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  1. Deborah_

    U.K. Government - Boris has resigned

    Why should our monarchy be a "Biblical" one? I don't even know what you mean by that. Does anyone in the UK want such a thing? If they do, whatever's standing in the way, it isn't the Magna Carta.
  2. Deborah_

    U.K. Government - Boris has resigned

    Nearly all the laws that were in the Magna Carta were repealed during the 19th century, and only three clauses remain in force. None of them are to do with the monarchy.
  3. Deborah_

    U.K. Government - Boris has resigned

    They didn't resign from being MPs, and they didn't resign from the Conservative party. They resigned from ministerial positions (not all from positions in the Cabinet, a lot of them were junior ministers). So they go back to being ordinary MPs.
  4. Deborah_

    U.K. Government - Boris has resigned

    Presumably he's staying until a new leader can be chosen. It's a process that takes 2-3 months, and you can't have nobody in charge for that length of time.
  5. Deborah_

    Is baptismal regeneration…

    It also becomes before everything else in that list. How can you turn to Christ and obey Him without repentance? But we were discussing baptism... That's a good way of putting it. Really? Paul says this about Cornelius and his friends: "God purified their hearts by faith." (Acts 15:9) Now...
  6. Deborah_

    Is baptismal regeneration…

    Baptism is presented as a believer's first act of obedience to their new Lord. In that it demonstrates their commitment to Jesus, it enables them to receive from Him forgiveness, salvation, the Holy Spirit, etc. But all this assumes that things happen in a tidy sequence: hearing the Gospel...
  7. Deborah_

    Is baptismal regeneration…

    That is the mechanism, yes. It's not the water itself, whether "blessed" or not.
  8. Deborah_

    Is baptismal regeneration…

    Yes - but only because, in the New Testament, baptism was simultaneous with conversion. If you separate baptism from conversion (as most churches do), then the doctrine ceases to make sense.
  9. Deborah_

    Pentecost - Was it the birthday of the church?

    Neither. What I was on my day of birth isn't the model for the rest of my life, so why should it be so for the Church? There's a continuity, however, between the Church then and the Church now. The same Holy Spirit empowers us. How He chooses to manifest His power is up to Him, of course.
  10. Deborah_

    Is it ever ok to lie?

    The truth must be spoken in love. It's generally considered better to give bad news face-to-face than over the phone, even if that means a delay. (It doesn't follow that if they don't tell you, then it must be bad news - there could be other reasons). When I was working, we NEVER gave positive...
  11. Deborah_

    What was the Purpose of Jesus' Baptism?

    Because that's just what priests do. Although originally, the idea may not have been so much washing away their own sins (they offered sacrifices for that) as washing off the contamination of the world.
  12. Deborah_

    What was the Purpose of Jesus' Baptism?

    The oil was symbolic of the Holy Spirit. The washing was separate. Jesus, after being washed (in water, like the priests), was anointed not with oil but with the "real thing" - the Spirit Himself.
  13. Deborah_

    What was the Purpose of Jesus' Baptism?

    Theos is a noun, not an adjective. It doesn't mean "divine'; it means "god". (It can occasionally be translated as 'divine' when in the genitive case - which isn't the case here) Whatever John is saying, it isn't "the Word was divine." It would make hyper-clear the number of times that the...
  14. Deborah_

    What was the Purpose of Jesus' Baptism?

    And one of the basic rules of Greek grammar is that when a noun is used as a complement and precedes the subject, the article is omitted. So in Greek, "the Word was a god" would be "Theos en ho logos", and "the word was God" is also "Theos en ho logos". So both translations are legitimate on...
  15. Deborah_

    What was the Purpose of Jesus' Baptism?

    But since I personally am convinced that the Holy Spirit IS personal (better than saying "a person"), I shall continue to refer to Him with personal pronouns.
  16. Deborah_

    Who is King James in the Bible?

    It should be Guy Fawkes. The poster has already been told this on another forum, but hasn't corrected it. Same with the dates.
  17. Deborah_

    What was the Purpose of Jesus' Baptism?

    But anyone, of any religion (or none), can imitate the "spirit" of Christ in that sense - and many non-Christians (having great respect for Jesus' ethical teaching) do just that. That can't be what Paul is talking about. Go back through Romans a bit further, and in chapter 5 Paul says that "the...
  18. Deborah_

    What was the Purpose of Jesus' Baptism?

    "Neuter words require neuter pronouns" - very true, but the gender of the word doesn't necessarily match the gender of what it refers to. In many languages the word for "child" is neuter - grammatically one should use a neuter pronoun, but in practice, if the child's gender is known (it isn't...
  19. Deborah_

    What was the Purpose of Jesus' Baptism?

    In Romans 8:9, Paul refers to the Spirit of Christ: "You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ." Interesting that he uses the titles...
  20. Deborah_

    What was the Purpose of Jesus' Baptism?

    The 17th century translators used the word 'ghost' because it had a slightly different range of meaning back then - it could have the same meaning as 'spirit' (rather like 'Geist' in modern German). Nothing to do with their belief in the Trinity. Christians had already believed for centuries...