P
Sure. The question was posed on post #588 and I didn’t see a reply so I thought I would give my two-cents-worth.
The ultra-short answer is that any ‘Christianity’ that does not consider all of the Bible is watered down, consequently, made weaker.
Now, I will give you the short version of how I came to study the subject. I was raised in Wisconsin in Lutheran churches and by the time I got married in 1971 just before I turned 20, I had never heard that Jesus Christ was coming back again. That was remedied the next year when we saw the movie, “Thief in the Night” at a local church. Jumping over the next fourteen years of learning basic Christianity as a ‘babe in Christ’ we moved to the so-called “Bible Belt” which is a serious misnomer, by the way. Over the years I have learned a lot from the mostly Baptist and Pentecostal culture down here. Unfortunately, I don’t mean that I gained much Biblical or spiritual knowledge or wisdom. I did learn that the brand of “Christianity” that I was seeing all around me, locally, and after the internet, worldwide, was practically powerless. I wanted to know why such a powerful God who promises His followers will also have prayers answered and do great things according to John 14:12-14. All around me I saw professing Christians struggling with issues of unanswered prayers, unsaved loved ones, not enough money to pay their bills, etc. As I studied, everything came back to having the mind of Christ sooner or later. Since I promised the short version, I will summarize with this: we really do need every word that proceeds from the mouth of God in order to even come close to what is expected of those of us who claim to love Him and follow Him. As Jesus Himself said in Matthew 4:4 "It is written, 'MAN SHALL NOT LIVE ON BREAD ALONE, BUT ON EVERY WORD THAT PROCEEDS OUT OF THE MOUTH OF GOD.' " which He was quoting from Deuteronomy 8:3.
And finally, should anyone undertake the same study (and since you don’t appear to be a brand new Christian, I’m sure you realize that I mean real study to learn rather than the common garden-variety of study which today means to hunt through scripture to find individual verses that van be construed to back up a convenient belief one holds dear) and dare to speak what is revealed, expect a lot of unfriendly confrontations.
The ultra-short answer is that any ‘Christianity’ that does not consider all of the Bible is watered down, consequently, made weaker.
Now, I will give you the short version of how I came to study the subject. I was raised in Wisconsin in Lutheran churches and by the time I got married in 1971 just before I turned 20, I had never heard that Jesus Christ was coming back again. That was remedied the next year when we saw the movie, “Thief in the Night” at a local church. Jumping over the next fourteen years of learning basic Christianity as a ‘babe in Christ’ we moved to the so-called “Bible Belt” which is a serious misnomer, by the way. Over the years I have learned a lot from the mostly Baptist and Pentecostal culture down here. Unfortunately, I don’t mean that I gained much Biblical or spiritual knowledge or wisdom. I did learn that the brand of “Christianity” that I was seeing all around me, locally, and after the internet, worldwide, was practically powerless. I wanted to know why such a powerful God who promises His followers will also have prayers answered and do great things according to John 14:12-14. All around me I saw professing Christians struggling with issues of unanswered prayers, unsaved loved ones, not enough money to pay their bills, etc. As I studied, everything came back to having the mind of Christ sooner or later. Since I promised the short version, I will summarize with this: we really do need every word that proceeds from the mouth of God in order to even come close to what is expected of those of us who claim to love Him and follow Him. As Jesus Himself said in Matthew 4:4 "It is written, 'MAN SHALL NOT LIVE ON BREAD ALONE, BUT ON EVERY WORD THAT PROCEEDS OUT OF THE MOUTH OF GOD.' " which He was quoting from Deuteronomy 8:3.
And finally, should anyone undertake the same study (and since you don’t appear to be a brand new Christian, I’m sure you realize that I mean real study to learn rather than the common garden-variety of study which today means to hunt through scripture to find individual verses that van be construed to back up a convenient belief one holds dear) and dare to speak what is revealed, expect a lot of unfriendly confrontations.
and i thank you for taking the time to thoughtfully answer my question.
i certainly do agree with you that the entire Bible is for Christians...it's a Christian Book!