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Arguments about God are only as good as their underlying assumptions. These assumptions are based on experience. Therefore, arguments about God are only as good as one's experience. "Experience" is subjective, not objective. So debate should be focused on what is subjectively or...

Translation: I have no answer to your detailed defense of the Scriptural basis of Purgatory. So I have no recourse but to ignore God's Word in the hope that other Fundamentalists here will support my mindless pontifications.

No, the historical background of a term like "Gehenna" is irrelevant to the question of its contemporary metaphorical meaning as determined by Jewish usage in Jesus' time. For the ancient rabbis, "Gehenna" refers to Hell, a place of postmortem purification to which a Jew of mediocre...

In other words, God takes away our free will to make us suitable candidates for Heaven. This undermines the value of our free choices in this life and raises this question: Then why wouldn't a God of love also control the wills of Hitler and Stalin, transforming them to make them suitable...

The biblical case has been laid out for Purgatory and praying to deceased saints and Evangelical critics have had no detailed exegete5ical answe4r to the detailed arguments. But what about these 4 common sense questions? (1) If, as Paul and contemporary Judaism teach, there are several levels...

Google King "James Version documentary" and you will learn the the KJV was a fresh translation, each small section of which the large committee read aloud to each other tp see how their NEW translation would flow in church! The committee notes of the translators have been preserved..

So doubting Thomas was wrong to acclaim Jesus as "my Lord and my God?" Then why doesn't Jesus rebuke Thomas?

Paul Christenson: "It is interesting to note that the earliest Greek manuscript that we have is from the 4th Century - when the active involvement of the Holy Spirit had largely disappeared from the church in general..." On the contrary, St. Augustine celebrates all the healing miracles that...

The NKJV is more readable than the old KJV, but is almost as corrupt because it still uses the error-filled Textus Receptus. The NIV is not really a paraphrase, but a dynamic equivalent translation, very faithful to the original languages. The best and most readable paraphrase translation is...

One of the first things a student learns at ANY seminary, evangelical or liberal, is how corrupt the Hebrew and Greek texts used by the KJV translators really is. This corruption is the inevitable result of its use of the latest manuscripts which display many centuries of accumulating copy...

No, I would put it this way: because divine foreknowledge precedes predestination (so Romans 8:29), God foreknew that humanity would freely disobey and fit that foreknowledge into his plan. In that sense, then, Genesis 2-3 is best understood as the story of the birth of conscience rather than...

I will begin my exegesis of the relevant Pauline texts by reposting #32 from the other thread which posters have so far ducked. The Kreisel: "You left out that pesky VS 25 - Romans 11:25 For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own...

My own position on universalism echoes this brilliant succinct remark by famed evangelical apologist C. S. Lewis: "The gates of Hell are locked from the inside." In other words, God is Love and therefore does not stop loving the sinner even in Hell. If souls are trapped in Hell, that is due to...

You shockingly omitted the key verse cited by universalists in Romans 11: "God has imprisoned all in disobedience, so that He might be merciful to all (11:32)." The pro-universalist interpretation then depends on these 4 points. (1) "Imprisoned" implies that none can resist God's purpose for...

The answer to the OP is that the apparent inconsistencies must be explained in terms of progressive revelation. Progressive revelation raises the question of the extent to which OT Jewish culture limited and distorted the revelatory impulse of prophets and what the Israelites were and were not...

Paul implies that Peter took his wife with him on his missionary tours. Peter calls Mark his "son" (1 Peter 5:13); so it is natural to view Mark as his biological son! Clement of Alexandria discusses Peter's children. When Paul refers to Timothy and Titus as his "child," he clarifies that...

My uncle, a pastor, once cringed when he heard a guy complain about a procrastinator, "She's as slow as the 2nd coming of Christ!" The church of my youth held a Watchnight service on New Year's Eve. The idea was that we would enter the New Year on our knees. Guest preachers often harped on the...

My uncle, a pastor, once cringed when he hear a guy complain about a procrastinater, "She's as slow as the 2nd coming of Christ!" The church of my youth held a Watchnight service on New Year's Eve. The idea was that we would enter the New Year on our knees. Guest preachers often harped on the...

At creation God brought order out of chaos, but God does not control or micro-mangage the forces of chaos. "All are victims of time and chance (Eccl. 9:11). Divine foreknowledge of poor human decisions does not mean divine control of those decisions. Divine foreknowledge precedes predestination...

One inference can be drawn: the "new earth" is not a remodeled present earth. The old earth "has passed away." Our earth is 3/4 water, So the fact "there is no sea" on the "new earth" suggests a different planet altogether. Also, Jesus teaches that "the kingdom of God does not come with...