Leaderboard

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/01/27/when-the-bias-of-our-blinders-changes-the-bible/

Rock of Ages, Oh, how I love Jesus, We Have an Anchor, Jesus Loves me, Come Holy Spirit, I Would be Like Jesus, Onward Christian Soldiers, Tell it to Jesus, and we even use the same old bible every Sabbath. God is Love! Jesus saves!

If we truly have "faith in Jesus", we have the "faith of Jesus". He gives us His own attributes by, and through, faith

I read a very interesting article the other day along these lines. Studies have shown that people who take notes with a laptop/notebook learn less than someone who uses a pen/pencil and paper to take notes in the same amount of study time. I don't remember where I read the article but it quoted somewhere around a half-dozen studies that have all shown the same thing. So, I guess my own ideas on notetaking and reading have been proven true. Give me a real book and a spiral notebook and pencil for studies I really want/need to remember, and for the pure enjoyment of reading I'll take a real book any day of the week. I guess that's why I have a library of around a thousand books. That's not a real big library but it isn't really small either.

My belief is that it has little to do with the 'ours' you listed and more of the 'His'. My part is very small. I am saved . But I am saved by HIS blood. Those may seem like jargon to you. But they are powerful to me.

First, there is no evidence that the different languages came from the tower of Babel. Graham Maxwell pointed out that the text only says that God confused their tongue so that they could not understand each other. Second, Maxwell also points out that language tends to show a gradual change as people move out and we see the extremes but that it seems to have grown from a one language that modified as people ended up populating the world. Third, Hebrew was the language of the part of the world when Abraham settled. We can learn what terms were meant in the Bible as we study the writings of the ancient Canaanites. Had Abraham gone to China the Jews would be speaking Chinese. Had Abraham gone to Norway Jews would have been speaking Norwegian. The language was there first. Abraham moved there and picked it up. Finally, God is the universal God as well as the God of Israel. He is Sojourner's God and he will listen to Sojourner pray in any language that Sojourner chooses.

An elderly man lay dying in his bed. In death's agony, he suddenly smelled the aroma of his favorite chocolate chip cookies wafting up the stairs. He gathered his remaining strength, and lifted himself from the bed. Leaning against the wall, he slowly made his way out of the bedroom, and with even greater effort forced himself down the stairs, gripping the railing with both hands, he crawled down the stairs. With labored breath, he leaned against the door-frame, gazing into the kitchen. Were it not for death's agony, he would have thought himself already in heaven: there, spread out upon waxed paper on the kitchen table were literally hundreds of his favorite chocolate chip cookies. Was it heaven? Or was it one final act of heroic love from his devoted wife, seeing to it that he left this world a happy man? Mustering one great final effort, he threw himself toward the table, landing on his knees in a rumpled posture. His parched lips parted: the wondrous taste of the cookie was already in his mouth, seemingly bringing him back to life. The aged and withered hand trembled on its way to a cookie at the edge of the table, when it was suddenly smacked with aspatula by his wife. "Stay out of those," she said, "they're for the funeral."

For one, if I am not mistaken, the language of the Hebrew people has changed so much over the years that what is spoken now is not a lot like what was spoken several thousand years ago. For two, that really does a disservice to the idea that the Christian God is omnipotent if he is only able to respond to one language, completely goes in the face of the Christian idea of the message being for all. And lastly, there will always be some idiot trying to peddle a "sacred language". Its all over the place in every type of religious setting. Its stupid.

forget about Benny Hinn's claims...those are purely for marketing and ripping people off for their money.. If his God is so shallow that He'll only hear and respond to prayers made in the Hebrew language, that's pretty pathetic. Maybe that's why Benny Hinn has to bonk people on the head when he tries to "heal" them...

and we have been waiting ever since.

I'm grateful to my SDA pastor who told me I had to pledge to give up alcohol completely if I wanted to be baptised. I tried to talk him around, saying I was a very light drinker and had only one or two glasses a month at a party, but he said take it or leave it. Good on you Brett, I found it actually made a noticeable difference to my mental performance when I stopped drinking altogether and I began to enjoy an increased clarity in my study that surpassed anything I'd had before. I'm a retired nutrition therapist and I don't go along with the medical claims that a little alcohol causes no harm in the body. Empirical studies are not the best evidence when the biochemistry is clearly and unequivocally known - acetaldehyde, a major breakdown product of alcohol in the body, causes oxidation and degradation of body tissues in 100% of cases, regardless what any population study may have seemed to indicate. Alcohol metabolites also act as exo-neurotransmitters in the brain and interfere with normal brain function to impair judgement. It also has a rebound depressing effect due to disruption of your neurotransmitter equilibrium. This effect can last for several days and, over time, repeated occurrences can tend to make such disruptions permanent. Good health depends in large part on supporting the liver detox function. In modern life there are enough challenges to the detox system without deliberately putting another toxin into your bloodstream. Overloaded detoxification is a factor in obesity and fatty liver, and less directly but no less problematically on conditions like atherosclerosis, diabetes, cancer, kidney failure, as well as many others where underperforming immune function is involved. And finally, when you are unable to live without something like alcohol you know you have formed another attachment to the things of the world. Caffeine is another drug that many people would struggle to eliminate from their lives. Not to mention sugar. As much as we all would like to be relying totally on Jesus for our needs and source of lasting peace and joy, I always suspected that attachments to such things would have to detract from my relationship with him. I could be wrong but I believe life goes better on quite a few fronts without alcohol. Or caffeine, or sugar. I know I sound like a wowser but to me it just seems like good logic. And when you try living without alcohol, after a while you don't miss it (I confess I'm not at that stage with coffee yet). I really like that I can still hold up my end of an intelligent conversation late into the night at a party. My friends have gotten used to my not drinking now and it doesn't bother anyone. And I definitely like waking up the next morning feeling fresh and wonderful, quite different from what it would be like back when I used to drink.

Something is broken, when the concern is the sex gender rather than what gets accomplished.

For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety. 1 Tim 2:11-15 (KJV) Satan went after eve on purpose because satan knew he could get to her. EGW is not referring to all women,but maybe the ones with an agenda"unconsecrated women" as you put it. Jezebel was the only women priest in the bible and she used her powers of persuasion to get what she wanted.She knew who to manipulate and how to manipulate. I agree a woman can lead and teach and be a prophet. They can do all these things without being ordained. EGW was not ordained nor any other women from scripture. I know i can never be right about this ,especially on this forum,but others with better credentials than me like Doug Bachelor, Steven Bohr,Joe Olson helped me see what scripture has to say about this. To be fair i listened to Dwight Nelsons sermon knowing he was pro ordination and all he did was trash two key bible verses and then shares a portion of a quote from EGW, then telling you what he thinks it means. In the end it was just his opinion. This is what happens when people have an agenda: And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach....Isaiah 4:1 (KJV) My apologies to any women who was offended by the EGW quote above. But i believe she meant "women" which is plural and not "woman" which would refer to one woman such as Jezebel.

Hopeful One: Your post about women being used by Satan was interesting. It was even more interesting as written by EGW. In her original statement, EGW was talking about Jezebel and Ahab and how Satan used Jezebel to trap. If you look at the two sentences that come before the sentence that you quoted, you see that EGW was specifically talking about unconcecrated women, such as Jezebel. It really does not look to me like EGW generalized it to cover all women. Further, if you read that citation from EGW about a Christian woman, that is printed in your source document just prior to your citation, you will see that EGW is presenting an example of a woman that is much different. Taken in the full context which includes other statements of EGW, I do not think that one can generalize the statement that you cited.

Most of the time when we talk about 'church growth', we are in fact talking about numbers in an .org. My perspective is that 'growth' is much more than that. The 'growth' of Christ church is the most important. I always think about the chastisement of Israel by God, when they were numbering themselves, as if that was important.

Using your reasoning there would be no moral accountability for anything. My broad point is that the USA has claimed to be the land of the free. Millions of its citizens were not free until the 1960's. Many years behind many of its western counterparts. American exceptionalism is a myth since by your own admission it behaved much the same as nations before it and since. In this thread the irony does not escape me that some Americans claim they are being invaded but invasion and conquest was the means by which this nation was founded. An uncomfortable but accurate observation. I wonder if native Americans gathered to protest the advancing settlers. They are long gone but America is reaping now.