Basic Christianity. Jesus is the sinless, perfect sacrifice that stones for all our sins, shame, guilt etc and takes our punishment.
If Jesus lied or knowing suport3d a lie would he qualify as a sinless saviour.
Are you sending your neighbors to Hell?
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If Jesus lied or knowing suport3d a lie would he qualify as a sinless saviour.
Is it a bad assumption to believe that Jesus told the literal truth?
If he was knowingly giving support to what he, as the creator, knew to be false, how would that qualify him as our ' sinless ' perfect atoning sacrifice?
Jesus is saying there was No evolution, that there have Not been millions of years.
Wick Stick
Well-Known Member
Nobody has made an argument that Jesus lied. I'm not sure why you keep harping on it, other than it's an easy argument to make.
The literal part... maybe? Jesus made an allusion to a well-known story. He didn't say the story was historical. (It is pre-historical so that would have been incorrect)
Evolution isn't something that is even remotely hinted at in the Bible. That idea didn't exist back then. It seems unlikely that Jesus was trying to talk about it here. That's not at all what the chapter is about.
Why would Jesus respond to the Pharisees with what he knew to be false.
Matt 19:
3 Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”
4 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’[a] 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’[b]? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
Jesus is the creator.
Wick Stick
Well-Known Member
Wick Stick
Well-Known Member
Well... the Bible contains multiple genres of literature. Recognizing what genre you're reading is important to understanding it.
The genre we call History didn't exist till the 5th century BC. That doesn't make the things written before that false, but it does mean that if you're reading something older than that, you probably should take a moment to identify what genre you are reading.
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And a passage depicting an event, whether Jerichos walls falling flat, a great fish and Jonah, an axe head floating or the creation of the world instill a truthful account of what happened.
Other literary genre have there own distinctive patterns.
Wick Stick
Well-Known Member
You don't seem to be recognizing those patterns very well.
The book of Joshua, where Jericho's walls fall, is not written as a history, but rather a collection of short stories. Are the stories based on real events - probably. But each story has its own purpose. Some of them are there to tell who-conquered-what and thus owns it. Others are there to teach lessons.
The book of Jonah is generally grouped with the prophets, but only chapter 2 contains prophetic content. The other 3 chapters tell a moral story, and are written in a completely different style than chapter 2.
2Kings IS a history. It was written late enough to be in that genre, is arranged chronologically, and attempts to relate literal facts.
Genesis, like Joshua, is a collection of stories that have different purposes.
Genesis 1 in particular is a piece of epic poetry of the same style written by the Amorites in the 15th-12th centuries BC. This shouldn't be surprising - Moses conquered the Amorites in the 12th century. Is it literally about the creation of the world? Yes. But it isn't written as a history; it's an epic poem. It isn't trying to relate a chronology, so much as its staging a story dramatically for performance to an audience. We can recognize poetic forms in it and allusions to other stories we know from the same genre of literature.
I know this, that if genesis is a collection of mythical tales we have no Christianity.
When I read geneses I see no poetic imagery but a story, a story that tells history.
Wick Stick
Well-Known Member
That's simply not true at all. Nothing is lost that Christianity requires. Maybe we should take stock of exactly what would be lost?
Young Earth Creationism is lost. Genesis would still teach creation, just without the silly insistence that the world is 7000-ish years old. Can't say I'd be sorry to see that go.
Augustine's formulation of the doctrine of Original Sin is lost - the idea that everyone is guilty of Adam's sin. The Bible would still teach that everyone sins, and that men by their nature tend to work iniquity... just without the gross insistence that God condemns innocent babies who die to an eternity in hell because of something that someone else did. This seems like a net positive to me.
The idea of a global flood that killed all but 8 people in precisely 2386 BC is lost. The Bible would still teach that God periodically judges the nations throughout history, destroying the wicked and saving the righteous. Noah's covenant with God would remain intact, too.
The idea of Abraham and his literal, physical descendants as determined by genealogies being God's chosen people throughout history probably needs to be re-understood. Abraham's covenant with God remains, and he is still a father of nations, but his descendants need to be reckoned spiritually, according to adoption. Actually, this needs to happen regardless, because it's what Jesus and Paul and the New Testament teaches. So all we lose here is a common mis-understanding of the Bible.
It turns out that understanding Genesis doesn't dismantle Christianity at all.
Perhaps the best evidence that
no one really believes in a forever-burning Hell.
Or that no one really loves their neighbors.
Take your pick.
If you really loved your neighbors, and believed in a
forever-burning Hell, you wouldn't send them there.
I can hear the reply coming now. "I didn't send them to Hell, they sent themselves there."
Did you do anything to stop them? Did you convince them otherwise?
Did you live a life that made Christ attractive? I see...
Fortunately for me, I don't believe in a forever-burning Hell. Not really my problem.
Do you believe in a forever-burning Hell? (nope) If you did...
Or maybe you don't really love your neighbors.
Seems to go hand-in-hand.
[
no one really believes in a forever-burning Hell.
Or that no one really loves their neighbors.
Take your pick.
If you really loved your neighbors, and believed in a
forever-burning Hell, you wouldn't send them there.
I can hear the reply coming now. "I didn't send them to Hell, they sent themselves there."
Did you do anything to stop them? Did you convince them otherwise?
Did you live a life that made Christ attractive? I see...
Fortunately for me, I don't believe in a forever-burning Hell. Not really my problem.
Do you believe in a forever-burning Hell? (nope) If you did...
Or maybe you don't really love your neighbors.
Seems to go hand-in-hand.
[
Nameaboveallnames
Active Member
A short Christian movie (about 30 minutes) was made several years ago on this topic. You can watch it here for free if you want to:
Wick Stick
Well-Known Member
I believe in what the Bible says, which is that the everlasting punishment of the unrepentant wicked is, in fact, everlasting.
Matthew 25:46
46 And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.
This punishment isn't referring to permanent annihilation, as some argue, because punishment that is not consciously endured is not punishment. One cannot punish a rock, or a mop, or a bit of moldy cheese. These things have no consciousness and so, are immune to punishment.
What's more, the parallel made in this verse by Christ makes no sense if punishment and eternal life aren't actually parallel. If the punishment is over at the moment of annihilation, which it must be for the reason already stated, then in what way is it parallel to the eternal life Jesus mentions? If the eternal life of which he speaks is truly eternal, then the punishment that parallels it must be eternal, too.
I wouldn't send anyone to the everlasting punishment of hell because it is not my place to do so. Only God has this prerogative, which He tell us in His word He exercises over us all. God and I occupy two completely different categories of being which means, among other things, that things like punishing the unrepentant wicked in eternal hell are only appropriate for God to do.
I've helped a number of people to saving faith in Christ. And I daily live so that I do not hinder what God may seek to do through me in bringing even more people to salvation. How about you? How do you live before God each day?
The man who denies that there is a grizzly bear charging straight for him, does not, in his denial of the bear, prevent it from killing and devouring him. So, too, those who deny the existence of hell. Their denial does not dissolve hell. It's still there, waiting for all those who pretend a wrathful God does not exist, or will not condemn them to everlasting punishment.
pandaflower
Well-Known Member
What if that was caused by a translation error?
Are translation errors divinely inspired?
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No one's blood will be on your hands for failing to deliver the good news?
Have you never dropped the ball when prompted by the Holy Spirit?
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--- PARODY ---
Judgement Day for a Christian neighbor.
God: Welcome to heaven.
Christian: Thanks. This is really great.
God: We have something we need to discuss.
Christian: What's that?
God: Do you remember Jesus telling you to love your neighbor as yourself?
Christian: That sounds familiar.
God: I planted you in a specific neighborhood to reach your neighbors with the good news.
Christian: You did?
God: Yes. Did you succeed, or fail?
Christian: I don't know any of my neighbors.
God: Why not?
Christian: They were all rotten sinners.
God: What were you before you met me?
Christian: Well... I err... not like them. !!!
God: I disagree.
Christian: I didn't send my neighbors to hell, it was their choice.
God: They didn't have a choice, because you failed them.
Christian: Couldn't they hear from someone else?
God: It was your job to tell them.
[
