The Mark of the Beast

[Lapell]

No human being can ever decide to love. It does not make sense at all. One can decide to accommodate, but to love, never believe such a thing. One either loves or he doesn’t.

Well, changing your mind is also a decision, Ben. Decision is not the same thing as the determination to maintain the same decision no matter what, Ben.
Also, to decide to love doesn’t mean that you overcome your dislike on the spot! It takes some time…
You are single or married, Ben?

 

[Lapell]

Why would there then be a need for a commandment from God that you love your neighbour as your own self if love were only a feeling, Ben?

 

[look3467]

I would like to point out something that goes along with commitment.

Commitment is key to the survival of a commandment. No commitment, throw out the commandment.

OK, having said that, I want to explain one of the reasons why the Jews were God’s instrument of choice.

And it is in one word, stubbornness.

Psa 78:8 And might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation; a generation that set not their heart aright, and whose spirit was not stedfast with God.

Stubbornness towards the law, to the letter of the law was key to the salvation of the world.
Tell me, what people can we say still hold without reservation the integrity of their beliefs through persecutions, imprisonments, torture and still, even today maintain that same integrity?

Unwilling to change, until God does the changing, they will persist in their commitment to the integrity to the laws of Moses.

Their stubbornness to the law is what was needed for the offering of the Son of God as a sacrifice for all mankind.

Rightly so, we all owe it to them in gratitude: Joh 4:22 Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews.

Let us not forget that of two, God in Jesus has made one.
Gal 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.

Therefore, love one another as God has loved you!

Blessing’s, AJ

 

[Ben_Masada]

You ARE confusing love with sympathy and attraction towards others, Ben.
You may also be confusing it with the “coup de foudre”. Might lead to true love but is NOT love itself! Ever read Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, the whole chapter 13?

Sorry Lapell, but that chapter 13 of Paul to the Corinthians is a piece of rhetoric on Charity, not love. Charity begs annonimity to be classified as love. Otherwise, it’s only hypocrisy.

 

[Ben_Masada]

I haven’t. And no matter how you subtitled love at one point there is a decision one makes to love. God initiated the covenant with Abraham not the other way around. Unless I’m misunderstanding you. Habit is an interesting point. I’ll have to think on it because our definitions may not coincide with this word. Love works this way BTW the more you love something the more you learn about it which brings about more love. It can be applied to God and anything else. However, I will agree that the Love of God is the ultimate thing we are to do. Our responce to all else should stem from this love of God that we have.

**Any decision to love will end in hatred and probably tragedy. Therefore, there is no such a thing as decision to love.

If God initiated the covenant with Abraham, then God is respecter of people. In this case, what do you mean by your first statement, “I haven’t forgotten that God is no respecter of people?”

I believe the opposite is true. Instead of “the more you love something, the more you learn it,” I would say, The more you learn about something, the more you love it, …or not. But hey! You must have your reasons to believe the way you do.**

 

[Ben_Masada]

If feelings were the criteria for the kind of love that Jesus commanded us to practice than this verse is of no earthly good: Joh 15:13 Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

Jesus did not lay down his life for his friends of his own freewill. Don’t forget that he prayed three times for that not to happen. At the end he said, “Be Thy will done and not mine.” What was Jesus’ will, to lay down his life? Hardly! He walked the via dolorosa against his will. We need to analize the facts with more maturity.

Jesus was beaten, spat on, lashed 39 times tearing the flesh of His back, crowned with a crown of thorns piercing the head to the point that the face was unrecognizable.
Mocked, laughed at and pierced hands and feet with spikes.

And so were all the other Jews crucified by the Romans. It was a matter of policy to scourge any Jew prior to crucifixion to break down the spirit of resistence. Read John 19:1. Then, Josephus is even a better source.

No! It was commitment. Commitment to His Father that the Fathers will be done over His own will.

There was no commitment but accommodation or resignation, since there was no way out of the ordeal.

Therefore, commitment becomes a commandment in that it becomes a standard by which our own feelings are exempt.

There is no such a thing as commitment to love. You are raping Psychology with this assertion.

That is why in the marriage vowels, it is promise is made that for richer, for poor, in sickness and in health, becomes a commitment, therefore a commandment.

No wonder so many tragedies happen as a result of love turning sour and metamorphosing into hatred.

The standard by which a marriage can sustain, apart from feelings, the marriage institution sacred.

Well, to make the marriage institution sacred is indeed a tonic for habit. Once a man told me that he hated his wife more than the plague. When I asked him why he didn’t divorce her, he said he couldn’t because habit was stronger than hatred.

Can Jesus expect from us something that He Himself could/would not do?

You are right. He can’t.

P.S. I’ve will celebrate forty-first anniversary this year.

**Indeed, habit is stronger than anything else. Such a commitment grows to such a point that it becomes impossible for one to live without the other. Congratulations NOW. But for some good part of your life, I don’t think congratulations would have been the word. **

 

[Ben_Masada]

Well, changing your mind is also a decision, Ben. Decision is not the same thing as the determination to maintain the same decision no matter what, Ben.
Also, to decide to love doesn’t mean that you overcome your dislike on the spot! It takes some time…
You are single or married, Ben?

**To change one’s mind is not an emotion. Therefore, it can be part of a decision.

Married twice and a widower now.**

 

[Ben_Masada]

Why would there then be a need for a commandment from God that you love your neighbour as your own self if love were only a feeling, Ben?

That’s not love. That’s respect. Love cannot be commanded. Respect can, and even be enforced. Besides, no one can love anyone else as one loves him or herself. That’s a cop-out beautiful only as empty rhetoric.

 

[Ben_Masada]

I would like to point out something that goes along with commitment.

Commitment is key to the survival of a commandment. No commitment, throw out the commandment.

OK, having said that, I want to explain one of the reasons why the Jews were God’s instrument of choice.

And it is in one word, stubbornness.

Psa 78:8 And might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation; a generation that set not their heart aright, and whose spirit was not stedfast with God.

Stubbornness towards the law, to the letter of the law was key to the salvation of the world.
Tell me, what people can we say still hold without reservation the integrity of their beliefs through persecutions, imprisonments, torture and still, even today maintain that same integrity?

Unwilling to change, until God does the changing, they will persist in their commitment to the integrity to the laws of Moses.

Their stubbornness to the law is what was needed for the offering of the Son of God as a sacrifice for all mankind.

Rightly so, we all owe it to them in gratitude: Joh 4:22 Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews.

Let us not forget that of two, God in Jesus has made one.
Gal 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.

Therefore, love one another as God has loved you!

Blessing’s, AJ

Rather respect one another as God has loved you.

 

[Lapell]

Sorry Lapell, but that chapter 13 of Paul to the Corinthians is a piece of rhetoric on Charity, not love. Charity begs anonimity to be classified as love. Otherwise, it’s only hypocrisy.

You seem to have a quite restricted set of definitions of what love is… Is God Love, or not? Charity according to 1 Cor. 13 IS a high kind of love… “Charity begs anonymity to be classified as love”, you say. Where did you take this. There is a difference between begging anonymity and not “sounding trumpets” whenever we help our neighbour in need! For when you make it public all the time, is that real loving charity at work or just the search for the people’s congratulations?

 

[Lapell]

**Any decision to love will end in hatred and probably tragedy. Therefore, there is no such a thing as decision to love.
**Necessarily, Ben? ****

If God initiated the covenant with Abraham, then God is respecter of people. In this case, what do you mean by your first statement, “I haven’t forgotten that God is no respecter of people?”

I believe the opposite is true. Instead of “the more you love something, the more you learn it,” I would say, The more you learn about something, the more you love it, …or not. But hey! You must have your reasons to believe the way you do.

And you too have your own reasons to believe the way you do, of course!

 

[Lapell]

Rather respect one another as God has loved you.

You can “respect” someone and still hate that person absolutely! Out of fear, for instance… like a slave.

 

[Lapell]

Rather respect one another as God has loved you.

“respected you”, you mean!

 

[Lapell]

It’s too bad many people who experience suffering think it’s a punishment from God and a sign that He rejected them… It’s not the truth!!

 

[sambos671]

**Any decision to love will end in hatred and probably tragedy. Therefore, there is no such a thing as decision to love.

If God initiated the covenant with Abraham, then God is respecter of people. In this case, what do you mean by your first statement, “I haven’t forgotten that God is no respecter of people?”

I believe the opposite is true. Instead of “the more you love something, the more you learn it,” I would say, The more you learn about something, the more you love it, …or not. But hey! You must have your reasons to believe the way you do.**

“Any decision to love will end in hatred and probably tragedy”? Really, then what ever you’re calling love isn’t. The Greeks had four terms you must be limiting to one of these consepts. Eros possibly, definately not Phileo. And certainly not Agape. You speaking of something other than love and useing the term love to express it. We must first agree on what we are talking about.

 

[sambos671]

If God initiated the covenant with Abraham

IF? This is what it says in Genesis:

Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there.

32 Terah lived 205 years, and he died in Haran. The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land **I will **show you.
2 "**I will **make you into a great nation
and I will bless you;
** I will **make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.

3 **I will **bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you."

4 So Abram left, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Haran

Its very clear in these passages that it was the Lord who initiated contact and ultimately the covenant.

 

[peary2]

The Mark of the Beast

Christians, especially Protestants, and among them, the Seventh-Day Adventists in particular, enjoy to talk about the mark of the Beast; and with fantastic definitions, that only make a ridiculous picture of themselves. Then, they charge each other with the potential to get the mark of the Beast. They think of almost everything but the real thing, which is given by the NT itself.

The mark of the Beast appears in conjunction with the Antichrist. Morphologically, the term Antichrist is composed of two words: Anti and Christ. Anti means to stand against
or to contradict. Christ means what Christians believe Jesus was. So, what stands
against Christ is only obvious that it means the Antichrist.

According to Matthew 5:17, Jesus declared that he had not come to abolish the Jewish laws. Then, 30 years later, Paul came and said that what Jesus said was not true, but rather that the Jewish laws were abolished on the cross. (Ephe. 2:15)

As we can see, Paul stood against what Jesus said by contradicting his words about his purpose regarding the Jewish laws. If Jesus was indeed Christ, as Christians believe he was, it’s only obvious that Paul acted as the Antichrist.

Now, where did Paul say the Jewish laws were abolished? On the cross. And what did the cross mean to him? “God forbid,” he said, “that I should glory in anything save in the cross.” The cross meant the glory of Paul. (Gal. 6:14)

Now, we have the mark of the Beast: The cross, a symbol of shame and a curse to the Anointed of the Lord, who, in the words of Habakkuk 3:13, is the People of Israel, the Jewish People.

Now, your comments are welcome.

Ben.

I’ve been accused my protestants of having the “mark of the Beast” when I receive ashes on Ash Wednesday, and I’ve also heard that the “mark of the Beast” is symbolized by any tattoo that defiles the body - the ‘temple’ of the Lord.

Christ said that He came, not to abolish the Law, but to FULFILL the Law.
But, to understand what Paul means here, you have to consider the following: The Gentiles lacked Israel’s messianic expectation, lacked the various covenants God made with Israel, lacked hope of salvation and knowledge of the true God (Eph 2:11-12); but through Christ all these religious barriers between Jew and Gentile have been transcended (Eph 2:13-14) by the abolition (i.e., fulfillment)of the Mosaic covenant-law (Eph 2:15) for the sake of uniting Jew and Gentile into a single religious community (Eph 2:15-16), imbued with the same holy Spirit and worshiping the same Father (Eph 2:18). The Gentiles are now included in God’s household (Eph 2:19) as it arises upon the foundation of apostles assisted by those endowed with the prophetic gift (Eph 3:5), the preachers of Christ (Eph 2:20; cf 1 Cor 12:28). With Christ as the capstone (Eph 2:20; Isaiah 28:16; Matthew 21:42), they are being built into the holy temple of God’s people where the divine presence dwells (Eph 2:21-22). I don’t read the word ‘abolish’ in Paul in the same way you do. I see it as fulfilling, clarifying, understanding the Law, and a new covenant etc., it is Christ as God who established the Law. Just my opinion.

 

[Lapell]

“Any decision to love will end in hatred and probably tragedy”? Really, then what ever you’re calling love isn’t. The Greeks had four terms, you must be limiting to one of these concepts. We must first agree on what we are talking about.

We are not ruling ourselves just by love alone! Other factors are in the way, Ben.

 

[sambos671]

We are not ruling ourselves just by love alone! Other factors are in the way, Ben.

You quoted me. I’m not sure how you’re viewing the argument flow. I believe Love to be comprised of many things involving the whole human being which also involves his ration or ability to make decisions and to control the will as into will something. I do not regulate love to just one aspect which for Ben seems primarily emotional and like unto the ancient fates which guided man despite his wishes. Often into folly if you read the Greeks.

 

[look3467]

Rather respect one another as God has loved you.

Absolutely!

Love for God is showing respect for His wishes.

Dare we offend someone we love dearly directly or indirectly?

Love one another is God’s command of respect for us as we in turn respect our neighbors.

If God did not respect our differences, He would have strike’d us down with a lighting bolt!

Blessing’s, AJ