The Jewish holy book is my inspired Old Testament that my savior Jesus honored with his life. You seem to have some unstated assumptions imported here that would do well to be unpacked.
That's much closer to accurate than the u/Mrexreturns title of OP.
The tweet is saying communism resembles centralized authority (communism loses the thread because human dictators are not known to be sufficiently benevolent). Baal however was the rebel like Zeus and demanded child sacrifice as an act of rebellion against the social order rather than as Abraham's (complex) demonstration of submission of his son's fate to Yahweh.
So it appears OP has fallen for the other lie that Baal equals Yahweh, which only comes up because (1) Yahweh claims original rights to all positive titles like "baal" or lord, and (2) There is an animus against Old Testament religion that, for obvious atheistic reasons, wants to pretend Yahwism originated as and was nothing more than the worst of what we now know as Baalism. With the help of evolutionists who have excised Genesis 1-11, they believe covenant theology has no foundation in the communal history of creation and cataclysm (Peter said they wilfully forget), and then recast Abraham as a fictional ideal of mere Canaanites from Ham. Do they not even teach comparative religion in high school any more?
I'm working the southeast and toward the middle. You?
It's rare this has worked for a group of more than a dozen at a time, primarily because of infiltration and lack of defense.
What city would you like to start in? Maybe a Ranger can refer someone to you.
The Western Roman Empire, yes. Eastern became the czars (caesars) and is now Putin. Details.
Part 2:
the other laws being kept that the Bible says aren’t anymore
Looking for these .... laws that the Bible says aren't laws? Do you mean when it says they are laws but are fading?
“A shadow of things to come” here does not mean “foreshadow;” it means “pales in comparison to.”
This is at least a facially possible reading of Col. 2:16-17. Then it would mean "let no man ... judge you in" things "which are" (presently) paling in comparison to "things to come", where the "body" casting the shadow is Christ. Which would mean that, today being the same era in which Paul wrote, nobody should judge Sabbath-keepers today (Sun or Sat) because they exist today to compare to Christ to come even as they are a fading representation like most all earthly things. So, like I said, in Paul's day and in our day these things still can be done without being judged if they are present shadows of Christ's body to come. Again, no legalism, Romans 14.
THE ENTIRE BODY OF JUDAISM obeys the Mosaic rules for salvation, denying Christ, denying the Gospel, denying the Spirit, denying the sole way to eternity.
80%-90% of Jews are secular, so let's say you mean "observant Rabbinical Judaism". If they obey for salvation, or deny Christ or Gospel or Spirit or the one Way, of course that's not salvation. But the oddity of Rabbinical Judaism is that it assumes its standard to be the Tanakh, so (just as Jesus said) anything built upon the Tanakh that isn't supported by it will fail. In that this Judaism is inconsistent. As an evangelist, I have hope that the inconsistency will resolve the right way, namely admitting the Tanakh's insistence upon Jesus coming at the time he did, just as I think you've expressed hope that Jews will turn from error and embrace Jesus. I do look out for those rabbis who specifically teach that denial of Jesus is essential to Judaism, and in all this time I've found only one debatable modern rabbi, in a Hebrew pull quote that I'm not competent to judge. If you have evidence of rabbis specifically teaching rejection of Jesus as part of Judaism, I'm all ears, and have been for years of searching.
To be a jew is to deny Christ, and to deny from knowledge, rather than mere ignorance.
That's not valid ethnically, as it judges the innocent children; and it's not valid religiously, because I've asked for proof and haven't received it. It's commonly asserted that Jews deny Christ today, and many do out of culture, but this is not taught them out of religion, which almost always teaches instead to learn to dodge and avoid the question.
You’ve openly admitted the old covenant doesn’t exist anymore, because Christ fulfilled it. You’ve openly admitted that jews are damned for all eternity because they deny Christ.
I didn't say the old doesn't exist, it still exists between Father and Son and we continue fulfilling it by filling up the works of the Son. I didn't say Jews deny Christ, I said when they deny Christ they are damned. So if you still want to debate these things, you could try to show that "the law of Christ" that we keep does not fulfill of the law of Moses, or that some rabbi or rabbinical org said that rejection of Jesus is a tenet of Judaism.
He needs to return already. Now. His kingdom has fully abandoned Him. I don’t look twice my age for no reason.
Then I pray that he returns as needed, both in his time for everyone, and in his individual returning to each of us when he speaks anew in our spirits. He can return for you today by speaking to you. The time he returns for the whole world I suspect will also come exactly when needed (Gandalf) regardless of our miscalculations.
To say that the old was not fulfilled by the new implies that you demand male genital mutilation for the sake of salvation ....
I didn't say the old was not fulfilled, I said it was not abolished. I didn't say that the old was ever for salvation, I said that it could only be honored by faith in Jesus, not that it's kept perfectly by outward standards, but that it's accounted as righteousness and perfection by God's standard of imputation by the kinsman-redeemer. By faith Abel sacrificed his sheep, think about it, never that anyone sacrificed sheep for salvation. As RFK just showed, many people circumcise today for many reasons, and I'm not saying that this is demanded but that this is permitted, if done by faith in Jesus. Jesus moved the dial from incomplete to complete (obtained the Father's answer for humanity, Ps. 22:21, where Jesus quotes the first and last verses thus defining "it is finished" by context); so I can admit that this part is "done". Now we have a lot more to "do" as described in 22:22-31. Yet this did not change in any way humanity's ability to seek God by faith, including by keeping some Mosaic laws as a shadow of what Jesus did. Why else would you go to church on Sunday except due to grateful interpretation of Mosaic law?
Found it. It means destroy, dissolve, overthrow, or abolish. Within the context of this specific verse, it means “annulling authority.” As in “it doesn’t have authority anymore.”
Yes, that's kataluo G2647. If you were following, that's exactly what Jesus says he DOESN'T DO in Matt. 5:17. So the law still has authority; and that authority was never legalism or salvation by works, but was always (schoolmaster authority) the shadow of the body of Christ, just as I said. Yes, words mean exactly what they mean. (There are rare occasions when Hebrew thought informs the Greek but those are easily proven by context including the LXX.)
will you improve your view?
It appears to me you just proved the opposite of what you think you proved, so I see nothing for me to change. If Jesus had said he does abolish, your conclusion would hold. Are you ready to improve your view about this? Did you instead mean to study "fulfill" (pleroo G4137)?
Here's my sincere attempt to agree with your concern using Scriptural language.
- Christ fulfilled the old covenant [Matt. 5:17], which we broke [Jer. 31:32] and are not under [Rom. 6:14], and he taught the law of Christ that we are under [1 Cor. 9:21].
- Judaizers are damned for all eternity because they explicitly reject Christ or their actions and beliefs are hollow mockeries of salvation [Gal. 2:14]. Jews are damned for all eternity if they explicitly reject Christ or their actions and beliefs are hollow mockeries of salvation [Rom. 2:23].
I can't agree that abolish or replace apply when the text doesn't say so (and you appear to have just mistook a key text); and I can't agree that the word Jew means by default a rejector of Christ because neither the Bible nor the Jews ever define it this way.
(1) If you just wanted to mean "Jews are damned because if they're not damned they're not Jews", most people don't use such tautology. I'd still ask for official proof before counting out any rabbi out of hand.
(2) If you want to mean "Jesus's teachings replaced the old covenant", that appears contradicted by your own Hebrews 8 where the place of the new covenant is different from the place of the old; maybe you mean "transcended", which is a fine word for infinity confronting finity. In fact the KJV is "excel" as in Heb. 8:6, and in "For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth. For if that which is done away was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious" (2 Cor. 3:10-11). Oh, look, we finally found one of your words, "done away", that you didn't find. Oh, but in Greek it's a present participle not a past participle, so it's "the doing away through glory". What's the doing away, or the abolishing (katargeo)? The "vail" (14) to be "taken away" (16). So, if you had said 2 Cor. 3 has doing away and abolishing in it, I already expressed interest in studying that word; but you didn't. At it stands it appears to have value for us, because the veil represents human inability, which is being abolished and done away with; and because the glory of Christ make the glory of Moses "no glory in this respect". If you wanted me to say "the old covenant has no place in respect of the place of the new covenant", that might work for me if I'm confident you're not disowning the fact that a shadow does have a "place" in a different respect, namely as a pointer.
If you want to mean "Christ obeyed Moses to death so now obedience to Moses has no benefit" (except the Ten Words and/or whatever we say the law of Christ is within the law of Moses), you're getting close to a form of Christianity, but I grew up in that form and never got answers about why we get to divvy up the law into moral and ceremonial. Now I know. Romans 14 passim specifically says that if someone observes a day or abstains from questionable meat, which are Mosaic, then we are to receive them along with those who don't; so it appears Mosaic obedience can still have shadowy (indicative) value: "He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord".
You've presented as someone who is willing to take the Bible literally on everything it teaches
Nowhere has this been made indicative.
Okay, pardon me for misstatement in an attempt to speak graciously, as I didn't mean to suggest that I was about to jump to legalism as you hint. You present as someone who takes the whole Bible seriously, rather than someone who thinks parts are uninspired. Jesus teaches that all the commands, including any about dealing with evil or with military issues, have spiritual meaning that we'll say "excels" their physical meaning, and we'll say gives the physical meaning "no glory in that respect". Maybe that'll be enough to help.
Thanks for taking the time. First, there's still no evidence that "fulfilled" means "over" or "gone"; it's your interpretation. I learned that reasonable inferences could be defended from the text and context, but your idea of an installment contract comes from the bankster world and not the text or context.
You get credit for citing Acts 13:45-51. This is a local group of Pisidian Antioch Jews who unite to oppose Paul, who then ministers to Gentiles; some take it as if it's an earth-shaking change in his strategy, but it's just a statement of giving up on partnership with a handful of people who don't want it. The passage he quotes, Is. 49:6, is indeed about the newness of the covenant reaching Gentiles, but everybody knew the part he didn't quote: It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles .... So the Servant of Israel had a mission to Israel that would be expanded to also include the nations. The very passage proves no replacement. Paul was wholly supportive of the delegation whereby he and Barnabas focused on Gentiles and Peter, James, and John focused on Jews (Gal. 2:8-9). So Acts cannot contradict his express delegation strategy. I appreciate your citing your sources because it shows you're interested in learning in case they don't say what you think. No contractual termination there (unless we want to assume Jesus uprooted the Pisidian Antioch synagogue only, consistent with Romans 11).
your extratextual heresies involving the killers of Christ being “already saved” and going to heaven
I never said that, dispies say that. Obviously Jesus's circle like Zechariah and Elizabeth were saved by faith in a Messiah to come just as Hebrews 11, so there were many saved by faith before Christ came. Obviously not all Jews had this faith, as at any other time, and they were winnowed by Jesus's death. The subset of dozens of Jews who worked for his death and hundreds in the approving crowd were indeed "unsaved" when they did so. Funny thing, in Acts 3-4, two months later, Peter says to a crowd of the same people "Ye ... killed the Prince" and told them "Repent ... and be converted", and "many of them which heard the word believed", by implied count including hundreds of the original crowd that called to convict him. So, no, they weren't saved, and there was a curse on the people generically consistent with other curses on other peoples, but the crowd who betrayed him were swayed immediately by one sermon from Peter and became many of the first 5,000 Christians.
Saying that Jesus fulfilled the Mosaic law unto death, and that we are deemed to, is perfectly consistent with the covenant. You seem to think that Jesus broke some Mosaic law as if Moses wasn't inspired. If the "spiritual law" that Jesus kept was different from the physical-spiritual law of Moses, then Moses failed to show the real terms of perfection and Jesus invented them afresh like a gnostic. But instead, everything Jesus did was justified by the same methods of interpreting the law that the leaders used (and that he approved). Jesus came "under the law" (Gal. 4:4) and that's obviously the Mosaic Law; he became "a debtor to do the whole law" (5:3).
(Now I'll grant that I don't see all the language I'm looking for in this pass of Scripture, so I may need to back off from the formulation I understood from Sproul. The Biblical language is "obedient unto death", Phil. 2:8. Obedience to what? Obviously God, which would include any command God offers and Israel accepts. So I can't conclude that Jesus was disobedient to any provision of Moses.)
the killers of Christ are not saved, nor are their laws valid.
You're mixing a few things. (1) A large group of the people who called for his death were in the first 5,000 Christians, so they were saved. (2) The Jewish people as a whole received a national curse for their elected representatives calling for his death and placing the curse upon the children in the mouths of the crowd, and this national curse does exist and works like other curses. As others have agreed here, as soon as any Jew accepts Jesus as Messiah the curse is broken for that one. And Romans 11 indicates they will discover Jesus en masse in the future, which is of course the hope of any evangelist. (3) The Laws of Moses are valid for those who accepted them (the Jews), as the Gentiles have accepted the Laws of Noah. Jesus accepted all the Laws of Moses, and removed encrusting lies like "Hate your enemy", which was not Mosaic. So they are valid as demonstration of righteousness for Jesus, and Moses gives a higher basis of righteousness compared to many others so Jesus is fulfilling the highest standard known, and that is the righteousness he shares with us, the highest standard. Perhaps you're concerned about some unstated corollary of these things, which I can't deal with unless I guess it right or unless you share it.
The law of Christ says the exact opposite of what you say about who is and is not saved.
I don't know what you think I said about being saved! I said "I'm saved by Jesus's works"; "we could [not] be saved by keeping" the old law; all are saved "by believing in the seed". Do you think nobody was saved before Christ? There are strands of churchianity teaching that. Obviously by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified (Gal. 2:16); and by faith Abel ... obtained witness that he was righteous (Heb. 11:4). Now, I know the formulation "saved by Jesus's works" is a bit novel in covenant theology, and there are valid competing views on exactly how this righteousness and salvation is applied, but the Scripture doesn't say the exact opposite. (Perhaps you think I said people were saved by works when I didn't.) What it says is the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe manifests in Christ's righteousness (Rom. 3:21-26). So, more accurately, I'll say my righteousness is within Christ's righteousness (which is obviously his obedience to the whole law). (My response to this righteousness is growth in the law of Christ.)
There's still no text that God supersedes or supplants or replaces a whole covenant or people. You posted text and very brief explanation, but I showed it doesn't say this but instead it supplements the covenant (unfolds, expands). You acted like "supplement" means "replace" but it doesn't. Instead, Is. 49:6, quoted in your cite, says that the newness of the covenant is "also" to the Gentiles, without losing anything of the gospel of Jesus the Jewish Messiah being also for ethnic Jews, millions of which have accepted it.
I have already directly cited, sourced, and defined every word I have used, in context, in all previous conversations
I grant that the interface is tricky but if you use comment view from the top you can see everything in one screen. You seem upset that I call you unclear because of your indirect style. Well, directly, you admitted supersession isn't in the text because you implied it's a retronym. I asked what supersedes what and you act like the existence of the new covenant by definition supersedes the old, but that's not how covenants work. (The old never worked for anyone but Jesus, and that was the point and was enough.) You then came right out saying "supplement" ("also") means "replace", but supplements don't replace. So my statement of your being unclear is that you don't have a presentation ready for where you get this idea of abolition. Christianity being about the New Israel is not a replacement or supersession because New Israel grew out of the covenant subset of Old Israel that was truly Israel. So original Christianity has lots that we both agree on, but it doesn't have your inference that something essential was removed, replaced, abolished, or superseded. (In fact that's what dispies think.) I began by telling you I was still looking for it (still am), and by suggesting that you could define "how people got saved from sin before Jesus came" for us to advance the discussion (still am).
the same propaganda only dispensationalists post
Hmm, let's guess. You mean dispies post "Medinat Israel is good"? I've posted that personally I can't judge this war yet but am looking forward to the ICJ findings on genocide. You mean dispies post "Jews are saved without Jesus" (Hagee sounds this way sometimes)? I've posted that Jews have always only been saved by Jesus. I grant that lots of Christians think that because Jesus constituted The Church then The Church is all the people we need to worry about, but, when I asked the Lord how people were saved before Jesus (similar to how are they saved before the gospel reaches their tribe), I found it was by faith in Jesus even without knowing his name. Oh! Maybe you think that because most everyone knows his name now, it's impossible now to be saved without knowing his name. That's pretty hypothetical when you actually pursue it: how is a person saved today if he never heard the name of Jesus? The short answer is that God knows, and the medium answer is that Romans 2 shows they are judged yea or nay by whether the law of Christ is on their hearts. So contending that the law of Christ, which we keep, was also kept by people who didn't know Jesus's name, is very consistent and not something dispie. I totally understand that as a supersessionist you may find covenantalism new and hardly distinguishable from dispensationalism; thus the history lesson. All three diverged out of millennialism (dispies last) and before the Reformation people didn't need to argue the details because Hebrews 11 was enough. So I appreciate your taking the time to learn that I'm not a dispie.
Those that "continue to purposely and consciously act in diametric opposition to that law" are damned, yes, but this is not ethnically predestined upon any human whatsoever. (Did you want to discuss Nephilim?)
you keep lying about the contents of the Bible
Since we're discussing libel, I have a high bar for that proof, namely someone puts up a Bible quote, then they put up a quote from me that is logically contradictory to the Bible, and then we determine if I have a defense that it's not logically contradictory. If we are both pursuing truth alone this is straightforward. It also doesn't seem to be how you are accustomed to proving lies. For instance:
Jesus has a second and better priesthood, not a replacement.
Oh, so there’s more than one way into heaven? Shut the fuck up, retard.
I quoted Hebrews, which says nothing about "more than one way". It says (your text) Jesus is a Melchizedek priest not a Levite priest (two priesthoods); it says he's "second" compared to "priests ... according to the law" (even though he's prior); it says "mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises", but the first was not a "way" because there was "fault" with its party (Israel, except for Jesus); it does not say "replacement" because the first was never intended to give salvation by works except by Christ's obeying it (so the thing you may think was being replaced, never had that place). And it says "place" for the second while the first was still standing and offering. So here you act like I'm lying but it's just your classic unstated premises, which evaporate when brought to light.
I repeat, 'The text literally says the new covenant is "established" in a better "place", so it contradicts the idea of replacement as if established upon the same promises without change.' If you think "replacement" means "establishment in a different place", we can run with that but "words don’t mean whatever you want them to mean."
refuting anything I’ve actually said
If all you said was that some Jewish branches were broken off, at the start I agreed with that, saying "portions are transplanted to the same whole". You didn't accept that as the baseline but acted like it was contrary to all you said.
the right of Pharisees to interpret Moses ... implies the “validity” of the papacy in exalting a human woman as sinless.
Interesting! (And totally aside.) It's true that my sympathy for getting Catholics saved out of the failures of their system is similar to my sympathy for getting Jews the same, I thought that was evangelism. Jesus said Pharisees sit in Moses's seat and must be observed, and he also gave Peter a seat and the right to appoint successors, and so I can't discount whatever he meant by that even as I point out excesses in interpreting these things. But as a Protestant it still comes down to agreeing that one's personal judgment must still respect other judgments shown to be in the real body of Christ. We come to find out why others than our narrow clique do the weird things they do. We can still tell them they're wrong, but understanding them makes it easier for them to hear us. So, yeah, that has some applicability to the two of us understanding each other.
So the ones who don’t believe He came… They’re definitely still saved, though, right? Because they definitely still believe a mashiach will come (even though He already has), and they’re still waiting, to this day… They’re saved? Still?
Now this is a great communication! And it's easily dealt with because it reveals a misunderstanding clearly so that it can be dismissed clearly. Have you never seen the Westminster Kids' Catechism? "Q. 61. How were pious persons saved before the coming of Christ? A. By believing in a Savior to come." This is a pretty common standard among Protestants and was something I learned long before I knew any of these big words. Obviously that has nothing to do with being saved after Christ. Most Jews today have heard the name of Christ and it appears (though God knows the hearts) that they have rejected it. By human standards, when a rejection is clear to us from an individual, we can run with that (you show that Paul did); but also, for evangelistic purposes, when there may be a way to regard a person's statements as not having rejected Jesus directly, we pursue the possibility of entree to acceptance of Jesus. And the fact is that most Jews are too cagey to speak directly about Jesus. Steven Anderson pinned down Reuven Mann, who could only say "maybe" Jesus was a sinner, as if he couldn't be dogmatic. Because in my searching for Jewish dogma, I never find a dogma that Judaism has rejected Jesus per se. Many Jews continue dying in their sins; I hold out hope that some of them may be saved by trusting God provides a Messiah and not knowing for sure who that Messiah is or isn't. They're still pre-gospel and get the same "creative evangelism" as Muslims.
[Continued.]
Yes, I just affirmed the Big Bang Theory, over its first 24 hours anyway; it's just that I use Magueijo lightspeed decay to question the OEC assumption.
I do reject macroevolution due to the Klee diagrams as I hinted. The simple fact is that abiogenesis requires instant assembly of a self-replicating organism, which the Minimal Genome Project puts at about 500,000 base pairs for the bacterium "Synthia". This is so mathematically improbable to be called technically impossible (given the size of spacetime). So when the creationist simply proposes 10,000 instances of abiogenesis as opposed to 1, he's not proposing anything less impossible. Suddenly fixity of species is back on the table!
Yeah, there are ideas about God's perspective being relatively six days but not mechanically so. That might end up being isomorphic with mine, in time. My idea comes from Setterfield and Dolphin that it really is mechanically six days, and that lightspeed has changed in the past (based on Setterfield's radiation measurements as well as the sketchy history of lightspeed measurement). The evidence for this is that the recent invention of dark matter and dark energy has no function other than to create indetectable agents to rightly measure the total mass of the universe. Well, it might be easier to get the mass and timeframe of the universe to add up rightly if you just start tweaking lightspeed, which is being explored as a real scientific possibility by a few folks, than by inventing a new undetectable substance that is greater than all detected mass but sits and does nothing but provide gravity to hold the universe together for the billions of years imagined. So I do like to throw about the "evolution stumpers" regularly.
I do change my view if it doesn't successfully account for new facts. Getting back to OP, that's exactly what scientists will have to do if we keep finding interstellars overtaking the sun from the south with a high frequency contrary to prediction.
Everything I say ties back to what I actually believe and is stated accurately, with a little allowance for blustery exaggeration because that's what the forum likes and calls for. It always ties back to truths I can point out to. Your own forum called for certain allowance of contradiction and extreme restriction on talking with me directly or by alt, so I sought to compensate. Anytime you want plain speech, speak plainly and without contradiction and you'll get it in return. I will be happy to be all things to all men in order that some might be saved.
The origin of SwampRangers.com is public, and our goals in Christian apologetics are clear there, and we are all volunteers. When I came to Scored I decided to contribute to the mission of deep research and dismissal of easily falsified narratives to assist in focusing on true community-building research. I had a lot to say about politics and creeds at the start. Lo and behold, it turned out that the most common falsified narrative, easiest debunked, was one about the Jews, so I ended up specializing in accurate research about them. It's because of the environment, not because of some predisposition. But, funny thing, whenever I name Jews for real or criticize the Talmud on valid grounds or express hesitation about Israel's politics, nobody gives me credit. It appears that unless I subscribe to some undefinable whitism I am not regarded by this segment as a truth-teller. But truth will always out. So if you actually wanted to indicate how I'm "identical" to known campaigns I'd be happy to listen and see what adjustments I should make as a truth-seeker.
Thanks for contributing!
But just because numbers of interstellar objects aren't exactly what one particular model predicted doesn't mean that you roll back to a YEC model that doesn't actually make any predictions.
That's a pretty fair point. I grant that sometimes I do speak boldly to get people's attention so that the actual facts can be digested more readily, but I don't say thing without cause and I back out my occasional errors. The fact is that because of the weak observational evidence, everyone is speaking hot air to the issue, so I'm just getting in that fray. (Add: If you want to compare predictions made by YEC/OEC models, we can certainly lay those out comparatively.)
I appreciate u/GuywholikesDjtof2024 chiming in with some hard data (less so that some of it appears unchecked AI), and I would certainly affirm Behe and Berlinski in that list as some of the brightest in their fields.
we're all just degraded trilobites
No, trilobites only became "index fossils" (circular arguments) because they were discovered so early, but we now realize that the Cambrian explosion involved virtually every body plan in existence appearing in the same geologic period (Darwin's Doubt, Stephen C. Meyer). So trilobytes are pretty complicated in themselves but all complicated life forms appeared in the same period ("stratum" they call it as we laugh). Would you like to hear about why Klee diagrams prove incontrovertibly that each DNA barcode refers to a different kind of lifeform that is genetically separate from all others?
Instant creation... sorted into layers with each layer having a different and unique set of fossils in it, to trick man into thinking that it was formed over time.
That's the dogma because if it were true it'd have a little evidentiary value. But unfortunately, real field work shows that it isn't true, the index fossils are chaotically arranged, there are many polystrates bridging multiple layers and supposedly tens of millions of years, there are many complex fossils at the lowest "strata" that contradict the theory and are ignored, etc. However, hydraulics demonstrates that a chaotic but relatively sorted set of specimens is very consistent with catastrophism such as the 4.6kya event.
Everything about the instant creation hypothesis hinges on a single Hebrew word "bara"
Fascinating, and I'll agree with you that bara also means creating clearings, and I'll also affirm that repointed it might mean "in pleasure" (no verb then). Unfortunately, your argument affirms both these meanings at the same time ("the correct way" and what it "looks more like" are schizophrenically opposed to each other). So it sounds like you found two in-language reinterpretations and uncritically accepted them both. Well then, you can accept ours too.
The problem with reading the text as not being creative is that neither its original audiences nor the rest of the Bible regarded it that way. For instance John 1:3 after paraphrasing Genesis adds "All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made", which is pretty double-dogmatic on Genesis being about creation. I also showed separately that the first 5 verses of Genesis are clause for clause consistent with the first 24 hours of the BBT; so we're on track, now we just need to get the crazy dating of the rest of it fixed.
Honestly, you're right that calling it creatio ex nihilo is a later Greek concession and (John Gerstner) a literal reading would instead argue creatio ex Deo, creation out of God's own substance, consistent with the Athenian poets' view (two quoted in Acts 17:28). But this weakness of argument isn't in the Biblical text, but in tradition, and the text gives a constant witness, which was agreed upon by science until uniformitarian radiocarbon dating became the fiat standard and the millions and billions could be defended by assuming ridiculous uniformity (despite evidence of catastrophism!). Except that half of the C14 readings are generally thrown out because they give data contrary to the half the evolutionists like. Funny thing, Peter prophesied that in the last days people would assume uniformitarianism to justify atheism, namely the assumption that from creation everything goes on the same as always but forgetting historic and geologic testimony of catastrophism (2 Peter 3:3-6, a real shocker to uniformitarians).
Related, it's true that Christians faced gnostic denial of the physical, but the mainstream Christians didn't fight this so much with creatio ex nihilo as with affirming the resurrection (redemption) of the flesh (e.g. 2 Peter 3:14). This is clear in Daniel 12:2 and anticipated in details throughout the Old Testament that were assembled in their best form by Paul. So there was plenty of "material" about material redemption by the time Greek gnostics came along.
Are you interested in structuring a discussion so that truth can be divined about these things? I know Guy likes to play "Let's You and Him Fight", but I don't mind if the rules are clear and we both seek a common truth about binary yes-no propositions. Don't mind my occasional bluster because I'm pretty amiable about origins, but I do challenge the OEC to explain the many difficulties in the theory, and (to the extent possible) I seek to answer difficulties proposed in YEC.
Okay, I'll keep in mind that you like caps, it's not necessary to mark it every time. :) Keep in mind the KJV didn't think that many caps were necessary.
But it DOES mean we are UNDER a NEW COVENANT, NOT the OLD ONE. Are we under both or only one? If we are still under OT law, then what did Jesus die for?? Is Jesus the only way to God? Yes or no?
Obviously Jesus has always been The Only Way to God, even when His Name had not been announced to mankind. Yes, we're under the new covenant (between Christ and those in Him): we are "under the law to Christ" (1 Cor. 9:21). (That passage is full of paradoxes to be kept in tension: we are also "as under the law" of the Jews, 20, while still "not under the law", Rom. 6:14.) The reason we are not under the law (being the old covenant) is that we broke it, Rom. 7:9. The righteous before Christ also could not be righteous under the law, because they broke it, Jer. 31:31-34; they could only be righteous the same way we are, by faith in Messiah, Gen. 3:15, Hab. 2:4, Heb. 11 (starting with Abel's faith in the sacrificial system to reveal God). Jesus died to seal His obedience to the old covenant, which becomes our obedience because He brought us into Himself; this fulfills the old covenant and prepares Him to make a new covenant with those in Him that Adam couldn't make with those in him, the covenant of sharing Jesus's obedience.
Yes, Jesus as God the Son retains His spiritual separation unto God the Father by circumcision forever.
That doesn't mean we TODAY are obliged to try to fulfill it. I don't see you sacrificing bulls.
Correct, and my point is that Israel was never obliged to try to fulfill it unless an Israelite (or new Israelite) were seeking to live with perfect righteousness, with the possibility of being Messiah for that generation when the Name of Messiah had not yet been revealed. (For instance, Ezekiel says that Noah, Daniel, and Job lived lives that were without fault before men, and Catholics generally hold that Mary did too.) But millennia of demonstrating that this couldn't happen by mere human effort were designed to lead up to the revelation that only God In Human Form could do it and have enough Righteousness to share.
So Abel did not sacrifice out of obligation but out of faith, it says. Now, we can't sacrifice bulls Levitically without a temple (though I do eat a lot of hamburgers); but the current Jews are very anxious that the red heifer be sacrificed according to all the same laws that it was in Jesus's day (when He directed people to use the holy water from that ceremony); so I cannot oppose the movement for that sacrifice. I learned from the dispensationalists "third temple bad", because Antichrist will defile it; but having read through Revelation more closely I understand that God's temporary permission for this defilement is to demonstrate the evil of evil and to cleanse it permanently, and so I don't oppose building the temple. Fact is that Ezekiel 40-48 is nine chapters about the layout and sacrifices in that temple being honorable to God, and as a literalist it seems to me that will happen again. But it can only happen the way that Abel, David, Solomon, or Paul sacrificed animals, namely by faith in God, both in what He's already revealed about his plan of salvation and what He has yet to reveal. (Going back one step from Abel, it appears that God himself, in the person of Jesus, sacrificed two animals because Adam and Eve were given skins, and probably a fellowship meal too for the insides.) Saying the third temple is likely to happen is not related at all to pressuring people to keep laws (including sacrifices) because a sacrifice of faith is voluntary but a sacrifice of legalism is held to be obligatory.
Matthew 5-7 shows that the law is more than the literal commands like "do not murder", it's spiritual and about even unrighteous anger and lust of the heart.
I grant Rom. 4:16 is debatable, I listed it because, in my understanding of interpretation, the present tense is significant because Jesus says to the Sadducees that it is. The present is not in the phrase "is of the law" but it's in "Abraham; who is the father of us all", and Gal. 3:16 shows that Jesus is uniquely the Seed of Abraham. We could argue that the seed "of the law" only applies when they are alive, which is the debatable point; but I listed it because it's a potential support despite being debatable, and it supports the other witnesses that are clearer.
And now it has been fulfilled. Thanks for citing a Verse directly proving that we AREN'T under it, and the New Covenant is how we can enter Heaven. No one comes to God EXECPT by Jesus.
Yes, we're not under the old law because we broke it, and we enter heaven by the free gift of Jesus that is His to share by His keeping it, and no other way. As I said, looking up destroy, abolish, fulfill, might be interesting, and with you I would take the effort even though I don't take the effort with those who aren't clearly committed to Truth. As a preview, "fulfill" in Greek translates three words about telos (goal), four about pleroma (fulness), and two generic words. I've previously done a study here on the "telos" function as being a final ongoing state and not just a conclusion that passes and fades. I would suspect that detailed study wouldn't teach that what is "fulfilled" is destroyed or abolished thereby; it's sure not true of fulfilled prophecy.
TODAY, it's on humanity to obey the NEW COVENANT.
But you do teach that people still should follow the Old Covenant?
I don't teach that it's "on" us, that we "should", that we "have to" in a pressure sense, or that that was ever true of anyone. We could teach that without the pressure sense we "should" keep all the Mosaic physical and spiritual laws fitting to cultural context, but that would only be to prove that we haven't, and can't in ourselves. The teaching of "should" often leads to false guilt and legalism. The Ten Words say instead "thou shalt", "you shall", not "you should". Not because it's "on" us by pressure, but because we are enabled to grow into the life of the Ten Words. Always have been.
But I do teach that we "get to" obey the Ten Words and the Mosaic law. When people are asked to summarize the law of Christ in one or two commands, they typically go with the Golden Rule and the Shema, loving God with everything. But guess what, those are both Mosaic commands and not of the Ten Words! So I use odd ones like "no stumbling block before the blind" as a good example, because that's also an obscure command but its spiritual meaning, to be transparent with people and not hide traps for them, is clear and certainly part of Christian life. When Jesus says all the [613] commands hang on these two, He's saying they all connect to the same love principle in different applications of life.
Now, what Hebrew Roots people often do, as I learned when I started among them, is to take the commands Paul mentions in Colossians, namely kashruth and festivals, and make that their law, ignoring the other ~600 commands. Well, I learned that's only a "good start". These two categories are easy to do, and can be done without legalism, because nobody will fault you if you stop eating shrimp or if you fast for Day of Atonement like Paul did in Acts. (The fault is if you lay a yoke on others.) So I got into festival-keeping; this week is Feast of Tabernacles (the first full moon of fall), so as a family we usually put up a tent or sleep on the couch or sleeping bags, so as to honor the command imperfectly and to remember Jesus's perfect obedience to the command. That's something that's long been on our hearts, we have clear Romans 14 conscience about it, we don't judge others who don't do it, and we are blessed by the practice and discipline. I trust that you can see the difference between following a command that Jesus followed out of gratitude to Him, and following a command to earn something in return (legalism). I grant that it took me awhile to learn, and I needed God to guide me at every step because both legalists and antinomians tried to knock me off the learning path! But the Christian liberty Paul teaches, long a mystery to churchianity when it sticks to legalism only, becomes a liberation both from the law and to the law, and a joyful flow instead of a drudge's obedience.
Thanks for asking Guy!
I said "Christ kept and is still keeping it, because he said he doesn't abolish it, and fulfill doesn't mean that it stops being law." I accepted separately here that Romans 7 says there are earthly laws only applicable until death, so let me portion that out. The spiritual component of the Mosaic law, to love neighbor as self, to love God with heart, mind, and strength, and in fact to show this love by spiritual application of any of the 613 traditional commands (e.g. not to cause someone to stumble who is in the category of blind), would be something that it'd be obvious Jesus didn't stop doing, the evidence being that he remains holy. But I didn't mean to imply that the Mosaic law with its many different ranges of application to time and person has totally the same character after someone has died. For instance, Jesus only got circumcised once and that fulfilled that command completely; but he retains his spiritual separation unto God thereby forever.
I haven't pressed this form of expressing the point into texts. A quick check shows that Rom. 7:14 emphasizes "the law is spiritual" as I glean from Matthew 5-7; Rom. 4:16 implies Jesus is still a man "of the law", Rom. 10:4 has "Christ is the end [telos, goal] of the law", and Rom. 13:10 "love is the fulfilling of the law" (cf. Gal. 5:14, James 1:25, 2:12) seems to cement the point.
that people still have to follow the 613 Laws
No, I don't teach this, that would be legalism the same as anyone teaching any set of laws for salvation would be. "Have to" implies required for salvation. But we've already been saved by the physical keeping of the law being imputed to us; so now we "get to" keep the law of Christ (or to Christ), whatever he says goes, 1 Cor. 9:21. According to Romans 14, the person who decides he wants to keep more laws, who does so out of conviction and gratitude without any legalistic hope of payment, is to be accepted just as the one who does not so decide. So it's not a requirement, it's an option among expressions of Christianity among the nations. (Incidentally, less than half of the 613 laws can be kept literally in the absence of a temple, so Rabbinical Judaism has always taught that those laws don't matter as long as Jews say the right words in lieu and hope for the rebuilding; that's an annulment of more than half of Moses. But our righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees, and so I have already kept all 613 laws because I did so in Christ since he gave that life of obedience to me. So we have a benefit over those who count the 613 scrupulously.)
The old covenant was never about legalism, but always about obeying in faith and gratitude for salvation (e.g. from Egypt). Legalists were never saved, but David was saved by faith and not works. Hebrews 11 says the righteous were all saved by faith the same as we, and Habakkuk 2:4, quoted 3 times in NT, shows that the righteous understood this embryonically.
I believe it's fact that Jesus kept all of the 613 commands insofar as he had part in carrying out their application (e.g. some commands are primarily upon women and so the man's part is only to ensure the command is fulfilled by the woman). Skil seems to think otherwise, so I commend my belief to him as a possibility to be considered. I have lots of evidence but we would need to start with what he's willing to accept and to define, so the question of openness to possibility needs to come early in the discussion.
Does that help explain?
Held fulfilled. Contract’s over.
Fulfilled, yeah. It’s gone.
Not in evidence. You're templating a contractual termination view over the situation without it being present.
Christ explicitly went outside it
Expressly not [Mosaic], as Christ Himself said and acted.
He didn’t [keep] the same covenant given to Israel…
This would be a valid argument if Jesus broke Mosaic law. However, look at the details (especially Matthew 5) and every time you find he strengthened Mosaic law and disputed traditions that had been added to the law just like anyone had a right to question extratextual tradition. So, it happens in Christianity that some people have held that Christ broke the Mosaic law several times, but that's not mainstream Christianity and isn't in the text. He fulfilled the Mosaic law perfectly and that is the ground of the rewards of eternal life he shares. Maybe you're not saying he broke the law, which would annul your own salvation; maybe you're saying that he deemed that we fulfilled the law. But the reason for this is that he took us into himself as kinsman-redeemer under the law and legally ascribed his fulfillment to us, which means that we are (still today) deemed to have fulfilled the Mosaic law, if that's the meaning you're going after. The standard hasn't changed.
STOP SENDING IN PAYMENTS
Jesus never stopped keeping the law, just because he kept it unto death! He's not lawless today, but in terms of laws that apply until death that obedience is complete because of Romans 7:1 ff. But it's not like he's stopped loving neighbor as self or loving the Father with all heart, mind, and strength. It's not like the Mosaic law is all complete at death; it says it is for the spiritual realm as well. The point is that we serve in newness of spirit (7:6, i.e. obey the law of Christ).
No Christian has ever upheld it, then.
Correct. Just as before Christ, the righteous are saved only by faith (Habakkuk), and never by upholding the law, except for Christ himself who purchased salvation by upholding it.
My first request for evidence was for what you say God "directly stated" about something superseding something. I pointed out there is no text that says anything was superseded or replaced in whole, even as Romans 11 and the vinedresser parable can speak about some of the people being replaced politically by others; but you haven't said you meant that replacement. There is no text saying the new covenant supplants the old, it was always the new covenant supplements the old. So if you mean "the old is fading so the new effectively supplants it", well, that's not in the text and you don't act like that's what you mean. You argue supersession is directly implied but you can't show from the text why your inference is better than others.
My second request for evidence was about your saying I can't read, apparently meaning something like my invoking Christianity as not being racist was somehow insensitive to your full meaning. Well, bypassing for now the degree to which you have responsibility for your words being clear, if you want to say you do have evidence that I'm not taking your meaning, spell it out. When I said your supersession "tends to exclude one race of humans from Christian salvation" and you said Christianity was Christianity before dispensationalism, you imply that excluding a race is right. What is your evidence that I didn't read that implication rightly?
My third request for evidence was about Jesus saying the contract was done with, and you said asked and answered. Well, that seems to mean only your complete Hebrews 8 (which was not by Jesus unless you mean he inspires all Scripture, which is facile). But Hebrews 8 says there is already a priesthood (note, present tense, still appropriate for the Messianic author and those myriads of Torah-observant Messianics) and Jesus has a second and better priesthood, not a replacement. The point of the earthly is to reflect the heavenly, just as Paul says that Sabbaths are (present tense) a reflect of things yet to come, Col. 2:16-17. So, just as Christians rest weekly to point to the future as well as the past, so the second temple pointed to the future and past both, and that continued to be true after Jesus rose. The text literally says the new covenant is "established" in a better "place", so it contradicts the idea of replacement as if established upon the same promises without change. It cannot be the same place because the old had not vanished away at the time of the writing of Hebrews; rather, that is an eschatological reference. So, when you repeat "Bible says" removal and replacement, the fact that that is never said, and you present no evidence that it is logically implied, begs the question. The evidence is that the "place" is different because that place is "upon better promises" when the former place still stood.
actual Christianity
matters of objective truth
I have said nothing against some Jewish branches being broken off and Gentile branches being grafted in, but you imply more than that. You imply it's "actual" that Jesus contradicted Moses but he affirmed Moses and the right of Pharisees to interpret Moses. You imply that something changed as if the thing that many Gentiles (and many Jews) received was on a different basis than the thing that Old Testament believers received: the basis is the same, the only difference is the new expansion, just as at other times of expanding the meaning of the covenant. I used to think folks in the OT earned righteousness by their works, but that was a widespread misunderstanding and what my church actually tried to teach me was that they were saved by belief in the Messiah to come just as Hebrews 11 says many times. So I'm unaware what dictum of "actual" Christianity you think I reject.
You call it a pilpul that "the covenant between God and Israel is the same as the covenant between God and Christ". Well, that's based on the point that Christ was Israelite and was expected to keep the Mosaic covenant like all descendants of those at Sinai. So let's redirect that one to whether Christ broke the Mosaic law: now I know what has been said to that effect, so rather than go over it between us I'd prefer to know your concern that pushes you to that tendency. What is it you're trying to preserve as a picture of Christianity? Is it a people who don't "have to" do anything that got started after Christ and didn't exist before then? Because then I'd ask how people got saved before Christ, and I'd ask how Romans 14 says we should treat people who, knowing they don't have to, still desire to keep some Mosaic laws for themselves out of Christian liberty, fully convinced in their own minds, without being legalist or imposing their own vows upon any others?
The text which says the first is done and the second is law
But Hebrews 8 doesn't say the first is done or the second is law. It says the first is antiquated and the second involves laws being written in the heart. Now if you want to say Paul says he's under the law to (or of) Christ, then the question becomes what is that law and why is it different from the faith that Habakkuk said the righteous were saved by in his day? So even if we said the second covenant is the law of Christ in the heart, its place is different (stone versus flesh) and it is testified and exemplified by the first, meaning the first still has power to foreshadow today as Col. 2:16-17 says.
There are a few people damned to hell for eternity who still try to follow it while waiting for the Messiah (who has already come) .... There are, in fact, a “fading” number of “jews” who still obey just the old rules. They’re irrelevant to objective reality.
Thank you for establishing a positive proposition! It's an eschatological question whether the Jewish people will fade or not, so I don't argue that. If we did Romans 11 you'd see that we don't get to exclude physical Israel from all Israel being saved, as there's no other consistent interpretation, but if you don't see that ever happening then that's a blind spot about the future and we have time to find out. To the rest, yes, there are many legalists (more Christians and Muslims than Jews) who try to obey some Mosaic rules for salvation, which is what I infer you mean; and as long as they do they are damned thereby, although this is reversible. But the realization that keeping the Law could be a voluntary response out of gratitude to the one who kept it and shared that perfection, without seeking any reward for one's imperfect keeping, occurred among the (Messianic) Jews as they wrote the NT. So as an evangelist to a difficult people I hold out hope that it can happen organically again. But that goes to our usual discussion about your hopelessness, which I say is belied by your fighting spirit.
Jesus says it's not abolished.
Explicitly said it.
He says it's not in Matt. 5:17 ESV. You're taking his statement of "fulfilled" and interpreting it as "abolished" contrary to his own words. You explicitly give "definition" of "fulfilled" as "replacement" but that is not its meaning. Now it's an interesting study to review his word for abolish, "kataluo", and the other word translated abolish, "katargeo", and review what is abolished and what is not said to be; it would be interesting to find what "fulfilled" covenants look like in Scripture; but I don't elaborate for now because you don't seem interested in learning from the Scriptures as you constantly have presented them as if they mean only what you say and your view is incapable of improvement. That's not Christian devotional reading.
Last, you accuse me of dispensationalism, I explained I have the classic millennial view as it branched separately into premillennialism without accepting dispensationalism, so that's why it got brought up. If you are willing to stop accusing me of being dispie then that passes. But I still don't see why you accuse me of being an enemy of Christ when I'm only an enemy of error.
The convo is pretty good this time, we can take as much time as you're willing and we might get closer. We'll eventually need something beyond your sticking to what you think the Bible says when it doesn't. You've presented as someone who is willing to take the Bible literally on everything it teaches, so are you willing to work through Scriptures and just confess what they say literally? I ask because you haven't seemed to confess Scripture for yourself, you've only confessed your summary of Scripture; but if we were to work through literal texts and agree on them that might be a path forward. For instance, does Col. 2:16-17 KJV literally say that meat, drink, holyday, new moon, and sabbath days are a shadow of things to come (even after the cross)? Because that would imply they were also a shadow of things to come before the cross.
You're making progress. A little history. In the 2nd century the church developed two eschatological views, mill and amill. In the 17th century existing tension in the mill view split it into premill and postmill. In the 19th century we had the clever feint you're surely familiar with where premill split into covenantal and dispensational (often but not always demarcated as posttrib and pretrib). That's the four accepted views of eschatology. I'm a covenantal premill, which is very different from a dispie premill. Perhaps you have some other standard like "everyone who disagrees with me is a dispie" but that's not how it works, especially when Paul uses the word dispensation but not supersession. (But it doesn't necessarily mean what the dispies say it means.) If you believe in the present age and the coming age, you believe in what Paul calls the dispensation of grace and the dispensation of fullness of time, and vice versa; but that doesn't create six-seven dispensations.
The old one, which has been fulfilled and is no longer law
It was never law in the sense that we could be saved by keeping it, which is the error legalists make. It remains law in the sense that Christ kept and is still keeping it, because he said he doesn't abolish it, and fulfill doesn't mean that it stops being law. Paul says we (continue to) uphold the law. There's no Scripture about God's law ceasing to be law, but there's plenty about it continuing as long as heaven and earth do.
were cutting themselves off from the covenant
The new one. Which is explicitly Christian law, defining Christianity as distinct from all other beliefs. To clarify.
No, I framed that to refer to people cutting off from the covenant in any generation because before Christ came they were saved the same way, by believing in the seed of the woman to come. So too they were cut off the same way before and after. People try to make up what "Christian law" could mean but what they ultimately end up with resembles Noachite law, which Acts 15 implies is the law of all men, and also resembles the Ten Words. But "love your neighbor as yourself" for instance is Mosaic law. If today we think keeping the "Christian law" gets us into heaven, we're legalists again, and poor ones too because our law is so much cheaper than the Mosaic law. But if we just follow Jesus out of gratitude, then the true Christian law is revealed as whatever he says, and we don't fault those who start to take on more principles of the Mosaic law if they choose to do so freely (or those who don't, Romans 14) because Moses is still taught every week (Acts 15) so people can learn it as they please if they don't become legalists.
The thing that supersedes
Not in evidence.
there were two covenants
Yes, there's a sense in which God's covenant with Christ is the same as God's covenant with Israel, and there's a sense in which Christ's covenant with those in him is different from Adam's covenant with those in him. Both senses are essential.
You won’t be able to redirect the conversation.
Yet Christianity was never about excluding any race
Cool, so you can’t read.
Not in evidence.
So hidden that it’s explicitly stated in the Bible as being new.
I already cited you your Jer. 31:31-34. What I referred to as a hidden provision was the kinsman redeemer in the Mosaic law, which is the new covenant between Christ and those in him. What Jeremiah reveals is that God will write the law on the hearts (law remains), but he doesn't reveal the mechanism how people will be redeemed and cleansed for this to happen, and Jesus reveals the mechanism is adoption by him under the kinsman redeemer provision.
So the old contract (covenant of works between God and all men) was not done with
Except Jesus said otherwise
according to Christ, who has damned you to hell for eternity.
Not in evidence.
Just removal and replacement with a new one
There's no evidence the old covenant is removed, as it remains fulfilled by Christ and is the ground of the righteousness he shares, and is now written on our hearts. There's no evidence the new covenant between Christ and men replaces this, because it adds provisions of grace. Perhaps you're afraid I'm saying that if the old covenant stands then we're bound to act all Mosaic, but that's the same flaw the legalists used ever since Moses wrote it. Instead, just as Israel was, we are freed by the new covenant unfolding so that we can keep whatever laws God in Christ puts on our hearts.
The rest of your comments are wild strawmen about your imagination of what I think so need no further elaboration.
Summary: (1) Yes, the new covenant in Christ is not the old covenant in Adam. At the same time the covenant between God and Israel is the same as the covenant between God and Christ because Christ is a member of Israel, born under the law. You act as if the first is logically incompatible with the second, but they're both in the text. (2) You act like the old covenant is gone when Scripture (like your own Heb. 8) says it's fading but not gone (compare 2 Cor. 3), and Jesus says it's not abolished. (3) You act like the new covenant is a replacement when Scripture never uses that but treats it as a supplement ("not like"). You could act like a student of truth and cease to preclude all questions dismissively, and say, yes, it might be logically possible that Christ kept the same covenant given to Israel, that Scripture doesn't say or imply the old covenant is gone, and that Scripture doesn't say or imply the new covenant is a replacement or supersession. But instead of even opening your mind to the logical possibility, you seem to have some deep need, possibly monetary, to fight that at every turn because you think my adherence to the initial millennial view in the face of crazy dispies is somehow your enemy. Like I said, your fighting is good, as it proves the deeper point that white men will be victorious by the grace of God; and it might also come to us understanding each other on the covenants too. Have you read Palmer Robertson? He might agree with you quite a bit, we could use him as a resource.
a theory that tends to exclude one race of humans from Christian salvation ....
Before your heresy appeared, Christianity was just Christianity.
I'm not a dispensationalist, my covenant also claims to go all the way back as your "supersession" does. Yet Christianity was never about excluding any race (so exclusion would be something new to it). This is proven by the fact that it was founded by a dozen Jews. In Acts 21:20 there were literal myriads of Torah-observant Jews who believed in Jesus in Jerusalem alone.
So you’re a supersessionist, got it.
If you're saying that my admission that I'm saved by Jesus's works means that I supersede someone, that's the point that I've never followed and that I've asked you about. There was never any salvation except by Jesus's works. Those who were born into the covenant but didn't trust in the works of a Messiah seed of a woman were cutting themselves off from the covenant no matter what era it was. If that were your definition of supersession it'd be fine because (1) it's not literally supersession and (2) it agrees there was only one covenant all along and the new covenant is the unfolding of the old. But the issue is that you've acted as if you have this idea that supersession means racism, as you did in the prior comment above.
the contract was over and done with and Christ created a new one
The contract with Israel was "who does these things will live by them". Not all Israel broke it according to Jeremiah, only the fathers broke it. Christ kept the same covenant. The newness is a formerly-hidden provision of the old whereby he shares his eternal life as a kinsman-redeemer, which he can do with all who trust him from Adam's era to the present and future. So the old contract (covenant of works between God and all men) was not done with because it is the foundation of the new covenant (covenant of grace between Christ and his brothers). There's no supplanting there.
This is not about one superseding another
Bible says otherwise.
Not the text. Do you mean "he has made it old"? Was Sproul wrong that we are saved by Christ's obedience to the old covenant and so it's still applicable throughout the present era?
or of expositing Scripture
Posted it directly.
Think about what "exposit" means, fren, when you talk about low effort. If you don't define and defend your position, well of course it's easy to snipe everyone else and then never take criticism for a position because you can keep morphing it behind the scenes. That's so 20th-century Usenet.
I agree that it's new that Christ makes a covenant between one man and many men, and because he's divine we could call this a new covenant between God and many men. But the old covenant stands, even in its fading glory, and the new covenant is just the kinsman-redeemer provision of the old. I asked you what supersedes what so as to take its place and you didn't answer. I suggested that maybe you meant that one tree took the place of another and you said strawman. I gave you the option of saying that some branches took the place of others but you didn't say that even though it would be natural. So, yeah, you don't define and defend, as a general rule; and you act like you're paid to malign those who do.
(But let's see if we can think of a different motive. Maybe there's still some spark in you that believes that a race exists that not only has the power to push back the tide against it but also has enough willpower that it'll get done by the grace of God. Maybe you fight so hard against dispie strawmen because you are belying your own words about there being nobody who will fight, and maybe the fight is your quest. Well then, wouldn't it be natural to conclude that as long as you're fighting for your cause then there remains hope? I always say that, as long as I'm alive, the US Constitution remains alive in me no matter what the rest of the world thinks. It would be silly if your cause were the Cassandra option of being insistent that nobody will ever successfully carry your cause after you; that's a bit nihilist.)
whites can, in fact, fight back and win.
Just snooping on you and wanted to affirm that you're finally producing positive content I agree with on occasion! Next step is to move your dial a little bit off that constant "won't". Jesus will win, whatever race he is.
Funny how the Bible never uses the words "supersede", "supersession", but a theory that tends to exclude one race of humans from Christian salvation begins to use those words in the last couple hundred years.
Funny how you call me dispensationalist when I reject dispensationalism as usually taught. (Paul did use a word translated "dispensation" for the present age and for the age to come, but that's not dispensationalism it's covenantalism.) You seem to think that because I believe in one covenant I must believe in dispensationalism. No, I believe in what R. C. Sproul called Christian salvation by works, namely, he says, by the works of someone other than me. I grew up with covenant of works and covenant of grace like the back of my hand, and then I realized they were the same thing.
The reason the old covenant is fading is described in Jer. 31:31-34, namely that people broke it. The reason the new covenant lasts is that one man kept it perfectly and shares that obedience with all who will receive it whether they came before or after him. This is not about one superseding another, because they are the same covenant made with different parties, those in Adam, and those in Christ.
Like I said, I agree that in that one covenant olive tree there are many Gentiles "replacing" many Jews. But the tree itself is not replaced, and that's what you seem to mean by "supersession", so as long as people get can that idea from you I simply throw Romans 11 backatcha.
But since you appear incapable of defining supersession or of expositing Scripture, I don't think this off-topic convo will go far.
Well, first let me apologize for the haste, because I often dash off quickies for the benefit of c/Conspiracies to see who's interested. In this case I meant interstellar but miscalculated and said intergalactic instead.
Since young-earth proponents favor the accretion hypothesis of star-planet-satellite formation, they have no problem extending this to comets. Old-earth proponents are stuck arguing that all these things existed for billions of years and didn't wear down, leading to numerous difficulties (e.g. Oort cloud); in this case their presupposition requires that the interstellar comet arose from a star system sometime rather than accreting like a rogue planet did. Similarly their assumptions require that stars are constantly being newly born but that the first stars were stuck with being H-He only, except that we don't really have any stars of that nature so it's a (yet another) imagination created to fill in a gap in the theory. And of course this relies heavily on the greatest god of the gaps of this age, dark energy and dark matter!
Anyway, if we did have 10-20 billion years then there should have been many more collisions and escapes that would free many more interstellar objects. In terms of rogue planets, the mainstream is estimating that the number of rogue planets per star is somewhere between 0.25 and 100,000. Quite a margin of error there, indicating that the model for formation of material outside solar systems is thoroughly unsettled. It's my prediction that as we discover more of both rogue planets and interstellar objects, we will see numbers heavily weighted toward one end, I believe paucity, and this will force the mainstream to revise their picture once again.
It turns out that NASA is already on top of resolving such questions (despite its bias), planning to launch the Roman Telescope in 2027, which will produce very interesting information about "extra-solar planets ... chronology of the universe and growth of cosmic structure, ... dark energy, the consistency of general relativity, and the curvature of spacetime." Looking forward to it surprising the mainstream!
Looking more into 3I/ATLAS, it turns out to be the first (of 3) to approach from the sun's south, which basically means it's overtaking the sun as they both travel around the Milky Way core (Sagittarius A*). This was thoroughly unexpected and it either means 3I is an outlier that should've been rare or (yet again) the model was wrong to start with and southern approach is more common than predicted. Well, with so much that is unknown about interstellars and rogue planets, it's safe to say that I think there's a high likelihood that southern approach will continue to be detected more often than current models predict.
While much of that is new to me, my initial comment was based on the fact that whenever I peel back the Tyson-Nye facade of modern science I find guesswork upon imagination upon horror movie. (Yes, I literally just discovered that Fred Hoyle based his steady-state theory upon a horror movie, Dead of Night 1945, based on Hindu cyclicality.) So I could confidently predict that such anomalies appear when I look at this one, and there they are. People want interstellar objects to mean evidence of an origin other than Yahweh, but other classes of objects keep testifying of their true Creator instead, and so it will be seen with interstellars.
So the Bible is true and the universe really was created recently for the purpose of humanity developing an internet where they could argue over the Jews.
Hi Skil, I'm getting paid double for this comment because twice nothing is still nothing.
You may be pleased to know that I'm a little closer to finding your "replacement" theology in the Bible after looking all over for it. I had to stop looking for literal "replacement" where one whole is removed and another whole is put in its place, and instead I focused on "replacement" where portions are transplanted to the same whole, and I was able to find some of that. Somehow I suspect it still won't satisfy your proposed Bible interpretation that has been presented as if you have the only truth. But I wanted you to know I was trying.
There is only one covenant people, you are right that the covenant people has been effectively Gentile for nearly 2,000 years, and since it goes all the way back then before Judah was born the covenant people was also all goyim (nations) for over 2,000 years. You seem to have a covenant people that is too small because it excludes all those Hebrews 11 covenanters who wrote the Hebrew part of the Bible. If you were to speak positively about how people got saved from sin before Jesus came, that might advance the discussion, unless it's beyond your pay grade.
You know the only religion that never gets abducted? Solid Christians. Beyond coincidence. Look into it! Alien Encounters by Missler and Eastman ....
Because it's only the third intergalactic object ever discovered and because it's going so close to Mars while behind the sun that it could swing suddenly (but won't) so there's hypeability.
The real conspiracy is that intergalactics prove young universe simply by their low count. Nobody's talking about that! Everyone's trying instead to get ahead of how intergalactics can prove a crazy Oort cloud or dark matter or other invented gods to patch gaps in the astrophysical model.
It's another way of organizing the info in OP based on what year what group decided a new denomination was needed in each case, counting only those that are not really defunct today. It's kind of like blame assignment for denominations, but lightheartedly.
They did a great job! I like to join in and refine things. There was a post here earlier that was pro-Catholic and I recast it similarly, but then after OP got posted I took a little time here and there researching, and rewrote the whole thing so we have at least a starting discussion of how we got where we are today.
Very good, Winston. It's essential to know why Abraham trusting God was so different from all the folks around who trusted their own righteous works to be satisfactory to their gods. I do suggest a bit of language tweak, in that lucifer (translation of helel) is more the god of Judaizing than of Judaism as we define those words today, and is a title for satan; and Remphan (probably Rephaim) and Saturn (Chiun) came much later than Abraham, in whose time baal and moloch were still relatively generic titles for several gods. So it's pretty twisty. Some Jews are willing to say their god is in fact named Yahweh, and if they have the guts to say that then Yahweh will hold them to their confession for good or ill. Some Jews and some others are so unwilling to describe their god that they may as well be offering to Dagon, who was one of the oldest and most clearly distinguished Canaanite deities among the baalim.