Time

[1Tim]

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

You set up a valid argument, but you loose me at the conclusion you draw.  If time is relevant to God, what does that mean.  What conclusions does that suggest to you?

[1Tim]

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

Excellent post Amigo! .   I tend to agree with almost everything, but I would add that the Greek written language is constructed in a way so as to include in it the inflections lost in our own written language.  I could have written simply the one word, "right" in responce to your post, but you couldnt tell if I meant it enthusiastically, sarcastically, casually, or took offence and muttered it.  The Greek written language tends to capture  moods like that, and that is valuable.  I too tend to rely on the English, but find great value in researching the original language.  When addressing the doctrine of the Bible with others that are not christian, I tend to rely on only the English, and reason, because those are two things immediately accessable and researchable for those I'm talking to.  I try to keep references to the original languages to a minimum so as not to set myself up as an authority to be believed.

Other than that I couldn't agree more.  Its allways amazed me that God recorded His Word in a language that He established in order to preserved moods in the written form.

[1Tim]

Let me also qualify, that I do not intend to minimize the office of pastor or teacher in the church.  I also have a few Pastors I love to listen to---but they are still men, and James 3:2, I think, pretty much guarantees that something he says will be false.  The question that comes up in my mind is why did God not give me the same insight that he gave the pastor?  Well on one hand He did--through the pastor, but why not directly?  I've concluded that for some reason that I don't understand, He elected to do it that way.  As we look arround us, almost everything has a hierarchy of authority.  God established an authority progression in the Home, at work, in the military, in the Government...ect., and also in His Church.  This is what I ws attempting to address.  Although God chooses to give me guidence through the pastor and teacher I sit under (as well as friends and other Christians) only He is the Teacher.

 Matthew 23:8-10
8 “But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have only one Master and you are all brothers. 9 And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. 10 Nor are you to be called ‘teacher,’ for you have one Teacher, the Christ.

In these passages, I believe Jesus is addressing who He is.  There are many commentaries that the pastor I had growing up taught from that said these passages were addressing the Disciples, and their tendancy towards pride. I agree that they could be, as a side note, but the scope of the passages themselves is focused on the character and position of Jesus Himself.  He's saying, ' You're not the rabbi [master], or teacher, I am.  You're Father whom you are defined by is Me.' IMO

I believe vs 10 says we are to learn from Jesus only, and those set up in authority positions in the church are only there to guide our learning, but we must take everything heard from them to the Word, and to Jesus, before committing it to our belief system.

[1Tim]

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.  

Interesting position, I have allways suspected this to be the case, but was never really able to scripturally support it.  How do you support this?

[1Tim]

BTW, and plus also, and all that jazz,

The working definition of the word "argument" I use is the definition used in the sciences of logic and philosophy:

Argument: a set of premises a conclusion is drawn from.

Just to avoid confusion   

[1Tim]

1Tim:

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 p****ed at the moment, but I will get back to this in the next day or so.   

Blessings!

We all do that.  It was just your turn  

[Brother Jerry]

1Tim

Time Reply:
Sorry it swayed towards confusion on the post.

The simplist way to state it would be that Time is irrelevant to the existance of God.  But since God created time for us and we are relevant to God then time itself is relevant to God. 

Maybe that helps, I hope

Sincerely
Brother Jerry

[Brother Jerry]

1Tim

Tongues

I will gather up that study and post it under a new thread.  It is a very enlightening study actually.  So look for it soon (within next week).  I will put it in the theology section

Sincerely
Brother Jerry

[2nd Timothy]

OK continuing with my previous thought process (hope it made some sense)


I think perhaps a parable might make understanding this better.   I'm sure a few of you have heard me use this one a few times before on the board, but it fits too well here not to use it again.


There was a man who had discovered a decent sized mound of ants in a field.  He would go out every day and watch his tiny companions carry on about their little lives.   One day, he noticed a bulldozer clearing the area and it was heading straight for the mound of his beloved little friends.  He tried picking up the dirt from the mound in his hands to move them, but the ants just bit him, not understanding what was happening.   The man thought to himself, "if only there was someway I could become an ant myself, and tell them about the coming danger, then they would listen to me".    

You see, in order for this man help, he would have become an ant, all the while maintaining his human ability to assess the current dangers in order to communicate his intentions and how much danger they were in.   This is exactly what Jesus did for mankind.   He had to become man, while at the same time maintaining His Deity in order to assess the Fathers will and current dangers we all face.  We simply are not capable of seeing things on Gods level, or timelessness.   So even though God is outside of time as you say, He still operates on our time, or our level, in our progression throughout Gods Pre-known history, all the while leading us out of harms way, and into His will.  Even though God is not bound by time, He is right here with us today, this minute, this second.  How unsearchable are the things of God!

You mentioned that you thought you might pray for Paul, because for God, history is timeless.  Well, God placed you here and now in the 21st century for specific reasons.   His plan for you is now, in this day, this time.   You are here for His purpose to do His will, and shape your current universe as a tool in His hand.   Much like Paul was during his time on earth.   So I would have to say that praying for someone who time has passed, is probably fruitless (and certainly not instructed in scripture), because God is right here with us in OUR time using us to mold the world as He sees fit today!- NOW, and FUTURE!.   He has already done His purpose with Paul in Paul's time, so praying for him is pointless.  Do you see what I mean?  Your responsibility as a believer is yielding to Gods will in YOUR life (YOUR time) to serve Him, and affect those around you in your time and life.  You have no effect on those who have died, because they have already served Gods earthly purpose in their time.


Would you agree that praying for anything requires faith?  I'm sure you do.  Look at this verse....

Heb 11:1  Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

If we are hoping for something, we are expecting it!  To expect something you would have to look froward for that would you not?   So when we pray, we are faithfully looking ahead at Gods outcome to our prayers, not behind      Because we already know whats back there 


OK I've hammered away at that enough I think.   I have one more item I want to touch on regarding the promise, but I will give you a chance to chew on this for a while.

Blessings!

[1Tim]

Good argument, and I tend to agree, but to bring the illustration a little closer to home...

Say I am driving down the road, and I pass a traffic accident with an ambulance present.  As is my attempted habit, I say a quick prayer for those involved in the accident, and their loved ones.  Specifically, I tend to pray for their understanding of God to grow from the event, from whatever point they are at , at that stage in their life, that He would reveal Himself to them.

If the events within time unfolded so that that person died just before I passed by and said that prayer, do you think that prayer is disqualified because that person was dead and I didn't know it?  Could it not be possible that God responded to my prayer before the point in time when I actually said it, and the victim had a death bed conversion?

I don't know, but according to my understanding, I would rather err toward saying the prayer.  On one hand I tend to think that since God would have all men to be saved and come unto a knowledge of the truth, that He would have postponed their death untill after I passed and prayed if it mattered.  On the other hand, this is all speculative, and like you said, there is no example in scripture suggesting it is relevant either.

[Soldier4Christ]

To err?  To err is to follow mans doctrines, to attempt to reason in man's logic. If the person is dead at the time you prayed for them then they are still dead. The Bible clearly tells us to not be concerned with those that are dead but to turn our efforts to the living.

Luk 9:60  Jesus said unto him, Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the kingdom of God.


No where, absolutely no where, are we told to pray for the dead. We are told to preach to and pray for the living many, many times. Should we expend our time and our efforts on those already dead or would it not be better for us to do as the Lord has told us to do and to preach to and pray for the living before it is to late for them.

[1Tim]

Whoa there, I aint mormon  , I don't pray for the dead, but in my hypothetical example I was unaware there was any dead at the scene.

So are you suggesting I would be sinning if I prayed for them and they were allready dead, even if I was not aware they were?

Since the word 'bury' in vs 59 and 60, is in the aorist tense, suggesting a future action, it seems reasonable to read this passage as the man Jesus is speaking to is saying, 'after my father dies', suggesting he isn't dead yet--physically.  Jesus responce suggests that he is dead spiritually though.  The dialog then is saying that we cannot wait to follow Jesus till a more oppertune time, when we may not offend someone who is spiritually dead, by our choice to follow Him. Therefore, Lk.9:59,60 does not apply to my hypothetical model.


You are correct though that it is a wiser use of our time and effort to focus on the living.  I will concede that point.

In light of my original proposition that it would be legitimate to "...pray for Paul...", I will say again that that is the logical conclusion to the definition of time I'm useing.  It is not scripturally supported, nor is it nessesarily practical, but I can not help but recognize that since God is not bound by time, and  the prayer of the righteuss is powerful and effective, that it may still be true.

I find it curios that so much effort is spent presenting arguments to my conclusion instead of the premis.  I think that is one of the problems we face when contending with opposition (...say, at the door with Mormons or JW's).  I tend to do that too, more often than I would like to admit, I think.

[Shammu]

Whoa there, I aint mormon  ,

I deal with them everyday, as out of the 250 people here. Only 6 aren't mormon. 

You are correct though that it is a wiser use of our time and effort to focus on the living.

AMEN!!

[1Tim]

I deal with them everyday, as out of the 250 people here. Only 6 aren't mormon. 
AMEN!!

 

"Here..." as in on the forum, or at your work?

[Shammu]

"Here..." as in on the forum, or at your work?

At home, I live in a rural area.  You miss the fun, when I start to preach to the missionaries (mormon).   Though they are starting to advoid me now.

Edited to fix a typo.