Understanding The Bible: Description

Originally Posted by DavidHenson

It must not be their truth. It must be Jehovah's truth. My truth, your truth, their truth, our truth will bring nothing but destruction. It must be Jehovah's truth.

DavidHenson,

Philosophically yes. But you cannot read that truth. God must give you the grace, the faith and the Spirit to accept that truth. It then becomes your truth with the same certainty that real faith is(as defined by the Bible)…..

[BigJohn]

and most people have heard of David, or a David but how many have heard of Yahweh? Let alone Elohim?

One day a Jehovah Witness was talking to me and we got on the subject of Yahweh. I told him most people can not recognize how Moses wrote Yahweh. He claimed I was wrong. He pulled out one of their pamphlets and showed me Yahweh as written as the Tetragrammaton. Then I showed him, using his same pamphlet, the same name but written in Moses' alphabet - Palo-Hebrew. Then I showed him the same name as it is written in the Masoretic Text. He was amazed. Hard to believe, it was always 'right there in front of him' but he never saw it. The same information can be found in wikipedia.

[DavidHenson]

Originally Posted by Molearner

DavidHenson,

Philosophically yes. But you cannot read that truth. God must give you the grace, the faith and the Spirit to accept that truth. It then becomes your truth with the same certainty that real faith is (as defined by the Bible)…..

I'm not sure what you mean. If you have faith how can it be your truth? Could that be that you have faith in your truth?

I'm not one for philosophy. I do believe in personal responsibility when it comes to spirituality, but I have no faith in myself as I do have faith in Jehovah. So I can't have faith in my faith. I can't have faith in my truth because then truth, for me, would become a stagnant pool.

Truth is something we search for but can't find. Truth is just a word. A commodity like water or time. You can never have enough water or time.

Put simply beware of dogma and cognitive dissonance.

Deus Ex Machina. Don't make your own God from necessity or for comfort.

[DavidHenson]

Originally Posted by BigJohn

I told him most people can not recognize how Moses wrote Yahweh. He claimed I was wrong.

Seriously? How could that be wrong? No one knows how Moses wrote Yahweh. Moses never wrote Yahweh.

[BigJohn]

Originally Posted by DavidHenson

Seriously? How could that be wrong? No one knows how Moses wrote Yahweh. Moses never wrote Yahweh.

Sure.... Moses wrote the name of God, that was pronounced in Hebrew and sounds something ike Yahweh, numerous times. Being you believe Moses wrote the Torah, then it was Moses who wrote the name about 450 times in the Torah! Easy enough to verify.

Moses wrote in Paleo-Hebrew which most people can not recognize. Fortunately, along came the Masoretic Text which captures the various, subtle ways that the name was pronounced in Hebrew.

Originally Posted by DavidHenson

I'm not one for philosophy. I do believe in personal responsibility when it comes to spirituality, but I have no faith in myself as I do have faith in Jehovah. So I can't have faith in my faith.

DavidHenson,

You are just as incomprehensible to me as I am to you. What exactly does having faith in Jehovah mean ? Is that your word for God ? If it is God…..then faith is a grace of God. You have faith in God but do not have faith in His gifts ? The rationale for that escapes me. Faith is not some belief in theology it is that knowledge of certainty as outlined in Hebrews. You have faith in the faith that God gave you….it is not of yourself which you seem to accept.

I should have added that if one is part of the body of Christ then the truth of Christ and the Holy Spirit is your truth……

[Miss Hepburn]

Originally Posted by DavidHenson

...Put simply beware of dogma and cognitive dissonance.
Deus Ex Machina. Don't make your own God from necessity or for comfort.

Deus ex Machina is now the phrase used to describe any situation where something unexpected or
implausible is brought in to the story line to resolve situations or disentangle a plot.

[DavidHenson]

Originally Posted by Miss Hepburn

Deus ex Machina is now the phrase used to describe any situation where something unexpected or
implausible is brought in to the story line to resolve situations or disentangle a plot.

Yes, Miss Hepburn. So, in the ancient Greek plays they would lift up the god, or hero from beneath the stage and he would inexplicably solve any problem that couldn't be resolved in the normal fashion. God of the Machine. Or, in effect, god of ones own hands, or ones own making. The mechanical levers were manipulated by hand, you see.

[DavidHenson]

Originally Posted by Molearner

DavidHenson,

What exactly does having faith in Jehovah mean ? Is that your word for God ?

Jehovah? That is the name of the God of Jacob, Isaac and Abraham. Having faith in Jehovah means that nothing we do is going to solve anything beyond the temporal which is insignificant. That's a big picture. The stuff of our lives, the catastrophes and the triumphs the quixotic (idealistic to an impractical degree) and the mundane (irreligious) are important to us only temporally. Everything under the sun . . .

How can I put that in simple, practical terms.

I don't have faith in Jehovah for my salvation, I have faith in Jehovah for his rightful sovereign rulership. If my salvation is contrary to Jehovah's sovereignty then it is forfeit. And perhaps that is the case.

Do I want everlasting life in paradise on earth? The sinful nature of my being doesn't, and that is all I've ever known, so how could I know? So then the question becomes which do I want more? The temporal or the unknown that must surely be contrary to my sinful nature.

When you ask a believer what they think heaven might be like they describe it as if they fashioned it from their own imagination with no thought of it's King. It's interesting that the unbeliever will protest by describing the hell they don't believe in exactly the same way.

Does religion control people or do people control religion?