Time

[2nd Timothy]

All right, everyone I wanted opinions from are here...well almost everyone, but I suspect 2nd Timothy will be along shortly, and a few others   , so lets get a couple things straight.

Whatever it was, I didn't do it!......lol   


I am only guessing this is in reference to the "Israel being a nation" thread I started some time ago?   Let me put your mind at ease 1Tim.....I do not believe in law keeping as means of salvation if this is what came across somewhere in my prior postings.


Eph 2:8  For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
Eph 2:9  Not of works, lest any man should boast.


Perhaps I misunderstand though 


I believe the OT and NT is the whole of things, its all inspired by God.   Being in the age of Grace, we the Church have the unique place in time of being able to look back and see the entire plan that God has for mankind, whereas the OT saints were not quite able to understand it all, even though they knew it was all about faith and trusting God as well.


As others have suggested, you could get into all kinds of things along this topic, but I assure you I'm not the final authority on these things, nor do claim to be....so please don't be alarmed at my presense here.   Only God has the final authority on these things, and like you, I'm searching and seeking to understand those truths just as you are.


Think of me as fun loving brother who loves Prophecy...Please!   

Blessings!

[Soldier4Christ]

Amen 2T. Much in the OT ( law ) was a shadow of things to come ( NT Grace ). However the OT is a valued wealth of information whereby we can understand the entire scriptures much better. Not two separate books but all one book. Jesus knew from the begining of creation the plan that was laid out for all creation and the entire Bible tells us of this. From Creation to Revelations, all is scripture and we are told that "all scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:". No we are not inder the law but we can learn from the OT as well as from the New what it meant to be under the law and how man failed miserably giving us the need to be under grace, the need for the wonderful mercies of Jesus Christ and the cross.

[1Tim]

Thank you for your responce 2nd Timothy, and no, I was not referring to your past thread, but your ability to think things through in the light of scripture, it is evident in your posts.

I have read and reread my original post, and cannot find anything in it that suggests my opinion is that we are still under Law, but most of you all seem to think that is what I said.  Could you show me what I wrote that suggests that?


Kelly, I am suprised, just a bit, that you didn't recognize how the OT law takes women out of the roles the occult placed them in.  The society the law was given to was one that was immersed in the Egypt occult system.  Alleister Crowley got a bit more...uh...colorful... in his rendition of the practices.


I find it mildly amusing that the "counsil" given here, and agreed with, is to seek out a "church" that teaches, rather than a God that does.  What is a church, but a fellowship of believers supporting each other...like this website...I thought. One poster did appeal to God as the teacher, but then negates it right away by appealing to man.  If I wanted to follow a religion, I would find a church or preacher I liked and believe everything he said--because he said so.  The object of Christianity though, is to understand the Bible and what God is saying.  The opinion of man may help, or may hinder, but is never an authority.

The reason God gave some to be pastors, some teachers...ect. is because He chose to reveal bits and pieces to each one of us, encouraging us all to work together, toward fellowship, otherwise He would have made us all philosophers, theologians, encouragers, evangelists, prophets...ect.

I did expect to be disagreed with, but I also expected that someone here would take 1 Peter 3:15 seriously, but if you would rather make an ambiguous appeal to a 15'  stack of books, than to the Bible, I completely understand.

[Soldier4Christ]

The reason God gave some to be pastors, some teachers...ect. is because He chose to reveal bits and pieces to each one of us, encouraging us all to work together, toward fellowship, otherwise He would have made us all philosophers, theologians, encouragers, evangelists, prophets...ect.

While I agree with most of what you said here we must realize what pastors and teachers role is. A pastors role is to feed the sheep. This says that the pastor is to preach the word of God. A teachers role is to teach the word of God. For this reason we are to heed what they have to say. Yes there are many false preachers and teachers today so in this aspect I agree with you that we all have need to study God's word and to test the spirits, to insure that they are indeed in the word of God and not in the word of man.

[2nd Timothy]

1Tim:

Thank you for your responce 2nd Timothy, and no, I was not referring to your past thread, but your ability to think things through in the light of scripture, it is evident in your posts.

I have read and reread my original post, and cannot find anything in it that suggests my opinion is that we are still under Law, but most of you all seem to think that is what I said.  Could you show me what I wrote that suggests that?

1Tim, I must shamefully admit that I was sort of quickly skimming through the thread and picked up on Law dealy in someones reply and sort of ran with the ball.   The law vs Grace debate has raged on the board here in the not so distant past, so I most likely jumped to a conclusion that was wrong.....My apologies there brother!   I promise to give the thread a thorough reading over again and will try to respond at that time.   

I work late nights so I'm sorta pooped at the moment, but I will get back to this in the next day or so.   

Blessings!

[2nd Timothy]

I work late nights so I'm sorta p****ed at the moment, but I will get back to this in the next day or so.

Zoiks!   I've been censured....lol   (OK I'm not pooped, I'm VERY VERY TIRED)    

[Soldier4Christ]

I think the confusion came from the comment on " that was OT theology, but we are under NT grace." Most people that say this then launch into a long speal about our needing to still observe the Laws of the OT. Perhaps people read that and overlooked the rest of the statements that were made.

[linssue55]

One poster did appeal to God as the teacher, but then negates it right away by appealing to man.    The object of Christianity though, is to understand the Bible and what God is saying.  The opinion of man may help, or may hinder, but is never an authority. The reason God gave some to be pastors, some teachers...ect.

I have a sneaking suspicion these comments are about me, and that is ok, everyone has a right on how they wish to learn the written word.
 
God the Holy Spirit is our teacher, and the reason He gave us "God gave some to be pastors", is just exactly that.  He "Gave" (A Gift)  SOME to be teachers with the "GIFT" of pastor teacher.  To deny this is to say God does not know what He is talking about or He didn't know what He was doing when He said this.  Those words should be headed, (as ALL of His words should be) they were spoken by the Lord, and the reason the Lord said that is because (being omniscient) He knew WE would speak a different language than HE.  The Lord spoke Arimain, the writers spoke Hebrew and Koine Greek.  They did not speak english!  Unless we are languages theologians of the "ANCIENT" languages, it would be impossible to for us to know what these words means aside from learning by a pastor teacher (The pastor MUST know the ancient languages) or a college professor.  That takes years of college, and "THE GIFT", and God only gave "SOME" to have that gift (To teach).  The writers of the bible did not speak english, and the earliest writing was 3,500 years ago, languages have certainly changed since, and their definitions have also.  To deny this would be just silly.
 
God put "Teachers" here for our growth and edification, we just need to find "Our right pastor Teacher".  These teachers (that KNOW the ancient languages) are our gift from the Lord, and without knowing the ancient languages it is IMPOSSIBLE to understand FULLY the word of God.  I want to know the word of God, EVERY word, as it was "Spoken back then" and I will NOT leave that up to guess my work, for His WORDS are way too important to me and to all of us.  But to each their own, the "Privacy Of the Priesthood,"...... God gave us the marvelous gift of free will too.
 
 
 
Teach Isagogically.
That means we consider the historical, geographical, economic, political, & cultural elements of the time period in which the Scriptures were written. An accurate interpretation of the Word of God without such due consideration is impossible.
 
 
 
Teach Categorically.
That means we develop particular topics, or doctrines of Scripture, according to the entire revealed Word of God. We correlate each individual doctrine to other doctrines in Scripture, and to the overall revelation of God's Word. For example, the Doctrine of Soteriology (salvation), would have several other doctrines included within and related to it, such as the Doctrine of Redemption, the Doctrine of Justification, the Doctrine of Reconciliation, the Doctrine of Propitiation, etc. An accurate interpretation of any portion of Scripture is impossible without an understanding of how that portion relates to the entire body of Scriptures.
 

 
Teach Exegetically.
That means we teach verse-by-verse from the original Hebrew and Greek texts. An accurate interpretation of God's Word must include an accurate understanding of the original meaning of the original words to the original audience of each particular passage of Scripture.
 

You say: "I can't figure things out"
God says: I will direct your steps
(Proverbs 3:5-6)
 
You say: "I'm not smart enough"
God says: I give you wisdom
(I Corinthians 1:30)
 

God has given me wisdom through the teachings of my right pastor teacher, because I KNEW I was not smart enough. True Humility is "Teachabilty".  My pastor is under the authority of God, I am under the authority of God and my right pastor teacher when learning the Word, with the filling of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit (when Filled) tells you when things are wrong and tells you when things are lies.
   
 

[Soldier4Christ]

These teachers (that KNOW the ancient languages) are our gift from the Lord, and without knowing the ancient languages it is IMPOSSIBLE to understand FULLY the word of God.

Sister while I see nothing at all wrong with your metodologies ( in fact they are great ) I must respectfully disagree with your statement on this. There are many excellant pastor/teachers that do not know a single word of Hebrew or Greek. These are led by the Holy Spirit for all things are possible through God.

The Lord spoke Arimain, the writers spoke Hebrew and Koine Greek.

These languages may have been there primary native languages but they were not the only languages that they spoke. Jesus had the ability to speak and be understood in all languages. Many of the Apostles were multi-lingual as they were born and raised in a society where more than one language was spoken and I am not talking about the instances of speaking in tongues through the Holy Spirit.

[Brother Jerry]

You are right when saying that time is not relevant to God. He transcends all time.  He created time and put it's constraints on man.

Amen to pretty much everything else that I have read.  But one thing that I always like to teach is time is relevant to God.  PR you are correct that he does transcend time.  He is above and beyond, and all around time.  And being that he is not constrained by time.   But to say that since He is beyond that and created that then it is not relevant to Him would also stated He created man, put the constraints on man and we are aslo not relevant. 

Just because God created something and is not in affected by His creation (ie gravity, laws of physics, etc) does not mean they are not relevant to Him.  They are relevant to us because He created them for us.  He loves us so much that he created these for us.  That in itself implies they are relevant to Him.  We must always put the term relevant into context.  Is time relevant to God's existance?  No.  Is man relevant to God's existance? No.  But is time relevant to God because He has made it so?  Yes by sheer will of creation He has made it relevant to HImself.  It is still not relevant to His specific existance, but relevant none the less.

Sincerely
Brother Jerry

[Soldier4Christ]

I agree totaly with that Brother Jerry. Perhaps I should have clarified that more.

[linssue55]

Sister while I see nothing at all wrong with your metodologies ( in fact they are great ) I must respectfully disagree with your statement on this. There are many excellant pastor/teachers that do not know a single word of Hebrew or Greek. These are led by the Holy Spirit for all things are possible through God.


Yes, I am going to have to respectfully disagree also.  For the first 25 years of my life I went to loads of churches, and no one knows if they (the other pastors) were filled with the spirit or not, for none of them at the time told any of us in the congregations how to even be filled with the spirit.  I learned Nothing from the pastors that did not know the originals and always left empty, and very sad.  For I was taught nothing about the Lord other than He was our savior, they told stories of the bible, and they told us about all of our sins.  So basically I knew nothing, it wasn't until the Lord GAVE me my right pastor teacher, and I STOPPED my frantic search.  Long before this, I ALWAYS wanted to know what the originals  and when I stopped searching, the Lord sent it to me by means of my right pastor teacher.  It opened a completely new world of the truth of the word, and I finally began to understand what I had so desperately desired.


I know nothing about engineering, even from books I would have a hard time. That is why people go to college, to get a degree, to be able to understand all about engineering, and for me to tell an engineer about his job, if he was wrong or right, would be wrong of me because I DON"T know the specifics languages and terminology's or the in and out's of engineering.  So until I learned what he learned, I really could not say if he was wrong.  That would be judging before knowing all the facts. People go to college to learn a specific thing, and those are the one's with the technical knowledge in that field.  College is an excellent thing.





These languages may have been there primary native languages but they were not the only languages that they spoke. Jesus had the ability to speak and be understood in all languages. Many of the Apostles were multi-lingual as they were born and raised in a society where more than one language was spoken and I am not talking about the instances of speaking in tongues through the Holy Spirit.



Yes I know this, and I know that the Lord chose to speak Arimain and I know about the apostles and their other languages, also the gift of tounges at that time. 

What I am referring to are the specific languages the bible was written in (exegetics) the "Every word that prceedeth out of the mouth of God, for the bible is the mind of Christ."  My love is for the word, and God gave me what I needed, for He knew I was lost and was learning nothing from all these other pastors.  Personally, I can not understand and will NEVER understand why a pastor WITH the GIFT (that God has so graciously given them)  would NOT WANT to learn the originals, this is totally beyond me.  The emense (sp) desire would be over whelming to know the originals for me if I were a man with the gift of pastor teacher.  I would have to know!  I could not (and never have) ever go into something that I loved with all my heart and all my soul and NOT want to know EVERYthing about it, I just couldn't.  To NOT learn this, would be like pulling a cake out of the oven when it was only half baked.  I do not trust any pastor teachers that do not know the originals and I never will.  Been there, done that, I will not put my soul through that anguish ever again.


 Everybody has the right to do as they please about the way they learn the bible, this is between them and the Lord, and I respect everyones privacy to do as they will.  I am a sinner, and who am I to tell others what to believe?, this would be very arrogant of me and absolutely none of my business.  The main thing is that all of us......"Grow in grace and the KNOWledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."   

[2nd Timothy]

OK 1Tim, let me see if I can shed a little light on this for you.

Another point is that time is only relative to us, not God.  To claim that "Jesus hadn't died yet" is really irrelevant I think in the light of the eternal covenant.  (Now this is where I get a little goofy)  I take it one step further in my understanding.  I define 'time' as that 'thing' that separates events.  If God is outside of time, then to God, everything is 'now' and there is no such thing as 'then'.  My dead Grandparents, Moses, and I will all approach the Throne at the same instant, immediately following each of our respective deaths.  This eliminates the conceptual need for a 'holding tank' for those who die before the end of 'time'.  It also renders 'salvation by faith' in the OT a non issue in my own ability to understand it.  One more step I take on this thought ( although I haven't really figured out why yet  , is that it is legitimate for me to pray now for the apostle Paul's welfare.  Kind of rediculus, 'cause I know how the story turns out, but I don't know the emotional battles he faced, and I can support him with prayer just as I can support my wife as she visits her mom in the hospital,  Because God is outside the realm of 'time'.

I think its probably going a bit too far to view it as you have layed things out here.   For some reason I am reminded of the movie back to the future...lol    If we get into that mindset, we could wind up as confused and confounded as I was trying to figure out that movie.   (great movie BTW)

Let me explain.

Yes it is true that God is not bound by time as we are, therefore He is outside that realm if you will.  We however, are bound to time which God chose to bind us to.   Why?  Because in Gods eyes this was good for man.  If you go back to the beginning where God made all of creation for MAN, He said it was good.   So us being bound to a time frame, in Gods eyes is a good thing!   If its good with God, its good with me 


Now, Since we are bound to this thing called time, we must live accordingly, in that goodness that He created for us.  After man sinned, God chose to use this for the revealing of His eternal plan to all of mankind in a gradual sense.   Most teachers call this Dispensational teaching.   As man moved along in knowledge of God, He uncovered more and more, and progressed in His own dealings with man in a gradual manner.   For example.  In Adam and Eve's time, God was dealing with them on the same time line we are on, BUT, with their current understanding and knowledge of Gods ultimate plan.   They did not yet understand sin, nor were they guilty of that sin until they disobeyed.   So obviously God dealt with them in this innocence quite differently then.  When man did disobey, God moved man to a knew phase of understanding His immense Grace, by teaching us about the consequences of sin (death), how devastating it is to us, and how He provided a means of us being forgiven.   With each dispensation, God moved us to a knew, deeper understanding of His grace and mercy.....all within the confines of His GOOD creation....time!

Think of it as a child being born.  An child being innocent can in no way understand the depths of our adoration and love for him.   But as it grows and learns, he begins to see how much it is loved, and learns of dangers of life, discipline, consequences of actions etc.   We are a lot like that child on Gods created time line.   God knowing the grand plan, and us being his children being raised under His watchful eyes, while He pleasingly reveals more and more about His glory and mercy to us as we grew througout history.


So the constraints of time might be irrelevant to God in HIS sense, but it was how God chose to deal with man, and it was good according to His own word.


I would say for us to get to where God wants us to be, we need to stay within the confines of His good creation TIME.   We simply do not have the capacity to view it on Gods level.   Its hard enough on ours....lol


I'll stop here for now, because work calls, but I will try to get back and address a few other points in your OP.

Blessings!

[Brother Jerry]

I would agree that in many aspects of this linssue we would have to disagree.  And reasons are obviously not based on anything other than personal experience.

I am similar to you in that I like to know what the original text said.  And there are times I pull out a lexicon or similar to check the definition.  And I can also say that my pastor is a teacher, a preacher, and a pastor of great love for God and a heart that is focused only on Jesus.  With that in mind I can also say that as far as original language then I think I can safely say I know more than he does.  That does not make me any more a pastor than him or any less of a pastor than anyone else.

If you take a look at the biblical use of tongues as mentioned by Paul and in Acts what do you find?  You find that someone was preaching and the Spirit came in and filled the people so that they would be talking and everyone could understand them.  Imagine if you will a kung-fu flick dubbed over...someone would speak in Aramaic and a person who only knew Hebrew could understand them.  This is the first true translation of the Word of God.  

When you look at things even such as the KJV and look at it's origins you find that there were many scholarly people with a heart towards God involved in reading the original manuscripts and such and translating from there.  No matter what you do when you read something that you do not know the language.  And I mean language not words.  You are trusting is someone elses translation/interpretation.  We put faith in not the authors, but in God that He would not let His word be tarnished.  And that the translation we use of the Bible is true to the word and spirit of the original words written 1000's of years ago.  

So it is by faith that we modern language speakers take any translation we read as truthful to the original written language.  It is by that same faith that we take any definition of words and explanations of terms of the original languages or any other language we do not know as being truthful.

Take for example the spanish term Co'mo esta'  commonly translated as "how are you"  however a true translation would reveal that it is strictly "how are"  The language of Spanish has like many devolved some and shortened phrases.  The full phrase would be Co'mo esta' usted for how are you.  Now unless you spoke the language fluently (being born in it), or someone taught you the dialects, and the devolution of the language you would would be confused the first time someone came up to you and said "co'mo esta'"  You would be waiting for them to finish their question.  Cause it would be embarassing if you then just blurted out that your hemoroids were hurting that day  

So unless we fully understand the language we are still relying on others to interpret and translate for us.  I for one have found that English Bibles are generally enough for me.  I do like to pick up other resources at times to delve a little deeper into their meanings but I also understand that everyone alive today is doing the same thing since those languages are dead languages.  They are going on the information that they have and translate from what they know.  But no one knows the original languages and inflections and possible dialects and such that may have been written.  But we have faith enough in God that He preserved His word for all to read, listen too, and experience as only the Holy Ghost can.

God Bless and praise to you Linssue.  It really matters not how you learn the word of God, only that you do and you help others learn it as well.  We must also remember that we should tolerate others if they learn in different ways as long as they are learning the way.

Sincerely
Brother Jerry

[Soldier4Christ]

linssue55,

Sister I think that you misunderstood me. I applaud your Pastor's teaching methods. I think that it is a great way to get into the meat of the Bible. There are many that are not ready for meat and must be given milk. When I was in the Military I was assigned as an instructor. I learned quickly that not all people can learn in the same manner. Some learn very quickly and effectively from a book yet others need hands on training yet others need someone to help them understand the job.


I was simply saying that the method you mentioned is not the only way for a Pastor to preach just as we have been told in the Bible. There are indeed different teaching methods for different Pastors. Peter did not preach the same way that Paul did and neither did the other Apostles preach in the same manner they did. Yet each one delivered the Gospel in a very effective manner.

I am very happy for you that you found a way for you to learn that is effective for you.