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A small Parish in Finland started to ring their funeral bells for the victims of Aleppo and by now this sign of protest and solidarity has become a big international movement with more churches joining daily. Let’s pray that the brutal killing in Syria ends soon! http://bellsforaleppo.org/

I agree, with the advice concerning coming clean about one's Christian faith. But concerning marriage to an unbeliever one may want to consider 1 Cor. 7:12-16: "12 I (not the Lord) say to the rest of you: If a brother has a wife who is an unbeliever and she is willing to live with him, he must...

Well, you seem to suggest we can reject salvation against God’s will to save us. Coming from a Lutheran background myself I may be biased in this one, but I think Luther was very much spot on here: “The Scriptures are like several armies opposed to the idea that man has a “free will” to choose...

Oz, My point was that there are very many “NT Greek distinguished exegetes“ who don’t agree with you and R C H Lenski and that - for all you and I know - one side may be as prone to eisegesis as the other. I tried to explain at great length why I don’t think the translation of “"αἰῶνας αἰώνων”...

Stan, I know it can be hard, but I’m sure you are capable of accepting that another poster does not share your firm convictions about what the Bible says without throwing insult at his intellect or language skills.

You want an entire thread closed only because in it you could not convince another poster of your position? Come on, Stan! Just let it rest and move on.

First of all sorry for the late answer, Oz. I’ve been away for the Weekend. Did we not already agree to disagree on the correct translation of "αἰῶνας αἰώνων"? To me an aeon still doesn’t quite equal eternity and I still don't understand why you want to base your translation on the authority of...

So God is not all-mighty and Job was wrong when he said “I know that You can do all things, And that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted.“ (Job 42:2) ?

There’s no need to re-write John 3:16 if God were to save everyone. The Bible very much tells us that everybody will believe in Him and praise Him (Numbers 14:21; Isaiah 45:22-26; Rom14:11; Phil 2:6-11) If God was definitely not to save everyone though, then there’d be quite a number of verses...

Well Oz, love and compassion don’t discipline disobedience in an intent to destroy but in an intent to cure and educate. As for the narrow gate: anybody who is saintly enough to live up to the high moral standards Jesus set in His Sermon on the Mount and make it through the narrow gate...

Hi there Born_Again, there’s very little doubt in my mind that God wants to save everyone, because the Bible tells me so: “3 This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, 4 who wants all people to be saved and to come to know the truth fully.” (1 Tim. 2:3) In the text you quoted...

I’m sorry you perceived my words as inflammatory, they surely weren’t meant to be. Surely God hates “all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men”. The question is whether He just hates the sin or also the sinner. Personally I don’t think God also hates the sinner. Jesus specifically sought out...

Oz, I find your answers to my posts increasingly erratic. Is it possible that you are just trying to avoid my questions because you’ve never ever given any thought to how your reading of Matthew 25:46 squares with verses such as John 12:32? How can Jesus draw all people to Himself when there...

Yes Oz, we very much owe the doctrine of hell to Augustine. But with all due respect to this great theologian, we must not forget that his Greek was notoriously bad and that other (greek-speaking) churchfathers such as Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa … did not agree...

Is that so? That raises the question whether you also think that Jews and Christians believe in an altogether different God, because Jews don’t believe Jesus to be God. Personally there is no question in my mind that while Athanasius and Arius had massive differences in opinion about the...

Well, the last Turkish person I spoke with about religion was a devout Muslim and very respectful of my Christian faith. He clearly was of the opinion that while we have different religious views and ways of worship, the God we worship is one and the same.

Hi there! Istanbul, how awesome! Say hello to the Hagia Sophia,

It is of course possible that your human reasoning is less frail than mine and even less frail than Moltmann’s and von Balthasar’s. But if you actually want to convince me of your superior human reasoning, you may want to come up with some arguments countering the ones I’ve given. As for the...

Well, Oz, the traditional Christian position based on Augustine is that God created everything including time. In that view God's eternity is not a rather long time without beginning or end, but no time at all, just one eternal “now”. Feel free to differ, but if so, you’ll probably run into a...

Oz, I read your quote the first time you posted it. What Robertson concedes is that there is no Greek word for eternity and that it is a difficult idea to put into language. (In fact in another discussion I noticed that “eternity” can hold very different meanings even for English-speakers: time...