Can you sum this up in a couple of sentences?

GerhardEbersoehn said:

No one before me ever included the whole bunch of Catholic Christianity in cahoots with Roman Catholicism, their undisputed common leader and head. The SDA deserve special mention as covenanted collaborate of ROMAN Catholicism in the CORRUPTION OF THE BIBLE. You must go take some lessons from them how to corrupt -- take their Clear Word Bible, Matthew 28:1 for one good example.

And Paul inspired by the Spirit wrote our name, "Sabbaths' Feast of Christ" as Jesus said, "Where two or three are gathered together in My Name", "eating and drinking of Christ the Nourishment ministered HOLDING TO THE HEAD GROWING WITH THE GROWTH OF GOD".

Not like just above YOU BRAGGED how your Antichrist <cult> the present RCC was <made-in-America>.

From South Africa with no love lost

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OzSpen said:

Steve,

OT & NT are historical documents that can be supported by the strategies of historical research. Because my background is on research into the historical Jesus, I talk with them through what criteria would be used to demonstrate that Captain James Cook sailed up the east coast of Australia in 1770 in HMS Endeavour. The same criteria are used to investigate whether the terrorism of 9/11 happened. Use the same tests on news items in the Brisbane Courier-Mail from a year ago.

You might like to take a read of one piece of evidence here: 2,500 Year Old Jewish Tablets Discovered in Iraq.

Oz

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epostle said:

Are you aware that "sola scriptura" is a Latin phrase?

If any one still harbors the traditional prejudice that the early Protestants were more liberal, he must be undeceived. Save for a few splendid sayings of Luther, confined to the early years when he was powerless, there is hardly anything to be found among the leading reformers in favor of freedom of conscience. As soon as they had the power to persecute they did.
(Preserved Smith. 177)

The Reformers themselves . . . e.g., Luther, Beza, and especially Calvin, were as intolerant to dissentients as the Roman Catholic Church. (Cross, Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church [P], 1383)

Protestants . . . read blood-curdling stories of the Inquisition and of atrocities committed by Catholics, but what does the average Protestant know of Protestant atrocities in the centuries succeeding the Reformation? Nothing, unless he makes a special study of the subject . . . Yet they are perfectly well known to every scholar . . .

Now granting for the sake of argument, that all that is usually said of Catholic persecutions is true, the fact remains that Protestants, as such, have no right to denounce them, as if such deeds were characteristic of Catholics only. People who live in glass houses should not throw stones . . . It is unquestionable . . . that the champions of Protestantism – Luther, Calvin, Beza, Knox, Cranmer and Ridley — advocated the right of the civil authorities to punish the ‘crime’ of heresy . . . Rousseau says truly: “The Reformation was intolerant from its cradle, and its authors were universal persecutors . . .” Auguste Comte also writes: “The intolerance of Protestantism was certainly not less tyrannical than that with which Catholicism is so much reproached.”
(Philosophie Positive, IV, 51)

What makes, however, Protestant persecutions specially revolting is the fact that they were absolutely inconsistent with the primary doctrine of Protestantism — the right of private judgment in matters of religious belief! Nothing can be more illogical than at one moment to assert that one may interpret the Bible to suit himself, and at the next to torture and kill him for having done so! . . .

At all events, the argument that the persecutions for heresy, perpetrated by the Catholics, constitute a reason why one should not enter the Catholic Church, has not a particle more force than a similar argument would have against one’s entering the Protestant Church. In both there have been those deserving of blame in this respect, and what applies to one applies also to the other.
(Stoddard, 204-205, 209-210)

Often the resistance to tyranny and the demand for religious freedom are combined, as in the Puritan revolution in England; and the victors, having achieved supremacy, then set up a new tyranny and a fresh intolerance.
(Harkness [P], 222)

Lord Baltimore allowed several hundred Puritans, unwelcome in Episcopalian Virginia, to enter Maryland in 1648.
(Armstrong, see Ellis, below, p. 37)

For the first time in history . . . all churches would be tolerated, and . . . none would be the agent of the government . . . Catholics and Protestants side by side on terms of equality and toleration unknown in the mother country . . . The effort proved vain; for . . . the Puritan element . . . October, 1654, repealed the Act of Toleration and outlawed the Catholics . . . condemning ten of them to death, four of whom were executed . . . From . . . 1718 down to the outbreak of the Revolution, the Catholics of Maryland were cut off from all participation in public life, to say nothing of the enactments against their religious services and . . . schools for Catholic instruction . . . During the half-century the Catholics had governed Maryland they had not been guilty of a single act of religious oppression.
(John Tracy Ellis, American Catholicism, Garden City, New York: Doubleday Image, 1956, 36, 38-39)

The principle which the Reformation had upheld in the youth of its rebellion — the right of private judgment — was as completely rejected by the Protestant leaders as by the Catholics . . . Toleration was now definitely less after the Reformation than before it.
(Durant , 456; referring to the year 1555)

Melanchthon accepted the chairmanship of the secular inquisition that suppressed the Anabaptists in Germany with imprisonment or death. . . . he was convinced that God had destined all Anabaptists to hell.
(Durant , 423)

A regular inquisition was set up in Saxony, with Melanchthon on the bench, and under it many persons were punished, some with death, some with life imprisonment, and some with exile.
(Smith , 177)

The persecution of the Anabaptists began in Zurich . . . The penalties enjoined by the Town Council of Zurich were ‘drowning, burning, or beheading,’ according as it seemed advisable . . . ‘It is our will,’ the Council proclaimed, ‘that wherever they be found, whether singly or in companies, they shall be drowned to death, and that none of them shall be spared.’
(Janssen, V, 153-157)

In his Dialogues of 1535, Bucer called on governments to exterminate by fire and sword all professing a false religion, and even their wives, children and cattle.
(Armstrong; Janssen, V, 367-368, 290-291)

His [John Knox’s] conviction . . . harked back to the darkest practices of the Inquisition . . . Every heretic was to be put to death, and cities predominantly heretical were to be smitten with the sword and utterly destroyed: “To the carnal man this may appear a . . . severe judgment . . . Yet we find no exception, but all are appointed to the cruel death. But in such cases God wills that all . . . desist from reasoning when commandment is given to execute his judgments.”
(Durant , 614; citing Edwin Muir, John Knox, London: 1920, 142)

In the preface to the Institutes he [John Calvin] admitted the right of the government to put heretics to death . . . He thought that Christians should hate the enemies of God . . . Those who defended heretics . . . should be equally punished.
(Smith , 178)

[During Calvin’s reign in Geneva, between 1542 and 1546] “58 persons were put to death for heresy.”
(Durant , 473)

Melanchthon, in a letter to Calvin and Bullinger, gave ‘thanks to the Son of God’ . . . and called the burning [of Michael Servetus] ‘a pious and memorable example to all posterity.’ Bucer declared from his pulpit in Strasbourg that Servetus had deserved to be disemboweled and torn to pieces. Bullinger, generally humane, agreed that civil magistrates must punish blasphemy with death.
(Durant , 484)

Persecution, including death penalties for heresy, is not just a Catholic failing. It is clearly also a Protestant one, and a general “blind spot” of the Middle Ages, much like abortion is in our own supposedly “enlightened” age. Furthermore, it is an outright lie to assert that Protestantism in its initial appearance, advocated tolerance. The evidence thus far presented refutes this notion beyond any reasonable doubt. (Armstrong)
Protestant Inquisitions: "Reformation" Intolerance & Persecution
Most of the citations are from Protestant and secular historians, so think before you accuse me of doctrinal bias.

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Yehren said:

Yehren writes:
This is a little island of Christian decency; I sincerely hope it stays that way.

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Steve Owen said:

If you find that works, it's great. Thanks for the Huff Post link; I hadn't seen that before.

From the Baptist 1689 Confession 1:5.
We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the people of God to gain a high and reverent estimation of the Holy Scriptures. We may be similarly affected by the nature of the Scriptures - the heavenliness of the contents, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole, which is to give all glory to God, the full disclosure it makes of the only way of man's salvation, together with many other incomparable excellencies and entire perfections. By all this evidence the Scripture more that proves itself to be the Word of God.
Yet notwithstanding this, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth of Scripture and its divine authority, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.

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Yehren said:

There are some people out there who are spiritually hurting, and some of them take it out on anyone who comes near. This is a little island of Christian decency; I sincerely hope it stays that way.

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OzSpen said:

Seems as though he meant something like that. Do you consider Scripture is self-authenticating?

See: What does it mean that the Bible is self-authenticating?

I could not use that approach in Australia with skeptics. They want evidence that the Bible can be trusted. What proofs should we give? Or, are proofs out of the league for Bible-believing Christians?

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farouk said:

I'm not in a primary sense an evidentialist; my background is more arts, etc. My preferred appeal is simply from Scripture to those who will hear.

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OzSpen said:

Try that here and you're likely to get an angry response: 'I don't believe your blankety blank fairy tales. I don't give a damn about what the Scriptures say. You haven't demonstrated to me the can be trusted. When you can do that, I might listen'.

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Evidential apologetics is demonstrated in Scripture: 'To the same apostles also, after his suffering, he presented himself alive with many convincing proofs.

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OzSpen said:

Try that here and you're likely to get an angry response: 'I don't believe your blankety blank fairy tales. I don't give a damn about what the Scriptures say. You haven't demonstrated to me the can be trusted. When you can do that, I might listen'.

Your approach is a country mile from what I could use here.

Evidential apologetics is demonstrated in Scripture: 'To the same apostles also, after his suffering, he presented himself alive with many convincing proofs. He was seen by them over a forty-day period and spoke about matters concerning the kingdom of God' (Acts 1:3 NET).

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Yehren said:

That's actually encouraging. Such people are aware that there's something important therein, and are fighting it. Would you be angry at someone who told you about the tooth fairy? Of course not. Because you know there isn't one. You can't prove that scripture is true, but you can engage someone fighting it. Like Paul, such people can sometimes be brought to a realization.

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OzSpen said:

Yehren,

I don't find it encouraging as I have to begin discussions on the Gospel way back further than the Bible. Defending the integrity of the Bible is not that difficult but I've spent my advanced study in this field.

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HammerStone said:

Scripture and tradition by definition means Scripture and something else.

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1 Corinthians 11:12 Now I praise you because you remember me in everything and hold firmly to the traditions, just as I delivered them to you.

2 Thessalonians 2:15 So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught, whether by word of mouth or by letter from us.

There are valid sources of knowlege about God, apart from scripture. Indeed, scripture says that there are.

Romans 1:20 For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also, and divinity: so that they are inexcusable.

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Butterfly said:

If I ever get to the end of each year and haven't grown, haven't changed , haven't learned anything- then I will be concerned. As far as i am concerned The Holy Spirit ministers in many different ways- I usually use the NIV, always have, but I check the King james as well ( at times )- I just liked the version Willie shared.
I use other versions to add to context of study
Rita

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