by cognac 77 Replies latest jw friends
As a believer I have to ask, have you ever stopped to think that maybe he has stated how it is, and you don't like what you see?
I have considered that and I'm trying to look at this logically. When I see how Jesus personality has shield through, he seems extremely loving. When I see Gods personality when reading other scriptures, he seems to have a completely different personality other then what Jesus portrayed him to be...
For good answers here is a couple of spots to look:
http://www.tektonics.org/nthub.html
http://www.tektonics.org/othub.html
From what I have read of Ehrman, he is sloppy and one-sided.
That would be great AMoment!!! Thank-you!
cog
The love of God of the Old Testament is revealed by Christ in the New Testament.
cog
I need to add, I you feel that God must love every human the same way, then you won't like what you see.
Suppose that you have been falsely accused of committing a crime, say, a murder, that occurred many years ago. There is very little evidence connecting you to the murder except the testimony of 4 people named Mike, Monty, Larry, and Jacob. Your defense attorney puts them on the witness stand and interviews them one at a time. During the questioning several important facts about their belief that you committed the murder are revealed. It turns out that none of the four actually saw you commit the murder. They’ve never even met you before. But each one of them admits that they heard some stories from some other people that you committed the murder. And it cannot be established that these other people were witnesses either and they are not available to be questioned. None of the 4 knows how many times the story was repeated or passed around before they heard it. They heard that a lot of people were witnesses to the murder, but again, none of those people are available and it is not known who they are. It turns out that the murder happened 30 years ago and they heard about it because the accusation that you did it has been talked about and remembered by these other unavailable people during all these years.
It also turns out that Mike and Larry got the story from Monty. They believe that you did it entirely on the basis of Monty’s telling them that you did. Furthermore, when the attorney tries to get the details straight about what happened at the crime scene, none of them tell the same story. The important details (that they all got from other people) are different in every case.
At one point, the prosecution puts a man named Perry on the stand and he affirms that you did it too. But he admits that he wasn’t there and he did not see it. Rather, he had a powerful vision during a trance while he was walking down the street one day and a voice he heard told him that you committed the murder.
The prosecuting attorney makes an attempt to assure the jury that you are guilty because there are lots and lots of people out there who believe it because they heard it from Mike, Monty, Larry, Jacob, and Perry. But the judge prohibits it because “Everyone knows that it is true,” is not an admissable form of evidence in court. But it never becomes clear why the judge allowed the hearsay evidence of the 5 men to be heard in the court in the first place.
The prosecuting and defense attorneys close their case. And the jury, all being good Christians, promptly convicts you of murder and sentence you to death.
If you haven’t figured it out: Mike, Monty, Larry, Jacob, and Perry are all Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul, respectively.
Does it sound like fair grounds upon which to convict a person?
A murder charge and conviction are no less important in their impact on a person’s life than the changes that Christian’s believe we should enact in our lives for Jesus. If it is not reasonable to convict a person of murder on these grounds, it is no more reasonable to believe that 2,000 years ago a person came back from the dead on similar grounds, especially since it matters so much.
The most convincing thing for me is that it has never been disproved. In spite of people working night and day to do that!
The Truth of everything we need to know or believe in, can be found in the Bible.........I was most convinced with the prophecy about Babylon never being rebuilt....and it never has!!
The Hittites were questioned as never havign existed, and yet when Tutenkhamuns tomb was founf it stated in there that his sister had been married to the chief of the Hittites......query sorted!!
If something is shown to be in the Bible I don't have a problem in accepting it as the word of God.
Go to minute 17, 20 seconds of this video. Dan Dennett discusses textual criticism.
"You can't get through seminary and come out believing in God!"
Cognac, one of the previous posters did you a great service, they told you that the Bible is most understandable when you know the hisorical roots of its writing. Think about how the fact that many people of the Muslim faith do not understand the freedoms of democracy (and even hate it) because they were raised to believe in a strict theocracy--for them the US constitution is almost giberish--they need to understand our historical setting first before they understand our writings.
A good and cheap way to begin is to obtain Eerdmans' Handbook to the Bible. Begin with page one and just read. It is really cheap when bought used online.
The Bible was written by genuine prophets. Every original word was true and accurate--the very meaning of "inspired." The Jews believed this, Jesus believed this, the apostles believed this.
After you have read Eerdmans, another really good text to read is Henry Virkler's "Hermeneutics." It is a short tutorial that steps you through the process of reading and understanding the Bible (Old and New Testaments).
Blessings.
Hmmm...Re the statement about Babylon being rebuilt - do you believe that because you have been TOLD that? OR because you've actually seen it and been there? Because that kind of thing used to be big for me too - however, if you google it, you will find that is not the case. Saddam Hussein actually preserved part of it, re-built part of it and there is a huge international effort going on right now to restore it. People DO still live in Babylon.
http://www.khouse.org/enews_article/2009/1483/
Interesting, isn't it?
