Why do you write such things? I did not compare them that way. I was using the travel brochure as an example.
Your Bible can read your mind? Your Bible can separate soul and spirit? Do you know what this verse means? If you can tell me that your soul and spirit have been divided, if you can tell me that soul and spirit have been separated from the flesh, then you can claim to know what that passage means. I can so claim. I also asked you elsewhere about sitting in heavenly places. I can claim to know about that too, having traveled in the spirit to heavenly places while my body was left behind on the earth.
What you are missing is how the saint can speak with a "new tongue." That is always done aloud the way Jesus spoke to the wind and told to be still.
Paul is talking about a lower variation of prophecy. Not all prophecy rises to the standard of being "Scripture."
This kind of prophecy can be incomplete the way the prophet who warned Paul was right to a certain extent.
Thanks Giuliana....some thoughts there....some work there.
One of the reasons I am here, to see some insightful thoughts.
The spirit....the mind....the flesh......the trick is to get them to work as a team.
The people that are successful have their own way.
As I read your posts here I thought how good it would be sitting around a fire with Peter and Paul, wine in hand and reading your thoughts. I could see them nodding their heads on some things.
They were probably wondering about the other Apostles, did they know what they were doing....Acts accounts for a few....but it seems that many had traveled off. Tradition suggests this to. I know they had a concern for standardization of the Gospel, so as we sat around that campfire I am sure they were talking about what the other Apostles were preaching. We speculate because most of the twelve Apostles were not prolific writers. Thank God some of Paul's letters to the churches survived.
They are thinking that His return could be in days. Never a thought of millenniums. I am sure that Peter and Paul felt the best way to deliver the Gospel was through a person full of the Holy Spirit. And that is what we hope for now. True that Christ never said to write anything down and never suggested the Temple was His or that they should build anything to Him.
As time went on, all recognized to importance of preserving the Words of Christ and the Christian story on paper. So how they did that, we do not know for sure. All from memory? The Gospels, the concept of the Q document could be true because the Words are similar but seemed to be written from different perspectives. And still they waited for Christ to return. Now Peter and Paul are gone and Christ did not return.
One of the rules I go by is Perspective, Context, and Motion
Deuteronomy 18:22 When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him.
Revelation 22:20 "He who testifies to these things says, "Yes, I am coming quickly." Amen.
So by this rule, Revelation and the "Last days" beliefs fall into question, well more than question, it did not happen. So over the 2000 years the speculation of why has been many. I have my own thoughts....I categorize depths of my own beliefs. I consider the possibility that something happened that postponed things. I suspect that maybe there were things that we needed to learn...oh boy! What is love? The love taught in the Bible, did not make an impression of them...slavery, subordinate status of women, witch-hunts, inquisitions...etc It was nearly 1800 years later that the concept of even platonic love started to sink in. It has always escaped me....all that time....did it never dawn on the sons that mom was human.
Prophecy has always been a risky business. both making the prophecy and interpreting the prophecy.
Around 700 year before Christ the prophets were says the Terrible and great day of the Lord was at hand...One big hand.
They prophesied a human warlord king whose kingdom would last forever. What they got was so different that they could not comprehend or cope with it....a peaceful God....a king....that died. So it does not matter if it is the Mormons, the Jehovah Witnesses, or the Seventh Day Adventists....Prophecy has been a disappointment to them. Lesson, best not to prophesize about the future. It could be like looking into a whirlpool of possibilities.
Either way the Bible was a necessity...no matter what it was written by man...all we can hope for is an honest attempt to be accurate. And mostly I believe that is what we got. But the whole, too many fingers in the pie, thing, is also evident. The politics involved is staggering. So part of my lifelong study has been to go back as far as we can and uncover the fallacies and promote the truth. The good thing is that older texts are being discovered all the time. And the issues are not just the Bible, tradition can be a Bible of sorts, traditions teach society, and it can also be false.
The desire for truth, whatever that truth may be has been my mission and ministry.
