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Maybe I am paranoid, like you said.
Ok, then what do I say that is against Christ? Because you still don't except what I am saying.
It has to do with inheritance of the Old Testament promises through Jesus as the key inheritor. We enter into a special relationship with Jesus to become fellow heirs that removes the necessity of having some sort of particular heredity. We become a sort of universal recipient where we can stop worrying about the standard workaround, which is to convert to Judaism, to become part of the group who imagines themselves as the sole heirs.
We don't all of a sudden have as our name and character, Christ. We are like children who are adopted in and so have a part, deserving, or not, with whatever it is that is supposed to be this great and wonderful future thing that everyone desires.
You are talking about believing. That is not what the point is that Paul making. We already believe or we wouldn't have been baptized in the first place.
What Paul means is his term Faith, as a way of life, the thing that in Christianity takes the role that Law had in the old material Israel. That is the new covenant spiritual "law".
As a sort of law, Faith is something we do ourselves in that we have to deal with problems every day and make choices about doing what is right, or doing what is wrong. We do it, though with spiritual guidance that is the major component of Faith. There is a spirit working inside us to make us better but that is how it works, incrementally, with every single choice and every action. We don't lie back and have good thoughts about how much we love, and God magically makes us better people with no effort on our parts.
Jesus is saying that he is the one people are to come to as God's sole agent. If they do come, or if they even go away, it is God's will, and not that there is somehow something wrong with Jesus.
The "preparation" was his death and resurrection and ascension to Heaven. People were not prepared and it had to be accepted after the fact, once their preconceived ideas of the Messiah had been done away with as something they could still hold out hope for.
It is not that sort of adoption that Paul is using as an analogy, like adopting newborns. Back in Roman times someone might adopt someone as their son in order to their heir, for example if they did not have a natural son to inherit. That person would adopt not someone at random, or a baby, but someone full grown who exhibited attribute that made him seem worth of taking their name and estate.
Children who are adopted do nothing to deserve the adoption.
A pledge is what baptism represents, not the actual reborn experience in the promised kingdom.
Inheritance is what we receive when we are born again into new life from the last. We must be born again.
The Hellenistic Judaism of the times of the writings of the New Testament were not "eastern" in the way that you mean, and was very western, closely connected to the world of the Diaspora among the Greek speaking people, including most of the Jews living in it.
Judaism is an Eastern view of the law.
Not unless "baptism" somehow all of a sudden has a whole new meaning.
According to Paul, the righteous and wicked would be baptized together before the day of the Lord:
No, unless you just rewrote the Bible.
Christ raised ALL the dead and cleared out the lower realm.
Enoch is not a book of the Bible so holds no authority to me.
Enoch said . . .
It is making an analogy which can not be construed to mean baptism. It is likening the rebirth of Israel after the Babylonian destruction, to the dew germinating crop seeds in the field. The destruction is the pay-back for what happened to Israel, to be visited upon Babylon, which did happen by the hand of the Persians.
. . . in Isaiah, we are given the progression of events.
There is one place in the Bible that talks about faith growing, and that is in 2 Corinthians 10:15 where Paul says he hopes their faith grows, but he is talking about all the people in Corinth who are believers, and could mean the community growing, or the entire community growing in a communal sense somehow, but not as in a individual way.
. . . our ultimate salvation from the faith HE develops in and through us.
The promises were made better.
Our inheritance is listed in Deuteronomy 4:19 -
Being born again is something that in this life is always in the future, though baptism, among other things, does serve to symbolize a sort of metaphorical rebirth into the kingdom, as if we were naturally born people in that territory of God's Kingdom.
But the real rebirth has to wait until the resurrection. If we go around saying we are born again, then we are kind of deluding ourselves into thinking that God is already done with us and are now perfect.
Paul is saying that we should love God, and it is not important that we know god perfectly now, because if we love God, then God knows us, and that being the case, even if we die this death from our current material being, God will bring us back, and then we will know everything we will ever need to know about God.
Paul was arguing about ideas people had about their wonderful personal religious experiences by saying all that is worthless if you don't love God.
You seem to be going in another direction by saying that you can have these little revelations on the nature of God, or be God, I guess.
Originally posted by bb23108
Yes that would be most interesting if you find passages that speak in terms of being reborn to here from above said by Paul - i.e., that speak of the process of real communion or union with God in this life. Such is the real process of receiving God's Grace.
Originally posted by jmdewey60
reply to post by bb23108
Paul says all that too, but you may not be seeing it through all the clutter spread by the "Free Grace" cults.
Yes but Jesus also said to fully live the commandments of love and that salvation was being reborn to here from above - in this life!
I'm re-reading the book that I mentioned earlier to see if I can give some better specific examples of Paul's teaching on the rebirth experience.
That is where the "material spirit" comes from in the title, the spirit that indwells us and changes us in this material existence, right now.edit on 20-4-2013 by jmdewey60 because: (no reason given)
Paul is more concerned with sin and being made alive again through a process of faith rather than an actual in life process of fully surrendering the whole body-mind in love of God, as Jesus' first commandment clearly calls for and is the profound and necessary basis for preparing the body-mind to receive and commune with God in this life.
Thanks for your input!
By the way, those cults you often speak of are easy enough to filter out of real discriminative consideration, so no worries there.
In that it is something that certain things are made of, such as the sun and the stars, according to Stoicism and Neoplatonism when Paul was writing.
. . . the pneuma was a physical element . . .
I don't know what you mean by "being reborn to here from above".
Did you find anything yet where Paul clearly speaks in terms of salvation as being reborn to here from above - in this life?
I don't think that Jesus taught that. He was saying that you will not die because he has been given the power to resurrect people and that he can raise people whenever he wants to and does not have to wait to some hypothetical end of time to do it.
In other words, one's resurrection beyond the limits of the mortal physical body-mind is best fully understood and lived before death as Jesus taught, rather than during or after death as Paul seems to promise to believers.
I am not aware of anything like that being taught in the NT.
. . . absorbed by God into a mystical ascent beyond the physical body-mind . . .
That would be ignoring Moses and the example you gave yesterday of the boy raised by Elijah.
The resurrection started with Christ rising from the dead.
It does not say in the Greek that he was the first born, but is using a compound word made up of words if looked at separately, would mean, first born, but takes on another connotation beyond the literal that existed in some hypothetical world before the actual word being used in the New Testament was coined.
He was the first born over all creation and the first born after his death on the cross.
I don't know where you get that from. Paul says that the first Adam cam from the earth but Jesus from heaven. He goes on to call Jesus the second man. I think that you are maybe going into Gnostic beliefs here rather than Christian.
He is the first and last Adam.
Another unsupported leap of logic. Christ is the risen Jesus.
The risen Christ is the church.
More of your use of non biblical writings as authority.
On his death, the 3 days to raise the temple is 3000 years to follow until the end of the last 1000 years.
The greek word means food, bread or loaf, so your argument does not hold up. In the context, you would have to imagine the whole congregation of Corinth sharing a single loaf which of course was not the case.
As I have shown earlier, the heel of the loaf is Adam on either side.
Jesus is one with the Father in a metaphorical sense, and this 'Adam' business is not a Christian concept but from a rival religion to it. Jesus represents a kind of anti-Adam, not Adam.
Christ is both one with the Father God and IS Adam, the father of mankind.
The writer of Hebrews draws a comparison between Christians being baptized and the Israelites crossing the Red Sea, the point you are making seems to be a product of your imagination.
---Baptism is necessary to follow the same path as Christ through the wilderness to the promised land.
You can't get that from the passage that you quoted since there is no illusion to Satan in it but what looks like human institutions. Jesus rules, not Satan, that's the point of Paul.
Right now, the dominion, domination, authority and power of Satan has not been crushed.
Again, relying on non biblical sources for your philosophy.
The heel of the loaf (Adam) does this before, during and after the Day of the Lord. Salvation comes when Christ comes as the temple is fully raised over 3000 years.
We are not the same like-giving spirit that Christ is, though we can be the recipients of that life. We have salvation now in Christ, and do not need to wait for some future world event.
We are the body of Christ. We are taught by the Holy Spirit now. When Christ brings salvation, we inherit this same spirit forever. Each member of the body has a purpose. Have you read 1 Corinthians 10 - 15?
Originally posted by jmdewey60
reply to post by sacgamer25
Maybe I am paranoid, like you said.
Ok, then what do I say that is against Christ? Because you still don't except what I am saying.
I was brought up in a religion that said that 99% of professing Christians are not going to make it to heaven.
Not ninety nine percent of people, but out of people who call themselves Christian and believe that they are somehow "saved".
This is what the church I belonged to believed, at the time back when I was young and impressionable.
Nowadays, it may be that it is more 'liberal' and think even some Catholics might get into heaven.
The reason that people who think they will be saved will be lost is simply that they think they are somehow already saved.
I'm not saying I necessarily subscribe to that myself, right now, but that I was kind of forced into accepting it when that was all that I knew on the subject, probably had an effect on my current behavior.
Anyway, whatever it is inside my head that says, "Danger! Danger!" does not allow me to just sit happily by while there are people pretending to be prophets leading people off like sheep to the wolves.
1 Timothy 4:6 That is why we labor and strive, because we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all people, and especially of those who believe.
Here are some quotes that should help with this consideration:
Originally posted by jmdewey60
I don't think that Jesus taught that. He was saying that you will not die because he has been given the power to resurrect people and that he can raise people whenever he wants to and does not have to wait to some hypothetical end of time to do it.
I don't think that he meant that you are resurrected now before you die.I am not aware of anything like that being taught in the NT.
. . . absorbed by God into a mystical ascent beyond the physical body-mind . . .
John 3
New International Version (NIV)
3 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.[a]”
4 “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”
5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You[c] must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”[d]
John 17:20-26
New International Version (NIV)
20 “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— 23 I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
24 “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.
25 “Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. 26 I have made you[a] known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”
You are, maybe.
If we are both teaching that the message of Christ is that we must love one another actively to receive the gift of the spirit than we both teach the message of Christ.
The Timothy letters are "Paul-like" books made to look like actual letters by the famous Apostle, Paul.
1 Timothy 4:10 That is why we labor and strive, because we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all people, and especially of those who believe.
Not everyone is like that. There is always a certain percentage of people who want everything just for themselves and care nothing about anyone else. Those are sociopaths or psychopaths and lack a capacity for love. Those people seriously need a change in spirit before the world can be a better place. God can do that where we can't, but those individuals need to come to God to receive that gift. I don't think they would be motivated to do that if they are already getting the message that suits their personality that they already have, that God somehow accepts them the way they are. He will accept them approaching in a remorseful spirit wanting to be changed, but not accepted in their sociopathic state to live amongst the saved in a future world.
They want to love and be loved, but they simply can't because they can't stop sinning.
Jesus is talking about something he is here calling the kingdom, that represents some future ideal state and that there is a judgment that happens first before entering into whatever it is, where what it is exactly is not that important to know the details of, as much as the idea of how it is determined if one goes in or not.
Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.
They had spiritual truths told to them by Jesus who was acquainted with them because of his own intimate relationship with God. Jesus had an intimate relationship with his disciples who he called his friends.
The disciples communed with God through Jesus' transmission of the Divine Spirit Light above which Jesus was One with.
I think it would be closer to the opposite of what you just said, based on what Jesus said himself. Jesus said that he came out of God, so his sacrifice was being not a god as he had every right to be, but a man, in order to tell people directly as possible the mind of God.
Jesus' confession that he and the Father are one, is the confession of his profound sacrifice of self into God - no separation. So he testifies that He is One with God.
Jesus was obviously following a course of action that was not beneficial to him if he was there to get what the world had to offer. His disciples would have also obviously been following the same course with their persecution, hardship and martyrdom. Those who learned the way from them need to carry on that tradition so eventually everyone in the world will be able to see that sort of life as an example.
20 “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.
How could you possibly know that?
Jesus did this via initiating them into esoteric practices regarding the Pneuma or Spirit Breath and Light in order to awaken them to communion with the Divine Spirit of God Above.
How you are interpreting this quote is exactly what the exoteric socially-oriented institution of Christianity, especially as Paul espoused, wanted. The esoteric tradition of actual, in life, communion with God was methodically snuffed out because it would never become big-time religion, which is what Paul and ultimately the Romans wanted. Ironically enough, it is Jesus' original esoteric way of absorption in the Light of God Above, along with the practice of his exoteric commandments of love, which could stop Christianity from its current decline.
Originally posted by jmdewey60
Jesus is talking about something he is here calling the kingdom, that represents some future ideal state and that there is a judgment that happens first before entering into whatever it is, where what it is exactly is not that important to know the details of, as much as the idea of how it is determined if one goes in or not.
Exactly - and Jesus initiated them via the ancient tradition of Spirit transmission that spiritual masters have done with their closest disciples even long before Jesus' appearance.
Originally posted by jmdewey60
They had spiritual truths told to them by Jesus who was acquainted with them because of his own intimate relationship with God. Jesus had an intimate relationship with his disciples who he called his friends.
Jesus has clearly said that he and the Father are One. But yes, he needed to become man in order to know man's ways and struggles directly, and to teach those that truly recognized him as God, real communion with the Divine Person beyond man's worldly ways.
Originally posted by jmdewey60
I think it would be closer to the opposite of what you just said, based on what Jesus said himself. Jesus said that he came out of God, so his sacrifice was being not a god as he had every right to be, but a man, in order to tell people directly as possible the mind of God.
One of the most telling quotes is this one:
Originally posted by jmdewey60
How could you possibly know that?
Jesus taught the way of divine communion with the Spirit Light of God Above. Such communion involved initiation, through Jesus's transmission of the Holy Spirit, of his disciples - which allowed them to release their persistent hold on the physical body-mind. Through such initiation and their practice of the commandments of love, the disciples were, to whatever degree they allowed, absorbed in the Light of God Above.
The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light (Matt 6:22)
Making a general statement like this is pretty useless especially since what I have said has been founded in quotes from the Bible. You are sounding like you are set on what you think the Bible says in terms of Christian exoteric beliefs and its social morality, and don't want to discuss matters that also exist in the Bible as esoteric teachings.
Originally posted by jmdewey60
reply to post by bb23108
Well, you have thoroughly stepped out of the realm of Christian thought according to the Bible...
Another unsupported leap of logic. Christ is the risen Jesus.
Making a general statement like this is pretty useless . . .
That is your conclusion, and not one that I share.
. . . also exist in the Bible as esoteric teachings . . .
That's just speculation. But, no, I don't think so. I don't see the New Testament as a physical thing, like an object that recorded events, like a video camera or something. Everything was written in it for a purpose that had to do with a theology. We may not be able to figure out today what the purpose of each thing was because we are far removed from the events when it was written, but there are, and they are very ordinary kinds of things, meaning that there is no secret code built into it because if there was, it would have been noticed right away.
Don't you think that Jesus would also work internal spiritual miracles with his disciples
Originally posted by jmdewey60
reply to post by bb23108
Well, you have thoroughly stepped out of the realm of Christian thought according to the Bible, and don't especially feel inclined to discuss other religions.
People who follow other religions like to quote the Bible for whatever reason and I recognize that, and tend to just let it go while I have more pressing things, like actual New Testament theology, to deal with.
Even the other poster on this thread, Enoch was right, I don't consider a Christian and normally don't discuss anything with him because he does the same thing, quoting scripture from the NT for whatever reason to support whatever religion he created for himself.
I think everyone should make their own religion, as far as I am concerned, but most do not interest me.