Alison

The phrase "the Son of God" is there in the original. Not only is it in the best and most ancient mss., but I was unable to find any evidence for the phrase not being present in any Greek ms. That doesn't mean that there aren't some late Byzantine mss. that don't have the phrase. But it does mean that no one today would be likely to argue against its inclusion in the text. I would guess that it's correct that the 1611 version accidentally left it out, but there is no way to tell for certain.

I remember a while back receiving tracts in my mail from a website that distributes them for free, but don't remember what website that did it. Does anybody know what I'm talking about?

In Conclusion

I have finished leafing through the rest of Mr. Price

I have a 6 year old boy and if you are one that feels you are able to handle the various and necessary subjects, with which a young person must become familiar, then home school is fine. A Christian school is equally as good, provided it does incorporate proper Christian principles. Only you can make the decision; but, in my mind, both are indeed "head-and-should" above our secular school system.

I most certainly believe that if someone tells you that she is going to hell that it warrants some sort of concern--whether it was said in jest or not. A person can die today and be on their way to hell because we have neglected the God given responsibility to share the Gospel. Our life is compared to a vapor, which appears for a short time and vanishes away, and we remain uncertain as to when we will breathe our last breath. Telling others that you care for them while sending them off to a burning hell is a sin, since we know what God expects of us. I was only able to "drag" one of my friends to church after "nagging" her for several months. She didn't respond to the altar call but the fact that she afterwards asked a series of questions concerning the sermon may be a sign that she has been convicted, I don't know. Please continue with your prayers and for the rest of my friends. Thank you kindly for all the prayers concerning this matter John81, Mountainview, anime4christ, Psalms18_28, dado4 and others.

I found this very interesting...A contradiction in the CT + Light on the question of which TR

Mt 10:10; Mr 6:8; Lu 9:3 (ASV):

no wallet for your journey, neither two coats, nor shoes, NOR STAFF: for the laborer is worthy of his food. and he charged them that they should take nothing for their journey, SAVE A STAFF ONLY; no bread, no wallet, no money in their purse; And he said unto them, Take nothing for your journey, NEITHER STAFF, nor wallet, nor bread, nor money;neither have two coats.

In the CT, there is a plain contradiction in these verses. Matthew 10:10; Lu 9:3 has the Lord forbid taking a staff, while Mark 6:8 allows a staff. The CT is an errant, not an inerrant text. Fundamentalists who hold to the CT are inconsistent

Praise Jesus!!! I got several of my goth friends to go with me to my church this Sunday. It took several months of persistence, but I don't believe it's in vain--but rather a divine appointment. Salvation is a miracle and the Lord is known for working His miracles, so let's pray in agreement folks. Thanks in advance!

:lol: :lol:

I had a similar experience with my car a while back. It was a supernatural experience, didn't question it. Knew it was God and I was extremely thankful.

I would like to request a prayer for a dear friend of mine whose name is Fahim. Once a bright young fellow, he has completely lost his mind and is now a wandering derelict. He has been overcome by alcohol and drugs and is borderline schizophrenic. Please pray that our dear Lord will save this lost sheep and bring him safely into his fold where he may find pasture.

Glory to God and praise him for having ltl's friend in the book of life.

Anyone for Chocolate covered broccoli? :)

going to black angus tonight with some of my friends.

Anyone here ever tried microwaved eggs? I usually take a couple of eggs to work and mix em up and pop em in the microwave.

Ban Madeline for banning me

Ban Madeline for bein back!

I kind of like Jack in the boxes Seasoned Curly Fries. :)

Chinese duck rice. With eggs and beancurd

alleluia

I wish I can get some of those toothpicks, lol. They would help keep me awake when at work. :)

Your browsers been hijacked, more than likely "tracking cookies" are stored on your computer where they are hard to locate.

Has anyone ever tried this hot sauce?
It's called Dave's insanity sauce!
http://us.st11.yimg.com/us.st.yimg.com/I/mlm7298_1932_3854640

I put a drop in my bowl of chili and my tongue was on fire. :frog :frog :frog :frog :frog :frog :frog :frog :frog :frog :frog :frog

It's like 10 times hotter than tabasco sauce, I can drink tabasco sauce.

I posted this elswhere and thought I'd post it here too.

HOW DO WE KNOW THAT THE BIBLE IS TRUE?

[*]It's one of the few books that makes the claim to be the Word of God. The phrases, "Thus says the Lord," or "the Word of the Lord" are used hundreds of times. It claims to be the uniquely inspired communication from our Creator to us: All Scripture is inspired by God (2 Timothy 3:16). [*]The amazing unity of the Bible: it is unique. It was written by forty authors from different backgrounds over 1500 years and yet reads like it was written by one author. [*] People have heard that the text of the Bible has been corrupted over the centuries, but the Hebrew Scriptures have been meticulously transmitted, as the Dead Sea Scrolls demonstrate. Thousands of New Testament documents, some of them written very early, in the First and Second Centuries, show that the text of the Bible has not been corrupted, but have been faithfully transmitted. [*]Recent discoveries demonstrate that the Scriptures are accurate historically. Great archeologists believe that the Bible is historically accurate. William Albright, who was the world's foremost biblical archeologist, writes: "We can already say emphatically that there is no longer any solid basis for dating any book of the New Testament after about 80 A.D." (From More Than A Carpenter, pages 42-43). William Ramsay is regarded as one of the greatest archeologists ever to have lived. Although initially skeptical about the accuracy of the Book of Acts, after some research he became aware of the meticulous accuracy of its historical details, and his attitude changed. He concluded that 'Luke is a historian of the first rank... this author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians'" (From More Than A Carpenter, pages 43-44). [*]The Bible reflects accurate scientific knowledge of the universe. "Some examples: the Earth is round (Isaiah 40:22); the Earth is suspended in space without support (Job 26:7); the stars are countless (Genesis 15:15); the water cycle, sea currents (Psalm 8:8); living things reproduce after their kind; many insights into health, hygiene, diet, physiology (such as the importance of blood, e.g., Leviticus 17:11, the eighth day after birth being high in blood coagulant); the first and second laws of thermodynamics (Isaiah 51:6)." From page 18 of The Revised and Expanded Answers Book, edited by Don Batten, Master Books, 1990. [*]The Bible describes reality better than any other philosophy or religion or worldview: It tells us why the universe has laws, design, order, complexity, simplicity, elegance, and beauty: because there is a Great Designer. It tells us why there is beauty, love, wisdom, justice, truth and personality: these are not the results of chance processes, and random activity, but they come from God who has these attributes. It tells us why there is evil, suffering, death, injustice in the world: it's due to mankinds sin and resultant alienation from God. It tells us that life is ultimately meaningful, full of purpose and eternal significance. Our lives are not the result of the chance coalition of impersonal atoms that ultimately mean nothing. But, someone observed that if a person believes that the universe comes from a Big Bang, which took place some 20 billion years ago, and that we are the result of billions of years of time and chance; that we evolved from an amino acid primordial soup, then we amazingly grew into a simple cell which learned how to reproduce itself; then we developed into a bacteria, or a one-celled animal, then a slug or a fish, then an amphibian, then a lizard, then a small mammal-like rodent, then we further evolved into monkeys and ape-like men, and then finally into Homo-sapiens (which means "wise man" - which is an ironic name for anyone who believes you can go "from goo to you by means of the zoo!"); if a person believes that this universe will continue for billions of years, and then experience either a gradual heat death, ultimate entropy, so that there is no activity, or that the universe will start contracting, and all the galaxies will begin to reverse themselves, and everything will return to its beginning point - one singularity, where perhaps it will form another Big-Bang; if a person believes he is ultimately nothing more than glorified slime mold, an advanced sea slug, a meaningless bit of temporary matter, and that when we die we die, because there is no after-life, no God, and therefore no moral or spiritual absolutes, no

Don't know where exactly this should go so I put it here on this forum. I did a thesis I did a while back concerning the Historicity of the Gospels and how "ironically" has been criticized not by "skeptics," but biblical scholars. One expects atheists and agnostics to deny the historicity of the Gospels. However, some of the most vigorous criticism comes not from skeptics, but from so-called "Christian" scholars teaching in seminaries. These scholars accept the teachings of Jesus (at least the ones they agree with) but generally deny the miraculous aspects of his life including the resurrection. What is sad is that these teachings have influenced the education of a century of pastors in certain denominations.

The Jesus of History vs. Christ of the Church

This model is called Form Criticism. It emerged from the "rationalism" of the late 1800's and has since become the dominant model of understanding the Gospels taught in secular colleges, and in many seminaries as well. The basic claim of the form critics is that while the gospels were, indeed, written by the traditionally recognized authors, that their purpose was to transform the teacher Jesus of Nazareth into the Jesus, the Son of God, and put into his mouth teachings consistent with the doctrines of the Early Church. Thus, the form critics believe that over the historical Jesus was laid a mythological biography. However, they believe that by studying the "forms" of the language, they can find the "true" sayings of Jesus as opposed to sayings added by the gospel writers to advance church doctrine.

Form Criticism: The Assumptions

Form critics assume much and expect others to accept those assumptions with them. Let's look at a few of those assumptions:

The Early Church was a "Creative Community." What this means is that they came up with the doctrine of Jesus as savior over a period of time transforming a teacher of philosophy, ethics and basic morality into a supernatural figure. This transformation takes place, in part, as a matter of natural mythbuilding, but it also takes part consciously by church leaders to encourage and give credence to the ethical and theological teachings which had emerged over the 20-30 years between the death of Jesus and the writing of the first gospels. There is, of course, no historical proof of such a claim. Indeed, where historical documents do speak, they do so to confirm the gospel accounts and not to deny them. This lack of evidence doesn't bother the form critics because they claim they can separate the authentic from the fabricated material in the gospels. First, they eliminate any stories of the miraculous. Secondly, they look at the sayings of Jesus to see which are similar to writings in the Epistles and through a convoluted logic eliminate those sayings as being inauthentic because they are found in the Epistles. In other words, the assumption is that the Epistle writers created the doctrine which was accepted by the church and then imposed on the gospels. Of course, a simpler explanation was that the doctrine of the Epistle writers was drawn from the oral tradition of the apostles based on the teachings of Jesus, but form critics prefer the obscure over the simple.

The early church was basically illiterate. The argument here is that the early church was unsophisticated, ignorant peasants easily fooled. However, a close look at the Apostles and other believers shows quite a different group. Matthew had been a tax collector, a public official capable of reading, writing and fairly complex mathematics for the time. Luke was a physician. Paul would have been the equivalent of a Ph.D. in modern terms. Peter, James, John and Andrew, simple fishermen, ran a business which required reading, writing and speaking at least three and probably four different languages.

Miracles are impossible a priori. What this means is that regardless of the evidence any account of the miraculous must be either rejected or attributed to natural causes. While it is difficult to prove the miraculous does exist, it is equally difficult to prove it does not. Certainly, if one humbles oneself before the evidence, we must admit that evidence of the miraculous is to be found in the gospel accounts. Certainly, we can and should test the credibility of the witnesses, but to reject any event out of hand simply because it does not fit in with one's world view is hardly scientific.

Form Criticism Criticized

Form Criticism is flawed by subjectivity. If you get together a dozen form critics and ask them which passages of the gospels are authentic and which are not, you will see several different versions. There are few consistently applied hermeneutical standards for evaluating the text.

Form Criticism cannot explain the transformative power of Christianity. On Good Friday the Apostles are hiding out in Jerusalem. They are meeting behind closed doors. They are doubtful, discouraged and despairing. They are on the verge of disbanding. Fifty days later, they are proclaiming the risen Christ from the rooftops. What transformed a defeated people into a bold force which would eventually reshape the Roman world? A philosophy asking it's adherents to celebrate poverty and self sacrifice, to forgive its enemies, to forego revenge, and eventually to face death because of these beliefs? Is that a belief system one will follow, if it was not for some sort of defining event which placed the imprimatur of God on the philosophy and its teacher? That event would have to be the resurrection of Christ.

The Testimony of the Epistles. The epistles pre-date the Gospels. The form critics admit this. Indeed, they claim that the Epistle writers created the doctrine of Christ out of the historical Jesus. It was from this doctrine that the early Church shaped the Gospels to fit the doctrines. However, if that was the case, how is it that little of the life of Christ is mentioned other than the death and resurrection. Why do we not see little anecdotes, miracle stories, even sayings of Christ mixed in more liberally? We see some, but certainly not in the abundance that one trying to create a myth would include in such writings. Likewise, the style differs greatly. Why not? Perhaps, this is so because the oral tradition had already given them this information. They didn't need to be told. They needed instructions on what it all meant. Likewise, Jesus in the Gospels teaches largely through parables. Yet, the epistle writers use a more expository approach. If the early church were imposing the doctrine of the Epistles onto the Gospels, why not make Jesus teaching style more like the preaching and writing style of the apostles? Perhaps the simplest explanation is still the best. The events were true. From those events emerged the apostolic doctrine contained within the Epistles. The Gospels then simply recorded the actual events which produced the doctrine.

On the whole form criticism asks for a great deal of faith in the unsupported theorizing of disingenuous theologians who are ready to accept the concept of God, but are afraid to face the reality of the divine embodied in humanity. Such an encounter would cause them to face their own inadequacies and dependencies upon the very God they would strip of power. Yet only within that emptying of confidence in self can one come face to face with the Truth standing behind the documents. The Truth the form critics seek, ironically then is hidden behind their theorizing rather than revealed by it. One never finds Truth by fighting against it. One only finds Truth by surrendering to it.

KIT with your friend so as to make sure his friends will not influence him. And although you may doubt yourself, God is greater than our doubts.