They killed him because he was breaking down there system. If you cant see that in reading Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John your blind.

They killed him because he claimed to be God, which was blasphemy. If you can’t see that, you need to study history and your Bible. It was punishable by death to blasphemy God, and claiming to be God would be the ultimate offense. Jesus didn’t break their system, he broke their law and was executed for it.

“Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, “He has spoken blasphemy! Why do we need any more witnesses? Look, now you have heard the blasphemy. What do you think?”
“He is worthy of death,” they answered.

Matthew 26:65-66

I’ve done plenty of digging. My brain doesn’t allow me to believe obvious contradictions and flawed testimony. You can rejoice in biblical teaching if it gives you joy. I see it as a huge waste of time believing in ancient fairy tales.

The works of Jesus the forgiveness and service to others I see as good. I am not a Zionist, I am a Christian and only by his teachings alongside intelligent creation I rejoice. If there is only one God or intelligence then every good or evil, spiritual energy and physical mass must be of him/her whatever.

Man did the Priests and the people in power hate him! They killed him because he was breaking down there system. If you cant see that in reading Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John your blind. Jesus was one
with the creator he understood that why can’t we. Love is service to
others, we must love and forgive. He was speaking mainly to the
Jews he was born into but also the Gentiles.

In the Zondervan NIV Study Bible in the first pages it list ancient texts relating to the old testament. This includes the Gilgamesh Epic Ge6-9 from Akkadian early 2nd millennium b.c. or Enuma Elish Ge1-2 also Akkadian… do your digging have fun follow your heart!

As I have stated before, most of the misunderstandings between rationalists and Christians occur when fundamentalists conflate revealed truth with factual or provable truth. In my opinion it simply can’t be done – there is no reason even to try because we operate by faith.

Keep in mind also that the Bible was not finalized until about 400 AD. In the very early years of Christianity the revealed truth was called the Word and was transmitted orally and so the examination of texts and phrases was not a part of theology. This may explain why you see a sort of circular reasoning going on – we belive the Word and we look for it in the revealed truth contained in the Bible – and it never fails to be there.

It seems to me that the essence of this example is that you identify something that you choose to believe, i.e., that is a part of your faith, and call it revealed truth. You use that term to artificially distinguish the items identified this way from the rest of the Bible which you agree is just literature.

I think that faith did not contribute to your restatement of the text. You did not add any meaning which is not in the original. Clearly you have studied this and related material, and you clarified the archaic language of the original translation. But this is the result of scholarship, not faith. Faith is involved in believing this material, but does not contribute to grasping its meaning.

Faith did apparently provide the criterion by which you identified this passage as “revealed truth”: “because it speaks explicitly about how Jesus has changed our relationship with God.” But that is essentially just a tautology: you choose (on faith) to believe anything in the Bible about that topic so anything about that topic is revealed truth for you to believe.

The example confirms for me that when you say “revealed truth” you are not using the word “truth” in the normal way. As you cheerfully admit, “[revealed] truth is not available from provable facts”. Thus, it is more a “revealed tenet” that you choose to regard as true for yourself (and your coreligionists). It is only “true” in the sense that you accept it as a part of the belief system that you have adopted. Apparently this works for you.

I will add one thing. I have found it very hard to understand how faith shapes your thinking. In the same way, I think that operating on faith and “revealed truth” makes it very difficult for you to understand that I have no faith. I do not have an explicit faith that there is no god. I simply have no faith at all, period.

Thanks for asking.

Here is the most concise example I can think of – Romans 3:21-26

” 21But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, 23for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement,[i] through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— 26he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. ”

The central truth here is that the death and sacrifice of Jesus restores our broken relationship with God. This is what Paul calls “righeousness.” We are all in sin and fall short of being able to be restored to God’s favor by our own efforts – we really deserve God’s punishment. But by God’s grace we are given redemption as a gift through the sacrifice of Jesus. This is free – all we have to do is believe.

This passage is revealed truth because it speaks explicitly about how Jesus has changed our relationship with God. The Old Testament speaks of a comming messiah, but in Romans Paul explains what the messiah has done. This is new information about God and his purposes – revealed to us by Paul’s words.

This truth is not available from provable facts. Many have stated that it is impossible to prove that Jesus ever existed, that God exists or that mankind is in a sinful condition. So the only way we know these things is by the truth as revealed to us in the Bible.

Paul says that these things require faith to believe. Faith is required for belief because there is no provable chain of facts and deductions that can lead to this truth. So we accept this by faith, not reason or logic.

Does this help?

This might not be the proper place for this, but I wonder if you could give a simple demonstration of a revealed truth in the Bible, which might help someone understand in a practical way how this works. This would include:
— The original passage which provides the revealed truth
— A statement of the revealed truth in your own words: I am assuming here that the revealed truth is not simply the literal words of the Bible passage; or, if so, say so.
— How you know that this passage provides a revealed truth and is not simply one of the items of ordinary literature in the Bible
— How faith contributes to knowing that this passage provides a revealed truth: What specific idea or concept does faith add to the plain words of the passage which allows it to be recognized as revealing truth?
— How faith contributes to understanding the revealed truth that this passage provides: What specific idea or concept does faith add to the plain words of the passage which allows the revealed truth to be understood from it?

The premise here is that as you read the Bible passage, your brain is thinking additional thoughts which do not come from the words themselves, but are provided somehow by faith. I do not suppose that you necessarily know the source of these additional thoughts, but you must be aware of them if you are finding meanings that other people do not. If the thoughts that come from faith could be explicitly set down next to the plain words of the passage, perhaps other people could see your reasoning and understand what you mean by access to revealed truth.

I doubt that this would lead to anyone agreeing with you about revealed truth, but it might make the concept less mysterious.

The story of Noah’s flood is bunk. Noah managed to not only build a boat big enough to hold all the creatures of the earth, but he also gathered them from every continent, fed them all for 40 days, and returned them each back to their respective continents after the flood.

The rain fell for 40 days covering every high hill on the earth. This means 10,000-20,000 feet of water rained down on the earth in 40 days. This would have required rain to fall at a rate of around 15 feet per hour. This would obviously overtake and sink any boat, let alone one loaded with thousands of animals. Also consider the mass of people that would have mobbed and fought to get onto Noah’s Ark when the flood started. And we are also to believe the all-powerful God needed this man to help carry out his divine plan.

Give me a break.

Name one part of the bible you believe to be “bunk”?

I do not know how to simplify it anymore than that.

I also have on ongoing series of biblical conflicts that have barely scratched the surface of the Bible’s flawed information.

Read more here, and many more to come:

http://en.wordpress.com/tag/bible-teaching-of-the-week/