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Old 02-22-2008, 06:23 PM
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A_PoMo A_PoMo is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2008
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Re: Faith: How Far Is Too Far?

Q1: I said specific individuals (Adam, Noah, Abraham, etc..) AND a specific nation (Israel). Each of the individuals had covenants and some of the provisions extended literally and immediately to their descendants and some of them extended beyond into subsequent covenants and beyond. Some but not all, and the ones that do have support later to show they're still relevant. I'm not sure what you mean by "Old" covenant unless you mean the Mosaic. Yes, there are some aspects and promises of each covenant that carry forward and others that don't in this longitudinal view. Thus support for wealth for NT believers must be found elsewhere and not in OT covenants.

Q2: I'm not sure what you mean by the second question. How is material wealth in an OT promise the foreshadow of material wealth in the NT? Seems it should either be the same promise and thus not a foreshadow at all or if a foreshadow then it should be something else than the original. Either way you'd have to have corresponding support in the NT and that support isn't there.

Q3: I'm not sure of the relevance of Deut 8 to this discussion since it's a promise to the Levitical priests under the Mosaic Law. I suppose you could go up the ladder of abstraction and apply it to us today but you'd need other support for that too but that doesn't change that the passage was written to specific people and not to us. Deut 28 refers to blessings available to Israel if they obey the Mosaic Law, an agreement modeled after the Assyrian suzerain/vassal treaty agreement of the time. It was conditional, not undconditional, and it applied only to Israel, not the church. Again, you might be able to apply principles shown here as long as you have additional NT support, but to apply these as if they were written for NT believers is not an option unless you want to allegorize scripture.

Q4: In Galatians the context seems pretty clear that the it's a single blessing (not all of the them) and that this blessing is spiritual, not material. I'm not sure of the relevance of 2 Cor as it's talking about giving and the abundance has to do with righteousness and grace, not money, and it talks about the Corinthians have "sufficiency" (wealth seems to be more than just sufficiency which in turn seems to dovetail more with Christ's teaching on the subject) the promise is to meet our needs and references an OT passage that talks of poor people. The blessing here is to the poor Christians who needed help from the Corinthians. In turn Paul says that God will meet the needs of the Corinthians. I don't see any promise of overabundance of material wealth here, just abundance of grace and the promise to meet their needs.

Ok, I've answered several of your questions. You say you disagree with most of what I argue. What is your position?

And please forgive me if I don't reply right away. In the next hour I'm going to start a whirlwind of a weekend and may not have time to come back on here right away.
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