The written word: Could we survive as Christians without it?

Deuteronomy · Sep 4, 2019

Hi Whispered, how can our transcendent God be part of His own creation? Or perhaps I should have asked, what do you mean by that

Whispered said:

We, who are "in Christ", are indeed, temples of the Holy Spirit, but I don't believe that's true of anyone who is unsaved, is it

(who is not born again, who has not been given a new heart and a new spirit, the Holy Spirit, and the mind of Christ).

Thanks

~Deut
p.s. - I'll include a few of the verses/passages that I just mentioned for the sake of discussion.

Ezekiel 36

26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

27 “I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.

John 3

3 Jesus answered and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

1 Corinthians 2

12 We have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God,

13 which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words.

14 But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.

15 But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one.

16 For WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, THAT HE WILL INSTRUCT HIM? But we have the mind of Christ.

1 Corinthians 6

19 Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?

20 For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.

.

GracethroughfaithinChrist · Sep 4, 2019

Romans 10:17
So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

1 Peter 1:23
having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever,

1 Thessalonians 2:13
For this reason we also thank God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe.

Mii · Sep 5, 2019

Well there is a verse that says the Gentiles have the law written on their hearts and a STRONG argument can be made that the Holy Spirit is at work in people that have not yet had the Word revealed to them.

I will also second what @MattforJesus said about the invisible attributes of the Lord being made manifest through creation so that they are without excuse...that can be seen in scripture.

How that manifests for each person is different though, and that is a deep topic so...

If we had no written word to go by at some point, we would still have what has been sown into us over time. Factoring in omniscience it would make sense that what we had was sufficient to the task that would be set before us at that time.

Though since you don't really know if you could be a POW or something for decades (think about the guy that visited North Korea) it is certainly important to read as much as we can, as creatively as we can, and to sharpen our iron on other people's understanding. In my experience, the Lord seems to put bits and pieces that I feel like I can't find in other people and I would guess vice versa. Automatic humbling. Automatic growing together...a lot of things honestly. We need each other.

You aren't ever alone.

Interesting idea though. I'll think about it a bit.

Lanolin · Sep 5, 2019

Good question...
Well when Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, he just had to declare 'it is written' and quote scripture for the devil to go away.

If he had not, maybe the devil would have tricked him. I see a lot of illiterate people go to prison. When I visited there to go for a librarians job, it appeared many incarcerated could not read or only had very basic literacy. When you cant read, you are more likely to fall for the devils tricks and schemes.

Writing is also important. It is no accident that God gave the ten commandments written by his finger. Why so the Isrselites could all read and memorise it. However it is more effective to have these written on peoples hearts than tablets of stone.

ForestGreenCook · Sep 5, 2019

TheLearner said:

I agree, we should learn from the example of the bold people of the church in Berea.

PERFECTION · Sep 5, 2019

Ok; I think I made a miss step in this thread. The conversation I was hoping for was centered around the idea of our relationship with Jesus.Instead I have inadvertently painted a target on my spiritual intent. I have worn out many bibles in my lifetime. Now when it comes to my hour of need do I want to hear someone quote me a bible verse or do I seek the presence of my friend who IS the Bible verse?

There will be many bible verses posted in reply here and thats ok, BUT , will just one person tell me how the Holy Spirit showed up in person to let them know what they needed know face to face. I know I am not the only one.It would just give me comfort in hearing it.

And no it will not contradict the written word.

There is no scripture written that says, the Holy Spirit is confined to words on paper.

maxwel · Sep 5, 2019

ForestGreenCook said:

Misunderstanding:

We seem to misunderstand each other continually on CC.
Although there can be many reasons, the most common reason is that we simply don't read another person carefully, and try to FIRST understand what they actually mean.

We all do this at times.
We are all guilty of this.

Humans generally don't pay much attention to each other, and so we just make "assumptions" about what others say or do.
We all do this, and it's very common.

We all do this, and we can all do better... we can all do better by taking a bit more time in the "listening" part of a conversation.

Answer to ForestGreenCook's post:

A. HUMOR:
I was merely using humor to point out a logical error in Perfection's post... nothing more and nothing less.

Sometimes we all learn better while we're relaxing and laughing a bit at ourselves.

B. ETERNAL LIFE:
I never said anything about "eternal life", so injecting that into any of my words or intentions is just... a kind of non sequitur.

In a nutshell, I just wasn't making any allusion to eternal life in any sort of way, neither pro nor con.
To find that in my post... you just sort of have to imagine it up.

C. ANALOGIES:
My analogies were not focused on anything theological; they were focused ONLY on the basic concept of how we NORMALLY have a very RATIONAL approach to "mistakes" or "errors."

- You can see this by simply reading my post, and looking for the SINGULAR PARALLEL I placed within each analogy.

- I intentionally created ONLY ONE PARALLEL between my analogies themselves, and ONLY ONE PARALLEL between my analogies and Perfections's original statement, and then I made a separate conclusion where I RESTATED the parallel all by itself... all of this so that it would be virtually impossible to misunderstand my meaning.

- Yes, before I make a simple little joke, I actually think it through carefully so it won't be misunderstood.

- And yet, it is still misunderstood.

Conclusion:
If I take great care, and go to great lengths to be understandable, and someone still manages to misunderstand me... I'm not going stop making jokes.

.

PERFECTION · Sep 5, 2019

maxwel said:

Misunderstanding:

We seem to misunderstand each other continually on CC.
Although there can be many reasons, the most common reason is that we simply don't read another person carefully, and try to FIRST understand what they actually mean.

We all do this at times.
We are all guilty of this.

Humans generally don't pay much attention to each other, and so we just make "assumptions" about what others say or do.
We all do this, and it's very common.

We all do this, and we can all do better... we can all do better by taking a bit more time in the "listening" part of a conversation.

Answer to ForestGreenCook's post:

A. HUMOR:
I was merely using humor to point out a logical error in Perfection's post... nothing more and nothing less.

Sometimes we all learn better while we're relaxing and laughing a bit at ourselves.

B. ETERNAL LIFE:
I never said anything about "eternal life", so injecting that into any of my words or intentions is just... a kind of non sequitur.

In a nutshell, I just wasn't making any allusion to eternal life in any sort of way, neither pro nor con.
To find that in my post... you just sort of have to imagine it up.

C. ANALOGIES:
My analogies were not focused on anything theological; they were focused ONLY on the basic concept of how we NORMALLY have a very RATIONAL approach to "mistakes" or "errors."

- You can see this by simply reading my post, and looking for the SINGULAR PARALLEL I placed within each analogy.

- I intentionally created ONLY ONE PARALLEL between my analogies themselves, and ONLY ONE PARALLEL between my analogies and Perfections's original statement, and then I made a separate conclusion where I RESTATED the parallel all by itself... all of this so that it would be virtually impossible to misunderstand my meaning.

- Yes, before I make a simple little joke, I actually think it through carefully so it won't be misunderstood.

- And yet, it is still misunderstood.

Conclusion:
If I take great care, and go to great lengths to be understandable, and someone still manages to misunderstand me... I'm not going stop making jokes.

.

If you and I were sitting across a table from one another having a cup of coffee and sharing our thoughts I can imagine I would enjoy myself greatly .

Lanolin · Sep 5, 2019

If Jesus was mute he wouldnt have been as effective unless he spoke God's word.

Now the reason why people WROTE down what Jesus said was so they wouldnt forget it! And people today remember it why because it was written down from all those centuries ago and passed down to us today.

posthuman · Sep 5, 2019

PERFECTION said:

i hope he wouldn't be uncomfortable with me staring at his one enormous eye, but, yeah.

Hevosmies358 · Sep 5, 2019

Of course we can survive without the Bible. Christians throughout history have done so for many reasons such as: couldnt read, lived during catholic latin madness, didnt have access to manuscripts, blind, lived in the americas which it took a looong time for any kind of Christianity (even catholic!) to show up in the Americas.

BUT: BUT: BUT! HEAR ME

To NOT use the Bible to our full advantage today equals a SPIT IN THE FACE of all the MARTYRS and all the people that SACRIFICED for us to have not only a complete bible in book form, but in our OWN LANGUAGE and even in ELECTRONIC form today.
WE ARE REAPING what we DID NOT SOW. Benefiting from the sacrifices of our Christian ancestors. SHOW SOME RESPECT

So treasure it, and be HAPPY, praise GOD.

ArtsieSteph · Sep 5, 2019

Definitely something to consider. There are those who have to deal with the famine in their countries of the word. They only get like few pages. But then they eat it up and want more.

The way for us to hide the word in our heart is obviously to read it. Also it literally says “faith comes through hearing, hearing by the word of God.” Not just people preaching, but the literal word itself I thing.

ForestGreenCook · Sep 5, 2019

maxwel said:

Misunderstanding:

We seem to misunderstand each other continually on CC.
Although there can be many reasons, the most common reason is that we simply don't read another person carefully, and try to FIRST understand what they actually mean.

We all do this at times.
We are all guilty of this.

Humans generally don't pay much attention to each other, and so we just make "assumptions" about what others say or do.
We all do this, and it's very common.

We all do this, and we can all do better... we can all do better by taking a bit more time in the "listening" part of a conversation.

Answer to ForestGreenCook's post:

A. HUMOR:
I was merely using humor to point out a logical error in Perfection's post... nothing more and nothing less.

Sometimes we all learn better while we're relaxing and laughing a bit at ourselves.

B. ETERNAL LIFE:
I never said anything about "eternal life", so injecting that into any of my words or intentions is just... a kind of non sequitur.

In a nutshell, I just wasn't making any allusion to eternal life in any sort of way, neither pro nor con.
To find that in my post... you just sort of have to imagine it up.

C. ANALOGIES:
My analogies were not focused on anything theological; they were focused ONLY on the basic concept of how we NORMALLY have a very RATIONAL approach to "mistakes" or "errors."

- You can see this by simply reading my post, and looking for the SINGULAR PARALLEL I placed within each analogy.

- I intentionally created ONLY ONE PARALLEL between my analogies themselves, and ONLY ONE PARALLEL between my analogies and Perfections's original statement, and then I made a separate conclusion where I RESTATED the parallel all by itself... all of this so that it would be virtually impossible to misunderstand my meaning.

- Yes, before I make a simple little joke, I actually think it through carefully so it won't be misunderstood.

- And yet, it is still misunderstood.

Conclusion:
If I take great care, and go to great lengths to be understandable, and someone still manages to misunderstand me... I'm not going stop making jokes.

.

I am sorry that I misunderstood your comments. I guess I had my "one track mind" set on the fact that we are on a Bible discussion forum and were her to discuss bible scriptures. The next time I reply to one of your quotes I will examine it in the light of what you have told me. My apologies.

garee · Sep 5, 2019

PERFECTION said:

The faith as a law not sunject to change after the oral tradition of men as that needed to believe God comes from hearing God's word. Take away the faith take away the hearing.

Romans 2:11-13 Easy-to-Read Version (ERV) God judges everyone the same. It doesn’t matter who they are. People who have the law and those who have never heard of the law are all the same when they sin. People who don’t have the law and are sinners will be lost. And, in the same way, those who have the law and are sinners will be judged by the law. Hearing the law does not make people right with God. They will be right before him only if they always do what the law says.

Whispered · Sep 5, 2019

Deuteronomy said:

Hi Whispered, how can our transcendent God be part of His own creation? Or perhaps I should have asked, what do you mean by that

We, who are "in Christ", are indeed, temples of the Holy Spirit, but I don't believe that's true of anyone who is unsaved, is it

(who is not born again, who has not been given a new heart and a new spirit, the Holy Spirit, and the mind of Christ).

Thanks

~Deut
p.s. - I'll include a few of the verses/passages that I just mentioned for the sake of discussion.

Ezekiel 36

26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

27 “I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.

John 3

3 Jesus answered and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

1 Corinthians 2

12 We have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God,

13 which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words.

14 But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.

15 But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one.

16 For WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, THAT HE WILL INSTRUCT HIM? But we have the mind of Christ.

1 Corinthians 6

19 Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?

20 For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.

.

God is the source.

pottersclay · Sep 5, 2019

As Jesus said all scriptures point to him. Without the written word of God it's like reading a map with no street signs or direction.
Sin separates us from God. Even in a believers life. In the teachings of the gospels the first words spoken in the ministry of John the Baptist and Jesus himself were repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
In reading a map we must first find out where we are. Second where we want to go. Third is how to get there.
The word of God says we are on a broad road of destruction. By repenting it puts us on the narrow straight road leading to a open gate and the direction we should go is to follow Christ.
The word of God is the map to his heart. Once we start our pilgrimage it leads us back to ever lasting life. We may at times walk in the valley of the shadow of death but fear not we are not alone and shall be comforted.
Where the Lord leads he enables.

Deuteronomy · Sep 5, 2019

ForestGreenCook said:

Hi again ForestGreenCook, Romans 1:18-3:23 is the best/most detailed explanation we have of the "natural man"/of both Jews and Greeks who are outside of Christ.

Romans 1
18 The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,
19 because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.
20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

It's true that understanding the "spiritual" things of God, as well all things from His "spiritual" perspective, cannot be done by those who are in their natural, fallen state. Nevertheless, the Apostle begins his treatise on "natural" men/women (Romans 1:18-3:23) by explaining that not only are they perfectly capable of knowing that God exists in their present, "natural" state, they are, in fact, "without excuse" in regard to knowing that fact (because God made Himself and the fact of His existence known to them both internally, and visibly through the Creation itself).

ForestGreenCook said:

The Apostle Paul counted the loss of his life's many surpassing accomplishments as a Pharisee, as well his high standing among the people of Israel, as "dung", ~NOT~ the word of God!!

~Deut

Deuteronomy · Sep 5, 2019

Whispered said:

Hi again Whispered, I certainly agree with you about that

God created ex nihilo, so there was no source outside of Him.

My concern was with the wording in your earlier post, that God was somehow "part" of His own creation (because that's actually the basic belief of Pantheism, not Christianity).

~Deut

notuptome · Sep 6, 2019

Jesus is the Word of God made flesh. God spoke to Adam in the garden. God spoke all things into being. I would venture to say that the word of God is essential. The bible is God's word written down so we can have it to know God.

Yes Romans 1 teaches that in the absence of the bible all men have nature round about them to testify of the being of God. The gospel has gone into all the world and God is able to get His word into the ears and hearts of those who will believe.

For the cause of Christ
Roger

NayborBear · Sep 6, 2019

PERFECTION said:

Sure man, er woman

, I'll tell ya!
But, it wasn't the Holy Spirit!
T'was the Spirit of God!
How did I know?
He told me His Name! And how to pronounce it to!
Told me everything I learned from "church/es?" Was wrong!
Which "set me on a course" to spending 500 bucks on a college level home school course from Moody!
After I turned in my first assignment, and started on the 2nd?
He came again!
Asked me if I wanted "them" to teach me? Or Him?

The "problem" with modern day Christendom? Is Jesus/Holy Spirit! Jesus/Holy Spirit!
Never, considering or seeking He who sent Jesus, or He who gave "The gift" of the Holy spirit.
The "Spirit of God" is different then either Jesus, or, the Holy Spirit!
Because, after all, It was Jesus who created the heavens and the earth, correct?
And, it is Jesus who sits on the right hand side of Himself on the throne, right?
As it was Jesus who raised Himself from the dead, was it not?
And Jesus, who ascended to Himself to be with Himself on the right hand side of Himself in Heaven, right?

Do ya/can ya see a lack of discernment here?

There is the "Spirit of God" the "Spirit of Christ" the "Gift of the Holy Spirit", and there is "GOD!"

Jesus knew this! His disciples had somewhat a problem with this! Paul knew this! Peter knew this! Even Thomas had trouble with this.

If this sounds "peculiar" to ya? You are not where you "could" be!

If you are comforted by these words?

Whaz goin' on Bro?

The written word: Could we survive as Christians without it?

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