....in this case the far left seems to be holding a position that conservatives should be holding, but have abandoned in their knee-jerk support for the Bush administration.

...I would paraphrase that to say it's a position Christians should be holding. It gives me some trepidation that the majority of those who profess Christ are supporting both the president and this incursion in the Middle East, in this totally ungodly and pagan land that has told God to get lost. It was once maybe the most Godly on the Earth, but has clearly lost its way.

Jer 9:9 Shall I not visit them for these [things]? saith the LORD: shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?

..This is the worst time in the history of the U.S. that they could go to war, when they are so vulnerable to God's judgments....

..And then doing so because of all the noise about Muslims... And buying into Bush's lips-outward politically expedient professions of faith, while he worships in the Shinto Temple in Tokyo when he visits Japan. Protested by Japan's Christians by the way, and something the Japanese president is forbidden to do by Japan's Constitution. Because the Shinto belief is still in the divine Emperorship.

...deceiving and being deceived... another sign....

--Alan

...This is the new age movement breaking its ugly face into Christianity.  I sometimes wonder if 'the whore' in elevation is a religion with the thought that there can be many religions and many ways to god.  I wonder what his ideas about this is.  Does anyone have any info. about that?

---...I don't know about Benny Hin, but Revelations 17 and 18 tell you outright what the whore is.   All those theological tomes cannot take away from the clarity of the Word itself. After the angel says he's showing him the mystery of the whore, he reminds him about the beast with seven heads and ten horns.

Here's what the ten horns are, it couldn't be more clear:

Rev 17:12: And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast.

They also make war with the Lamb...  And then the whore:

Rev 17:16:  And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire......... 18: And the woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth.

Which city today is growing into that role?  (Hint: Rome does not rule the world anymore)

  candice:  I imagine all the good that he could do that he isn't doing

This bears repeating, but it's more so the harm he's doing the Gospel.

  Anyways, the point I want to make is why are we ripping at him in a public forum? Are we not children of God too? Did you know that with what measure you judge, you shall be judged also?

Them that sin, rebuke before all. Judge righteous judgment. He has sinned in a public forum and we should call him on it. Just because he cries "Lord, Lord" in public doesn't mean squat without the works, and he has patently false works, the spirit of his presentation of them just reeks of the stink. And not just because he has stuff by the way.

From Evangelist: 

      ...2Ti 4:3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;(4) And they shall turn away [their] ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.....

An excellent scripture. This is part of the falling away. When I first saw him on TBN, I wanted to puke!  Made me think of the dung God wanted Ezekiel to eat to show what kind of spiritual food Israel had been imbibing. And note: the ones who love him, even after they are warned, and continue so, they are just as guilty. 

....And to the talk about "Judge not", somebody posted the rest of what Jesus said, "Judge righteous judgment". Why does anybody think Jesus went into the temple THREE TIMES with the whip, probably one that hurt real bad too!

Go read Matthew 23 if you think Jesus minced words when he talked to the Pharisees for the benefit of the hearers, and ours. He avoided the confrontations till close to the end, but when it was time he let it rip!

1 Timothy 5:20 Them that sin rebuke before all, that others may fear.

This guy has sinned before the whole world! He takes the name of God in vain every time he opens his mouth, and it is a blasphemy before the entire world! Can we seriously think that we should not condemn the damnable things he does before the world? They already know what he does! 

Is this not the complaint among many Christians today about Muslims, that they don't strongly condemn their own sinners?

When I was new to the faith, I got into a lot of conspiracy theories and end times stuff (you know? The stuff the SDAs and Pentecostals concentrate on).

There is good Biblical reason to "get into" the endtimes stuff, and yes, "conspiracy theories". Why do people think that conspiracies have become such a taboo topic (except when it's directed at Christians?)  When did the political heavyweights of the world have their worldly epiphany and decide they were going to stop conspiring?

(continued)... I used to wonder why the secular TV station was playing Benny’s programs. I knew that our “free to Air” stations here don’t support Christian values but support every “New age” guru that pops up. I thought, “what’s a Christian doing on TV”
NOW I KNOW!!!!!!!!!! He aint no Christian!!!!

And not just New Age gurus. They're always telling us which "Christians" we ought to follow.. And which Christ...

  They base their beliefs on Benny and his cohorts who talk to GOD and have near death experiences.

...Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Almost every last prophet in Israel was a false prophet when the true prophet Jeremiah gave the Lord's message to them...  False prophets are sent out I think to fulfill the scripture about "strong delusion".  Trot out those scriptures in Jeremiah if anybody says you should believe any prophet. There is direct admonition in I John and elsewhere to "try the spirits". If you do daily Word study, these verses will grow into you, so to speak.

Ollie:  "He hasn't given up all that he has to follow the Lord.  There's people at this moment starving to death."
....Does anyone meet this commitment today? Is it easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for any of us today to sell all we have and follow the Lord?

This much is true. There are people who do actually live out Luke 14:33 and Acts 2:44-45 and Acts 4:32-25 today. Not everybody does.

Too much Christian feeding in churches today is just the feel-goody stuff that the anti-creationists and anti-Christian world wants to say they should say and do.

Dr. Dobson God bless him has had a fire in his bones and even got up a 501c4 so he could name names and name legislative bills. That's another subject, but the people of Christ need to get more visible sharing the Good News of Christ's salvation so they won't follow claptrap. That will get you into the Word as much as anything, after all., "The Word was God".

Yes , BUT!  All my Pentacostal friends love him.   

FYI, Your friends might, but the pastor who started a new Pentecostal organization with my late Dad, he and my Dad took exception to the kinds of things Benny Hinn says.

(Note: In case it matters, I am not Pentecostal, though many are excellent Christians and humbly so, like my Dad was...)

Oh wow, she thought it was some accomplishment to brag about!

Do these tribes in India she mentioned have a word for --Father-- as opposed to --Mother--? Because Jesus referred to his **-Father-** a big bunch of times. 

The ideal father takes care of his family but carries a big stick (maybe one that goes boom) to protect that family.

There is a promise in that very book of Revelations she did her writing on that has a very severe warning:

Rev. 22:19:  __"And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and [from] the things which are written in this book"___ (from God's Holy Word, in the KJV, also known as the AV)

I once heard Pastor Cole get a question about this new abomination out of England they spun as a "woman-friendly version", which had already gotten Thieu pejorative title of the "feminist" version. I don't remember him as endorsing it but he thought all the hoopla about using gender-neutral references for God and for man instead of the masculine, he thought it was misguided! he justified himself by referring to the tribe he worked with in Angola that had no gender-specific pronoun!

The obvious answer to that is that if the target language has a word for "snow", then you use that word! And there's another relevant point, illustrated by the fact that along with the Gospel of Salvation through Jesus Christ of Nazareth that Saint Patrick brought the Irish, they were gifted with a written language.

That illustrates that entire peoples and tribes can learn new things along with the Bible itself! To think that a jungle African tribe cannot fathom what snow is, is something that comes from unthinking cultural arrogance. This does not mean that the poor toiling translators are being arrogant in their translations, but I think it helps understand the point by calling it at least a condescending attitude.

If the Bible uses a masculine pronoun to refer to God, or to men and women in general, in English we have understood that for a millennium.  "There is no male nor female in Christ Jesus". There's that too. Personally I do not think for a minute that there cannot arise a female prophetess, either, it says even in Amos we'll have them!

And here's a subtle little bottle-breaker from the word: Gen 1:27 So God created man in his [own] image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them..

..So no, I do not think it is man created in God's image but the woman not.

--Alan

From Pastor Roger:

    WASHINGTON – Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., is calling for a congressional investigation of the Oklahoma City bombing....    .....In a memo written to Rep. Henry Hyde, chairman of the House International Relations Committee, Rohrabacher said he has spent 12 months personally investigating the April 19, 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building that killed 168 and concluded "there is ample evidence to justify an investigative hearing into this historic crime."
........The focus of the probe, he suggests, should be "Was there a foreign connection to the Oklahoma City bombing."   

I remember the first reports from CNN that same day. Every single witness they interviewed over the air almost live, every one, said they had distinctly heard three separate loud explosions, not one.

They also reported that the seismology lab at the U of Oklahoma had detected five --that's five--- distinct explosions.

The next day the story had changed to one explosion without comment about the change to the story. The only mention I subsequently saw was the remote-back-page local one-paragraph report about the final report of the head investigating agency (the FBI I think). This final report blew off those first reports by saying they were echos from rock layers "down below".

Many witnesses saw Timothy McVeigh together with the fellow with a Near-East appearance. So for weeks the nation was alert for the police drawings done with the witnesses. Suddenly Reno and (Freeh?) did a press conference and that was the end of that!

--Truthsayer

Here is a mighty fine link to some info. about the KJV that some people may not be aware of.

Aki,

Did you even look over the URL I posted?

From the URL you posted: "To date, only a handful of Greek MSS have been discovered which have the Trinitarian formula in 1 John 5:7-8, though none of them is demonstrably earlier than the sixteenth century."

This is applicable to the Textus Vaticanus and the documents used for the new versions than the Textus Receptus, upon which "The Holy Bible" (also known as the "Authorized Version", or KJV). The comment otherwise shows either ignorance or deceipt.

Erasmus did not "edit this text". There were already copious numbers of the manuscripts around, and they just kept on copying them.

There is this answer to the Erasmus ciritcisms, but the Textus Receptus is --not-- "based" on his publishing of it, but rather had its own pre-existing six thousand plus manuscripts to corroborate, still extant!



He says "it has been repeatedly affirmed that no doctrine of Scripture has been affected by these textual differences. . If that is true,."

He said scribes tended to add "based on the textual evidence". That was circular, because he also said they were added "because they were later manuscripts". Miserable few "older" manuscripts, we now have even older manuscripts that line up with Textus Receptus. Not to mention copious corroborating quotes from the NT from the most ancient fathers like Polycarp, who walked with John on the isle of Patmos.

The KJV has been revised maybe with 100,000 changes, according to this guy who proves himself in context as an extremely unreliable source, but this has been in doctrines such as the Jehovah's Witnesses, who had their folllowers black out gobs of KJV passages, till they did a translation they liked.

And because of what he said about the manuscripts, you can't trust what he says about the Greek, because you can't trust that definitely minority body of documents.

Do you know why most of the Textus Receptus copies are later than the other Greek copies? Because the earliest Christians read and re-read and studied and re-copied the good ones until they wore out. And they didn't want to touch the other ones, which the scribes ("Woe unto you scribes!") had already perverted with other doctrines, including some Gnostic versions.

His best example of only one "definite error in translation", even from his own explanation, actually shows me that it was the best translation of the meaning and is so weak.

His 6th reason, he says, it was resisted at first for being too easy to understand. And sets up a straw man as if the defenders of "The Holy Bible" like it today for being harder to understand. That's why you should check the AJV web site, it answers all this. Every objective test shows it easier to understand, not even considering that it defines many of those terms.

Luther's German had to be okay I would think. For his eighth, I'm not surprised at all that the defenders of the errant Scofield Bible prefer the other versions. "By their fruits ye shall know them". "Can two walk together, lest they be agreed?"

Also not surprised that "the most recent Greek New Testament" that's out there excises so much from the Bible. "Blind leading the blind.."

Now the Bible itself declares that "not one jot or tittle" is candidate for discarding, and declares the worst of judgments on those who would take away "one word". This is hardly a "mountain out of a molehill".

Riplinger started out thinking the translations were equivalent. Then a student asked her one day if it was Satan or Jesus fallling from heaven. This is a trivial difference with no effect on doctrine? That's when she started comparing and discovered the alarming truth.

Revelation is in chronological order.
 The problem a lot of us have is that there seems to be several verses that are not in sequence.]

Pretty much, but some is recaps. Daniel is the key that opens up the timeline of events.

The first three chapters clearly state what they are. It is a collection of messages to the "seven churches which are in Asia". Revelation is mostly prophecy, and mostly for leading up to (and beyond) the "end-times", just like Daniel, but some of it is not, just like Daniel.

Rev 17 - 18[/u] is satan's kingdom. In these verses the mystery of evil is revealed as well as it's final destination.

This beast is much like the one shown in Daniel 7 or 8, and it shows that this succession of kingdoms on Earth are of the same spirit. The subject is clearly stated as the "Great Whore" plus a long description, but it is clearly also distinguishes it from the reign of the Beast. God puts it in the heart of the ten kings to destroy the Whore.

..we no longer have to, for example,  place the rapture in a "later" timeline because we believe it seems to occur in a later chapter in Revelation.

There is no reason--at all--to move it to before the Trib in the first place! However, the timeline of events laid out in Dan. 9 and other chapters in Daniel, and by Jesus Himself in Matthew 24, and those found in Revelation, all agree.

(A) "And he shall confirm the covenant for one week" (Dan 9:27), a seven year pact (Dan 9:27).

(B) and "when ye shall see the abomination that maketh desolate sit in the holy place"--Jesus in Matt 24:15 referrring to Daniel 9:27,  "in the midst of the week"--

(C) "for then shall be great tribulation such as was not since the beginning of the world..".

(D) then (Matthew 24:29: "Immediately after the tribulation of those days...(v.30)..then shall all the tribes of the earth..see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.."(v.31)..And he shall send his angels...and they shall gather together his elect from one end of heaven to the other.."

There are verses that go along with this sequence in II Thessalonians, Timothy, and as we can see, in Revelations. The plagues associated with the trumpets refer obviously to the Tribulation plagues, and then with the seventh trumpet you get the voice saying the kingdoms on Earth are finished, and then you have the seven vials of the wrath of God poured out upon the wicked who are still here after we are gathered together.

Now again, you have your answer, Bronzesnake you have THREE DISTINCT EVENTS: (1) the establishing of the Covenant for seven years; (2) the breaking of the covenant in the "midst of the week", which marks the beginning of the Great Tribulation, according to Jesus' words in Matt. 24; (3) the end of the Tribulation, at which time the two witnesses and the others saints are "gathered together", and the the seven vials of wrath are poured out upon the Earth; (4) the seventh vial, which is our return with Jesus at Armageddon.

There is no other way to make the pieces fit together.

We are still not appointed unto wrath, that is for the wicked left behind after the 7th trump is sounded and before and up to Armageddon.

No cushy heavenly escape for us.."..to try them and to make them white" it says in Daniel 11. Baby Christians need us more than ever during that time, God would not abandon them.

--As to what happens at death, you have the story of the beggar Lazarus and the rich man, both of whom got their rewards after death, and Jesus put them in the past tense.

You have Elijah and Moses who appeared with Jesus, Samuel speaking with Saul, and the "angel" who brought the Revelation to John, who told John he was a prophet just like John. And the multitudes of saints under the altar praying in Heaven...

kraken...

 Let me ask you a couple of questions before I pick apart your extreemly weak "proof" for a rapture/second coming.

 1) God says we are not appointed for wrath. Do you agree?

 2) When do you believe God's wrath, in relation to the seven vails takes place?

Bronzesnake

Bronzesnake

Another question is also, if Jesus said "ye shall have tribulation", will you not? And if "that's not what he meant", then why interpret "wrath" that way. But turns out you get what you asked for below anyway.

1. We are not appointed for wrath. This is God's Word. God's Word does not contradict itself, it just contradicts sin and untruths.

2. "When the trump shall sound, we which are alive and reamin shall be caught up in the air with him.."  (Paul) At Revelation 10, the angel prepares to sound the seventh trump.

In chapter 11, as a prelude to the 7th trumpet, it talks about the two witnesses who prophecy in Jerusalem and give the Antichrist some real problems, and goes right into their resurrection. It immediately goes to the seventh trumpet, and the kingdoms of the Earth have become our Lord's, those 24 elders worship, and look at verse 18a, "And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou shouldest give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear thy name, small and great; and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth.".

Now look at verse 18 again. At the same time, "thy wrath is come", and the "servants the prophets" are getting their "reward". A parenthetical aside about the woman in Rev. 12, the Beast and the False Prophet and the Mark in Rev. 13, then 14 and 15 lead up to the Vials.

So after the 6 trumpets are done, there is a recap of some of the events of the tribulation.

The 2 witnesses are caught up, and like Jesus said (Matt. 24) "every eye shall see him", and they are likely raised up with the rest of us.

With us out of the way, the vials of the wrath of God are pured out for the few days left before the return at the end of the seven years, while we enjoy the marriage supper of the Lamb "upstairs", and return with him to execute the seventh vial at Armageddon.

Those chapters, with that well in mind, will never be the same to you.

Check this web site, from Gayle Riplinger, the author of "New Age Versions".

http://www.avpublications.com/

I bought the book and it is so right on! "By their fruits ye shall know them". She exposes the NIV, the NASB, the bunch of them. There are 64,000 words less in the NIV than the "Authorized Version", or as it was always known, "The Holy Bible".

Who needs a PhD in ancient Greek to know that "sexual immorality" is a neutered and castrated substitute for "adultery"? She demolishes all their assertions about manuscripts and more..

Steven Gould's term was "trade secret". I just expanded on his own terminlogy.

What do you expect a transitional form to look like..any reasonable set of criteria: morphological, genetic, etc....Much too vague.  

Okay, morphological. But how do you expect a more "exact" answer for a genralized question like that?

That hardly represents a significant minority, let alone the majority that Creations keep claiming.

I never claimed it was a majority. Anyway, "Wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth unto destruction. Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life." For the record, I never said it was going to be a majority either. However, it is definitely a significant minority. A much much bigger one for example, than is required, say, for the same club of the high priests of this persuasion to consider a variable speed of light. And it is growing.

"..spontaneous bio-generation on Earth..".
We were talking about evolution.

Uh, this particular paragraph of our exchange was about the changes afoot among "scientists".

++++++

It's not taking what you want "like a cafeteria".  It's thinking about what message God is communicating to us and accepting it as the genre it is rather than forcing it into a 20th century concept of a history book.

It says what it says. God is not a man that He should lie. "I am the Lord thy God. I change not". "His word is established in heaven forever and ever". "Not one jot or tittle shall pass away until all be fulfilled".

 

I don't know Hugh Ross, but I'm not talking about liberal extreamists like Spong.

It's the same point. Just because you say you're Christian doesn't mean much. I could say I'm Ebia, doesn't make it so. So what criteria can we use? I'd say do you believe the Bible? By the way, most Europeans is cold cold cold to the Gospel.

Charles Darwin, [...] had only one degree, and that in Theology.

So?  Most of the scientists of his age had other backgrounds.

The Royal Society of London (the first association of scientists of whom some 80 percent were Puritans), including Isaac Newton, was maybe two hundred years old already. Point is their double standard.

Creationists have challenged x-Darwinists for a century to apply the scientific method to their work. So they're actually coming up with a new way to do science, where they don't have to bother with that. (Don't object; I've studied their best assertions on this subject).

LOL - any fool can make an assertion.

Yeah. Fools in this case like Steven Gould, Isaac Asimov, other such fools. They both had essays in the very best presentation of the naturalistic evolution case that could be made. The editor was beaten senseless academically in a debate with a Creationist, so he got the best authors he could to write something. They now tell "scientists" not to engage in any such debates.  

Don't be fooled by obfuscations. There is a intrinsic difference between factual science

Science is not the collection of facts (though it depends on that) but the formation and testing of conclusions drawn from those facts.

Now there's a good point. Science has paradigms, working frameworks, in which they place their ideas. The x-Darwinist looks at the fossil record, and since he refuses to accept Genesis 1 with its other implications, he has to "conclude" something else. My point was about the difference between "factual science" and "philosophical interpretation". We have the same fossil record, for example, the same facts.

Now go test it. Neither the Creationist nor the x-Darwinist claims to be able to "test it". Both groups make claims about which philosohy, or framework of ideas, paradigm, makes the best fit for that evidence.

Since you seem to be accusing every evolutionary biologist of lying, I think you'd better explain what you mean and/or back up that statement.

The phrase "playing fast and loose with the facts" does not refer to lies. Most are not outright mouthing untruths. Some believe their pronouncements and deceive themselves (like it says in James). However, many make asssertions in this debate that they know are untrue.

As an example, I saw with my own eyes in an essay from Steven Gould (a counter to Creation book) that the fossil record universally supports the evolutionary time-line everywhere without exception. That may be a paraphrase offhand, but the quote says just that. As a paleontological biologist he knows better.

He also referred to the lack of transitional forms as the "trade secret of panleontology". So when you see assertions that all palentologists know the fossil record support gradual complexification over billions of years, remember it is a "privacy curtain" to hide their secret from view.

What do you expect a transitional form to look like, so that it is neither a trilobite nor another species?  What exactly would fit your definition of a transitional?

Using any reasonable set of criteria: morphological, genetic, etc. There are some big ones. Despite some efforts to fit square pegs into round holes, there's no half-reptile/half-bird. Archaeopterix is a reptile with wings. The "feathers" were a stretch. The only one they ever discovered was the cut-and-paste plater-of-Paris sample a remote Chinese farmer used that sent them all atwitter until their letdown. At least it didn't take 50 years like Piltdown man. Now that's a really really big gap. There are zillions. Pick your flavor.

How could there not always be gaps?  However many (finite) fossils you get you are examining what is essentially a continuum.   You can't build a line with a finite number of points.  You seem to want to demand evidence of evolution that would not be expected of evolution.  Which is, infact, mathematically impossible whatever the model.

This is exactly the idea I was addressing. Palentologists today know that they don't have anywhere near what they would expect from evolution, despite Gould's weak theory. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of species that in turn have tens, dozens, some hundreds and some thousands of individuals in the fossil record. These are not rare at all. They show (according to the "x-Darwinist" timeline)  that the species appears suddenly in the record, exists for a time, and then disappears. Except for some that are categorically extinct as of 100 million years ago that show up in the South Atlantic or somewhere.

No-one says that science is infallible

No one is expecting infallibility. In fact, there is only one book that has proven so. The "would that they would apply the scientific method to this area" was the answer to the statement (from your post) requesting that we apply it. That is the point Creationists have been making. There is a difference between
facts and interpretations.

Only if you throw away all evidence otherwise.

You'll never find evidence in the real world that contradicts the Biblical Word. On the other hand, there is plenty more fit in the world for the Creation model than for the "spontaneous combustion" model.

Citations please.  Every creationist says this, and not one has yet shown me ANY evidence this is true.

Previous posters have offered up links to the list of scientists associated with the www.icr.org web site. That is a partial list. There are a large number of Creationist sites populated by mostly scientists with all the credentials you want. You'll see that a great many of them started out as "x-Darwinists". Their memberships and activities are growing as they only can if this is true. Duane Gish and other well-known figures are also examples.

But there is more. There are famous names like Francis Crick, I think Halley, and more who say there couldn't have been any spontaneous bio-generation on Earth. Others are saying it couldn't have happened period. Some physicists are saying that the universe is itself intelligent and alive. There are many going baffy with the anthropic principle, but they want anything but Genesis 1. Aliens did it, the universe is alive, there must be infinite numbers of universes.. But the Genesis 1 folks are more invisible in the media you read.

There's no contradiction between evolution & Christianity (or many other religions).  And plenty of scientists have always known this.

Read Genesis 1. There's no way to fit the "evolutionary tree' into the day-ages semantical tapdance. And to say it's an allegory is also a tap-dance. You can't take what you want like a cafeteria. Now I'll admit there are pagan believers today who call themselves "Christian", like Episcopal "Bishop Sprong", and believers in evolution like Hugh Ross who also call themselves "Christian", and there's no contradiction between evolution and their brand of what they call it.

However, I still call myself a Christian, of the kind that accepts the Bible. There is definitely a gap between x-Darwinism and the Bible.

Whatever floats your ark.

Better than sinking into the Flood...

Christianity in my definition is belief in the Bible. This the one "faith" that is based on history and evidence.

I came from atheism and evolutionism to belief in the Bible based on the logic and the evidence.