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Xavierlives
Guest
As in what is the itinerary?
Well, that is why it is in pencil. I am leaving it up to Him.
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Well, that is why it is in pencil. I am leaving it up to Him.
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Xavierlives
Guest
Thank you.
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Xavierlives
Guest
Hold on. I’d really like some clarification on this one because if this is part of LDS teaching I’d really like to know.
Are you saying that because Moses included bats in Leviticus 11:13-19 in a list of fowl, that the Bible has proven errors?
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mrparker
Guest
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mrparker
Guest
I apologize, as afterwards i realized that one could mistaken what i had inserted to be what you said. I should have separated, or indicated more properly what it was that i added and not just what i crossed out. Forgive me. And thank you for your kind manner of addressing it.
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Rocket_Man
Guest
Mr. Parker, if God’s love is shown through Christ Jesus coming into the world to save sinners, exactly when in history did the active church apostate with this message?
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dianaiad
Guest
Because He didn’t. He has never been about force, and will do nothing against our own wills. I realize that this is a VERY different paradigm from the predestination folks, but we are about as ‘free will’ as it is possible to get.
We can be ‘fore-ordained’ to something…but that doesn’t mean we can’t screw that up.
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dianaiad
Guest
As do we, really…we simply understand that it’s going to be more. More learning. More to do. More to accomplish. More to BE.
More.
Stephen168
New member
Jesus had an earthly ministry. During his ministry, he taught his disciple all they needed to know for salvation. Many of his disciples were called Apostles. The term ‘Apostle’ means one who is sent. Jesus selected The Twelve: Simon (Peter/Cephas/Rock), James (the Greater/son of Zebedee/brother of John), John (the Evangelist/the brother of James), Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James (the Lesser/the son of Alphaeus), Jude (Thaddaeus), Simon (the Zealot/Canaanite), and Judas Iscariot. Christ sent the Twelve (Matthew 10:5). Christ selected 70 more and they were sent (Luke 10:1). Mark and Luke the Evangelists are referred to as Apostles. By tradition, James, Luke, and Mark were members of the seventy. Paul and Barnabas were called Apostles (Acts 14:14). Barnabas was taught by the Twelve and was with Paul on his first journey. These Apostles are the witnesses and recorders of Christ’s earthly ministry. Most were witnesses to his resurrection.
Just as sheep have four legs but not all animals with four legs are sheep; all the Apostles were not ‘The Twelve.’ The Twelve were the foundation of his Church (Eph 2:19-22), but not just any 12 but THE Twelve (Rev 21:14). The corner stone and the foundation are laid once. Just as Christ is eternally the head of the Church, The Twelve are the eternal foundation.
Because of Judas’ apostasy (Acts 1:25), the Twelve needed to be restored. The eleven chose Matthias.
According to Peter there are two requirements to be a member of the Twelve. The two requirements are:
a) Witness the resurrected Lord
b) Been in the company of the twelve while the Lord walked on earth.
These requirements limit the council membership to the first century. After all the men that walked with the twelve, while the Lord walked the earth, died; no one else qualified. The Twelve was never meant to be on going. This was the only time eleven selected a twelfth; one apostasy, one replacement. Revelation 21:14: Peter/Cephas/Rock, James son of Zebedee, John the Evangelist, Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus, Jude, Simon the Zealot, and Matthias.
Just as there was no need to replace Christ as the head of Church after the crucifixion, or replace The Twelve as the foundation after their deaths; the Twelve were not replaced after their deaths. If Apostle was only an office to be filled, they could have easily been replaced; just like Bishops have been replaced for almost 2000 years.
The only consistent meaning to being called ‘Apostle’ seems to be an Evangelist who was taught by Christ or The Twelve. The Twelve would pass from the earth by design. The title of Apostle would pass from the earth because The Twelve was not here to commission them. When Eusebius (Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History © 324) refers to an Apostle being replaced it is as the Apostle’s position of Bishop (Peter in Rome, James in Jerusalem) not as Apostles. As the Apostles died, IF they were also Bishops, they were replaced by Bishops.
“For by her activity the machinations of her foes were promptly shown up and extinguished, though one after another heresies were invented, the earlier ones constantly passing away and disappearing, in different ways at different times, into forms of every shape and character. But the splendor of the Catholic and one true Church, always remaining the same and unchanged, grew steadily in greatness and strength,” Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Book IV, Chapter 7.
Just as sheep have four legs but not all animals with four legs are sheep; all the Apostles were not ‘The Twelve.’ The Twelve were the foundation of his Church (Eph 2:19-22), but not just any 12 but THE Twelve (Rev 21:14). The corner stone and the foundation are laid once. Just as Christ is eternally the head of the Church, The Twelve are the eternal foundation.
Because of Judas’ apostasy (Acts 1:25), the Twelve needed to be restored. The eleven chose Matthias.
According to Peter there are two requirements to be a member of the Twelve. The two requirements are:
a) Witness the resurrected Lord
b) Been in the company of the twelve while the Lord walked on earth.
These requirements limit the council membership to the first century. After all the men that walked with the twelve, while the Lord walked the earth, died; no one else qualified. The Twelve was never meant to be on going. This was the only time eleven selected a twelfth; one apostasy, one replacement. Revelation 21:14: Peter/Cephas/Rock, James son of Zebedee, John the Evangelist, Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus, Jude, Simon the Zealot, and Matthias.
Just as there was no need to replace Christ as the head of Church after the crucifixion, or replace The Twelve as the foundation after their deaths; the Twelve were not replaced after their deaths. If Apostle was only an office to be filled, they could have easily been replaced; just like Bishops have been replaced for almost 2000 years.
The only consistent meaning to being called ‘Apostle’ seems to be an Evangelist who was taught by Christ or The Twelve. The Twelve would pass from the earth by design. The title of Apostle would pass from the earth because The Twelve was not here to commission them. When Eusebius (Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History © 324) refers to an Apostle being replaced it is as the Apostle’s position of Bishop (Peter in Rome, James in Jerusalem) not as Apostles. As the Apostles died, IF they were also Bishops, they were replaced by Bishops.
“For by her activity the machinations of her foes were promptly shown up and extinguished, though one after another heresies were invented, the earlier ones constantly passing away and disappearing, in different ways at different times, into forms of every shape and character. But the splendor of the Catholic and one true Church, always remaining the same and unchanged, grew steadily in greatness and strength,” Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Book IV, Chapter 7.
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dianaiad
Guest
Well, is a bat a bird?
Does a hare chew its cud?
How old WAS Ahasiah when he began to ‘reign…’ 22 or 42?
Did Solomon have four thousand stalls for horses, or 40 thousand?
Did Saul kill himself, or did the Phillistines kill him?
Was Jonah in the belly of the fish (Jonah 1:17) or the whale (Matt. 12: 40)
…or how about this one: The "johanine comma,’ (1 John 5:7-8, found in in many versions, including the KJV) which ALL agree is a scribal add on. The Trinitarians like it a lot, because there is no other group of verses that address the present idea of the Trinity so exactly—but it was not a part of the original letter. It was a scribal add on by an overzealous monk. Of all the errors in the bible, that one is the only one which actually speaks to doctrine.
these are errors. There’s no way to show that they are NOT errors, since, well…they are. Notice, however, that they are not errors of doctrine, or errors that, corrected, would affect doctrine in any way (except for the Johanine comma, of course) . They are simply 'errors of men." Scribal goofs–not all that important. All the biblical critics in all the world, doing fine tooth combing of scriptures, can only find errors like the above. Errors, certainly—but how do they affect the teachings of the Lord in any important, or even semi-important, thing?
What they DO do, however, is nail the sort of biblical inerrentist who worships the book rather than the Writer of it…who, like a televangalist I once saw, would say that if Jesus Christ Himself came down and pointed out an error in the bible, he would turn his back on the Lord and hold to the book.
It is a book. it is an inspired book; scripture, written by Prophets. NOT dictated to them the way Muslims claim that the Quran was dictated to Mohammad, but written by them, in their own words, from their own cultures, according to the knowledge that they personally had. OF COURSE they are going to make errors. Unimportant ones, of inadequate scientific knowledge, perhaps…
But what they aren’t going to do is make errors in what the books were about–the religious principles for which the book was intended as a text.
Our belief in this matter is quite clear: We believe the bible to be the word of God, as far as it is translated correctly. We believe the Book of Mormon to be the Word of God.
On the title page of the Book of Mormon, we read…if there be errors, they are the errors of men.
So…we do not believe that scripture is some magical idol; they are words, they are words to be read with descernment and the Holy Spirit in order to glean the truth. They are SCRIPTURE, but they are not inerrent.
Finally, how CAN they be? For God is Perfect. His Son is perfect…but no man is, and if no man is, how can anything he touches be perfect?
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zaffiroborant
Guest
So He is also the literal father of kittens too?
Literally offspring is, the product of the reproductive process of an animal or plant. This is what you seemed to be saying when you first answered concerning what was meant by “literal children of the Heavenly Father and Mother”.
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why_me
Guest
Xavierlives;5929051:
I hope everyone knows that this is the belief we share, and that this is indeed the Core of all belief in the savior Jesus Christ.
Thank you, i feel your passion, and love for your belief. And i appreciate it.
And if you respond to this entire post of mine with no more than a “i disagree” I will not attempt, as many others do, to claim that i have proven you wrong and confounded you, but thank you for reading what i have expressed.
edited it out.
That is a good starting point for agreement.
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Xavierlives
Guest
First, lets think about what is gained from proving the Bible has errors. I guess it is basically a childlike syllogy. The Bible is the word of God. If the Bible has errors then God has errors. In the alternative, you can say the Bible is collected works written by man and inspired by God. Now you get to say no man, besides Jesus, was perfect, so it is to be expected that a few typos and errors will occur. Now, Mormons have written off nearly 4,000 errors as I recall. So for the sake of not trying to remove mote from my neighbor’s eye, lets let the extra zero or two-for-four typo sit on the back burner for a second.
Since these as somewhat common contradictions posed by non-Christians they are all pretty easy to discuss:
Q. Well, is a bat a bird?
A. Well, lets ask God. Gen 1:21 says:
And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
Doesn’t it make more sense that in the inclusion of “every winged fowl” we accept that fowl means animal of flight? Why would God say, every winged fowl and the only mammal with sustained flying ability, the bat. It just makes more sense to refer to animals of flight as fowl.
Q. Does a hare chew its cud?
A. I’m actually still surprised when this one shows up in a discussion. Maybe it is because the person hasn’t been around rabbits or know much about them, but a hare actually does reingest the contents of its digestive system. (see cecotrope).
Q Did Saul kill himself, or did the Phillistines kill him?
A. I am going to answer this with a law school hypothetical. A man wants to commit suicide so he jumps off a 40 story building. At the 20th floor a woman shoots a gun out her window. The bullet strikes the man in the head and he is killed instantly. Who killed the man? Back to Saul. He had a fatal wound, recovery was impossible and death was inevitable. Saul did not want to be defiled in death so he fell on his sword. Who killed Saul?
Q. Was Jonah in the belly of the fish (Jonah 1:17) or the whale (Matt. 12: 40)
A. (this one is always my favorite). A Whale.
Q. Why?
A. Because Jesus said so. (I also like to add, it was probably pretty hard for Jonah to identify the beast from the inside of his stomach).
Some of the other ones I have heard from Mormons are:
Q. How did the ark come to rest on the mountains of Ararat?
Q. How did Sarah nurse children when she had but one son.
Q. How did the thief on the cross both revile Jesus and rebuke the other thief while asking for mercy? (see Mark 15:32; Mt. 27:44; Luke 23:39)
Q. How did Peter deny Christ three times before the cock crowed, but in the Gospel of Mark, the cock crowed twice?
The last one actually threw me off because Jesus said both things. They are all fun too, though,
Alas, I must stop for now because my family calls. I’ll try address the other issue later.
Remember Jesus died for us that we should only die once, but Lazarus had to die twice to get the same gift.
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PaulDupre
Guest
Mormons don’t get it. Eternity is not time, it is eternity. When you live in eternity there is no time - everything is present. Period.
:banghead:
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dianaiad
Guest
No.
. There is something about being 'in His image" that might give you a clue.
And your reaction comes extremely close to mockery: what if I started making snarky comments about Marian worship? (I would not, by the way, DO that.)
What is confusing about this concept?Literally offspring is, the product of the reproductive process of an animal or plant. This is what you seemed to be saying when you first answered concerning what was meant by “literal children of the Heavenly Father and Mother”.
We humans are His offspring. In His image. His children. He is God…we are not telling Him how he is supposed to do this stuff, why are you?
YOU have this mystery of the Trinity that, quite frankly, is almost impossible to get the human mind around; it’s a mystery; and that’s fine, Catholicism has quite a few of those–and that is also fine. God is SUPPOSED to be greater than we are. He is SUPPOSED to be difficult to comprehend for mortals. I haven’t heard that you expect your fellow Catholics to understand all the parameters of the mysteries of your faith. There is no expectation of total comprehension and understanding…yet for some reason you expect us to explain all the nuts, bolts and technical details of every belief we have.
Why the double standard?
This is our belief: God created everything spiritually before He created it physically. We, human beings (including all the angels…) are His spiritual children; offspring in a way that all His other creations are NOT.
And yes, kittens have spirits.
…you have NO problem expecting others to accept miraculous visitations at Lourdes, of visions of Mary in grilled cheese sandwiches and on the sides of barns, of miraculous cures resulting from faith in the fingerbones of saints…of the incorruptable nature of the bodies of saints…of the very strange looking clothing your clergy wears during religious rituals…
and by the way, there is nothing wrong with any of the above. They are special to your faith, ‘mysteries’ that you are not EXPECTED to understand completely; just to accept, and have faith in. All religious faiths have such mysteries and concepts that one simply…takes upon faith. One of these, for us, is that we humans are the literal spiritual offspring of God…and that kittens, though they do have spirits created BY God, are…not.
Though
And you just did that. Stop it.
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dianaiad
Guest
Some say it’s more like 3000, but then who’s counting?
Well, that could be a problem, since there are fowls that do NOT fly, yet have wings…but are still birds. Bats, however, are mammals. That’s an entirely different biological classification. Your point may be poetic, but scientifically it, well…sucks.
QUOTE=Xavierlives;5930524]Q. Does a hare chew its cud?
A. I’m actually still surprised when this one shows up in a discussion. Maybe it is because the person hasn’t been around rabbits or know much about them, but a hare actually does reingest the contents of its digestive system. (see cecotrope).
Chewing ones feces is NOT chewing one’s cud. Very different products of the digestive system.
QUOTE=Xavierlives;5930524]Q Did Saul kill himself, or did the Phillistines kill him?
A. I am going to answer this with a law school hypothetical. A man wants to commit suicide so he jumps off a 40 story building. At the 20th floor a woman shoots a gun out her window. The bullet strikes the man in the head and he is killed instantly. Who killed the man? Back to Saul. He had a fatal wound, recovery was impossible and death was inevitable. Saul did not want to be defiled in death so he fell on his sword. Who killed Saul?
Samuel 31:3-5: Saul gets hit with the arrow. He asks his armourbearer to kill him, and the armourbearer refuses, so Saul falls on his sword and dies. The armourbearer falls on his own sword, then, and dies too. Nothing in there about the armour bearer being an Amalekite.
2 Samuel 1: 5-10; David is told about Saul and Jonothan’s death by a young Amalekite, who says HE knows that Saul is dead because, well…he killed Saul himself, for which David had him killed.
2 Samuel 21:12 tells us that David went after the bones of Saul and Jonathon "from the men of Jabeshgliead, which ahd stolen them from the street of Bethshan, wher the Philistines had hanged them, when the Philistines had slain Saul in Gilboa.’
…and yet a fourth version has GOD killing the man, in 1 Chronicles 10:13-15, for his disobedience.
Well, that last is of course easily reconciled, and the third may also be…
But there is no reconciling versions 1 and 2. Either Saul fell on his sword, as the account rather plainly states, or some really stupid Amalekite killed him and told DAVID this, losing his own life as a result.
That is a contradiction, no matter how you want to describe it.
QUOTE=Xavierlives;5930524]Q. Was Jonah in the belly of the fish (Jonah 1:17) or the whale (Matt. 12: 40)
A. (this one is always my favorite). A Whale.
Q. Why?
A. Because Jesus said so. (I also like to add, it was probably pretty hard for Jonah to identify the beast from the inside of his stomach).
That’s fine…but the BIBLE also says it was a fish. We aren’t talking about the inerancy of the words of Jesus.
QUOTE=Xavierlives;5930524]Some of the other ones I have heard from Mormons are:
Q. How did the ark come to rest on the mountains of Ararat?
Q. How did Sarah nurse children when she had but one son.
Q. How did the thief on the cross both revile Jesus and rebuke the other thief while asking for mercy? (see Mark 15:32; Mt. 27:44; Luke 23:39)
Q. How did Peter deny Christ three times before the cock crowed, but in the Gospel of Mark, the cock crowed twice?
All good questions, actually.
QUOTE=Xavierlives;5930524]The last one actually threw me off because Jesus said both things. They are all fun too, though,
Alas, I must stop for now because my family calls. I’ll try address the other issue later.
You haven’t really addressed THIS one yet.
QUOTE=Xavierlives;5930524]Remember Jesus died for us that we should only die once, but Lazarus had to die twice to get the same gift.
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dianaiad
Guest
Eternity is ALSO time, because time is contained within it.
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Xavierlives
Guest
If 3913 is closer to 3000 than 4000, sure. It is still quite a few for “the most correct of any book on earth.”
Yes, yes, you are so right, some fowl do not fly. You caught me there. But like you have already said, bats do fly. Bats are included in the list of 10,000 birds (probably more) because, while they are not fowl, they are the only flying mammal. I does not make sense to specifically point them out at creation simply because they are the only one. But it seems that your complaint is God needs to be more scientific? Err… okay.
So you want the hare to have multiple stomachs and regurgiate for this to be true? I would think, chewing on formerly digested food would count and chewing cud.
Well since you are okay with your #3 & 4, and I already explained #1, all that is left is the Amalekite. He was a liar. He was hoping for a reward as a looter and met his demise.
I’m disappointed. I wanted more of a “No! It was a fish argument.” I tried to set the stage, but it didn’t work. It really was a fish. I was just “fishing” for what you were complaining that the whale is not a fish, that the Bible identifies the beast as different things, or that the translator calls it a whale? The the word in Jonah and word in Matthew are the same (I couldn’t tell you). Since you accept the Bible as the Word of God, so long as it is translated correctly, I wasn’t sure how your’s wrote it out.
I can’t take credit for them, but they are easy enough to rebutt (or I wouldn’t have brought them up).
Which?
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dianaiad
Guest
uh…problem, there. I am not the one claiming that God erred. That would be whoever assigned the bat ‘bird’ status when God rather clearly made it a mammal (you know, hair/fur bearing, live birth, nursing the young, that sort of thing? ) and not a bird. Nicely circular argument there, though…
Well, yes, actually.
It only counts in the sense that bats are birds…and they aren’t. Your argument is, again, circular; you wouldn’t count a bat a bird OR the feces chewing rabbit a cud chewing bovine if the bible did NOT say that about either one, and since it is the accuracy of the bible that is in question…
But again you aren’t getting my point, which is–errors of MEN are going to happen. What you should actually look at is that the most virulent anti-religious searcher out of things can NOT find; that is, any contradiction in basic doctrinal truths or teachings (though I will admit, there is a little confusion in the NT with the ‘he who is not with us is against us’ and “he who is not against us is with us” thing, but that’s not exactly earthshaking.
There was no need to 'Explain" #1. It was self evident. The question here was…if everything in the bible is inerrent, then whatever report given of the death of Saul would, therefore, have to be true. Here’s a question, though. Number 1 is reported in the third person omniscient (how DID the narrator know exactly what happened to Saul, and that his armour bearer refused to kill him because he was 'sore afraid?" Who WAS this observer? Nobody ever tells us)
Then comes #2, with a very real witness…an enemy, for crying out loud, who tells David (whom every body KNEW loved Jonathon and would not allow the death of Saul to go unavenged…) that he killed him because Saul asked him to. As well, HE brought proof of HIS story, since he brought Saul’s crown and bracelet with him…and by the way, he also said that Saul had ‘leaned upon his spear…’ and living (not falling upon his sword and dying) and nothing about arrows. So what is it; did Saul fall upon his sword and die, as was told in 1Samuel, or did he lean upon his spear (a slightly different weapon of war) and NOT die? If the Amalekite was lying, why did he have the crown and bracelet (which he obviously DID have) to give to David?
If one is going by trustworthiness here, which story has the supporting evidence; the one that is a bald narration without proof, or the story of the Amalekite who brought it with him? It doesn’t matter at this date except that they ARE two entirely different stories, and both are in the bible, both presented as true. Now I do not have to reconcile them. The reason I was able to accept #3 and #4 is because I do NOT have to reconcile them to accept the bible as scripture, and even to accept it as inerrent IN THE ORIGINAL.
You, however, do…which of course raises the point; if the bible is as completely inerrent as you claim it is, no reconciliation should be necessary. The writers would have gotten their science right. Jesus would not HAVE to have the last say on whether Jonah was in a fish or a whale, because the original story would have gotten it right the first time. THAT doesn’t matter either to the point of the story, except that “inerrent” means “WITHOUT ERROR.” Not 'without large errors," or 'we can twist things and poke things hard enough so that they seem to fit if you don’t look hard," but WITHOUT ERROR. None. The science is right. The stories are all straight. The timelines work. No Johanine commas in any translation. You know, without error.
to be cont…
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dianaiad
Guest
cont…
After all, I also think that it’s pretty much inerrant 'in the original," though my version of ‘original’ may go back a little further than yours.
Diana, getting rather a giggle out of the ‘the Amalekite lied’ story…it is ironic, given a fairly recent conversation regarding the reported deaths of a couple of Joseph Smith’s attackers—and that report isn’t considered scripture by anybody at all!
Does it matter which translation I use? Your claim is that the bible is inerrant. All the time. As soon as you start allowing for translation differences, you prove MY claim, not yours!
After all, I also think that it’s pretty much inerrant 'in the original," though my version of ‘original’ may go back a little further than yours.
If the bible is inerrent, as you claim, there would be no problems that need rebuttal. If that rebuttal requires you to go to another, earlier, version of the book, you have–just by doing THAT—proven my point, not yours.
The one in which you are attempting to explain away errors that were actually made; either by the original writers or by scribes–or by reporting something inaccurate as ‘truth’ in something that will later be termed 'innerant."
Diana, getting rather a giggle out of the ‘the Amalekite lied’ story…it is ironic, given a fairly recent conversation regarding the reported deaths of a couple of Joseph Smith’s attackers—and that report isn’t considered scripture by anybody at all!
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