Recent content by Bruce-Leiter

In Matthew 8, Jesus is talking about the coming of his kingdom, when all the people who thought that they will be part of it will lose out, and Gentiles like the Roman centurion will enter it. In chapter 13, it is Jesus' explanation of the Parables of the Weeds and the Wheat and the Fishing Net...

What "sort of monster"? No "monster," but our just Judge. If we spend our whole lives rejecting or ignoring God, he has every right as our God of justice to let us have our own way without him throughout eternity. After all, he created us to honor him. If we don't, he lets us have "outer...

@St. SteVen, why do you use such a negative word "extortion" for the consequence of refusing the free gift of salvation. Who nowadays "threatens" such a consequence for such refusal? Why are you so angry at the "church"? How has the "church" hurt you? Please answer one or all my questions. In...

@Big Boy Johnson, please explain how all five points of Calvinism "twist the Bible," one by one.

You generalize too much. To what specific teachings of John Calvin do you object? Be careful what you say in criticizing a man who professed to follow the Bible. He believed that God is Triune, Jesus is fully God and fully human, that he is the only way to the Father's forgiveness, and that...

@Big Boy Johnson, why do Christians like you attack other Christians about honest differences of interpretation on comparatively-minor matters? Don't we have much-more-important ideas to talk about that unite us?

A lot of "doctrine" comes from outside the Bible from human logic. Examples are Jehovah's Witness and Mormon doctrines, which try to make the Trinity logical by making him one, only god without three Persons and three gods without being one God, respectively.

No, we were created as human; our perfect bodies will be these same bodies made perfect and filled with God's glory (1 Corinthians 15:42-47). The second Person of God who became Jesus was never created, though he took on a human body in Mary's womb. Being God, he is eternal. As God, he was...

By God's grace and love, yes, @St. SteVen, all of us believers in Jesus will be resurrected to have our perfect bodies (1 Corinthians 15:51-57): 1Co 15:51 Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 1Co 15:52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at...

Because he was fully-human, he could die for our sins; because he was fully-divine, he could be resurrected.

Having been born of a virgin with the Holy Spirit involved, he is both all-human and all-God. That's genuine greatness and the reason he could die and then rise permanently from the dead.

Hope for the afterlife is not my motive for following Christ; it is a byproduct of God's gift of faith by his grace. That's what I'm saying.

@St. SteVen, without the afterlife, we would be denying Jesus' bodily resurrection, the truth of which confirms our future bodily resurrection and afterlife, since we are connected to him. God will judge all Christians for their motives; I won't.

Sarcasm will get you nowhere, @Dan Clarkston. Just show me in Scripture where God commands that all Christians must speak privately in tongues. By the way, God healed me from seven years of major depression more than 30 years ago, but he has left in my body four kinds of chronic physical pain...

@Dan Clarkson, You wrote, "Not all have the gift of speaking in tongues for interpretation in a public setting like a church service... but that does not mean all don't have the gift of tongues for their private prayer life in their prayer closet between themselves and the Lord. 1 Corinthians...