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There are many that read it and come to the same conclusion. Just read it as it is written, in context.
In other words, you just ignore what Jesus said about the scripture being parables. Just throw out that. In other words, just pick and choose whatever you like. And throw out anything that disagrees with your belief.
There are many that read it and come to the same conclusion. Just read it as it is written, in context.
And there are many who read it and come to a different conclusion. The very reason for my original question. Are all Christian denominations correct in their belief structure? Does it matter?
And I don't know that they are deliberately trying to swindle, they just do so many church events and flights around and flying people in it probably gets expensive and the income distribution is towards the poorer end for the church.
Oh that is good to hear. Very few people would deliberately act "bad" and not feel "bad" about it, but if such were the leaders, then we would have a recipe for disaster or just more of the same... I guess like a ticking time bomb.
Still, the ultimate goal of all religions is self-sustainance, and that requires collecting more money than is spent on concrete non-investment services. It requires collecting and spending in such a way that externalities such as "paying" a pastor for his non-volunteer "job" is feasible.
It's clearly because certain people are not interested in what the Bible actually says and what Christianity actually teaches, but are there for other things, such as the excitement they get from something like this.
But at the end of the day their faith in and love toward whatever they imagine God, Jesus, and Christianity to be is strengthened... and isn't that what you always wanted? I suppose not, I suppose that believing every detail of your personal culture of Bibliolatry would be more important for granting blissful immortality than the two loyalist and groveling ideas above.
There are many that read it and come to the same conclusion. Just read it as it is written, in context.
Which version? KJV? NIV? Original vague Greek? Which Biblical Canons? The ones none existent before 300AD or the ones standardized with government help after Emperor Constantine?
In other words, you just ignore what Jesus said about the scripture being parables. Just throw out that. In other words, just pick and choose whatever you like. And throw out anything that disagrees with your belief.
Early Christians did write, and many of them believed the O.T. was parable and that Paul's letters were just helpful personal letters NOT holy dictates. One explicitly stated that people were "drowning themselves and sinking to the bottom of the flood" when they were persecuted by the Roman authorities and gave up their Christianity in order to be complacent to the pagans who had become angry at the Christians for their bigotry and violence against paganism. It seems that Christian (held in high authority and esteem back them and given Sainthood by the Catholic Church) that that the "world flood" was not a literal event of the past but a "spiritual" event of the present and one that was constantly occurring "spiritually".
The miraculous gifts of speaking in tongues, healing, prophesying, knowledge in the first century was a demonstration of Gods holy spirit being on the early Christians. 33CE right after Jesus death 120 gathered in an upper room had tongues of fire descend on them and they were able to speak 15 languages. These had never learnt nor spoken these tongues before. Acts 2:7 They were recognised as being Galileans and each proselyte heard his own native language. This is very different to speaking in tongues today as it is rarely understood by hearers what is said. 1 Cor 14:9 In the same way, unless you with the tongue use speech EASILY UNDERSTOOD, how will anyone know what is being said? You will be in fact speaking into the air.
Healing from when Jesus himself started said to his disciples "Cure sick people, raise up dead persons, make lepers clean, expel demons. YOU RECEIVED FREE GIVE FREE Matt 10:8
Are healers healing for free as Jesus commanded?
Rate of success in healing - "All the crowds were seeking to touch Jesus because power was going out of him and HEALING THEM ALL. " Luke 6:19 Acts 5:15, 16 Also the multitude from the cities around Jerusalem kept coming, bearing sick people and those troubled with unclean spirits and THEY WOULD ONE AND ALL BE CURED. Do todays healers or religious practitioners CURE ALL WHO WANT TO BE HEALED?
Jehovah used these gifts to establish the Christian congregation in an orderly way. 1 Cor 14:33 For God is a God not of disorder but peace.
Gradually those gifts would be done away with.
1 Cor 13:8 - 9 Love never fails. But if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away with, if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge it will be done away with.
What would remain would be faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. Vs 13
Jesus had already said what Christians were to do and practise.
John 13:35 Have love among themselves
John 15:19 John 17:16 No part of the world.
Matt 28:19, 20 Make disciples of ALL THE NATIONS
Matt 6:9 Gods name to be sanctified
John 15:14 Doing as Jesus commanded
Paul under inspiration of holy spirit also added a few more details
Gal 5:22,23 Cultivate the fruits of the holy spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, mildness, faith and self control.
1 Tim 2:3,4 This is fine and acceptable in the sight of our Saviour God whose will is that ALL SORTS OF PEOPLE should be saved and come to an accurate knowledge of truth.
2 Tim 2:15 Do your utmost to present yourself approved to God, a workman with nothing to be ashamed of, HANDLING THE WORD OF THE TRUTH ARIGHT.
2 Tim 4:2 Preach the word BE AT IT URGENTLY IN FAVORABLE TIMES and difficult times, reprove, reprimand, exhort, with all patience and art of teaching.
Titus 2:11-14
For the undeserved kindness of God which brings salvation to all sorts of men has been manifested, instructing us to repudiate ungodliness and worldly desires and to live with soundness of mind and righteousness and godly devotion amid this present system of things; while we wait for the happy hope and glorious manifeststion of the great God and of the Saviour of us Christ Jesus who gave himself for us that he might deliver us from EVERY SORT OF LAWLESSNESS and cleanse for himself a people perculiarly his own zealous for fine works
jw.org Miracles Healing
I have all sorts of logical and theological reasons why I don't like the Pentecostal church I attended and still am forced to attend, but the main thing I don't get is how people see this a fun?
They do it for approx. 10 hours a week collectively and more hours than that privately... Go to church, sing a couple completely uncreative songs, get b****ed at (aka preached to), then have the "alter service", which is the longest part of the whole service. It's the highlight of the service.
Sometimes they dance around and speak in tongues and sing, but the true aim and goal is to get a god given seizure and convulse around. You get like a 5 star rating if you do this. And if you aren't or look like you aren't worshiping enough, they will huddle around you, force your hands up, scream at you, and try to get you to convulse, and when you do, they are satisfied and leave. If you don't they just gradually leave and it's super awkward. I've never caved in to their desires and done it in church, but could if I wanted to. I just wouldn't do it when I was younger and now I'd feel incredibly morally compromised if I did do it.
But all that rowdiness doesn't last long. 10-25 mins depending on energy levels. Some services they get rowdy, many times they don't, but nearly every service they will end up face down in the carpet wailing. ALL the time, just howling and wailing and "travailing". It sounds god awful. Towards the end, everyone kind of peters out and they sit there in silence, the holy hush...
I just don't get it at all. This is the moments they live for. They dedicate a lot of their disposable income to it, most of their free time, sever relationships if they get in the way of it, and fear for those who don't do it. They expect this to be heaven, that garbage all the time...
Can anybody explain it?
Maybe it simply feels good to some people. Just praying, or reading and studying the bible, or singing hymns in church used to put me on a spiritual/emotional high. Nothing inherently wrong with it, I don't think. People do all kinds of things, religious and otherwise, to experience the emotions that make them feel good. If the behaviors themselves become an addiction and are dangerous to one's mental or physical well-being, then it's problematic.
Maybe it simply feels good to some people. Just praying, or reading and studying the bible, or singing hymns in church used to put me on a spiritual/emotional high. Nothing inherently wrong with it, I don't think. People do all kinds of things, religious and otherwise, to experience the emotions that make them feel good. If the behaviors themselves become an addiction and are dangerous to one's mental or physical well-being, then it's problematic.
It does feel good to some and the whole point of the pentecostal and charismatic movements was a desire to personally EXPERIENCE god. It was largely a reaction against what they saw as the sterile, dry, dead, moribund experience of most believers.
It appeals to a certain sort of personality. It puts me in mind of these ghost-hunting shows where frequently the "ghost hunter" will turn the camera on his arm or the back of his neck and bid you to look at his hairs standing on end, as if that is proof of anything whatsoever other than that the person is having an emotional response of a certain kind -- which requires only a mental perception to respond to, and says nothing at all about it being sourced outside of the experiencer's own mind. The point being, that for some people, intense personal subjective responses are a very impressive big deal and are held in higher regard than logic or empirical evidence. Couple this with both the need and desire to believe certain things and you have something that's very compelling to some folks.
Another thing that pentecostal / holiness theology addresses is the problem of ongoing revelation. Outside of the holiness movement it's generally claimed that god no longer speaks to his people other than in a very general and personal way through the leading of the indwelling Holy Spirit, but even there, it is error to claim any sort of new or overly specific or non-personal revelation. Nothing may contradict or even build on the standard canonical scriptures. "Signs and wonders" are seen as ending around the time that the "canon of scripture was closed", if not largely even before that; they were needed only to authenticate teachers before they could point to the finished NT canon for validation.
This is a boon to some ... the sort of folks who tend to gravitate towards "high church" practice like the Roman Catholic Church or Episcopal Church or the Orthodox traditions ... they see this "settledness" of revelation and the (allegedly) unbroken line of succession and tradition back to the original apostles as comforting and reassuring. But others see it as lifeless and increasingly irrelevant. They want a sort of hipster Jesus who speaks to current issues, not a timeless Jesus who speaks to first principles. They want god to tell them what to eat for breakfast, in a sense, not just broadly "thou shalt not murder / commit adultery / wear mixed fabrics / suffer a witch to live". Hence all the emphasis on imagining an active two-way communication with god.
This impulse finds its expression in other ways than the charismatic / pentecostal movements. It is somewhat true of Mormonism for instance which has a new supplementary "Bible" in the Book of Mormon and in theory continues to receive new revelation through its "apostles". That is sort of a hybrid approach that de-emphasizes the miraculous / interventionist nature of god and formalizes ongoing revelation by limiting it to "trickling down" from top church leadership.
I should point out that non-charismatic fundamentalism has roots around the 1830s in Darbyism and was itself a reaction to the allegedly "dry, dead" mainline protestant denominations and served as a kind of populist movement to take the mediation of teaching from a clerical elite and put it in the hands of individual "believer / priests". Ironically the pentecostals branched off on their own starting in the late 1890s because that wasn't enough for them, and fundamentalism had already been around long enough to start to ossify in its own right.
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