Hi Ozzie Oz hope you survived the storm we're having ,and maybe we can meet one day.
I think Terry's post was excellent in that, point by point he establishes in my mind a case for showing that christians like Chalam have no case for boasting in their faith ,and their "blessed" priveleged and almost smug "gift" of the holy spirit they claim to ask for and be given .
Taking into account Terry's points one by one , and I can only conclude that over time there would eventually grow a multitude of faithful people who would claim god or Jesus or both blesses them , but over that time we would actually observe what we see today - a multitude of self proclaimed christians who say the holy spirit had revealed christ to them .
But the problem is with Chalam and others like Stephen is they have collected themselves into pockets of belief in their formula and contradict each others teachings yet claim the same leader and blessings ,how can this be ?
As pointed out we have ,what ,66 books as the canon ,other writings that some say should be included in the canon are classed as apochrypha?
And who decided on the 66? was it not the beginnings of the Catholic church in the 4th century ......is it then ok for protestants today to accept the findings of the catholic church back then ? We still have no harmony in a lot of belief areas as far as scripture is concerned let alone correct teaching which the holy spirit is supposed to be guiding.
In a nutshell do we have one true god ,and yet massive dis-harmony of teaching ?
Is there any wonder Ozzie Oz asks his question?
No Blessings but open mindedness
Stephen