[ Show ]
Support VoyForums
[ Shrink ]
VoyForums Announcement:
Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor
of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users'
privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your
privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket
to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we
also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.
Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your
contribution is not tax-deductible.)
PayPal Acct: 
Feedback: 
Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):
[ Next Thread |
Previous Thread |
Next Message |
Previous Message ]
Date Posted: 06:16:26 08/02/05 Tue
Author: Sheepdog
Subject: Re: Salvation FREE and Eternal (Part 1)
In reply to:
Sheepdog
's message, "Re: Salvation FREE and Eternal (Part 1)" on 06:10:30 08/02/05 Tue
Sheepdog: The Pharisees and Sadducees believed in God,
but they would not accept any of the living prophets
that God chose to send. So what good was their belief in God? They believed in a Messiah, but not the one God chose to send. To them, the one God chose just wasn’t quite
what they’d expected after their interpretation of Him
in the scriptures. Their belief in the Messiah did
them no good.
Lord Veritas: Is this behavior any different from that which those who interpret the scriptures in the light of different texts, such as the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, or Pearl of Great Price, do to the Messiah God sent?
SD: I’m not sure I understand your paragraph. Please restate your point if I miss it.
It IS different. The Pharisees had one text, which they built their faith around. The Christians had the old text PLUS living prophets and chosen apostles. Their faith was built around revelation and not an old book. The Pharisees were a murderous bunch. Not unlike those who killed JSmith. Pharisees believed that Jesus was a corruptor of “true” faith. Just as His church is still viewed by some (LDS). But instead of allowing people their freedoms to worship God the way they choose, they decide to do a favor for God and kill with no command from him to do it. Same thing which had happened to the prophets He’d sent before Him. Same thing that happened to JSmith, whom He sent after. In reality, the gospel Jesus taught seemed new, but was really a correction of the gospel which their leaders had rejected and messed up over time. The Pharisees are the ones that had a problem with new texts and living prophets. The only way the texts such as BofM, D&C, etc. are evil is IF, IF they are not of God. But they are and so to condemn them simply because they are new scripture is nonsense. Being different is not a sin either because the NT is different than the OT.
Just for the heck of it, quote for me the most untrue, non christian chapter, as you see it, in the Book of Mormon.
Sheepdog: They believed in scripture, but only when they got to interpret it their own way.
Lord Veritas: And those who follow Joseph Smith do not?
SD: Some may interpret it incorrectly on my side. I will admit that for sure.
All scripture must be interpreted and understood with prayer and the Power of the Spirit of God or else it is of little worth. Even dangerous.
Sheepdog:So what was their belief in scripture worth?
They had the commandments of God, yet they chose to
break them. What good was all their faith and beliefs
then?
Lord Veritas: The beliefs of the Pharisees and Sadducees were not worth a grain of salt, I'll admit, however, you misunderstand why their beliefs were worthless. Their beliefs were not worthless because they broke the commandments of God (which everybody as done-Romans 3:9-12:" What then? are we better than they? No, in no wise: for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin; as it is written,There is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that understandeth,there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way,they are together become unprofitable;there is none that doeth good, no, not one") but rather, their beliefs were worthless because they were placed in their own good works instead of the grace of God.
SD: Their problem was what they called “good works”. If they had truly done “good works” there would not have been a problem. The problem was that they murdered and believed in their hearts that God would approve. They honestly believed that their torment towards the Christians was ridding the world of evil. They believed they were “casting out devils” by murdering and hurting. THOSE are NOT “good works” yet they though that they were.
The other “works” they relied on to save them were rituals. Now God had commanded rituals BUT the rituals were to remind them of certain things they must do and think of. They began to put all their efforts into the ritual and forgot the reasons they were performing the rituals/works.
LV:When one truly becomes a son of God, they cannot be damned no matter how many times they break the commandments, because their faith in the grace of God saves them, and God's grace is too strong to be defeated by man's shortcomings.
SD: So, Judas is in? The Pharisees called themselves the sons of God and they called themselves “saved”. Just because someone anoints themselves as “saved” doesn’t mean anything until God himself appears and lets them know that they are. Otherwise it’s a hope, and very possibly a vain hope.
If a person does not try to do his best to keep the commandments then how does he ever expect to hear from God about his standing before Him?
If one truly becomes a son of God, they do not break the main commandments. Of course, they have their imperfections and sin a little.
They do not commit grave sins without punishment and renewed repentance.
Sheepdog: With all their belief in God, one thing they refused to do was get down on their knees and ask God, the
Father of us all, who Jesus really was to Him.
Lord Veritas: They also did not pay enough attention to the scriptures that prophesized his coming and what he would do-sound familiar?
SD: Oh yes they did pay attention. They were scriptorians and priests! The most educated in scripture!
They argued about where Jesus was born because of what scripture said.
Because of scripture, they expected a King, did they get a king? Nope, not exactly. They expected a wonderful, counselor, marvelous, etc. Did they see Him as anything other than an ordinary nut? No.
Was he their “counselor”? No, they refused his counsel because he taught new things and didn’t follow scripture.
They expected to know him just by looking, (they being religious and all) but nope.
They said they’d believe if he’d just give them a sign and prove who he was.
Nope, no proof.
Bold claims, yet no proof.
Sheepdog:We make a bold claim to be the church that has the
authority to preach and baptize in Christ's name.
Lord Veritas: (nods)
Sheepdog: All we ask of those we teach is that they consider the things we teach and then ask God, with a sincere desire to know, if it is true.
Lord Veritas: A fair request. Nonetheless, your method of "testing truth" appears to be relying on a warm, tingly sign from heaven to corroborate your teachings, which given the fancy of human emotions, does not seem very wise.
SD: I am not talking about emotion. I’m talking about the Spirit of God communicating with you. Now if you can’t decipher the difference between the burning of the Spirit and tingling, then that is between you and God. Some of us had a relationship with the Spirit of God before we ever asked about this specific, very important, topic. We have had many less important troubles and questions and have approached God on them and have learned what He feels/sounds like. The Burning of the Spirit should not be minimized or mocked by any true Christian. It is the Power by which God communicates with men.
When the apostles were traveling after Jesus died, a man walked with them and they talked. The apostles did not recognize that it was Jesus. Afterwards though, they scolded themselves for not knowing because of the burning within their hearts as he spoke.
Only a person who has never experienced this could say that it could be confused with any human emotion. It is very different, distinct, and powerful.
There are levels of it’s manifestation and sometimes it is barely there, but it continues to get stronger as needed according to faith and need.
Would you really deny the power of the Spirit of God?
You see, this is why I like the Mormon Jesus. He is real and He is there and if I need Him, He comes. I read in scripture how others have also heard Him and I know that they are not lying because I have also heard Him for myself.
[
Next Thread |
Previous Thread |
Next Message |
Previous Message
]
Replies:
[> [> [> [> [>
Re: Salvation FREE and Eternal (Part 1) -- Sheepdog, 16:07:38 08/02/05 Tue
LV:Why do that when God has already provided a far more reliable method of testing if your doctrine is true, by testing it against the gospel that Christ has already preached in his living word, the Bible.
SD: It's can be reliable if you don't take your pastor's word for who is and isn't a false teacher. That takes communication from God.
The Jews also were warned to beware of false teachers and the Priests told everyone that Jesus was one of those false teachers that scripture warned of. That is why they felt he deserved to be stoned for blaspheme against God!
The Bible is a book. We do not worship a book. We worship Christ.
To you, a living word is a written word, to me it’s when I hear someone speak to me who is there. To me, the book is a tool. It shows me how others obtained a real living relationship with God. I do not worship their experience or the book they wrote. I use the advice there to help me have my own real experiences.
The scripts of the apostles were many. Evil men discarded the scripts that offended them, even though they were written by the twelve.
To think that you have it all is a vain hope, especially after considering all that the scripts had been through before they were compiled into what we now call a Bible. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful for what made it through, yet I know that because of motives and other things, I can’t trust every word is untouched by other humans or that all important info was contained and not scapped.
I do not trust what Constantine and his book burning left us with. We know that other Christians had texts of the apostles that he burned. Now why would he do that? Well, he didn’t get all of them burned because in 1945 some that had been hidden were found. The gospel of Thomas and the gospel of Philip to name a few.
In the NT after Christ was resurrected he taught the disciples for 40 days or so, don't you think that this information would have been good to have?
LV:After all, if God is immutable and perfect, it would make sense that his gospel would be immutable and perfect as well, and that any gospel that differed from it would be false. And we all know what God has to say about false gospels
SD: He is perfect, His gospel is perfect, but the book is not “his gospel” nor could it be perfect unless it was hand written by Him, which it was not.
The apostles didn’t have the NT. They had Him and then when he died they still had direct revelation from Him. He gave them a government to run the church by. He left them with that, He did not leave them with a book that contained His gospel.
LV:Galatians 1:8-9 But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.
SD: This is one of my favorite verses. Only a Christian who didn’t know the history of his own faith could possibly use this scripture against the LDS.
The key verse is “if any man"....claiming to be of God (like an angel would)...
The gospel the Emperor Constantine left to you was the accursed gospel.
Do you know what he did to the gospel of Christ?
In a nut shell...
His motive was power and money. He wanted to stop the fighting between religions because it was causing so much trouble for him. The Christian sects were fighting among one another about doctrine and there were many sects. (NOT just one!)
The Pagans were fighting with the Christian too.
It was totally a mess. Constantine knew that he must unite the people, by force if necessary.
He favored both Christians and Pagans when it suited his motives.
One year he's giving tribute to the Pagan God and a couple of years later he's claiming to have a Christian "vision".
He established a church to please and pacify both. Many Christians were punished and killed because they would not comply. He changed the Sabbath to Sunday in order to please the Pagans who worshipped the Sun God. He combined the celebration of Jesus’s birth to the Sun God’s birth (Dec. 25). He combined the celebration of the resurrection with the Pagan God of fertility (Easter).
He demanded all Christians stop their preaching and turn over their buildings of worship to the new government church.
He assembled some bishops and insisted they come up with a definition of God that all could be forced to accept, Pagan's and Christians alike. It's the definition you still have today and anybody who has a problem with it is automatically called "non Christian" even though there were many who shuttered at the creeds back then. What did they do with these people? Charge them with blaspheme, just like their Savior, and punish or kill them.
Constantine built the first elaborate “Christian” church only for the rich to attend, no poor allowed.
He made it so that sins could be paid for with money and favors to him.
He was a murderer and he had his wife and son boiled to death and he conquered many nations under the symbol of the cross. The cross was his symbol, not Christ’s.
He pretended to have a vision in which Jesus told him that he could kill and conquer as long as it was under the sign of the cross.
Does this sound like a man of God?
What ever happened to the doctrine of preaching the gospel "meek and mild and harmless as doves"?
Wow, free pass to murder!
He burned all books and scripts that were “not approved”.
I surely could go on and on about this accursed gospel which was preached and established by a man that was NO angel sent from God.
These are the roots of your church. He did this to the original gospel. This was the “different gospel” talked of here. In other places it is written that it would come to pass soon. If Constantine would have known what was symbolically written of in Revelations, he’d have burned that too. The Lord knows how to get his message through so that the wicked don’t see it or comprehend.
Many Christians will say that they don’t follow the gospel of Constantine, but they do. He was the author of your creeds which God rightly called an abomination.
[ Post a Reply to This Message ]
[ Edit | View ]
[> [> [> [> [> [>
Next! -- Lord Veritas, 18:47:01 01/28/06 Sat
>LV:Why do that when God has already provided a far
>more reliable method of testing if your doctrine is
>true, by testing it against the gospel that Christ has
>already preached in his living word, the Bible.
>SD: It's can be reliable if you don't take your
>pastor's word for who is and isn't a false teacher.
>That takes communication from God.
LV: You did not answer my question. My question was why pray for divine inspiration on whether or not a text is scripture when you can easily test its validity against those of the previous scriptures. All you did was say "Do not take your pastor's word for who is/is not a false teacher", and by doing so, completely ignored my question.
SD:>The Jews also were warned to beware of false teachers
>and the Priests told everyone that Jesus was one of
>those false teachers that scripture warned of. That is
>why they felt he deserved to be stoned for blaspheme
>against God!
>The Bible is a book. We do not worship a book.
LV: Neither do we. We simply acknowledge that the Bible is the complete and living Word of God.
SD:We worship Christ.
LV: Then why do you have no faith in His ability to preserve His Word and Church from being corrupted by a mere man such as Constantine? Why do you have no faith that He is powerful enough to bring you into heaven without needing any "extra help" from you trying to fulfill commandments that you can't fulfill?
SD:To you, a living word is a written word
LV:Wrong. The living word is the gospel and scriptures of God, not simply anything that's "written". You've jumped to a radical conclusion for no apparent reason.
SD:, to me it’s
>when I hear someone speak to me who is there
LV: I hope you have better qualification than that for a "living word". Any imbecile or demon can say a word. If you heard Satan speak to you, and he was there in front of you, would you consider his lies "living word"? I certainly hope not.
SD: To me,
>the book is a tool. It shows me how others obtained a
>real living relationship with God. I do not worship
>their experience or the book they wrote.
LV: Neither do we Christians. We use it to discover what God wants from our lives, to discern truth, and as a measuring rod to make sure that we are not duped by every "new scripture" that people try to fling at us.
SD:I use the advice there to help me have my own real experiences. The scripts of the apostles were many. Evil men
>discarded the scripts that offended them, even though
>they were written by the twelve.
LV: Not true. Many books were excluded from the Bible because they either:
1) Preached doctrines that were contrary to the gospel and the previous written Words of God, and therefore, false, since God does not contradict himself.
2) Were completely irrelevant (ex. stuff like shopping lists, or address books)
3) Were not actually authored by the prophets or the apostles (ex, the Gospel of Thomas, which was written at least five decades after he was killed in India)
To think that every little thing an apostle wrote should be included in the Bible is tantamount to claiming that Shakespeare's bills and shopping lists should be included in his play anthologies. It would be ridiculous to put anything that was not a play into a play anthology, just like it would be ridiculous to put anything that was obviously not divinely inspired into God's divinely inspired Word. And somehow, I think that a council of over two hundred church leaders who spent most of their lives studying the thousands of scriptural texts are a bit more qualified than an American with a third grade education is to figure out which texts are divinely inspired.
SD:To think that you have it all is a vain hope,
>especially after considering all that the scripts had
>been through before they were compiled into what we
>now call a Bible. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful for
>what made it through, yet I know that because of
>motives and other things, I can’t trust every word is
>untouched by other humans or that all important info
>was contained and not scapped.
LV: Yet, you trust everything Joseph Smith wrote was untouched by other humans/motives, despite the fact that he and his followers were all humans. Good to know your standards are consistent...
SD:>I do not trust what Constantine and his book burning
>left us with. We know that other Christians had texts
>of the apostles that he burned. Now why would he do
>that? Well, he didn’t get all of them burned because
>in 1945 some that had been hidden were found.
LV: I gave you plenty of room to write about Constantine in the "Rants about Constantine" thread. Please use it.
SD:The gospel of Thomas and the gospel of Philip to name a
few.
LV:Gospel of Thomas has already been addressed. Gospel of Philip will be looked at soon.
SD:In the NT after Christ was resurrected he taught the
>disciples for 40 days or so, don't you think that this
>information would have been good to have?
LV: I had this crazy idea that this information that Christ taught the apostles would be contained in the TWENTY SEVEN DIVINELY INSPIRED New Testament scriptures that they wrote AFTER CHRIST ASCENDED TO HEAVEN, which, coincidentally, took place AFTER CHRIST TAUGHT THE DISCIPLES FOR FORTY DAYS. If you cannot logically follow that, then perhaps you are not adequately prepared to participate in a debate.
>LV:After all, if God is immutable and perfect, it
>would make sense that his gospel would be immutable
>and perfect as well, and that any gospel that differed
>from it would be false. And we all know what God has
>to say about false gospels
>SD: He is perfect, His gospel is perfect, but the book
>is not “his gospel” nor could it be perfect unless it
>was hand written by Him, which it was not.
>The apostles didn’t have the NT. They had Him and then
>when he died they still had direct revelation from
>Him. He gave them a government to run the church by.
>He left them with that, He did not leave them with a
>book that contained His gospel.
LV: Not true. They had the Old Testament, which, if I am not mistaken, was WRITTEN DOWN. If Christ preached a contrary doctrine to what was previously mentioned in the Old Testament, then any imbecile could have called him out on it! However, the New Testament is full of Old Testament references to prove its consistency with God's previous teachings. The gospel Matthew is especially famous for this. Honestly, double check your facts before you post, please. It will result in less headaches for all who are involved.
>LV:Galatians 1:8-9 But though we, or an angel from
>heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that
>which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.
>As we said before, so say I now again, If any man
>preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have
>received, let him be accursed.
>SD: This is one of my favorite verses. Only a
>Christian who didn’t know the history of his own faith
>could possibly use this scripture against the LDS.
>The key verse is “if any man"....claiming to be of God
>(like an angel would)...
LV: That is not what it said. This is what the verses said:
Galatians 1:8-9 But though we, or an angel from
heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that
which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.
As we said before, so say I now again, If any man
preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have
received, let him be accursed.
If you read the above carefully, it does not say "“if any man"....claiming to be of God (like an angel would)..."
It says if any man or angel preaches a different gospel than the gospel God has already given to us, then let them be accursed. Man or Angel. Not Man claiming to be of God like an Angel would. Man or Angel. Plain and simple. This is outrageous-this session is supposed to be us debating whether salvation is free and eternal or not, not me explaining to you the fundamentals of the English language.
SD:The gospel the Emperor Constantine left to you was the
>accursed gospel.
LV: This, and the rest of it which has been deleted, belongs in the Constantine rant section. This was supposed to be about whether or not Salvation is free and Eternal, yet, you have taken us way off-topic. I hate to say it Sheepdog, but quite frankly, you have proven over and over again that you are not qualified for a debate. You completely ignore simple questions, take up paragraphs of space on tangential subjects, can't get basic facts straight, and cannot comprehend verses that a child could understand. Therefore, I am afraid I shall no longer engage you in this discourse. I hereby wish you best of luck in all your endeavors and pray that God will allow you to see the truth one day. But until then, goodbye.
[ Post a Reply to This Message ]
[ Edit | View ]
[> [> [> [> [> [> [>
Re: Next! -- Like I said... brainwashed, 10:12:56 02/07/06 Tue
LV:
>This is outrageous-this
>session is supposed to be us debating whether
>salvation is free and eternal or not, not me
>explaining to you the fundamentals of the English
>language. ...
...This was
>supposed to be about whether or not Salvation is free
>and Eternal, yet, you have taken us way off-topic. I
>hate to say it Sheepdog, but quite frankly, you have
>proven over and over again that you are not qualified
>for a debate. You completely ignore simple questions,
>take up paragraphs of space on tangential subjects,
>can't get basic facts straight, and cannot comprehend
>verses that a child could understand....
Like I said.
Nice posts though LV. You have proven him (her) wrong over and over again and he/she never has a valid or even logical response. It's been elightening reading your posts LV. I for one, have learned from them so your words did not go to waste on sheepwash.
[ Post a Reply to This Message ]
[ Edit | View ]
