There are many criticisms of the Mosaic Law. They're a bit off topic from the OP subject, and they all require deliberative handling and discussion if inquirers want to understand them in context and compare judgments. Whitewash answers abound and are the wrong approach. Most of the above I've already handled in depth here, so would you mind an indefinite rain-check on these while we handle more fundamental matters to allow more helpful discussion on these?
If you are seriously minded to do the rapid-fire like this (especially if you make the judgments from the English text without knowing the culture or even being certain of the historical underpinnings of the text), I'd like a couple of concession points about what the purpose of the discussion would be and what would be gained. If they're put out in the sense "I have questions and would like to seek answers together", that would be a good civil discussion, but often such questions are put out in the sense "I have the end-all of the discussion to affirm what I already believe". So parameters help me, but we might do better to table this discussion for a couple days.
u/SeverelyBrainDamaged might find my response tiresome, but I tag him for interest anyway, because as he's against institutions he would consider doctrine that sounds exactly like the SDA church as to be tainted by that association. However, I believe in judging all things by their own words, and our experience of those words, so I affirm what I can and I criticize what I must.
The first part is handled under your thoughtful copy here. The distinction between the Ten Words, and God's Law as given Moses, is useful and beneficial, but doesn't go as far as Adventists believe as noted by some minority-report Adventists who have brought very clear Scriptures forward. IMHO the points about "cancellation" of the Law are wholly eisegetical, as the link shows.
The famous numbers 613 and 1050 are rather arbitrary. The 613 was a number invented in Judaism that circulated for many years without an enumeration until Maimonides listed exactly 613 via various calculations. Nachmanides immediately came along and changed several of them to make up the count of 613 another way, so it's more of a guideline symbolic number. The 1050 was wholly invented by one Finis Dake, but when I looked into his list you can't even make it 1050 without a lot more twisting beyond what he did; he may have left some of his calculations unpublished. So they're both symbolic numbers that are as useful in their contexts as saying 10 or 2. Commands in the 34 books between Moses and Matthew are not traditionally enumerated.
Everybody who studies this recognizes there are distinctions of applicability, which is the fact that allows much mishandling. Obviously some commands are limited only to men, or only to women, or only to the existence of a tabernacle. Some commands are temporal ("get this done") and not counted as any part of eternal law. This allows everyone to fudge about what is applicable to their flock and what is ceremonial or excluded. As I implied, the trick is to escape any "requirement" at all, because the Law was never given to "require" but to grow into by those who have received life and want to show it by grateful obedience. Growing into God's pleasure resolves all quibbles about details and applicabilities, which only become problems when people are focused on themselves and their performance rather than God's pleasure. We can't make ourselves grow, it happens as we live God's life, and is stunted as we don't.
So saying the standing commands are essentially the 10 and the 1050 is as arbitrary as all the other things. All the Law has applicability in the sense that we learn from it, and all can inform our moral actions metaphorically if not literally. I've never had occasion to put a stumblingblock before the blind, but I've learned from that metaphor a heart attitude that informs all my dealings with everyone. The Bible gives marks of being of eternal duration and of outshining every other revelation, and so if it can be accepted without contradiction then that seems to be the Way, and so none of its commands are without benefit.
The link shows that the differences between the Ten Words and God's Law revealed to Moses are slighter than realized. You add reference to "the Jewish sanctuary service that passed away at Christ's sacrificial death on the stake". Unfortunately, several passages reveal the service did not pass away at that time. Hebrews, particularly 7, consistently uses the present tense to speak of the later temple service as if it was the same as the earlier, even the pre-temple service as well. Namely, in 11:4, Abel offered an animal sacrifice by faith in the Messiah to come, and the whole point of the temple was for those who could do the same, not those opportunists who tagged along with the faithful but who were offering out of their own deadness. The destroyed Temple is unknown to Hebrews, which speaks as if the continuation of animal sacrifice is valid for pointing back to the onetime sacrifice of Christ and also valid for those who still have faith. In Acts 21:20, we find that those believers in Yeshua who were zealous for the temple sacrifices numbered many tens of thousands (literally myriads).
This corresponds to testimony of Paul's practice, which is to answer those by paying for animal sacrifices himself (21:26) and joining in a Nazirite vow with others. This is the resolution to his affirming the Law to those with it and becoming like one without the Law to those without it. He had no issue with sacrificing those animals after Jesus's death. And this is further explained by Col. 2:16-17, where another present tense is often ignored: "Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ." Jesus says tense is important, and this verse emphasizes that after Jesus the sacrificial meats (like Sabbath itself grouped with New Moons and annual Sabbaticals) still foreshadow things to come later. Therefore the meaning is, don't be judged either about abstaining or about indulging, because the judgment ought to be whether you do the thing to Christ or not (compare Rom. 14). It's not about what laws are cancelled if any, because if it was then we'd all be keeping New Moons.
All these Scriptures indicate that the reason the sacrificial era did not end ca. 33 but ended ca. 70 was that its function was not ever intended to be dead religion. It was the living faith of Abel, the first recorded sacrificer. It was always intended to point backward to what God had done (created, saved, established people) and forward to what he will yet do (provide Christ in a former and a latter rain). If we ignore these passages about meats and Sabbath pointing forward and being observed by faith and not requirement, we get the wrong picture. I grew up thinking the Temple system was about people having to do stuff we don't have to do anymore, but then I realized that the righteous, then as now, were just offering themselves in joyful service to God with perfect faith in what was coming next. Not have to, get to.
So, again, the distinction between the two doesn't apply to validate the Sabbath while invalidating other things like the New Moons and annual Sabbaticals that accompany it. Similarly, kosher laws didn't start up with Moses as noted, nor was there a vegetarian era. Gen. 9:3 doesn't suddenly create permission to eat meat, because Adam and Eve were given animal skins indicating a fellowship meal, and Abel offered sacrifices of lambs as repeated in Hebrews. The details on how fellowship (peace) offerings were distributed as shared meals (as opposed to burnt or ascending offerings) are in Lev. 1-5, but they are well-documented in antiquity as well.
The application of this is that if we want to include kashruth in our eternal laws, we have an excuse because those can sound eternal too. United Church of God does this (for all their idiosyncrasies), I don't think the SDA does much. Some want to make veganism go all the way back too, and the answer on that is Rom. 14, if they want to then it's fine for them if nobody makes a stink about it. Fact is, meat consumption is supposed to be regulated by dedicating its lifeblood to God, and it's ignorance of this regulation that causes all the debate on both sides. If we argue that kashruth is still valid even though it's not explicit in the NT, we could be convicted about any number of other commands. But the reality is that we're all growing into it, and learning Sabbath or kashruth or New Moons, and judging them (or judging not to observe), are parts of that growing, and we need not sweat the details because we'll learn them in time.
Actually, Is. 21:2 KJV says, A grievous vision is declared unto me; the treacherous dealer dealeth treacherously, and the spoiler spoileth. Go up, O Elam: besiege, O Media; all the sighing thereof have I made to cease. Your statement in quotemarks is wholly imaginative.
Verse 9 declares the upshot: And, behold, here cometh a chariot of men, with a couple of horsemen. And he answered and said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen; and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken unto the ground.
Elam and Media were the domains of Cyrus, who successfully attacked Babylon (ruled by Nabonidus) via his general Gubaru ("Darius the Mede") on 12 Oct 539 BC. Cyrus also ruled the Achaemenid Empire (geography later Persia, later Iran), but Isaiah isn't focused on that empire. If we were to twist the Scriptures so far as to turn Media into Persia (with which it is always contrasted even as they were allies), and to turn Babylon into Israel (its physical and spiritual enemy), we could imagine anything to be true.
For a real prophecy about Persia attacking Israel in the latter days, consider Ezek. 38:5 and context. For real prophetic details about Persia's former control of Israel, consider Dan. 8:20 and context.
Yeah, there are hardly any limits on posting, what people object to is misrepresentation. I love Hillsdale. A brief explanation of the speaker's viewpoint and outline would be appreciated. Transhumanism is onto the fact that humanity has a supreme, transcendent destiny, but it doesn't know that we're already there and have the goods on what that is, so we have nothing to fear from their machinations and we can expose our transcendent superpowers anytime. What's the meme, "Look what they need to mimic a fraction of our power"?
The problem, some say copout, is that "objective measurement" requires choices and in a "controlled" system means some are selected not to be "prayed over". Frequency alignment is designed to happen naturally from all involved, e.g. by word of mouth and by meme, not by a controlled system that restricts its direction. So just start visualizing everything that resonates with you, including the prayers and wishes posted on PDW, and including the more experimental thoughts here, without excluding anything that speaks to your spirit. Then you'll see the individual manifestations that you were designed to see and to share with others, and we all will see those we were designed to see. The idea of doing something to "prove" it to someone who demands proof is counterproductive; the demander is the one who has more of a burden of experimental design because only the demander knows what would cross him over to belief. Meanwhile we benefit from resonance every second.
Do you know anyone who needs healing? Post it on PDW and ping the people from this thread and a couple others. No need to design a "test", just keep making requests of the Cosmos and see what the answers are.
Good work, fren! This is a big tool in our kits.
Randi attempted to study frequency manifestation scientifically. Officially he did not find the critical mass needed for large-scale manifestations (considerations include that weather is being fought on earth by people of many different considerations, and that hidden loopholes in physical laws are harder to manifest than events following known laws). I've begun telling people I'm always up for participating in such manifestations; in fact you might say that I have opened up my own frequencies to participate in all manifestation attempts that promote good, consciously or not. So it needs to be taken to the next level, and it is being so.
I think the "side note" was added after I wrote. In my experience, the largest two camps of people who look at it put Jesus's death in 30 or 33 AD, and I'd like to say 33 is the larger camp but I can't prove that. There is also a small camp who put his birth in 1 BC. When looking at other views I don't find any that answer all my reasons for proposing exactly 4 and 33 (age 35.5, or 18 months more than OP proposes).
Remember, that's one man's view, Clarence Larkin, which is pretty good but which requires some context and may contain error (I haven't read the whole thing, but have seen it before).
Where one puts the rapture has been hotly debated, so he takes the pretrib view, which is one of the mainstream views but one I don't take.
Given that, what I tell people is that we are somewhere inclusively between "church 7" (Laodicea) and "seal 5" (martyrs). Church 6 is believed to be past (church having moved from favored to lukewarm), and seal 6 appears so clear that it must be future (it includes the first blackout, Rev. 6:12, black sun, blood moon, cast stars, rolling heavens, moved mountains). This includes the first direct attack on heavenly powers too.
I believe that the first 5 seals correspond to 5 "horsemen" that have a final mission (probably future) but also have been on mission for thousands of years, reading from Zechariah 1 and 6. (People say 4, but I say Hades is the 5th.) So I say the present corresponds to aspects of each: the lukewarm church, the heavenly worship, and the first five plagues. The precise identification of which aspect prevails at any given time need not be finally determined right now.
The nature of signs is compared to labor, which has two kinds of signs: one is ordinary pangs, which come and go but which tell you the event is close without a rough deadline, and the other is definite crisis marks (such as water breaking) which tell you the event must take place directly in connection with those signs and which usually give you a rough deadline. In our era the pangs of dramatic upheaval have been increasing gradually but the specific crisis events have not happened yet. For instance, sacrificing a red heifer is not a crisis event but it removes a bar to other crisis events happening. Personally I think that at least either Putin or Netanyahu will be replaced before the full crisis can take place.
However, there are certain events that are "imminent" meaning they can happen at any time, immediately without any precursor, and the red heifer is one of those, as are various plagues; but the blackouts and the space forces are not "imminent" in that sense even though they could happen within a year, for instance.
I have accumulated a whole lot of detail, and it is best taken in bite-sized pieces! Here is my outline of Revelation, in which there is fully valid chronology and no claim of "parenthesis" or "repetition". You can compare that with Larkin and focus on the similarities and get a pretty good picture of the focus and the variety within Christianity.
Now, appropriate to Conspiracies forum, we should also be open to alternatives. I support the Christian view because as a theorist I think it makes the most sense and answers the most questions. If we took the view that Christianity is bunk but all ancient texts have resonances that indicate the future, we'd still arrive at much the same conclusion. If we took the view that some other narrative has much stronger resonances, then we'd have the question of how many ways are there to preserve self and fight space evils, and the Christian fragments would still arise as one of several viable theories even if others may seem stronger. So this can be taken with a grain of salt; but what I seek to prevent is the idea that Revelation is contradictory or useless, because that does not credit it like other ancient texts are credited.
Keep reading. In verse 14 God's appointed Man defeats all the beast-nations. In 17 the beasts are defined as kings (and their kingdoms), and special attention is given to the final defeat, the fourth beast. That's the time the heavenly powers will be shaken.
By Jesus's time it was understood that Daniel's four kingdoms most likely referred to Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome, so people were looking for Rome to be defeated; but Jesus said it wouldn't be that simple and the vision is still future. Whether it's generic or specific, we trust that we will get that victory over the heavenly powers, but it will probably be accompanied by atmospheric signs like solar blackouts (e.g., smog, volcano, nuclear).
This one I can affirm fully! Read Psalm 109. Unless the organization and its members renounce secret oaths, the cable-tow keeps pulling them to their destination, regardless, by the very nature of secret oaths.
History is easier than you make out!
It's called the 1st century because it's the one Jesus manifested in. It's called the "Old Testament" because it was all kinds of godly testimony sitting around ready for him when he came to give new testimony. So everybody knew that Daniel 7 said world-shaking things would happen at the end but God would fix everything through the perfect Man he had appointed, and Jesus said he would come and be that Man when the time came. We just trust that.
Here is Daniel 7 GNT in the same translation as you are reading. Note that you can flip through the menu to get better translations too, in modern English, and I certainly recommend NASB1995, as well as ESV and NKJV. But Daniel was assured, centuries before Jesus, that all the star wars would not matter because God's people would know to seek him for protection and would receive it.
Now, Nibiru and Anunnaki and NASA and slavery (betting is a form of slavery), all that is secondary to being protected in Jesus, and it gets revealed when you know you're into him. Lately we've seen bio and cyber attacks like never before, and yet somehow God's people muddled through it and are stronger because of trusting in him; and Jesus's point is that even when it gets worse we'll still have ways revealed to us of surviving and thriving. Keep reading his story and you'll see him!
Oh, old NASB is excellent, probably top five, but OP asked about and used GNT, and was having to use a subscription service for it when the basic edition is free.
Matthew 24:29-31 in a GNT edition, where the first two clauses of 29 come from Isaiah 14:10, and the next two loosely from Isaiah 34:4. There are three such blackouts in Revelation, and they are each described in much more detail in Joel but Joel is topical and Revelation is chronological; that means this corresponds to Joel 3 and Rev. 16:10-11. All those shed light and you can get the Good News Translation free on BibleGateway, though in a slightly different edition of GNT.
This translation is not inaccurate to describe spiritual forces as "powers in space driven from course"; it's those forces that have declared domains over stars and satellites and refused to yield them to the Creator. The rooting out of evil needs to go all the way up. They are alien to us, but it's not often recognized that most "alien" technology is spiritual in nature.
The whole of Matthew 24-25 is given for future reference (i.e. for us today). God will restore to the universe certain features of light that will cause meaningful symbols to be visible to all men in the night sky (like evidence suggesting they once were); this will include the sign of the Son of Man. This is part of the process of overcoming the forces of darkness. Ask any questions you like!
Unironically.
Yea, if thou desirest to continue I recommend thou learnest early modern english:
when thou moanest
doth keep (or) keepeth
ye/ye (or) thee/thou
thou hast (or) ye have
thy sins
one's own
Good comments here. I predicted the first twist before skimming the transcript, but there's quite a bit more here. This begins with just the 1988 CIA Project Sunstreak asking a psychic what is seen to exist at a certain location by "remote viewing", and of course the psychic describes the mainstream narrative of where the Ark is. Well, even James Randi would say that it's very easy for the psychic to get backchannel intel on what they want to hear and then feed it to them, especially when many psychics are being consulted; but we also know that it could be spiritual too.
This description agrees with Ron Wyatt's, who said he was underground and saw the whole thing but couldn't remove or photograph it due to time and circumstance. Wyatt was sometimes right, but he also knew when an unverifiable belief could be sold to get him more followers. He also made claims about that other Ark (Noah's), which I politely disbelieve (compare John Morris), and the two claims of lost arks seem to have some tied destiny to them.
Video very considerately compares three other claims. (1) 1983, Yehuda Getz and Shlomo Goren dig under Temple Mount, claim to have seen the ark, Israelis covered the entrance with concrete. (2) Edward Ullendorff investigated Axum, Ethiopia, ark in 1941, declared it medieval. (3) Wyatt, 1982. Thumbnail also uses the Trump reconstruction; IMHO this relatively standard artistic position of the angels, and the details of the rings, are not accurate, since I have counterevidence from Ezekiel and from the practice of Moses.
Spoiler: The conclusion, after lots of good Biblical explanation, is that the author believes the ark was literally moved into heaven according to Rev. 11. Fine, tenable theory; I think the ark on earth is the copy of the heavenly one and so it's likely that it will once again figure heavily. Since this is Conspiracies, I'll add that, unlike the misdirection created by releasing a psychic story, the real IC has been concerned since before the Raiders 1940s that the blood of Jesus might be on the ark and might be clonable; that's also why the Holy Prepuce disappeared, and many cross relics, and the Shroud is under constant watch, and why Hitler was obsessed with the Sword of Longinus. Why do you think satan has been experimenting these thousands of years on so many unwilling subjects, it's to get the gnosis as "right" as possible before the final antichrist is revealed, the one whom all the enemies aspire to be. All the stories about such artifacts are just cover for the masses to give alternate reasons about why the nations rage over these things instead of admitting the deeper Power concern.
The good news is that the blood of Christ is already flowing through my veins, he's my blood brother and he can be y'all's. So I don't have to worry about what it takes them to mimic a fraction of our power.
Thank you Jacobin, I really appreciate your letting u/Graphenium and u/Thisisnotanexit draw you out and your being more transparent with them, because it appears my brasher style didn't have the good effect their appeals did.
I empathize with and respect your explanation about your mother and it's very understandable that your experiences would lead you to regard the Christian Bible with doubt. Without belittling that experience at all, I repeat that one of the best cures, and best paths to hope in this time, is to go back to foundations, instead of grappling with the highly specific moral questions that the detailed text also confronts in passing: the details are probably too close to you to handle first. For foundations, you say e.g.:
Even if YHWH is as the gnostics believe then the ultimate god above him still appointed him over the earth and so is equally as uncaring/evil or equally as ignorant.
Good thinking! That's similar to my point about how, even if Jesus didn't exist, the system in which his narrative became popular still has the same characteristics as Jesus himself. So you're rightly looking at the whole tree all the way to the root and doubting that it's the best theodicy (i.e. a defense of good given the existence of evil). There are a few insightful people here who generally have asked the similar question, and when the questioner is patient then good discussion can be engaged!
I can also welcome you into the brotherhood of those who accept a good Creator:
I would agree with you that nature and everything in it only points one way - towards a creator. Nothing else makes any sense to me and I highly doubt it ever will .... I don’t think it can be contained within the bounds of human characteristics
That's all I was trying to get you to say! Again I apologize for not being able to elicit it. Not only that, this good Creator has the foresight to give us good things like mushrooms, and channels to high planes of experience, and this affirms a concept of good. It's my belief that building on the foundation of what this Creator is like will get us to a concept of God that remains transcendent but also helps us live our lives in this strange world.
What I'd linked previously establishes that if the Cosmos contains things like meaning, life, and personality, science shows that these don't arise of themselves but must have been hard-wired at some event like a Big Bang from some containing or transcendent source. Whether we call that an Anthropic Principle or a Multiverse or whatever, it must have meaning, life, and personality because we have them, and these things do not arise out of nothing. Theists don't feel they have to define what that personality is like, as long as they recognize that it informs (or creates) the fact that we have personalities, and so we're not it, it remains transcendent while also being experienced in spacetime (immanent).
TLDR: Working from a common foundation, would you be willing to share ideas about why evils happen, so as to compare notes toward finding the best explanation, without bias toward any particular solution? Because that's why I'm here.
As to your OP concern, now that I understand better, please feel free to ping me about any evangelizing that looks to you like it perpetrates a deceptive conspiracy within Judaism and/or Christianity. I'm all for exposing the deceptive networks, while yet balancing in the sincerity of those who want truth and still have adopted various of those systems; so I'll be happy to question specific Jews, Catholics, Orthodox, or Protestants alongside you.
How can I acknowledge that when you say in OP the existence of Jesus is a psyop? If I wasn't trying so hard to keep you on the correct one point at a time, I'd explain that Jesus told his disciples to repeat his words to all his followers; but the point is that you have given no epistemology for how to determine whether Jesus or anything exists. If there's one true God, then we should focus on his/its nature rather than argue about dogs and serpents. It's silly to major in minors.
As I said above, if Jesus were an unpleasant racist deceiver then we should abandon him in the search for truth; but then there's nobody admittedly better in world history than the conceivers of the Jesus narrative, as otherwise we're all just unpleasant racist deceivers ourselves. That seems to be the best point following the one you raise.
I'm linking you again then. Still the first comment under the OP. Evidence is that there exists one true God and that anyone who doesn't acknowledge him faces the natural consequences of self-delusion. Jesus's words only reinforce that, and if they didn't then we might attempt to insert a wedge between the true God and Jesus, but you give no guidance as to how or why you would insert such a wedge.
I totally agree that the search for the one true God has been hijacked by all kinds of hangers-on, of many stripes including Jewish and Christian. Those are indeed the subject of c/Conspiracies. The difficulty as with any other conspiracies is sorting signal from noise. When someone obscures the hijacking by blaming all of a certain group or movement, without making distinctions, that's usually noise. If all of a group should be blamed, it should be because enough of the key formal agents of that entity have taken unconscionable actions, for instance the Church of Satan entity. The same is not true of Jesus or Christianity, despite all the blame we can throw on Constantine or Ben Zakkai.
So I see no distinction between Jesus's claims about the one true God, and the natural law that those who reject God die without God.
You're free to name Jews for real, such as Samuel Untermyer, who may have latched on to Christianity as a vehicle for carrying out Jewish interests. But that's a far cry from the idea that Jesus himself and Christianity itself are corrupt to the core. When you are capable of making those distinctions, you don't get pushback like you do for the high noise ratio.
The OP topic is Christianity in Jesus, not dogs.
If you have taken Jesus advice and rendered yourself childlike and naive and accepting these things purely on the say so of the book itself then, fair enough. That is your prerogative
I accept with simple faith all the 66 books that Jesus's people have recognized as his Word. Since you are at peace with that, then you should have no OP objection to those who do the same. If you were to return to implying that simple faith in that Bible is intellectually inferior, then my question would return as to what ground you stand on from which to make that decision. Whatever moral high ground you use, I can meet you on, and we can work from there rather than act at cross purposes. Either there's no such ground (all being meaningless), or there is (true natural law), and in either case there's not any indictment of simple faith that seeks truth and nothing else.
Thanks, but it looks like you focused on the minors and ignored my primary questions. You don't get to critique the Christians using what you think is Christian interpretation and then not propose your own moral system, because by denying Christianity you have no right to proclaim judgment about its interpretation. That's othering.
Are you committed to follow truth wherever it leads? If yes, we can investigate where in my 50 linked points you think the truth diverges from my conclusions; that would allow us to judge questions about meaning of "dog", for instance. If no, then you're the one in bad faith and you're projecting that on me. I ask that question of people because it separates those interested in persuading me, at the risk of learning something new, from those who aren't mature enough to accept that risk.
Your OP ball is that Yahweh is not to be worshipped but you have no better alternative. That's the ball I'm playing. If you want to run from that ball it's on you.
Did you have a better teacher than Jesus?
Your methods here are not following logic. (1) "Not general advice" is your assumption; (2) Jesus told the apostles to speak his words from the rooftops, and they did, contrary to your assumptions; (3) "Purposefully deceiving and confusing" is your assumption, as there is no deceit and the parabolic style is not confusion; (4) "Dogs" and "swine" didn't mean Gentiles per se any more than "sheep" or "serpents" meant Israelites, they were metaphors; (5) Jesus praising the woman's great faith and her receiving healing after he tested her sincerity are contrary to your narrative.
But let's imagine your "thoroughly unpleasant, hateful, racial supremacist literary figure posing as a good guy whilst deceiving even his fellow Jews with unfathomable parables but hoarding his real secrets for his inner crew - just like all secret societies since .... not a purveyor of truth, but a gatekeeper of it" for a moment. As I linked from c/Atheist, someone had to have written out the life of this character and to plot out such distinct moral teachings and claims of divinity as were hardly conceivable in those days. It would take a Jesus to invent a Jesus. Someone is there with great truths, and the simplest truths there are not hidden but are clear to children. And when I compare this to every other religious etiology in existence I find this one the best, the fullest, and the incomparable, by many objective standards. The Bible's Jesus requires us either to accept his ways or to despair of finding anyone whose ways can be accepted. That's the choice I ask you when I redirect you to whether you are willing to pursue the truth wherever it leads.
If you read my other comment again, you'll see that the end goal is not what I already hold but whatever Truth I haven't yet uncovered.
I thought it polite to acknowledge your reply to me and affirm the complexity of the question, which automatically pings you, as does this comment. I can use that a little less frequently now that I am told you don't like it that much. I certainly accept that you have this position, but it would shut down discussion if you only listened to people who agree with your position.
The fact that you raised a gallop of issues indicated you wanted, um, conversation and encouragement. (Note, most of those issues were originally raised by the same kind of crowd you criticize, college students that think their objections to the Bible more intelligent than anyone else's, because of their understanding of the pagan historicocultural context of the Bible.) I encouraged you that the topics are worthy and that I wouldn't want to do them injustice by a flip answer. We might, in our other discussion, discover that we have incompatible systems (but I don't believe that necessary). So it's appropriate for me to leave this thread off for now and see separately if we do have means of agreeing to converse for edification voluntarily.