Quote:
Originally Posted by Reader
I am certainly not horrified by your thoughts. What I have attempted to do is to have you see that when one picks and chooses what is true and what is not, how do you really know if the places you chose to believe really happened? Let's take one thing you said:
Where is it that one gets that the Spirit of God draws a person or fills a person? Is it not from the Bible? If one believes only some things in it really happened or are true, then how can you know that the Spirit drawing is true?
I am not putting you down. This is not personal. What I cannot understand is how one can decide this part is true and this is not. What is your standard for doing so- in other words, what do you use to determine this?
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Ok, lets take the Bible out of it for a minute. Mary Sue is not a Christian, and knows very little about Christianity. A friend invites her to Acme Christian Church. There a man preaches about Jesus, and Mary Sue thinks "wow, Jesus, if you are real, I would love to have a relationship with you".
A few days later, Mary Sue is praying at home alone in her bedroom, and all of a sudden something amazing she happens that she can't explain, as she is baptized in the Spirit.
A few days after that she comes out of the Grocery store and there is a pamphlet stuck under her windshield wipers. She see's that it's about Jesus, so she reads it, and it talks about how important it is to be Baptized, she feels in her heart that she would like to do this, and so calls the number of Gotham City Apostolic Church listed on the tract. She attends and is baptized in Jesus Name.
Now, I ask you this, would you call any of the 3 things used to draw her in, (A Pastor's Sermon, Personal Prayer, and religious literature) absolute truth and inerrant? Or would you say that God used the available people/items to make his will known?
A Sermon is not necessarily filled with Absolute Truth, it's certainly not inerrant or infallible. However, It CAN be inspired, and filled with sacred wisdom. And God most certainly can use ANYTHING to speak to and reach us.
What did people do in Jesus' time when the NT didn't exist? What about in the dark ages when only the Priests had access? When it wasn't even printed in the common language, or when most people couldn't read?
The Bible is a useful tool, but it's not God.
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