is partly reliable but we have no genuine grounds for accepting it as 'inspired'. Best wishes Peter | ||||||
72 | Prayer for death | 1 Kin 19:4 | jonp | 183689 | ||
Hi The short answer is that no Elijah was not right to want his life to end. It was just that he was despairing because he felt that he had failed and was therefore no longer of any use. What he should have done of course, is what we should do in such circumstances, cast ourselves on God. But most of us have felt somewhat like he did. We are all sinners. | ||||||
73 | So Abraham hurried into the tent to Sara | Gen 18:6 | jonp | 183688 | ||
Hi Re Genesis 18.6-8 the answer is that it is indicating a good meal. We must not try and read in ideas that are not there :-))). See commentary on Genesis at http://www.geocities.com/genesiscommentary/ Best wishes jonp | ||||||
74 | Does the Bible diminish women? | Bible general Archive 3 | jonp | 183643 | ||
Of course the first point that has to be made is that in the beginning God made woman to be man's helpmeet. Each was assigned a role. It was not a case of one being 'superior' but of essential roles. It was sinful man who turned the situation into one of inferior and superior and sinful woman who sees it in that way. Bearing children and shaping the world through them was a huge privilege. Paul saw it as a supreme ministry (1 Timothy 2.15). It is still a main way in which she is to 'work out her salvation'. The strength of the church has always been the children brought up by Christian women. Why then should we see their situation as inferior? Answer because we are like the disciples arguing who is the greatest. Jesus said that we had to see ourselves as the servants of all. Thus we could argue that women were given a huge advantage. But like sinful man, sinful woman wants to be in control. God never diminishes the value of women, it is man who does that. What God did do was try and protect women in the light of the customs that sinful man has established. Women were not on the whole able to take up prominent positions in public because they had to be protected in a world which was violent and lustful. They could not go out into the world as they do today because it was not safe to do so. There were no police. Indeed even Deborah had to have her male support for this reason. Protection depended on the family and was only possible if women were cosseted. Indeed women were so valued that their purity was looked on as of primary concern. Men could be attacked but they could not be violated in the same way as women. And a violated woman would not find acceptability because she had already become another's. It must not be assumed that women in those days felt that their position was second best. They enjoyed the security that this protection afforded. It could be argued that it is women today who devalue themslves by their sexual behaviour. But it is true that as today God's purposes were very much manipulated by men to their own advantage. We must not however blame God for that. And we must remember that in those days might was right in practical living. God knew very well that if His commands were seen as too outlandish they would be ignored. (They were largely ignored anyway. That is the story of the Old Testament). His laws were intended to make a difference. They were not just theoretical ideals. He made them in order to regulate and improve a system set up by men and women (and even then the hand that rocked the cradle had unseen influence). With regard to Bathsheba she was not quite in the same position as David. He was the king which made his sin the more heinous. Thus the consequence for him was seen as important for it affected the whole nation. But she was allowed to live. She received the same mercy as David. She did not come off second best. So the truth is that most of the problem we have with a woman's 'position' is that we look from the world's point of view not from God's. We just cannot bring ourselves to believe that Jesus was actually right when He said that those who truly serve are the truly great ones. | ||||||
75 | Significance to Tree of Life? | Gen 2:9 | jonp | 183638 | ||
Hi The tree of life was probably a tree whose fruit provided unfallen man with the means of rejuvenating himself. Thus by eating of it he could perpetuate his existence. The tree of knowing good and evil (literal translation of the Hebrew) was probably like a sacrament, It stood there as the visible symbol of God's lordship. It was an act of grace and mercy so that man would not forget the One Who was his Lord. By refraining from eating of it He learned by practical experience true goodness which lay in obedience to God. Once he ate of it he learned evil by practical experience. For the first time he knew what it was to be in rebellion against God. Thus he had through it come to 'know (in practical experience) evil'. Previously knowing evil had been theoretically taught by the tree. He had then known that evil lay in disobeying God and rejecting His Lordship by eating of the tree. See commentary on Genesis at http://www.geocities.com/genesiscommentary/ | ||||||
76 | scriptural basis for loving self | Lev 19:18 | jonp | 183634 | ||
Hi The Bible does not tell us to love ourselves, it assumes that we do so. What it does seek to do is make us look outward from loving ourselves, to loving other to an equal extent. It is paralleled by Jesus words about doing to others what we would want them to do to us (Matthew 7.12). Of course Jesus took this one step further and pointed out that we had to deny ourselves, take up the cross and follow Him (Mark 8.34 and parallels). In other words we must die to ourselves and live for Him, and thus for others (Romans 6.10-11). | ||||||
77 | KJV uses LXX, NET uses MT, NASB uses ? | Bible general Archive 3 | jonp | 183633 | ||
Hi In fact the KJV was translated from the MT and the byzantine Greek text, not from LXX. Nestles Greek New Testament is a published attempt at an accurate text of the original writng based on critical methods used to weed out interpolations etc. For further information about Biblical matters try http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/4027/ | ||||||
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