VT 11

I do not believe the abomination is a future event. It stands to reason that since the OT religious system was ended in 70 ad in which the Temple became desolate and was destroyed that this is what it is referring to in Acts.

Reply Quote Notify

482  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Dissagreeent = terrorist? 2007 Papal statement. True??? on: October 21, 2013, 05:32:51 PM God created government. He ordains the life of leaders. The gospel of grace turns mans desires to control other men over to God. The primary authoritative powers of ruler ship are Gods alone. God is free to govern this world as He sees fit. If God is worshiped as being sovereign and free then man is free. The gospel offers free access to God. There is no excuse for man to usurp Gods authority. The gospel has released man from His own destructive desires to usurp Gods authority and rule by destroying others. All of mans problems are from taking his focus off of the primary functions of this world that God has established and over turning the gospel of grace. Grace is simply waiting for God to act justly in the affairs of men. God has promised to take vengeance on the wicked. Grace is valuable because God has established His government to work in this world through letting Him enact vengeance. Grace frees us from thinking we are gods. This is what we are saying when we talk about cheap grace. I mean the pride of man cheapens grace ... but the primary focus is not on believers but on the wicked. The value of grace is that even tho it weakens the powers of the righteous to act in vengeance it is actually seeing God taking vengeance on evil. God will not allow man to act as God as the arbitrator.  Grace funnels fascism into Gods destructive vengeance. God destroys destruction. Grace cannot fail. It is Gods power to free us from our fallen reactions to the evil powers of this world. Because of grace our success grants us a position to receive and judge all the things on the authority that Christ has received and granted. Grace is our rich inheritance.   Reply Quote Notify

483  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: The Pre-Trib Rapture In Acts 15:13-18 on: October 18, 2013, 10:10:25 PM Now your saying that the temple is where satan sets up himself. But the temple is under the old covenant. In the new covenant Christ body is not the ot temple but the nt church. Here is exactly what I am saying. Your denying the obvious that Satan setting up himself in the temple was when the temple was relevant in history when Christ was on the earth. All of the ot worship was fulfilled in Christ. How can you take the temple in which the central part of it was the holy of hollies where the curtain was torn in half when Christ was on the cross ..that is a representation of its final purpose ...Christ opened up the worship from the ot priest to all believers. You got to miss represent the fundamental portions of scripture to squeeze in dispensations. Reply Quote Notify

484  Forums / Key Life Forum / Re: Heading to a Psychology lecture on ethics. on: October 18, 2013, 09:38:35 PM The question in this area of philosophy and psychology is Who are we? This question presumes that we can look at ourselves and form an image. When ever we study people we are organizing the qualities that make them who they are. The bible says that we are body and soul. We possess five senses. These qualities are universal. But we also have an individual identity. In understanding who we are by our image it is not enough to know ourselves by these general universal qualities. The question is can we divide all of these different qualities and examine them according to studies done about human behavior and understand who we are? When we discuss causes and we define how we came into existence we are saying that because God created us it is essential that we know God. The question is does the bible give us a complete understanding of who we are? The bible is the only source of the essential definitions of who we are. But man has also learned certain behaviors through experience and gives his own explanation about how we are act. So when we are discussing the difference between biblical understanding of how we are made and function or mans explanations through experience we are saying that one is essential and one is non essential. The bibles explanation gets to the source of what makes man who he is but the explanations of man done by studies identifies universal behaviors. The question is does the bible offer one way of explaining who man is but there are other equally essential ways of helping man to understand who he is? The difference between the biblical approach and the human study approach is the bible is relational because it defines our causes directly from God, while the human studies takes their explanations through studies in which they divide man up to identify the causes of the problem. How narrow is the bibles approach? It proclaims that we cannot understand ourselves unless we understand who God is. Instead of the approach of dividing man and identifying the problem the bible says that man can only understand Himself as He understands the image of the Perfect Man. This is a radical approach because it is proclaiming that One Man defines every person who ever existed. How can the image of one man help many men to understand themselves in light of their individual qualities? This One man image creating the individual image needs to be examined. How can the image of one man help create different individual images? If you think about this it cannot possibly happen through an idea of the image of the One Man but its got to come through a relationship with this One man. This is what we are saying that God is big enough to listen to every need of every individual and meet every need even if the needs of one man has evil ends to another man. We confuse the teaching of self denial as the only way to know God and ourselves with our desire to have all of our needs met. If we are to know ourselves by knowing God then how can we know ourselves if God does not provide us with the ability to know ourselves as we were created? Is God asking us to deny our desire to have our needs met in order for us to know Him as the definition of self denial? Is ability essentially our understanding God by communication of meeting our needs? This is what we are saying that we are unable unless God gives us what we need to be able which is more than our doing something. We need ability to understand who we are because God knows Himself by His power. Reply Quote Notify

485  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: The Pre-Trib Rapture In Acts 15:13-18 on: October 16, 2013, 09:54:02 PM I was once a dispensation guy. I will explain the reason that I no longer hold to it. I used to believe in seven dispensations. But I think the dispensation teaching divides that bible into 7 ages is done from far scripture comparative way that does not fit in the near context of scripture. So there is a lot of taking an idea from another part of scripture and using it to create a false division of these supposed ages. I believe that dispensations are simply economies that are progressively explained. But the scripture is a history of redemption that shows salvation is in God alone. So the intent of scripture is not to show how God works through economies but to show the works of God as a saving God. This salvation is explained through covenants. Man does not have the ultimate authority over the earth. The history of redemption is an explanation of how Gods eternal government works in the history of the world to over turn all of mans attempts to replace God. God as governor preserves a lineage through out the history in the OT that establishes Christ as His ruler. This history of redemption is the great theme of the bible and acts as the lens through which we interpret all of scripture. The world is divided in light of Gods governance through creation. There is the earth, the first ,second and third heavens. The history of Israel is explained to show the works of God. God is over the earth and explains His acts of faithfulness, kindness, judgements, and justice in the events of history. The central purpose of the history of redemption is to show that all of His acts of history are fulfilled in One Man. What the dispensationalist do is put a false division in the text of the Old Israel and the future Israel. If you divide the text then the future Israel would establish the ot temple worship and the sacrifices. You cant divide the text and avoid bringing back what God has already brought to culmination in His Son. Revelation is giving us a glimpse of heaven through the history of the world. God as governor does not change. He acts against the governments that do not bow down to Him. Revelation is simply explaining how God acts from the heavens to judge the nations of the earth throughout all history. This will go on until the last person in Gods time table becomes a saint. Then God will establish a new heaven and a recreated earth.     Reply Quote Notify

486  Forums / Key Life Forum / Re: Heading to a Psychology lecture on ethics. on: October 16, 2013, 09:17:23 PM Pete I do not like labels. I dont like to analyze people and put them in some kind of category by their personality traits. I do not trust my natural way of thinking but try to put everything up against Gods word. So I am willing to avoid judgement because I know that God is the only judge that can be trusted. This means that we must exercise self control and be patient , loving and kind. But on the other hand its important to think on the scripture and ask question. The Psalmist says that we should meditate on it and pause, muse a little, then meditate on it some more, pause and ask questions. But we should also express an idea that we have to God as if our application was presented to Him as a judge. I find myself at this point putting my hand to my mouth. Because we are standing before a Person who can pronounce life or death. We begin to experience a serious spirit about us. A lot of times its best to be silent and seek to be illuminated so that we can draw wisdom from above. We hear Gods voice and it puts all the wisdom of this world into perspective. The wisdom of man is foolishness to God. You hear very little of this scriptural comparison. I think we are gonna be very surprised when we are on the other side of eternity at what and who God awards as wise. Its natural for us to explain situations and people in a cultural way of speaking. It sounds wise and we find a lot of agreement. But the bible gets to the bottom of the reasons that people believe what they believe. God promises to give us wisdom if we ask. I dont believe we can figure anything out in our own wisdom. The more we know God the more we will understand people.   Reply Quote Notify

487  Forums / Key Life Forum / Re: Nicene unity on: October 14, 2013, 10:10:48 PM The other side is saying that God is soveriegn but will not violate our wills. If God is soveriegn then He does whatever pleases Him unless He is thwarted by a greater will. We acknowledge that God is free to act as He pleases. If we were to entertain the idea that we are free to act in ourselves what ever we want then we would be setting up a god of our own making. I do not think that gods are made just out of physical things but we can have gods that we create in our minds. We acknowledge that God does whatever pleases Him because the idea exalts God to the be the Highest. It is in our best interest to define God as other because we are moral creatures. If God is other then there is no law that He is under.  We can say that the law is really not the highest standard but God Himself is the highest. When we say that God is above the law I do not believe that we know in an absolute way the demands of the law. This is why the law is purposed to show us our sin. I mean in a very crude way. As the Psalmist says who can discern his errors? So God acts in Himself as He alone is pleased with His actions. We are looking at God who shows justice, faithfulness, kindness and love by acting in the unity of all the purposes of the definition of meeting the demands of the law throughout all time. This symmetry that emanates true unity is a Trinitarian work. This communication to us is through the spirit of the words. The word of God is a whole not in parts. All the words are Trinitarian. Each word has in it the spirit of all the words. So in a sense the symmetry created by meeting the laws demands throughout all time is in the spirit of one word of scripture. The Palmist calls this the word of salvation. When the Psalmist meditates on Gods word ,his petition to make it pleasing in Gods sight is to create in the future the symmetry and unity of Gods perfect acts in the creation out of nothing and the recreation of the new. We experience the unity of alignment in our souls as we see the detail of how God creates and recreates. We experience this spiritual renewal through word and Spirit.   Reply Quote Notify

488  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: The Myth of saying that Jesus Christ died for all men without exception ! on: October 12, 2013, 09:49:36 AM God saves some men and judges the others. Im wondering if we lower God by making Him a God who rehabilitates rather than delivers. What does God promise? Does He promise to put people in a half way house until they are saved? If God is holy then how can He give an inch in His standard? All of these questions that i am asking have consequences in our own thinking about morality and connection both on a horizontal level and vertical. If we lower the standard of Gods holiness then He can accept a thing that is lower raising mans stock in saving himself. But if God cannot budge then man is hopeless unless God decides to save that man. If God does not have a fast line of acceptance and rejection then His judgements of those who are accepted are relative. In other words God could say to the righteous...I am letting this guy ravage your city so He has the most opportunity to come to me. How can the righteous trust God if God is lenient towards the wicked who seek to destroy the righteous? In this case God would even let the roaring lion on his own to wreck havoc so as to allow even Satan time to believe. But we know that just as Satan who is the greatest example of the wicked s relationship with God has a sure judgement awaiting him. Reply Quote Notify

489  Forums / Prayer Requests / Re: For Our Mbg on: October 10, 2013, 11:09:17 PM Quote from: Worc on October 03, 2013, 09:46:08 AM We have Charter here in The Peoples Republic of ChaoMass. They are a very disturbing company parting ways with them is like getting rid of a chronic cough. Its a wonder how long you persevered and asked for prayer! By reading through your post again shown me my pride in regards to my avoidance of asking with repetitive needs. It's not a surprise that I slipped and fell and you did not. Thanks for the help---Even though you didn't know this would help- Prayers Tom.    Ive given up on charter..... you are correct Reply Quote Notify

490  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: When does acts of sin and righteousness become a "practice" on: October 10, 2013, 10:40:39 PM What is wrong with responding to the standard by saying "I cant keep it"? Why do we say that I can do this works in our performance? Isnt the whole point of the christian experience to give God all the glory? What does it say about God if we are always saying that we can keep it. Isnt it the same thing as saying we do not need Him to do it? I mean by how we speak. Isnt it more consistent to say that we cannot keep it but God has kept it and we give Him the glory because we are united about the focus and quality of Gods glory? We are always concluding that we had no strength or ability in ourselves but look what Gods strength did through us. Wow we did it. How can we be consistent in thinking that all things are gifts to us from God and yet be upset that we are not responsible enough to meet the standard? If God is to get the glory then why should we be surprised if we fail? Isnt the fact that we failed magnify the success of Gods intervening in our lives? In this case no one would respond with sincerity to Gods gifts. And there would be no necessity for special occasions after seasons of long prayer to express the desire of gratitude to God because it does not come out of a heart that says I cant do this but for the grace of God. So there is no desire of appreciation because it is not as valuable as the responsible action.   Reply Quote Notify

491  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: An observation about sanctification.... on: October 10, 2013, 10:11:31 PM God has made us experience personal salvation. This means that our knowledge of being saved is tied to our needs. We experience frustration when we think that God is not concerned about meeting our need. We are always taught that our needs are met when we focus on others needs. But how can we understand meeting other peoples needs if we do not understand how God meets our needs? This is funny because salvation is backwards. The outworking of salvation is different from our personal experience with God. We have no strength in ourselves. This is why understanding how to rest in Christ is actually our experiencing the most ability to do something. We need to understand that the christian life is not like a copy machine. Its something far greater than we could achieve in our own strength. The only way to know our purpose is to know God as all in all. The only way to know God as all in all is if He is the source of all of our strength. This means that self knowledge is trusting that God desires our personal good. If God has promised to give us all that we need then He has given us desires like His. Otherwise how can we trust that God is gonna meet our needs if He is not personal to us in how we think and feel? Why do we always say that God has His side and we have ours? Where does that lead to? It just says that we cannot understand God which is that our hope of our needs being met are lost but we need to trust Him. The bible teaches that our faith is worked out but its in a result context and not a 50- 50 ability. Ive been meditating on the Psalms day and nite for 30 years and never been taught to think this 50- 50 way. 50-50 Is like trying to act like two people. We have Gods promises which are focused on us and then we have our responsibility which is focused on others. Its like trying to live a personal life and an impersonal life. All the bad things that we experience are impersonal to us by demands. And we are left to wish for a heaven were we are promised an end of pain and suffering. We are supposed to experience equal guilt , fear, sorrow, and pain but on the other hand we have some kind of deep seated joy.. go figure. Why cant we define what we are to think and avoid the wrong thinking? Why do we accept balance as these equal lines?   Reply Quote Notify

492  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: The Word World ! on: October 10, 2013, 08:59:52 PM The world is more than just the christian community. If God was only soveriegn over certain people or organizations then He would have created all things and been slack in managing them. And if God was only sovereign over the physical things that we see or all the people of the world then He could not be sovereign over the things we cannot see. But how can we relate to a God who communicates to us in our language and yet give Him the glory He deserves unless we acknowledge that He is separated from us because we do not understand as He does. And if we do not understand as God does then who can counsel God about any word in scripture that we place in our own context according to our limited view? But we know that the world is not limited to just the physical attributes but it is a course with carefully thought out purposes that come through communication from the beginning of time. But where are the witnesses who can testify about how each of discussions has impacted the course of the world? Obviously it cannot be in the ability of man to bring all these things to light. Only God has existed through all generations from the beginning of time and has witnessed not only the planning of man but every thought that man has before man thinks it. Is it in mans ability to create something from nothing if man has not created the language to speak it into existence? How can anything that exist ...exist without a necessary purpose? How can necessity originate from a borrowed language? This is why from Gods view point all the thoughts of man are futile. Because God cannot lie about giving man ability to create that man has never witnessed because man was not present when God created all things by the word of His mouth. All things are necessary because they originate from Gods order in His secret counsel from eternity past. The only reality is revealed language. Man is without ability to do one good thing without God granting him the ability. Ability is given as a revealed language to mans purposes. Reply Quote Notify

493  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: An observation about sanctification.... on: October 08, 2013, 07:38:37 PM Ive never been a fan of making a list of things that need to be changed and focus on them. Ive always looked at sanctification in the sense of health and not moral excellence. We cannot define the level of our problems in an absolute sense. There are things in us that prevent us from achieving all that we set out to do. So I do not believe we can make an absolute decision to go in a certain way and eliminate the problems of life. Ive meditated on many things that we are related to. But ive never thought that I could figure out how these things create an image in how we view them. Nor can I figure out how the other persons image of me has painted me in a picture with certain limitations. will finish this Reply Quote Notify

494  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: An observation about sanctification.... on: October 07, 2013, 10:57:22 PM Our position as a sinner does not need to be revealed to us. Being a sinner is living in a state of grace. We have been bought with a price and we are no longer our own. Now we look at being born by a choice made before the foundation of the world. Now we live in an eternal family with God as our Father from eternity past. We have new desires. These desires are anti intuitive to our natural way of choosing. But its hard for us to believe that our spiritual instincts are good. We want to be forced by God to be free to be good. But God wants to free us and give us space to fail to be good. We want to condemn the knowledgeable and give license to the ignorant. But God graciously works through knowledge of Himself while overlooking our waywardness because we are weak while at the same time He brings justice to bare because of the blindness of mens hearts lest they become proficient in evil and destroy the world. God wants us to look at our beginnings as gifts to us so that He teaches us dependence and rest. Reply Quote Notify

495	Forums / Theology Forum / Re: When does acts of sin and righteousness become a "practice"	on: October 07, 2013, 10:39:33 PM
We can think in a way that we curse ourselves. The righteous do not curse but bless. Anytime we hold onto sin we become destructive. The law condemns. When the law speaks we die. Gods law curses sinners. But we are freed from the curse of sin because Christ took the curse upon Himself. We curse ourselves by thinking that our relationship with Christ is not enough to keep us from the destructive process of the law that works death in us. We must hold fast to the truth that our justification gives us a legal rite to be blameless in the sense that if God should hold sin against us then no one could stand. The whole world is under bondage to sin. But because we are freed from sin in Christ we have a legal rite to argue for our blamelessness even tho we are sinners because we are no longer in that hopeless position as the world is in. Now listen to me... all of Gods words are legally binding. We are either defended by His words or we are condemned. There is no in between position. We now stand as arbitrators of our own defense. Come and let us reason together says the Lord..tho you sins be scarlet they shall be white as snow. We have been bought with a price. Its Gods redemption price. We are no longer slaves but sons. You can push away the destructive process of the law. The law is no longer your school master. When we hold God to His promises He listen to us. The puritans used to say pleading the promises. We are not automation's but human beings. We are not psychologically progressive but we are like a cup that gets filled up. We are not parts of something incomplete! Please people! We are body and soul in an expressive image. We pour out our hearts to Him and we grow in sanctification. We do not grow by bare experiences.         496  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: An observation about sanctification.... on: October 06, 2013, 07:20:35 PM Sanctification is worked in us when we apply the gospel in every situation. Every time I see the word sanctification it is in the rear view mirror. Our view of becoming holy is related to the image of Christ. It's not really focused on outward appearance but its seeing Gods commitment to us as the foundation of our confidence in the relationship . It's not focused on meeting deadlines or getting over sin but we are focused on Gods faithfulness when our lives are turned upside down. We face every situation in a world that is corrupted. In sanctification we are the people who have the means . We have the word of God in which every idea ,experience, that being the translation of the thought process that illuminates the soul in which we touch the eternal verities. We experience something far greater that surpasses understanding. God shines the light of His glory into our face and we experience new life and laughter. God also listens to us not as someone who is passively hearing our cries. But  in the Psalms God has given us the perfect response of Christ as He poured out His heart before our Father. When we learn how to cry as He did the holistic response of our soul and body are experienced. We are taken to a place of transperancy that we could not achieve on our own. We learn that our souls have depths that could never be accessed. It's an experience in which we feel the life of God as waves crash against the shore. We experience a oneness in our cries and a flood of the life of God filling our souls. Reply Quote Notify 497  Forums / Break Room / Re: Dealing with critcal and controlling people on: October 03, 2013, 09:47:22 PM I often wonder what giving control to God is. Is it acknowledging that we are isolated from the purpose that God intends for us? If we deal with everything in our lives by saying God is out there and is bigger than our desires then how do we know this God? Yes I want a God who is in control and I want Him big enough to personally do the best for every person at the same time. I think that is a bigger God than the one who does things to us so that we conclude that we cannot explain them. If God does things for us so that we are assured that our purpose will be fulfilled then are not we showing what God is like in relationship? If God does things for our good then would not it be correct to say that all people are unified in one purpose for good? What is wrong with everyone being in control and going to the good purpose? Why do we like to write a novel and make God the monster? I mean saying that everyone is out of control but God and He does this to prove He is God.  Reply Quote Notify 498  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Israel / Christ parallels on: October 03, 2013, 09:08:44 PM Kk the Psalms are the perfect expression of Christ interior world. He entered into a world that rejected Him. He was the perfect man who experienced evil in light of His eternal knowledge of its effects and ends. He always understood the difference between how evil and temptation was part of His earthly experience as adding up to be contained in perfect truth in the future world but in Christ He viewed the other world in the present. So He pronounced judgement and blessing that was not understood by those He came to. Christ suffered but He was able to be shielded from the effects of the second death. He never received a curse. Yet in His humanity He was purely transparent before God desiring destruction on those who destroy others. Christ displayed a perfect defense of His sheep creating their success by His prophecy of their ends. He was the perfect blessing to His people in His honoring them as His Father would have Him. In this all things were ordered by Christ in perfect unity and symmetry. He set everything in order at all times.  Reply Quote Notify 499  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: When does acts of sin and righteousness become a "practice" on: October 03, 2013, 08:26:49 PM Im not the classical reformed guy when it comes to talking about sanctification in the context of struggling with sin. Sanctification is simply our wanting to do Gods will but acknowledging that we fall short. But I do not believe that confessing sin or knowing Gods forgiveness is our main goal. Because I do not believe that the ot curses have ended in the death of Christ. I believe the curses still apply to the unbelieving world. When the Psalmist approaches God he doesnt do it as a way to become more holy by experience. I do not believe that the bare experience is the way that we are sanctified. I propose that we are not sanctified by our display of humility as a result of a sinner coming to God. But I believe there are many things we are trying to obtain and our position as a sinner is not the aim of God in responding to us but He is more interested in us personally than just how we think of sanctification . Ive often wondered way we think that justification is the free act of God but then we get serious repercussions of God by the experience of sanctification. Sanctification is not really God trying to make us holy when we obey but its God acting on our behalf to recreate in and through us an alignment of our souls as He created us. When we have found God ... not His standard ... then all is well. We have been definitively sanctified at our new birth. This means that our old will was destroyed and we received a new will. We have been given desires in our new birth that are Gods desires. Our desires define the purpose of our salvation. Although our desires are imperfect , yet it is not because we have a self will that is equal with what God wants of us. We are not divided. Sanctification is not God getting serious with us to force us to take the 50 percent that He has given us. lol But we long for our own purpose to be successful because God uses our desires to deliver us. Our desires give us freedom that is dangerous. God is not threatened by our bold approach about what we think. He has given us desires so that we can trust ourselves. Sanctification is not really some kind of personal discipleship. We are not subject to other men as if they were imperfect replacements of God. lol Sanctification is not us acting in some kind of chain of command. It is our own personal fight in which we care about winning. So its not finding a balance of life of all the things we do ... recreation, work, family etc. But sanctification is reducing everything so that we only trust in one Thing. In sanctification we fight to distinguish between mans philosophies, religious fanatical teachings in reducing God, with the pure word of God. We want to dig into His word as if all of mans counsel was evil. Sanctification is our daily coming to the point by word and Spirit in which we find truth and mystery , that true line that cuts all things straight. It is in this mindset that we are most aware. We find both cursing and blessing most pleasurable. We can grow down and then up in the same exercise of His word. Reply Quote Notify 500  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: When does acts of sin and righteousness become a "practice" on: October 02, 2013, 09:21:31 PM First our sin does not have power because it is covered by grace. How can something be identified if it is not counted or marked? How do we take something that is practical like acting in a sinful way and look at it in a biblical way? We must know who we are in Christ! This is the rule that those who are a friend of God are a friend of a friend of God and those who are an enemy of God are an enemy of an friend of God. This means we live in a society where blame is in Gods wrath only. The bible identifies us in a community of very specific words describing people as perfect even tho they act sinful. The vision creates the reality. There is no longer relationships in the cursing sense. Its kind of like vampires. We are part of the good witches family. Both families are familiar with the destructive pull of the curse. But the good witches family creates success by blessing God and others while the vampires face the destruction of the curse and are pulled into a destructive death. Some of relationships are the experiences as if we were being pulled by a magnetic force. We may experience the pull through familiarity with destruction but grace prevents us from being identified with that group. We push the curse away so we in a sense know the dangers of sin and we push the curse away , but God heals us as our experience of being renewed. Reply Quote Notify 501  Forums / Prayer Requests / Re: For Our Mbg on: October 02, 2013, 09:06:58 PM Im trying to get Charter cable out to my house ...its been very strange. Reply Quote Notify 502  Forums / Break Room / Re: Extremely honest confession on: October 02, 2013, 08:57:34 PM LA...Salvation is being kept safe. Some people think that aggressiveness is forbidden because its in the category of meanness , but its our vision of the work of God that makes our safety paramount.  Its like this, If you want God to win in this world then His children must win. If you want God to win then His children must be preserved. Preservation is not a bad desire. Its part of our natural desires. God preserves the righteous but He cuts the wicked off....or He removes them and their posterity from the earth. This is why God gives us the bare facts. He hits us in between the eyes. If He did not show us that salvation is more wonderful than we could imagine and that judgement was more dreadful than we could comprehend then we would settle for self loathing as a way to unburden our guilt. But God takes us in vision to the eternal aspects of life. He makes our wanting to do this on our own like ashes by the fire of His personal care for us to take the world in His direction. Being safe is a desire to fall into our Fathers arms so to speak. Its finding happiness in full dependence on God. This world has only two spiritual realms. Its the saints and the aints. The bible uses metaphors of real people and soldiers to depict how words create danger. Kind of like a physical war. To be safe is to be protected from words that are like arrows. To be protected from people who do harm by their planning. In Gods view of us it is His presence surrounding us so that no enemy can penetrate it. Kind of sounds like someone who is overly concerned for his own safety... the old adage this guy has a very thick shell. lol That used to be a term that painted christians as square. lol Sometimes we must go this lonely way. Reply Quote Notify 503  Forums / Current Events / Re: My Friend, Steve Willis on: October 02, 2013, 08:32:29 PM I remember Willis... very accepting of everyone in the early days. Im saddened by this news. Although I had Gene in my house about a month before he passed , I never met Willis personally...unless he was the same guy who went to my high school... but he made the early days of Key Life enjoyable. Pete with all the physical ailments you were struggling with I understand. I dont think any less of you bro. Reply Quote Notify 504  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Do you confess every single sin, every day? on: October 02, 2013, 07:32:45 PM The gospel is not really for God but its for us. God doesnt need to be delivered from anything. So God doesnt have needs that are met outside of Himself. He desires that we be saved. To be in the position of being saved is to have our needs met. Salvation is simply an ongoing state in which we go from one deliverance to another. If God is not in need of something from us then He has all resources in Himself. He approaches His people in a communicative way as someone who is satisfied in Himself. If God is completely free to do as He pleases dont you think that He would act in a way toward us that is consistent with who He is? God is not subject to weakness or falling into temptation. He has the resources and power to turn evil to good. God is not sitting back thinking that there is something that we need to know in order for God to be successful working through us. The problem is not in God but its in us. God has taken care of all of the obstacles of our salvation. God who is satisfied in Himself deals with us as faithful, kind, loving, patient and gracious. If our knowledge of sin was the most important thing in our salvation then we would never know satisfaction outside of our need for forgiveness. In other words our salvation would be a relationship of our need being met when we received forgiveness. But God approaches us not as identified as sinners but saints. If one thing defined a relationship then it would be the bases of our confidence the knowledge of that person in the relationship. It would be thinking in a way that we make the other person fit our view of how we know our need. But God is much bigger than a single doctrine. He not only defines truth but He emanates Himself beyond our knowledge of the perfect image of ourselves. To understand sin is to know our weakness by being transparent even if we do not understand ourselves as God does. We come with confidence that we know what is rite about our experience even if God sees how miss guided we are. God doesnt want someone approaching Him as if that person had complete knowledge but God in His satisfaction wants us to be bold in our approach. But boldness is something that comes to us by our needs being met. What needs am I talking about? All of our needs! If we want to know salvation then it is only personal when we receive everything we need from God. Is confessing sin a way to get to the second level of asking for our needs to be met? No sin is our problem not Gods. Sin doesnt hinder God from working. Our struggle with faith doesnt prevent God from being satisfied in Himself in our presence. Sin really is part of our struggle to believe God can act on our behalf to meet our needs so that everything is put rite in our lives. We must get past the idea that our sin prevents God from being gracious.  God does not treat us as our sins deserve. Our struggle with sin, tribulation is Gods way of teaching us how to overcome in this life. Its not given as an obstacle but as and encouragement to seek being satisfied in God by having all our needs met. I dont know why christians have such an easy time thinking like they are losing as if more burdens would be helpful in growing. We must learn how to us our weakness for our own benefit. We must think in a way that our weakness is the road to blessing. When we approach God in transparency then our sin will not be a burden but gives us a desire to know God who knows exactly what we need even if we do not know. God will reveal what we need when we understand how to use our weakness for our benefit.  Reply Quote Notify 505  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Do you confess every single sin, every day? on: October 01, 2013, 08:37:20 PM The only accountability partner that will cure us of sin is someone who has never sinned. The first advancement in understanding sin is to understand that we all struggle with it. So if we are thinking that our relationships are built on confessing sin then to be quit honest there would not be time for anything else. I do not think we can segregate our lives. The christian is not someone who should be dividing the different occupations of life with the intent to get better. But we are people who seek one thing and then we look at our lives in light of how we value this one thing and it is described in the detail of our lives. Salvation is already given in its fulness. We are not looking back as if we lack something that needs to be added. We only grow when we convinced that Christ has given us all things. This is why we focus so much on Christ as the image of God. Our goal is not to add something as if we were looking at these different areas of weakness and holding ourselves accountable by an enforcement of our wills. We start from the premise that salvation is the highest reception of honor that we could ever envision about ourselves. Salvation can only be real in our receiving all things from God in Christ. So in a sense a more pure focus of salvation gives us a certain disconnection what falls out in how it looks in the world. We see the apostle describing these different occupations as if there was an organism that had entered from space that had an uncommon connection to its own species and out of that experience we observe how it functions. The moment we begin to observe ourselves is when we become disconnected. The world has changed rapidly from a christian focus to a humanistic view of how species behave. In this focus it is very easy to conclude that in dividing the epistles into the doctrinal sections and the practical sections that this world view is what the bible teaches in the practical sections. But we cannot conclude that if we understand doctrine intellectually that we are left to do the practical things. Because the doctrinal sections are describing the life of Christ as we image it both as individuals and as corporate. So we cannot conclude that our reception of His life is as to connection with one another which is both mysterious and understandable.... is separate from the practical outworking of our connections.   Reply Quote Notify 506  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Do you confess every single sin, every day? on: September 25, 2013, 08:20:44 PM What we need to understand about the scripture is that there is a difference between the fundamental doctrines with the application of the doctrines to our hearts and the action we take. It is our natural inclination to reverse this order. We like to think in terms of doing something to get returns on our action. But the bible doesnt describe the application of doctrine as a return of our actions. So we need to think in relational ways about how we grow rather than some kind of approach we take. Forgiveness is never earned so God doesnt put us in front of a ledger board to measure our sincerity in order to grant forgiveness. So why would we conclude that forgiveness is free if it cost us a confession? The point is that grace has a single purpose. It is the foundation of our receiving many gifts. So the question is if the gifts are given by grace then how does that involve our view of God? Now we have described two kinds of gods. One God does not give forgiveness for the price of confession. The other teaching about God is that forgiveness is free but we still must confess to enjoy forgiveness. This leads us to the next question. "What is meant by free?" Is the teaching of doctrine on one side and action on the other? Is it as simple as saying that my action proves my belief? Or I cannot act correctly unless I know what I believe. In my opinion this leads to a very simplistic way of thinking as if we are dividing how we feel with what we do. The bible describes a saint as thinking a certain way and the result is evident. As you know forgiveness is at the heart of this whole chabang. The teaching of forgiveness is akin to the difference between respect and torture. Its so very simple that if we miss it then forgiveness will be like a carrot on the end of a stick that we are always chasing. In my opinion that is the worse torture anyone can put themselves through. Our conscience is not perfect. It is the most dangerous faculty that we possess if it is not taught correctly. Some people say as a matter of counsel that we should not trust in our feelings when it comes to dealing with our conscience. But in my opinion a defective conscience is the result of cultural bias or ignorance. Both of these identifications are from our old cursed way of dealing with ourselves. The conscience can be like putting a cross in front of a vampire. Its the scenario like an old wives tale that has a certain control over our reaction to things. Our relationship to the law in our former life was destructive. Because our conscience created all kinds of imaginary powers in us as to how we reacted to the threat of the law. This is not really a moral paradigm but its the spirit by which we lived. This process which brought about total chaos in our souls is described as the destruction of the curse.     Reply Quote Notify 507  Forums / Key Life Forum / Re: the Word >=< the Truth on: September 24, 2013, 09:07:27 PM God cares about us outside of our understanding of His word. He applies His remedy without us understanding exactly what He is doing. And yet He acts according to His word. Our emotional experience is not strictly tied to our interpretation of His word. But God hears us even if our answer about a situation is not exactly correct as we become emotionally involved about the persons or actions in the situation. We can be happy or mad about a situation even if we do not know all of the facts about it. God is not asking us to deny our feelings but He is much bigger than our feelings.  All He ask is that we be transparent before Him about how we feel. I think I have said this before. If we divide how we feel with our personal experience in relationships then truth is only concerned to address what we know about ourselves and our circumstances. But we know that truth contains our experience which the completed facts are outside of our understanding. We who are finite could not possibly know the full truth at any time. The bible gives us not only a description of the perfect man but addresses the heart issues , how Jesus thinks and feels in a perfect word. This is mainly addressed in the Psalms. The Psalms address Jesus human experience, His feeling, ...that is a perfect redemptive experience as described in the application of the doctrines of salvation. The book ties together a description of the mind and heart ..the perfect desires of a man that are fulfilled by Christ. As Christ was one with the Father the perfect description of the inner workings of Christ heart and mind are seen in His desires united to the Fathers desires. The Psalm go beyond a description of addressing the question how a sinner approaches God and speaks of the perfect creation of reality. The reason that people question the emotional approach in the Psalms is because the perfect view of the reality of this world by experience is extreme.  Our inner experience is only extreme in our own view. Our reactions are corrupted but in the Psalms the extreme reactions burn away our insincere reactions by comparison to Christ. We have an alive inner experience that views the world as insincere because our renewed feelings are hidden.  There is nothing that we feel or think that surprises God or that He cannot contain in us. Kk sorry I talked over your head in the eternal creation thread. I am using His word as the instrument which creates not just addresses our understanding.   Reply Quote Notify 508  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: The Eternal Purpose of Creation ! on: September 23, 2013, 08:47:18 PM The creation is evidence of Gods order and symmetry. All things are created because of Gods goodness. And yet because of sin the creation is under the curse of death. The curse is the creation of disorder and destruction. But God has decided through grace alone to bless man with all that He has created. He has given us all things that He has made to enjoy. There is no destruction in the way that God blesses man. I do not think the mode of blessing is corrupted. This is why Gods salvation cannot fail. We may experience the pangs of death but the sting of death has been removed. The word of God is perfect. All things have been put into effect through the word of God. This means that we have the perfect order of renewal in the spoken word of God. The word goes beyond any pragmatic response to disorder and sets all things in order. We seek God through His perfect word. His word not only aligns all things but it creates a new heart. The heart is corrupted  but the word is quick and powerful , sharper than any two edged sword. The word brings together cursing and blessing, the absolute declaration of the law, and life and death. The word is like a sword and it divides these things in an absolute sense. The word is truth and any thing that opposes the word is a lie. God has created everything according to His word. Each word has order everything that exist from a Trinitarian source. Salvation belongs to God and He orders all things for this purpose. The Father sent the Son to do the perfect work in perfect order out of the disorder of sin. The Spirit was sent into the world to reprove it. The Spirit works to reorder everything in our lives. The Spirit who regenerates us acts as our advocate. He takes the work of Christ , that work that is the perfect creation of our lives and applies it to us. Its not us being perfect but its the Spirits design that is perfect. The Spirit makes our paths level. Or He removes the traps that could ensnare us. The traps that we cannot see since we do not know the future. Our Father draws us to Himself by His love alone. The love of the Father is His promise to work everything for our good because He loves us according to who He is and has proven it by giving us the Spirit who applies the work of Christ to us. We view the perfect law of liberty, God loving us according to His definition of love. In this sense everything is unified as we see Gods recreation in light of His perfect goodness and symmetry evidenced in the created order. He could if He so desired remake us in actuality to our youth. But each of His words are the eternal existence of order as if we were outside of time having glimpses of our youth. His created word is a legal declaration of the absolute love of God as He views us in our ultimate image. When we see God we come to the experience of reality and mystery which is the cutting straight between blessing and cursing, life and death. We experience something far greater of eternal life and experience something more awful in our viewing eternal death. In this view we are being changed from glory to glory.  Reply Quote Notify 509  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Israel / Christ parallels on: September 20, 2013, 07:47:53 PM I use to think that action was using body parts in accomplishing a task but is our internal worship strictly passive? It's like the reasoning that the apostles writings are divided into doctrine and practice. But I think it's dangerous to talk as if we discuss these teachings in a divided way. We should seek to unify truth as all seeking to ultimate act which is to glorify God. So in a sense we could do anything with the wrong motive and work to exhaustion but the action is of little profit. And this is the mystery of the gospel that in doing all things for the glory of God we act in a profitable way because we act in one spirit. So there is no real automatic way as being consistent with adding the right amount to be profitable. The gospel is an interior action on the heart. It is the only message that can set our hearts in order in how we view our relationship to things and people. We are not divided between a psychological world and a spiritual world. The gospel is one message that not only teaches but creates. In this sense we have a world in us as if we were looking at a physical image which is our self reflection. The division of the psychological and spiritual reverses the gospel view. We are regenerated so that we are completely new. The world outside of us is disjointed and destructive. This is why the christian fights with exact concepts that are contained. If we say that our interior world is equal or powerless in relation to the exterior world then we will struggle with inconsistency about our faith. But the gospel is a message of deliverance. We should experience being shielded on all sides as if we were being attacked by an army. This is guarding our hearts or interior world. Its not our attention of how we connect in the world but its what we experience in our own interior world that effects all our relationships to things and people. This is what really gets my feathers up. We create a picture that salvation is our experience of things we hate. In other words its painted as everything we choose must have a prior self denial in order to be successful in our christian walk. But we hear very little about Gods initial work on our hearts to destroy our old will. Why is this? Why cannot we simply reason that we do not belong to ourselves which includes our weakness to sin so that we are in a sense pushing away the evil of the exterior world and seeing as God sees. That the whole world is powerless to do one thing about sin. So that the grace of God represents to us not only a shield from our falling into sin but a prevention of the destructive effects to overcome Gods interior renewal process. So that our wills are His will because we are defined by our interior reality of having this kingdom dwelling in us and in this we stand on Gods definition of us which leaves the chaos where it really is in the exterior world. Reply Quote Notify 510  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Israel / Christ parallels on: September 18, 2013, 08:57:51 PM Yes Kk ive almost changed my identity to being a Jew. Ive meditated on the Psalms so many times that sometimes I feel the heart of David. If Jesus was a Jew and we are gonna be with Him in His eternal reign then I must embrace the humanity of Jesus as well as His deity. Ive changed a lot in my doctrinal approach. I believe in this culture we have tried to push the results of the death of Christ to an extreme. And Ive been trying to view myself outside of my own cultural box. In a sense Ive rebelled against the formalism of our day by asking myself the question... how do I feel about this particular thing or situation? Why do we separate truth and put them in an order? Why do we always say that you cant trust your feelings they are second to your actions? As if we are half a person to prove what we have been taught is correct. Ive really been intrigued with how the Jews thought about the oneness of body and soul rather than dividing man up and applying doctrine like a list. This has caused me to think that the flesh we fight against is outside of our box of our own cultural definition. It goes beyond the tendency to over eat or enjoy something to much. It is a mechanism that teaches us to repeat half truths. Its easy to say things about the truth of scripture in which we get appreciation because we have defined it for our best interest. But there is something about meditating on the unity of the spirit and body before God and then sitting and musing. We can draw pleasure from thinking in way that we question truth so that we are led outside the box so to speak. In a sense there is a universal longing of the heart but its so difficult to express it in a way where everyone agrees about the universal redeeming value of the experience. Its almost like we are talking to 20th century automatons and not human beings.