Who are you? Let your view of yourself be the judge of your view of me. Do I test or judge? Do you recognize me? How would you know I have not gone to the Church except by consulting the Church's records in my Christian name?
I believe the Apostles' Creed. I've gone to the Church and am waiting. Here I am going to you. Why don't you recognize me? Are you not the Church?
Incidentally, how do you know I haven't been training with other members of the Church and gotten the right hand of fellowship from them but don't want to play it up to see how other Church members will treat me without credentials?
Jesus came to seek out and save that which was lost, the lost sheep didn't "go to" him.
What if I am a humble supplicant waiting upon the Church to recognize me? What if I do believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist? What if I don't worship the killers of Christ? What if I don't deny the successors of Peter? What if I do believe in the apostolical succession of bishops?
I keep telling him that. But you see, since the Holy Church tells him he has Jesus in him already (via sprinkling) and there is no greater assurance of his eternal destiny than what the Holy Church says, he can cuss up a storm and not be accountable to any of us separated brethren about it.
No, Guy, in my second sentence, which was not a non sequitur, I cannot promise not to make people aware of the block function when my every comment makes people aware of the block function by platform programming. Nor am I interested in arguing over it or explaining my view, because unlike the things I do explain at length this is an inconsequential intramural question that you are free to be wrong about. You are being tenacious and my first sentence was intended to redirect you patiently to greener fields.
Thank you so much for your moderation work at c/BewareTheirTactics.
Add: Did you know that your every comment here newly informs people of the "block" function by virtue of the linked word "block" under your comment? Refocus.
I don't wish to argue with you, Guy. This is a complicated issue where the Christian libertarian approach is not easily understood out of context. Why don't you state a positive proposition in a post in another forum and I may get around to it next year?
Not as though I had already attained, or were already perfect; but I follow after, if I may by any means apprehend, wherein I am also apprehended by Christ Jesus (Phil. 3:12 DRA).
I wish you well in your pursuit of Christ as Truth in the new year.
So you list the countries from that list then and see if there are 109 there, because that's not a list of 109 countries, as I said, and no list of 109 countries has ever been derived from it and published. You apparently didn't even bother to note that this was already covered at #5 in my link above.
Glad to know that even u/DresdenFirebomber can see that there is no list of 109 countries but only a list that resolves to 12 modern countries and a few regions.
Those who oppose me have a right to the same tools I have access to, just to make it fair.
Every point is brilliant.
I question everything, including what you have to say. And I doubt you would get along with me, because I think you are a person with an agenda.
Oh, I get along, and so far you're getting along. I have only one agenda, the One who laid hold on me, I am his love-slave and can do no other than serve him, I'm very predictable that way.
Are you referring here to Oséh, meaning the one who acts as in Freemasonry?
No, clearly the Masons stole that word from the Hebrew, Oseh doer, Asah to do or make. When Jesus said "It is finished" he was quoting the last verse of Psalm 22 (as he had quoted the first verse), "He has done it", which is "Asah" in Hebrew. Not my fault if the Masons culturally appropriated it from the correct Hebrew meaning you describe.
Maybe it's nothing wrong with the Bible and Paul belongs there, although there is little doubt in my mind he was an agent of Rome, not only a citizen, and doing the work the Pharisees tasked him to do. Maybe everything is wrong with the Bible starting with Genesis where in the first two chapters we find two distinct and contradictory stories of creation.
Good. I've tested the first theory and haven't found problems with it. I've tested the second theory and found that it relies on faulty assumptions and people inventing perceived contradictions from extreme cultural distance after thousands of years of regular readers not seeing anything contradictory. Nobody treats any other ancient book that way, as if the whole book is garbage after thousands of years of preservation because a 19th-century German doesn't understand the first two pages in their context.
And continuing with the Ethiopian Bible which has 81 books, compared to 66 books for Protestants, 73 for Catholics. And hundreds of manuscripts, including Gospels, and religious writings, were considered merely Apocrypha, not part of the accepted canon of Scriptures.
Correct. Note that this is not about shutting anything out, this is about what books rose to the level of canon over hundreds of years of testing by covenant people. All three agree on the same 66 books (and the Jews agree on the Hebrew books), so it's the same covenant tradition of the same books being recognized, because they all passed the same tests and none of the others came anywhere close. The extra books were always regarded, by each group including Protestants, as attaining to a secondary level of utility (deuterocanon), not meeting the marks of the protocanon but still retaining broad utility. Yes, the hundreds of other books could be counted as close to the deuterocanon, and it's a disappointment the church doesn't share more about them (let me plug Odes of Solomon again). The modern idea that the fourth century made a random list and censored everything else is totally false; rather, each book, when it was written, was preserved by the covenant people as a candidate and, after the centuries of testing, rose in esteem until it was accepted as inspired. It's a pretty well-regulated process, actually.
I assume you mean exclude him as a disciple of Christ.
Well, I meant exclude his writings as inspired. See, you're free to select any writing as inspired, or reject them all, but I do ask people to make decisions and be consistent. If you were to imply that the words of Yeshu only appear in Thomas, well, you can say that straight out and we can work with it. But if you act as if the gospels have some historical value, those (a) give lots more words of Yeshu, (b) indicate that he believed every letter and serif of the Hebrew Scriptures, (c) indicate something extraordinary and unparalleled happened among Yeshu and his disciples. The idea that none of the Greek Scriptures were written by people who knew Yeshu is very recent and actually falls apart upon a little inspection (IMHO), but if you'd like to put forward standards for judging historical documents we can easily work those details out. But when you present as a person who feels free to quote Scriptures but who doubts Paul, I state my positions from Scripture without Paul. If you'd like the truth derived only from Thomas, it's a slower route but it might be doable. I hold back from overwhelming you with links unless I'm confident you'd enjoy them.
Despite considerable research we know surprisingly little about the historical Yeshu (Jesus).
Whaddaya mean we, kemo sabe?
Everything else like virgin birth, miracles, walking on water, resurrection, including Peter being a disciple, comes from texts written decades later by people who never met Yeshu.
Actually, the first evidence we have, as many scholars are now recognizing, is that 1 Cor. 15:3-4 quotes an oral tradition that Paul formally "received" from Peter and James and that had to have been circulating 2-5 years after the crucifixion, and it indicates the belief in the supernatural nature of the death had already begun entrenching itself. Luke is often regarded as the best historian of the era, given his accuracy, and he describes (as if written for a court review, which it probably was) how a demoralized group suddenly became accepted leaders of a new Jewish movement that rapidly spread worldwide, with regular reference to miracles; these statements were written when contemporaries were alive to dispute them, and often challenge them to do so. So by ordinary historical standards, something extraordinary caused a massive new movement that taught the supernatural from its origin (a supernatural that, incidentally, the surrounding Jewish culture universally taught as well). But let me know what core you want to start from and we can go from there. I doubt you'd want to propose both that none of the NT was written by people whose names are on it and that Thomas nevertheless wrote Thomas, that would be a bit of special pleading.
So I appreciate very much the consideration. But ultimately it comes down to Truth. Truth apprehended me and enslaves me, and so I ask people if they are committed to pursue Truth at all costs, or if there is some reason one couldn't commit that. If you question everything for the sake of establishing Truth, you're making that commitment and you'll come to find what of the Scriptures is true. It sounds like you've come across many conflicting sources (churchianity, gnostics, skeptics, Mormons, Masons) and so you are cautious about making truth commitments. Except Thomas sounds good to you (it's so ambiguous and twistable, it serves that purpose for many). But I find you only need that one commitment, Truth, and by the time you find yourself making it you realize it was already made for you. From then on it's easy to receive more truths every moment.
u/Thisisnotanexit, since he's blocking me, you should tell him that you or me talking about him is not engaging him or an invitation to engage, let alone harassing him, or trying to provoke him or to publicly humiliate him or to manipulate his behavior, or engaging in DARVO tactics, or slandering him, or targeting him to try and cause him distress, or playing the victim (claiming victim), or delighting to do the above, or continuing to target him for harassment, or stalking him.
Jesus taught the golden rule, but Seeker has not yet learned how to externalize himself so as to recognize the sameness of action done to him or done to another. For him to reserve the right to talk about others while disallowing the right for others to talk about him is the basic disconnect that he will someday abandon. You just don't go on the public internet and do that. If he keeps up he is likely to get trolled by much worse folks than you and me as it gets more obvious to everyone else what an easy target there is here. (Yes, I'm prepared for him to misread that statement of encouragement for him to watch his Way as if I'm saying something other than that.)
Since you're talking about what I'd like, I'd like for you to be absolutely committed to The Way. The person who is absolutely committed deals with his lapses on others' terms instead of trying to cover them up on his own terms. When you are absolutely committed, we won't have trouble communicating.
u/Paleo, in re u/SeekerOfTheWay pinging you, his admitted prior account wrote, "It's two-ways free range. Swamp .... can do what he wants in regards to me, say anything on here to me or about me, and I can respond however I want and vice versa", 7:24:08 PM CST 2025-12-26.
I continue to "reserve such rights as (1) to comment at a distance in response to contributions that involve me, (2) to interact with any comments in forums where both the commenter and myself are contributors with equal rights, (3) to invite others to interact with other accounts as fitting, and (4) to continue in my prayers for account holders here that they grow in absolute dedication to The Way." Obviously, while an offered agreement on voluntary interaction ban remains unconfirmed, I also retain such rights as commenting at a distance on other contributions.
I appreciate your sharing your thoughts! By pinging Paleo you're expressing your desire again for a third party to step in between us, a desire which I've pointed out can be resolved instantly by your simply saying "Agreed" to this draft proposal on voluntary interaction ban. The fact that you don't, so far, suggests that you're not comfortable with your own terms and so the best approach for that is your continuing to define those terms in ways that I or a third party can affirm.
You logically have two options. Bilateral: We agree on terms (which you can currently do with as little as a single word). Unilateral: We continue each doing whatever we believe right (which is the default and which was the note on which the Soul account left matters):
You don't have the option of remaining logical while you accuse me of continuously harassing and stalking you and while also you refuse agreement by which all the actions you categorize as harassing and stalking would end. You either act like a person who cares that they end, or you act like a person who doesn't care that they end, but not both and remain logical.
If you agree on voluntary interaction ban, then I can leave you to consider the next trap (your playing the victim card) in silence, rather than to encourage you to rise above it. If you don't agree, then status quo continues.
Add: I was just reading Teresa's Interior Castle last night just as you were today, so we are on the same wavelength and it would be nice to talk about. It would be a pity for this opportunity for better understanding to be bypassed.
Continuing my regular reporting to c/Conspiracies, OP made a new statement about Christians being "welcome" which I initially read as welcoming me to operate within the rules. However, a brief exchange by modmail indicates this is not the intent, and that there's a disconnect between the idea that Christians are (all) welcome and the continuing idea that Christians can be permabanned at mod discretion without recourse. I see these as essentially contradictory, but Seeker is not aware of how the perception of contradiction hurts his cause.
On the ban modmail "You can no longer post in TheNarrowWay." I wrote: "Thank you for your new rules comment. Any chance you can unban me from c/TheNarrowWay, so that I can seek to ask supportive questions about The Way and Original Christianity, please?"
Seeker wrote from his own account "TheNarrowWay Ban Appeal Inquiry": "I didn't make any new rules comment(s). Ban remains as is. Appeal denied. No further or future appeals please." (Incidentally, Seeker, if you wish to keep the reply as coming from the same modmail account instead of from your personal account, just reply from the individual message page in the modmail tool.)
So it appears that I, and any others who have been banned by this account, will remain so even as Christians are "welcome".
TLDR: How long can Seeker practice all the extremist, absolutist, censorian, manipulative control tropes while pretending also that he is fighting them? When will he realize what everyone else does, that he is being just as abusive as those who have abused him, or more so, and that he has need of external assistance for reconciliation, not just feeling good about Self, but also having right relations with Other, as determined by Other and not just by Self? Omphaloskeptics become ouroboroi.
I have a little elasticity. I get along with people who are very straitlaced about those things but I also get along with people who question them. As a great advocate of the primitive Christianity of James, which was more closely connected with the Essenes than people realize because Essene is from Oseh, James's word for being a Doer, I see bridges between what the creeds are attempting to convey and the concerns of antitrinitarians and upholders of original Christianity. Between James and the formal creeds we have many steps, not only Paul, then gnostic influence, then Roman hegemony, then the very significant Lapsi controversy of 251, and finally the Constantinian revisions, so it's essential to distinguish the problems at each step when we talk about the creeds.
If we were to say all doctrine must be taken from the portion of the Bible excluding Pauline Christianity, I'd be very happy to agree, and aspects of your perceived "Christian core" are naturally a bit removed from that source. First, the connection of God's nature to the words "trinity", "three", and "person" is tenuous and not very Biblical. "Dying for sins" has in America gone quite far removed from the Mosaic teaching of animals dying for sins, or from Peter's view "For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit" (1 Peter 3:18); would you accept Peter on this or are we to exclude him too? "Second coming" and "final judgment" are also poor and unbiblical summary phrases; "coming again" is Johannine (14) but doesn't mean what people think, "final judgment" is in the NLT but not the Greek, and in my experience Christians are least united about eschatology, which your core framing has several elements of. In particular Christians often fail to realize that "heaven" and "hell" are not the names of the final states, which are more rightly called new heaven-earth and fire lake.
So what I actually believe is taken from the Bible alone (which is holistic enough to permit the removal of all Pauline books and Hebrews): if you wish to excise anything else, feel free and I will compensate. (1) We are to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost (Matt. 28:19). (2) Father and Son bear witness (John 8:18). (3) Spirit bears record (1 John 5:7a, 8b; excluding the disputed portion that might have been written by Tertullian). (4) A matter is established by three witnesses (Deut. 19:15; but don't infer anything the text doesn't actually state). (5) Christ suffered for sins and was put to death (1 Peter 3:18). (6) Jesus will come in like manner as the apostles saw him go into heaven (Acts 1:11). (7) The dead will be judged every man according to their works (Rev. 20:12-13). (8) Jesus was ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and dead (Acts 10:42). (9) The Son of Man will separate all nations as sheep from goats (Matt. 25:32). (10) The goats shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal (Matt. 25:46).
Ebionites and Essenes revered all these Scriptures if I'm not mistaken. Is there a problem with any of them?
(Add: I should've expressed concern also about your including Mormons (the COJCOLDS) as a denomination or as Christian, because neither Christendom nor Mormons include the other, and they don't agree on this core. Instead of a corporate trinity in unity they have a tritheist language of "three personages"; instead of dying for sin they have modeling all the godhood that we are to "become"; instead of heaven and hell they have three destinies, "celestial, telestial, and terrestrial", which don't overlay heaven and hell. But that's tangential.)
You'd be surprised at how subtly documents like Fiducia supplicans skirms heresy without falling into it. Hence preserving the Pope (and the Church) from overall fakeness and gayness ;)
What I've been trying to tell people.
All the same, it was literally produced by the Spanish Inquisition (now called the DDF), and Hippie Frank (whom I took to calling "Mario the Slummer") expressed cautious hope that things like this would improve the Inquisition's overall optics. So the awareness of others' perception is still behind the times. Vigano all the way, for me.
Jesus wrote to seven churches in 96 AD and every time he distinguished those who were doing real "church" (kyriakon, Lord's work) from the infiltrators who were doing works of satan (seven different schemes named).
What would you say the "church" should be, what does Jesus want us to be doing?
I embrace the fact that satanists are evil? What? I'm pretty good about exposing satanists here pretty consistently. You seem to refer to the fact that I don't think everyone accused of being a satanist is a satanist (we need some consistent methods on that to prevent infighting).
I evangelize everyone and I have the power to break people's blood contracts with satan (and I do). So I don't write people off quickly as unsaveable, although there are tests by which I would. You use collectivism and antichrist cultism (Hitler being your professed messiah) to abrogate the white man's responsibility to make good judgment.
I asked God about this and the answer I got is that the covenant people are always getting better and the world people are always getting worse (up to a point we haven't reached yet). The tools that the righteous have for dealing with the problem and protecting themselves are ever more sufficient for the day. The blessed trajectory will outlast the Goddamned one.
Three, because when the NSDAP did burn porn, it was to cover up the burning of all the previous government-mandated intervention records on all the party members' own sexual deviancies.