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NASB | Matthew 24:28 "Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Matthew 24:28 "Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will flock together. [Job 39:30] |
Subject: Who is Jesus? |
Bible Note: Ross: 1. Lack of fear of being accursed or the amount of money given to an organization does not make anyone more right or less accursed. 2. Matthew 24 may be interpreted differently by different people, but I think most would agree that such a passage, while important, is not an essential element to the gospel of Christ Jesus. 3. What makes a church or denomination a Christian one? (a) Belief that the Bible alone is the sole authority of faith and practice; (b) belief that we are saved from our sinfulness against a holy God by God's grace ALONE through faith ALONE in Chirst's sinless life and subsitutionary death and resurrection ALONE. Now there are many groups that deny this. You have mentioned the Jehovah's Witnesses. Besides an ever-shifting theology, they use a mis-translation of the Bible to support their cultic views and their rejection of the two marks of a Christian church cited above. Other denominations are apostate ones because they reject the first tenet above. It is not that they interpret the Bible differently than evangelical denominations; they merely say that the Bible isn't a reliable standard, Still other denominations and Christians within those denominations disagree on certain issues (such as the timing and mode of baptism and how much humans are involved in their own salvation). However, most do not see those as essential issues that place someone in the category of "non-Christian." I can give you two very good examples. The first is Tim, with whom you have been discussing things here the past several days. While we have disagreed on much on this forum, because we hold to those two distinctives mentioned above, we hold each other to be brothers in Christ, because it is the same gospel. Likewise, within my own Reformed tradition, there are those who hold that only believers should be baptized and others who hold that infants should be baptized. They will rigorously hold to their positions, but the message they preach from the pulpit is going to be essentially the same on every other issue. One can go to a conference and hear members of both persuasions sharing the stage and in fellowship with one another. Why? Because they meet the mark of "Christian" as outlined in the Bible and mentined above. Baha'i denies both of those distinctives, and therefore cannot be classified as Christian from a Biblical standpoint. --Joe! |