Christianity's Deeper meaning

[mtnman]

Really?  This is semantics.

Semantics ? No

Truth ? Yes

Let me ask you this, at Luke 23:43, where do you put the comma ?

Is it:

And Jesus replied, “I assure you, today you will be with me in paradise.” ?

Or is it:

And Jesus replied, “I assure you today, you will be with me in paradise.” ?

[mtnman]

1 John 4:1 (New Living Translation)
Discerning False Prophets
 "Dear friends, do not believe everyone who claims to speak by the Spirit. You must test them to see if the spirit they have comes from God. For there are many false prophets in the world."

Heres the bugaboo, if you're going to test the spirits that others are operating by to know if they are true or false, you better be connected to the Lord who is the Truth.  You better have that inward spirit connection or else you'll BECOME a false prophet when you open your mouth and speak of the Lord yourself.
You test the spirits by being intimately aquainted with the Lord yourself, not because you've drenched your mind in religious dogma, because if thats all you've got, even if your doctrines are right, your constitution is wrong, and you will end up speaking falsehood because the only thing that can speak then, is the religious mind of man, and not the spirit of God.  And in all of creation there is nothing that God despises more, than the religious mind of man.  Religion is that thing in the earth that raises itself up as God, but is not God, and unless you know the Lord yourself, and cling to Him as He deals with YOUR religious mind, then you'll be led astray by it as you become puffed up in a sense of your own righteousness, instead of true righteousness, His righteousness.  Understanding this, and how serious it is to God, keeps us in a place of submission, because we all have that religious mind, and we have to see that it also has to be in submission to Him.  I belive this is a deep work of the Lord in us, to bring us to the place where He rips apart our dogmatic religious thinking to bring us into a true knowledge of Himself.

So the primary quesion is not "Does He have the right to rule us?" but the primary question becomes "Do I know Him?", and if I do know Him have I surrendered all.  Will I lay down my life, to walk in His life and to grow deeper into knowing Him more so that He may have his rightful place in the earth as Lord."  By the time you've come to that place, the question of whether or not He has the legal right to rule me has long been answered, because we wouldn't be considering those questions if we didn't already have an inward revelation of Him, and see that indeed He does have the right, and in fact won that right at the cross.

The dogma in this case is the Trinity & if you believe in the Trinity then you haven't come to know him or understand him by means of truth.

You continue to ignore the evidence.

[mtnman]

BTW, this isn't deep stuff, it's basic Bible teaching.

No need for long winded explanations.

What does the Bible state ?

What did Jesus, Paul etc. say was required to be a Christian ? Go back & read the scriptures listed in the posts.

Either you believe it, or you don't. You either enter into a discussion with an open mind or with bias & pre-conceived ideas (see below). Your choice.

Humility & meekness are qualities needed to learn. Either you measure up or you don't. This isn't coming from me, it's coming to you from God's word. It's not semantics. READ WHAT THE WORDS SAY. It's that simple.

2 Corinthians 4:3-4 (New Living Translation)

 3 "If the Good News we preach is hidden behind a veil, it is hidden only from people who are perishing. 4 Satan, who is the god of this world, has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe. They are unable to see the glorious light of the Good News. They don’t understand this message about the glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God."

[BucNative]

1 John 4:1 (New Living Translation)
Discerning False Prophets
 "Dear friends, do not believe everyone who claims to speak by the Spirit. You must test them to see if the spirit they have comes from God. For there are many false prophets in the world."

Heres the bugaboo, if you're going to test the spirits that others are operating by to know if they are true or false, you better be connected to the Lord who is the Truth.  You better have that inward spirit connection or else you'll BECOME a false prophet when you open your mouth and speak of the Lord yourself.
You test the spirits by being intimately aquainted with the Lord yourself, not because you've drenched your mind in religious dogma, because if thats all you've got, even if your doctrines are right, your constitution is wrong, and you will end up speaking falsehood because the only thing that can speak then, is the religious mind of man, and not the spirit of God.  And in all of creation there is nothing that God despises more, than the religious mind of man.  Religion is that thing in the earth that raises itself up as God, but is not God, and unless you know the Lord yourself, and cling to Him as He deals with YOUR religious mind, then you'll be led astray by it as you become puffed up in a sense of your own righteousness, instead of true righteousness, His righteousness.  Understanding this, and how serious it is to God, keeps us in a place of submission, because we all have that religious mind, and we have to see that it also has to be in submission to Him.  I belive this is a deep work of the Lord in us, to bring us to the place where He rips apart our dogmatic religious thinking to bring us into a true knowledge of Himself.

So the primary quesion is not "Does He have the right to rule us?" but the primary question becomes "Do I know Him?", and if I do know Him have I surrendered all.  Will I lay down my life, to walk in His life and to grow deeper into knowing Him more so that He may have his rightful place in the earth as Lord."  By the time you've come to that place, the question of whether or not He has the legal right to rule me has long been answered, because we wouldn't be considering those questions if we didn't already have an inward revelation of Him, and see that indeed He does have the right, and in fact won that right at the cross.

The dogma in this case is the Trinity & if you believe in the Trinity then you haven't come to know him or understand him by means of truth.

You continue to ignore the evidence.

Really?  and how does one come to know Him and understand Him in your view?

[Coburn1]

Well I tried to leave this thread alone... but I have too often heard JWs interpretation of John 1. I happen to have a friend who is studying Hebrew
and Greek and I trust him more when he says the translation 'was a god' is completely wrong. Also if you believe that then you're also unrepentant
of breaking the first commandment. Exodus 20:3 (NASB) "You shall have no other gods before Me.

Also
Isaiah 45:21 (NASB) "Declare and set forth [your case;] Indeed, let them consult together. Who has announced this from of old? Who has long since declared it? Is it not I, the Lord? And there is no other God besides Me, A righteous God and a Savior; There is none except Me.

You can pull up websites speaking against it? Cool I can pull up websites too, these are actually based on scripture ,not he said, she said

http://www.joyministries.org/joytrinity.html
http://www.dtl.org/trinity/study/scriptural.htm
http://www.gotquestions.org/Trinity-Bible.html

There are many more. There are many scriptures stating there is only one God, many that speak of God using language like us, many scriptures that speak of God's spirit and of the father and son being one. It's not easy to explain how it works in man's limited understand but do we not also have 3 entities? body, soul, and spirit? or physical, mental, and spiritual?

[mtnman]

Well I tried to leave this thread alone... but I have too often heard JWs interpretation of John 1. I happen to have a friend who is studying Hebrew
and Greek and I trust him more when he says the translation 'was a god' is completely wrong. Also if you believe that then you're also unrepentant
of breaking the first commandment. Exodus 20:3 (NASB) "You shall have no other gods before Me.

Also
Isaiah 45:21 (NASB) "Declare and set forth [your case;] Indeed, let them consult together. Who has announced this from of old? Who has long since declared it? Is it not I, the Lord? And there is no other God besides Me, A righteous God and a Savior; There is none except Me.

You can pull up websites speaking against it? Cool I can pull up websites too, these are actually based on scripture ,not he said, she said

http://www.joyministries.org/joytrinity.html
http://www.dtl.org/trinity/study/scriptural.htm
http://www.gotquestions.org/Trinity-Bible.html

There are many more. There are many scriptures stating there is only one God, many that speak of God using language like us, many scriptures that speak of God's spirit and of the father and son being one. It's not easy to explain how it works in man's limited understand but do we not also have 3 entities? body, soul, and spirit? or physical, mental, and spiritual?

Where is your friend studying Hebrew & Greek ?

I assure you that Christendom doesn't have a monopoly on knowing Hebrew & Greek. How many people in the world belong to Christendom ? Probably what, 90-95% of them are Trinitarians ? So I wouldn't expect their institutions of learning or others to be free of bias. Did the disciples have degrees ? No - read Acts 4:13 It's the same old thing repeated time & again throughout history. See Acts 5:27-42

What does this friend say about the Sahidic Coptic text ?

You are correct, the scriptures tell us there is only ONE God, not three in one. Show me one scripture that says the three are one. 

So you'll believe your friend rather than the original texts ? Interesting.

If you believe Exodus 20:3 (NASB) "You shall have no other gods before Me." then why do you worship a Trinity god ?

So now you have scripture & also secular history as to the origin of the Trinity as proof. Have you ever sat on a jury ?

What I find is that most, I say most people who say they are Christians come up with all kinds of excuses why they can't do what the Bible says they need to be doing.

IOW, they worship God in a way that suits them rather than find out for themselves & conform to the way God wants to be worshiped. They depend on, yes, friends & the Clergy to tell them what they want to hear ( 2 Tim 4:3-4). There's no denying that this is what we've seen in Christendom. No unity & tens of thousands of denominations.....that should tell you something right there.

Did you know that the Clergy isn't scriptural either ? When the Christian congregation was formed at Pentecost, all of the brothers & sisters were ministers. All Christians are supposed to be ministers.

Matthew 23:9-12 (New Living Translation)
"And don’t address anyone here on earth as ‘Father,’ for only God in heaven is your spiritual Father.  And don’t let anyone call you ‘Teacher,’ for you have only one teacher, the Messiah.  The greatest among you must be a servant.  But those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted."

[OneTruth]

it is fairly simple and staight-forward to understand that God is Jehovah and is just 1 peron, albeit a spirit. Jesus is another person - His son.
To try to put them together with the holy spirit as a triune godhead weirdo psuedo pyscho god with convoluted long winded explainations that lead nowhere and use circular logic to describe how the flesh cannot fathom how god is 3 in 1 but really just 1 but you cant understand it because you live in the fleshly mind blah blah blah.
God would never reveal Himself to people as unknowable. the plain simple truth is a fact - God is one, Jesus is one, and they are not 1 person but 2, and the holy spirit is not a person at all but God's force.

[Col. Klink]

There are many scriptures stating there is only one God, many that speak of God using language like us, many scriptures that speak of God's spirit and of the father and son being one. It's not easy to explain how it works in man's limited understand but do we not also have 3 entities? body, soul, and spirit? or physical, mental, and spiritual?

Yeah, but those 3 don't talk to each other ...

[mtnman]

There are many scriptures stating there is only one God, many that speak of God using language like us, many scriptures that speak of God's spirit and of the father and son being one. It's not easy to explain how it works in man's limited understand but do we not also have 3 entities? body, soul, and spirit? or physical, mental, and spiritual?

Yeah, but those 3 don't talk to each other ...

LOL.

Really though, let's see......... body, soul, and spirit.

OK, Coburn, I'll have a public discussion with you if you will answer a basic Bible question for me:

Did Adam have a soul or was Adam a soul ?

(I'm going to be disappointed if you ask your friend for the answer.    )

[mtnman]

it is fairly simple and staight-forward to understand that God is Jehovah and is just 1 peron, albeit a spirit. Jesus is another person - His son.
To try to put them together with the holy spirit as a triune godhead weirdo psuedo pyscho god with convoluted long winded explainations that lead nowhere and use circular logic to describe how the flesh cannot fathom how god is 3 in 1 but really just 1 but you cant understand it because you live in the fleshly mind blah blah blah.
God would never reveal Himself to people as unknowable. the plain simple truth is a fact - God is one, Jesus is one, and they are not 1 person but 2, and the holy spirit is not a person at all but God's force.

I'm hearin' ya bro, I don't understand it. Well, yes I do......

[Col. Klink]

There are many scriptures stating there is only one God, many that speak of God using language like us, many scriptures that speak of God's spirit and of the father and son being one. It's not easy to explain how it works in man's limited understand but do we not also have 3 entities? body, soul, and spirit? or physical, mental, and spiritual?

Yeah, but those 3 don't talk to each other ...

LOL.

Really though, let's see......... body, soul, and spirit.

OK, Coburn, I'll have a public discussion with you if you will answer a basic Bible question for me:

Did Adam have a soul or was Adam a soul ?

(I'm going to be disappointed if you ask your friend for the answer.    )

Coburn, don't answer him until he agrees to put Ernest T back up there ...

[bradentonian]

God would never reveal Himself to people as unknowable.

Have you been reading this thread?  I don't think I've seen more than 2 people agree on anything.

[OneTruth]

The problem with the false trinity doctrine is people are afraid of being mislead like this is some sort of demon trick. Well, the truth is not afraid of anything. Jehovah has so much more power than Satan its not even comprehendable the magnitude of the difference. IF the trinity is true then it should hold up to scrutiny. It should make sense at some level. But it doesn't. It only makes sense if you accept the impossibility "I know that I don't fully understand it but God is capable of anything and I'm scared Ill go to hell or be overtaken by the darkness if I consider that it is a human teaching and NOT FROM GOD."

Also, the argument that all Christianity teaches God this way and only the JW's and some oddball's here and there feel the other way doesn't mean anything. There was a time when only 1 man was doing the right thing in the whole world (Enoch). Also when Jesus began his teaching he was 1 man. 1 person teaching it differently than all the religious leaders of the time. So mass acceptance is not a determining factor for truth - never has been.

[mtnman]

There are many scriptures stating there is only one God, many that speak of God using language like us, many scriptures that speak of God's spirit and of the father and son being one. It's not easy to explain how it works in man's limited understand but do we not also have 3 entities? body, soul, and spirit? or physical, mental, and spiritual?

Yeah, but those 3 don't talk to each other ...

LOL.

Really though, let's see......... body, soul, and spirit.

OK, Coburn, I'll have a public discussion with you if you will answer a basic Bible question for me:

Did Adam have a soul or was Adam a soul ?

(I'm going to be disappointed if you ask your friend for the answer.    )

Coburn, don't answer him until he agrees to put Ernest T back up there ...

   I"m tellin ya Klink, LOL !......... I tried to get Earnest T Bass back up there but wasn't able to after the switchover.

[Coburn1]

So you admit that there is in fact only one God and yet you think John 1 was that Jesus was a god? I don't follow. And the trinity doesn't conflict with there being one God. Three entities but one God.

I will agree with you that a clergy is unbiblical. I have never actually been a part of any church that had priests. We have our pastor and elders but we're all priests.
I also agree the Bible has been sugar coated in some senses and that sometimes the messages that no one wants to hear aren't preached. I sometimes think
we only take the warm and fuzzy parts, especially pertaining to God, and leave out the parts that aren't. A certain type of Carebear Christianity. There is too much evidence not
to believe in the Trinity for me though.

Oh and the people who go to Seminary don't just learn how to interpret a certain verse. They learn the entire Greek and Hebrew language period from it's basics on up.