Leaderboard
Popular Content
Showing content with the highest reputation on 09/08/2016 in all areas
-
Chosing a Physician
rudywoofs (Pam) and one other reacted to Gregory Matthews for a topic
As we have recently moved from Colorado to California my wife has been faced with chosing a new provider of medical care for her. She has decided that she would first chose a near-by hospital that she would like to go to if in need of hospitalization. From that choice, she would chose a physician who could admit her to that hospital. NOTE: There are several hospitals near to where we live. To assist her in he choice of a hospital we went to: https://www.medicare.gov/hospitalcompare/search.html? This website gave us an extensive listing of hospitals. Three were selected that are near to where we live. The website then generated a comprehensive evaluation of those three hospitals that consisted of many pages. She selected one hospital. She went to that hospitals website and asked for a listing of physicians near where we live who admit patients to that hospital. After setting further limits as to type of practice and were accepting new patients she was given a listint of 9 physicians from whom to select. This may be helpfule if you are neding to select a physician and want to know something about a hospital.2 points -
Praying for a Man’s Husband
phkrause reacted to rudywoofs (Pam) for a topic
the article is here: http://www.adventistreview.org/church-news/story4317-praying-for-a-mans-husband1 point -
Trivia Quiz?
Outta Here reacted to phkrause for a topic
Prince Phillip! Easy-peasy. Answer: Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh is the husband of Queen Elizabeth II. He is the longest-serving consort of a reigning British monarch and the oldest-ever male member of the British royal family. After an engagement of five months, he married Elizabeth on November 20, 1947. Just before the wedding, the King granted him the style of His Royal Highness and the title Duke of Edinburgh. His wife made him a Prince of the United Kingdom in 1957. Philip has four children with Elizabeth: Prince Charles, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew, and Prince Edward. He has eight grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.1 point -
What is "the handwriting of ordinances" that Christ nailed to the cross?
Martn reacted to Ron Amnsn for a topic
Jackson, I have put line-breaks into your quote above so I can refer to the various phrases. I agree absolutely with the first line, "We should take the Bible as written". It was written in Hebrew and Greek, and virtually all of it was written by men who lived according to God's Law of Moses, as Jesus did. The English translations that we currently use were translated by "outside, uninspired sources" that interpret God's Word for people who speak English. That is precisely what your third line says we need none of -- "it's plain language needs no outside, uninspired source to interpret it for him/her". If it were possible to make a totally accurate translation, we could use our English translations as an equivalent to the Greek or Hebrew. But totally accurate translations are not possible due to the nature of translating from one language to another. The target language (English for us) does not have all words that the original languages have, with matching connotations, nuances, and alternate meanings. An example of what translators face, is the phrase "the lamb of God". When translating into tribal languages that have no word for "sheep" or "lamb", modern translators will sometimes translate the phrase "the lamb of God" into words that mean "the pig of God". That approximate translation conveys part of the original meaning, but will cause significant misunderstandings when the tribal people read the "plain language" of the Old Testament that says pigs are unclean animals. The translators of our English versions face similar situations while translating, so they have chosen for us which meaning the plain language of our English Bibles will have -- and sometimes that plain language is quite different from the meaning that the original author penned in Greek or Hebrew. Another problem is that in the target language (English for us) the words the translators choose often have multiple meanings that the original word did not have. This problem gets us into trouble in understanding Colossians 2:14 because technically the Greek word dogmasin can be translated into the English word "ordinances", if everyone understands that it only refers to man-made ordinances, decrees and rules. However, the English word "ordinances" has a meaning that the Greek word did not have at all. In English "ordinances" is also used to refer to God's Old Testament instructions, a meaning that the Greek word dogmasin did not have when it was penned by Paul in Colossians 2:14. That extra English meaning has enabled people to misunderstand what Paul wrote and to become theologically dependent on that mistranslation. If people had been taught the Biblical methods of study and interpretation to start with, the effect of such mistranslations would have been minimized or eliminated altogether. Just by reading the plain language of Scripture, even in faulty translations, people would be able to confidently rule out most of the man-made interpretations that are not true to Scripture. But proper methods of study and interpretation were never a priority for the historical church that didn't even want the people to read the scriptures for themselves or have the Bible in their own language. And now that people have become emotionally attached to mistranslations, it is very difficult to convince them to adopt Biblical methods of study and interpretation that would exclude those mistranslations that they have based their theology and their whole lifestyle around. On the second line, you refer to a "doctrine" that is not taught in the Bible and that history has shown to be false. The idea that God has intervened in human history to protect Bible translations from being corrupted is not taught in the Bible. Even a quick survey of currently available Bibles turns up a number of translations that are not reliable. On my shelf I have a very nice looking Bible in the New World Translation, in which the translators chose words that support the beliefs of their particular denomination. There is also a paraphrased translation of the Bible found among SDA's in which the translator has added words and concepts that were not found in the original Scriptures. There are also the translations made in tribal languages where Jesus is referred to as "the pig of God". And even in the mainstream English translations like the KJV, NIV, NASB, ESV, etc. there are passages that have been corrupted because, after centuries of the great apostasy of lawlessness foretold by Paul, the translators do not hold the same theological beliefs as the original Bible authors held, so the translators have chosen words that match their own beliefs rather than the beliefs of the original authors. In the case of the KJV, it is documented that King James instructed the translators to corrupt the translation by using "traditional ecclesiastical words" rather than accurate translations of key words, and many mainstream English translations have followed the example of the KJV. These problems with translations are probably why God gave the New Testament believers the gift of tongues to go into all the world to preach the gospel, and why Jesus sent them to make disciples, rather than to make Bible translations. I fully agree with what you said in the fourth line, "Only inspiration can be relied upon as truth." Inspiration tells us we must test the words of everyone claiming to have an inspired message to ensure that their words are compatible with God's Word revealed in previously existing Scripture. We can't accept as "inspired" the the words of any such message that disagrees with Scripture. And since that has been the case ever since Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible, we know that any correct interpretations of later Bible authors must not contradict the plain words of earlier Bible authors -- those earlier Bible books would have been used to test the later Bible authors to determine if they were actually "inspired". Thus we can't use man-made interpretations of later Bible authors to overthrow the plain meaning of earlier Bible authors. Any interpretation (of a Bible passage) that contradicts earlier Scripture cannot possibly be the intended meaning of a truly inspired writer -- either we are misinterpreting one of the Bible authors, or the later Bible author is not inspired. When there is more than one possible interpretation of a New Testament passage, an interpretation that agrees with the Old Testament will be a better interpretation than an interpretation that disagrees with the plain language of the Old Testament. We should always be looking for interpretations that agree with earlier Scripture. I agree with your last line above. And I would add that when we find a New Testament passage that seems to disagree with the earlier Scriptures of the Old Testament, we should check the original Greek to see if that perceived disagreement with earlier Scripture was caused by a faulty translation made by someone who was influenced by the great apostasy of lawlessness that Paul said in 2Thess 2 was already at work at that time. Words matter, especially when they are the words inspired by God.1 point -
1 point
-
1 point