If what you say were true, there would be no purpose in spite, nor in happiness either. Why do you shill like you do unless it's because you get some jollies out of it that you value above the alternatives?

^ thinks a forum named "satanism" is automatically in favor of satanism when posting in a conspiracies forum that's not in favor of conspiracies

for people who don't know how one translation works with another or what the Greek means:

For he who is called in the Lord while a slave is the Lord’s freedman. Likewise he who is called while free is Christ’s slave (1 Cor. 7:22 NKJV).

Is Jesus Christ not Lord and God if one's free will of choice chooses not to believe the suggestion thereof?

For he that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord's freeman: likewise also he that is called, being free, is Christ's servant (1 Cor. 7:22).

YES, Jesus Christ is the Lord and the God of myself and of the universe. For that reason I pursue the truth at all costs no matter where it leads.

God uses law

God implies holy

one within re-uses law

one within implies a partial

This is a good point. I learned that enslaving myself to Jesus Christ means the two of us jointly do take responsibility for and uphold the entire world, and it's been doable for many years now.

In Christian history and particularly monasticism, the voluntary acceptance of rules and self-regulations is a virtue. Compare the Recabites. What Paul actually says is to use your liberty to enslave yourselves one to another. IMHO the greatest discovery of sovereign liberty is the freedom to deign to walk as a peasant among others. Compare Tom Canty's friend.

Thanks, I appreciate how you get one right every now and then. Also: FDR was able to pay for it with Social Security withholding collateral and the new Victory Tax that became the personal income tax; and FDR had the decode knowing that Japan was about to declare war but let Pearl Harbor get attacked anyway rather than reveal his knowledge and jeopardize the intel advantage later in the war.

Yes, the official assumption is that the preborn might be a drug addict via shared blood, therefore we must give all babies ("weakened") hepatitis.

Society is increasing its pushback against predatory teachers, I would agree with that continuing. Going after churches, synagogues, and mosques is a bit challenging because they are supposed to be self-policing. When police actually get involved they share that built-in sensitivity to giving some freedom to religion (feel free to blame the Egyptian pharaohs for first subsidizing the priests including their aberrancies). But I think the societal outrage level will continue to dial up (and Q specifically calls out church sexual abuses) so that both the churches and the police will prosecute more harshly.

No comment on your gender-based characterizations.

It's reasonable to presume that the advertised "storytime" for kids 2-5 might be one of the kind that is known to provoke the response "groomer": that kind of storytime flatly isn't mass-marketed at schools and churches.

Actually, for Gentiles, they plan only to enforce the seven Noachite laws, which after all trace to Noah as if they apply to all mankind, and which are very similar to the Ten Commandments. Mitzvoth are only enforced on those who voluntarily convert to Judaism. It's quite a bit different from Shariah, where giaours must pay jizya and remain dhimmis. Honest questions: Do you see any problem with people descended from Noah (everyone) obeying laws that are widely attributed to Noah, even if Jews are breathing down our necks to tell us how? And do you see evidence that Jews want to enforce mitzvoth upon Gentiles without voluntary conversion (which it's traditional for them to counsel against, so as to test its voluntariness)?

You forget, u/Vlad_The_Impaler isn't NSDAP, he's EO. Important to keep anti-Semitic subcultures straight (nothing against EO of course).

(if I may) Thanks for proving that you're either not an American or not a Christian. Probably both.

(needless) It doesn't logically follow that there are no Christians in Babylon; rather, Babylon enters typology and remains there as a place where there are Christians that are persecuted.

(nevertheless) You and your prior accounts seem to want to hang out here indefinitely as we celebrate a big anniversary and into the future, waiting to gloat if we make one misstep that you might regard as matching some prophecy of yours, but that's not how prophecy works in Abrahamic religions, and you are a false prophet.

(nevertheless) You could learn true prophecy from that Jewish guy Jesus (Isa).

Yes, you heard that, and was any direct evidence provided or was it only that I've constantly said I'm a Hebrew-roots Christian and I politely point people to the fullness of covenant Christianity? Jesus Christ is Lord and God.

Have you considered analyzing Paul's words and flow and culture without supplying your own assertions that do not come from those sources? It looks like you're asserting one thing without supplying evidence and then shifting the burden of proof for your claim onto someone else who declines to believe it.

(The Julian calendar aligns with the Roman calendar of the first century. The proleptic Gregorian would be two days off from that in that century. There's no issue which one you use, but IMHO most historians use the Julian because the locals did at that time.)

The leap year drift does account for why Christmas is December 25 instead of the solstice around December 21, because it took about 4 centuries of drift to solidify; but the solstice has always been in late December and not at the beginning (kalends) of a new Roman month. But God knows why he let different eras use different calendars, and no data point is contradicted by the existence of drift of "Christmas".

Thanks, Crazy, that's actually a better argument than Winston Smith was giving! As a Protestant I still hope for that extranormative connection to the True Church.

Howdy, Light, what you have just done is called by some here "Gish gallop", named after someone I respect Duane Gish, who was often accused of bringing up several unrelated points all at once. Fact is, if you're in a debate and there's enough time for all questions to be answered, it makes sense to let loose, but you should get the other person's permission and it should fit the debate format.

1. It's reasonable to start with proof that God exists and what he is like, and then to search for his revelation in the world and to find the Bible and Jesus Christ to have high reviews for that status, and then to investigate and find this to have higher reliability and consistency than any other approach; that's not circular (although it's correct to say some formulations by Catholics, Orthodox, or Protestants are circular). The historical fact that the death of Jesus is associated with immediate reports of resurrection that became an ongoing movement among billions indicates that there may be something supernatural going on, and even if there isn't there's something that sustains and encourages more truth seekers than any other comparable narrative. When the veracity of the core is recognized, the possibility of other supernatural elements in the narrative can be reviewed too. But you don't have to start with the virgin birth if you're skeptical of that, start with the generally accepted fact that the gospel Jesus is unlike any human that ever lived, and look into why.

2. Good things don't need marketing; forced conversions are a blot but they don't disprove a whole system but only a particular attempted application of it. The fact that missionaries believe they have such a good thing, that they don't market it for pay but live for years on subsistence to empathize with other cultures just to be able to share the good thing, suggests there may be something there. But obviously the 501(c)(3) that churns out self-help books in the name of Christ is not necessarily selling a good thing.

3. The "higher school" of Biblical textual criticism is biased against the text, as the biographies of its 19th-century innovators show. However that's not relevant to the truth of the matter because I can go to any textual critic no matter how biased and, by God's grace, find the pathway to truth that works from what sources that person does accept as truth. The Bible is holistic in the sense that if you lose much of it you still have all you need. So if you're willing to state what your core revelation of truth is (whether it's a list of books, or a personal revelation that you can distinguish from other experience, or an outside source, or your own conscience), then you can still build to all truth from there. I find that lots of people who do that eventually realize the church's list of 66 books is Pretty Good Prophecy.

4. I don't know how you know there were not two temple cleansings three years apart, as there is no contradiction or contraindication. There are several ways to harmonize texts if a person wants to treat them like any other historical documents; but if a person wants to disqualify them from the start he quibbles over minor issues instead of reads the main point. So that goes to what you want to do with the fact that there are two accounts of temple cleansing; have you got something better, or are you just complaining without a solution? Sincere question.

5. (a) Matthew is giving an accurate, but incomplete, genealogy, where it is known that about 4 kings (regarded as of less account) are omitted, and other later names may be omitted. This is not regarded as deception, but as selection; the purpose of the selection is to emphasize that the genealogy is Davidic and the important parts of it can be remembered with 3 lists of 14 names (41 generations), which is easy to remember because of the gematria. Also culturally nobody quibbled about inclusive rather than exclusive counting. (b) I love Codex Bezae, but it doesn't indicate your narrative about Jesus becoming at one with God at baptism via soul birth. If you approach the text believing that it was intended to use false statements to teach mystical concepts secretly, that contradicts historical inquiry and invalidates ability to derive anything from the text, because the secret could be proposed to be anything. But people didn't do that in those days, they circulated historical accounts for the purpose of testifying historically what actually happened. If you investigate the sources of your claim, you'll find that they arise from a proposed oral tradition in competition with the oral tradition used by mainstream Christianity. When you look at the histories of the two traditions, the mainstream (despite its quirks) has a clear demonstration of being the actual tradition intended by the apostles, when compared to any esoteric tradition. So if you agree on what standards of proof you wish to use, the judgment of what is really true about the account can be made objectively, and I'd be happy to work with you on seeking that judgment jointly under any agreeable standards.

6. It's actually irrelevant to argue whether Theophilus was a real person or an allegorical title, because those are both possible plaintext readings. What you're doing though is to find esoteric (secret-order) readings and then substituting them for the plaintext. It's an established canon of construction that Judean texts were to be judged on four levels, the first being the plaintext and the last being the esoteric, and all four levels were cooperative with the plaintext always being more determinative than the rest. (A secret might be intended, but the plain meaning is always intended.) The problem is that people who uphold convenient numbers like 432 also don't go very far in teaching that anything comes of it. Wow, I found 432 twice, that means what? Well, it means the text is holy, what else? Well, the person might say, I don't know because I don't believe the text actually means what it says. Such a person only has a feelgood experience from finding the number, and might get a (diminishing-return) experience again from finding another number, but is not using the text the way the person wrote it, which is to be a conduit for God's teaching on every level starting with the plain meaning.

7. You are free to reject the plain teaching about sin, but you are not free to ignore that thousands of years of history support that the same plain teaching, as it developed, was upheld by a covenant preservative community. This community upheld the plain meaning and was not sustained by some secret symbolic reading. Some propose that there existed a secret community all this time that knew the secret, but you see that anyone could make such a claim and deny all evidence. Maybe I am the current exponent of a secret community that was founded 6,017 years ago and has preserved secrets that I speak to the willing in secret, which have never been written down but have always been transmitted orally and even nonverbally; how then could your claims of secrets compete with mine, except by our agreeing on objective judgment standards for truth?

8. (a) I have a lot of experience with quantum physics, but you don't go to any specific so I can only guess your application; and much of quantum physics permits any religion to claim they have had a corner on what the physicists are arguing about but don't have consensus on. Sure we are to become like Jesus and pursue gnosis and reject pseudognosis. Have you protected yourself against including pseudognosis (false knowledge masquerading as real) in your experience? Gnostics have that problem of not being able to distinguish the two unless they know what standards distinguish truth from error. Look into it. (b) Historians have hidden the fact that the Hyksos expulsion of c. 1539 BC was attested to involve the departure of myriads of Semites from Egypt, and yet they don't think that's the Exodus, partly because they use excuses to late-date Moses and then ignore the Hyksos. Yes, Abraham came from the Canaanites and lived among them, and Israelites were influenced by Canaanite culture for centuries, but you don't have evidence that you can know for certain these things never happened.

TLDR: If you're interested in gaining more gnosis on these points, I suggest you share your standards for judgment and your commitment to pursue truth at all costs. If you're one of those who doesn't pursue truth because you think contradictions are fine, you won't have any way to protect yourself from actual lies or destructive narratives. But if you do pursue truth, you will be able to state how you distinguish truth from pseudognosis. The rest is detail on that theme.

Funny, I heard the same thing about bodies of dead Israelis.

I love how you mention two candidates and immediately jump to your undeniable certainty without evidence. Bethlehem is a suburb of Jerusalem and a perfectly fitting stayover for those who intend to commute to fulfill the festival requirements, there is no halakhah that says you must live within the Jerusalem boundaries for a week. The command, Ex. 23:14-17, doesn't even mention Jerusalem because it wasn't the location immediately intended anyway (its status had not been revealed); the intent was to appear before the LORD meaning wherever the ark was stored signaling his presence (which has an interesting history of movement). You express ignorance both of the taurat and of the injil.

Heh heh. I've already demonstrated that all these are in the category of typology, which would also include the new coincidence trail, and that should only be used as a secondary reference to confirm what is accurately witnessed by primary references, because typology can be twisted to produce any number of coincidences.

God allowed Josephus to record just enough data about the period to give us the general picture and to find more details by analysis. In particular, putting the birth of Jesus on that early date does not agree with the timing of Josephus, nor of the timing of Matthew in how long the kings would take to come from the east. I probably have some additional notes lying around here about why it's reasonable for the Chinese-observed comet to mark the beginning of the kings' journey. Further, Hyakutake can be calculated to have entered the solar system with a period of approximately 17,000 years, not exactly 2,000 years. So to hit a couple secondary matches doesn't help if there are several primary fails.

That's why I don't argue about it, but I also blithely say Jesus was born 6 Oct 4 BC at 3 a.m. on primary and secondary evidence.

These are all six manipulable, and all six have been documented as having been manipulated many times. I just proved that Bill Nye was shilling for provably false ice core data. So you just ask Jesus instead, who was there and knows how long ago things happened.

Imagine when we start dating the universe and every measuring tool amounts to being nothing more than light, how crazy the exaggerations get.