James Malm is so disgusted by a grace filled Jesus that he prefers a murdering god who strikes down sinners and lawbreakers. Being the official COG Pharisee, it is easy to see that
31:9 And the children of Israel took all the women of Midian captives, and their little ones, and took the spoil of all their cattle, and all their flocks, and all their goods. 31:10 And they burnt all their cities wherein they dwelt, and all their goodly castles, with fire. 31:11 And they took all the spoil, and all the prey, both of men and of beasts. 31:12 And they brought the captives, and the prey, and the spoil, unto Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and unto the congregation of the children of Israel, unto the camp at the plains of Moab, which are by Jordan near Jericho.
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Moses rebuked the army for the sin of sparing the women of Midian; For Jesus Christ had commanded them to destroy Midian, lest they be again led astray by the women of Midian. Does this sound like a wimpy Christ who paid for our sins in advance so that we need not depart from sin, only mouth the words “I repent” and repent in name only? This is an instruction for us, that we should not involve ourselves in false religions and false doctrines.
Most people's interpretation of "Grace Jesus" isn't exactly that of a chip off the old block of his dad El/YHVH, although the Jesus of Revelation with eyes aflame and a sword in his mouth slashing and hacking, creating rivers of blood as deep as the horses' bridles, may be more like his El/YHVH dad and more to Malm's liking.
ReplyDeleteRe: the picture-
I didn't know Jesus wore glasses, but I'll bet he got them from Lenscrafters, since Jesus saves.
Mental Malm notes:
ReplyDelete"Moses rebuked the army for the sin of sparing the women of Midian; For Jesus Christ had commanded them to destroy Midian, lest they be again led astray by the women of Midian"
No Jesus of the NT was any "God of the Old Testament" and commanded nothing. If there ever was a meaning to "hocus pocus" , this has to be close.
Do any other sects or cults teach that Jesus was the God of the Old Testament? Or, is that an exclusive part of the HWAcaca?
ReplyDeleteWhat is really strange, is that in Armstrongism, sometimes they look to a Jewish understanding, and sometimes they do not. They basically believe in one permanent dispensation, and extrapolate everything from that focal point. It really blocks them from having a realistic and functional understanding of God's love.
BB
Jesus owns everything.
ReplyDeleteHe thus could afford Lasik or at least contacts.
The pic therefore posted here is a fraud and religiously deceiving!
Luv,
Joe Moeller
Cody, WY
PS- Jesus also did not part his hair in the middle!
Bob:
ReplyDeleteHere is the dilemma Biblically. If , as stated, no man has seen the Father, then who was it that Moses and others saw and dealt with in the OT?
The conclusion is then that this had to be Jesus who was seen. There is a logic to this, or am I missing something?
Your Friend,
Joe Moeller
Cody, WY
Byker Bob said...
ReplyDelete“Do any other sects or cults teach that Jesus was the God of the Old Testament? Or, is that an exclusive part of the HWAcaca?”
The answer is yes, Bob, quite a few groups.
And why wouldn’t they? Jesus Christ Himself made that claim, as did the gospel writers, and so did Paul.
Joe axed;
ReplyDelete"The conclusion is then that this had to be Jesus who was seen. There is a logic to this, or am I missing something?"
You're missing too much to mention.
If is not God it doesn't have to be Jesus. It could have been Mordecai Levine or Shlomo Cohen. Maybe Moses saw Chemosh or Baal for all we know. Maybe he lied about what happened to him alone on the mountain. After all, the story as many are merely hearsay. If I said I saw Jesus and he talked with me last Thursday, you'd declare me nuts.
Maybe it's a made up story by the Priests in the Babyonian Captivity when they had little to do but write and give their oppressed and captive selves a very large petigree?
Something magical happens when such stories are not current but very old. They "really happened."
There's a very good video featured on Banned by HWA right now which points out that Jesus and Christianity as we know it was invented by the Ceasars and the ruling classes of Rome to gain control over the masses and torpedo Jewish nationalism and fanaticism. Jesus Christ is aa contrived fiction and Christianity gave the caesars power over the masses.
ReplyDeleteAs with most religions, origin stories are inflated, and if Moses was in fact an historical person, it's more likely that he was a minor warlord than for him to have been the person the Bible's story claims he was, replete with the fanstasical.
ReplyDelete“If is not God it doesn't have to be Jesus. It could have been Mordecai Levine or Shlomo Cohen. Maybe Moses saw Chemosh or Baal for all we know. Maybe he lied about what happened to him alone on the mountain….”
ReplyDeleteI realise your current position on the scriptures, Dennis. However with such a view, it really makes any discussion a non-issue.
Joe is making a point, taking what the bible is saying. If you have decided that actually we can pick and chose just anything, there is no real point in having any discussion – discussion becomes meaningless.
Joe’s point that ‘no man has seen the father’ also becomes meaningless with your viewpoint. After all that statement could also be made up by the writer, in which case you need to add God the Father to the list of possibilities of who Moses may/may not have seen.
Obviously, he can cast the first stone.
ReplyDeleteWhat need is there for redemption?
There was the Marcionite/docetist view that "the Father" of Jesus was a different god from the god of the old testament and unknown until Jesus declared him. To Marcion, the god of the OT was the Demiurge put in charge of the Jews - in other words, the angel in the burning bush (Ex. 3:2) and the angel that Yahweh left in charge (Ex. 23:20-21).
ReplyDeleteNice put down Dennis, do you agree with Allen's view on the invention of Christianity, because it sounds a little farfetched; or do you just save your disdain for people in the COG?
ReplyDeleteJoe,
ReplyDeleteI know that "No man has seen the Father" was the basis for HWA's understanding on that, however, yes, it is a much, much, deeper topic, even if we don't look to atheist solutions.
The first would be linguistic scholars' better understanding of the ancient Hebrew language today, a language which had been dead for hundreds or even thousands of years at the time King Jimmy's boys did their translating. We know, as an example, that when the Bible states that the Israelites had utterly slain all of certain Canaanite nations, and then we are presented with the dilemma of certain of the particular members of that nation being alive and doing something or other several chapters later in the same book, that in ancient Hebrew, all meant " for the most part" or " the majority of". We also know that when certain things were commanded forever, it meant so long as certain conditions existed. So, there are a lot of nuances of the ancient Hebrew which are just coming to the forefront of our understanding today. The footnotes in a modern study Bible treat this phenomenon as it occurs.
Also, God is capable of manifesting Himself in any way He chooses. Should He choose to disguise Himself in deglorified form so that a mortal like Moses would not die (and remember, Moses only saw His backside) this would certainly be within His capabilities. Frankly, since Jesus is God, and we are theorizing that He was the one Moses saw, why would we believe that the Son would be any less brilliant or cause lesser effects on humans than Father God? It would appear that either would need to filter down or disguise so that the object of a theophany could survive.
I do not subscribe to a Unitarian, or "one God" viewpoint, nor do I believe that Jesus was a created being who became God for the first time by virtue of having been resurrected. However, I have carefully reviewed the theology behind this belief, and the proponents raise a number of valid issues as to why the God of the Old Testament could not have been Jesus. They understand John 1 as meaning that God was simply a being of His Word, not to mean that there was a separate being known as "the Word". Again, they go back to the nuances of ancient Hebrew for this, and also cite examples of the use of personification for other Biblical concepts such as wisdom.
My own belief is that Father and Son acted together as the God of the Old Testament. Moses is theorized by scholars as having had several earlier reference manuscripts in compiling his own writing. One is the Y document, and the other is the E document. Y for YHWH, E for Elohim. He appears to have quoted from both throughout the Torah. Elohim is, of course, uniplural. So is the statement in Genesis, "Let us make man in Our image". I also believe that in order for the Old Covenant to be abolished, and a new one brought into play, that one of the parties of the original covenant would have to die. We know that man has not died off, and we also know that one of the members of the God family did.
I probably don't even need to state this, but the thoughts above are my personal findings and beliefs, expressed for the purpose of sharing, and not for the purpose of starting arguments.
BB
Anon. 1:36, Don't be too hard on the guys. In the greater scheme of things, atheism is a real temporary, short term condition. Love 'em. They're our future brothers and sisters!
ReplyDeleteQuest said:
ReplyDelete"Joe is making a point, taking what the bible is saying"
I totally undersand that. Discussing the story within the context and pages of the Bible will lead leaps from the OT God to the NT Jesus of course. I do have a much bigger view which does not limit me to such prooftexting as if one must find all the answers between Genesis and Revelation where one figures it all out.
That's like limiting oneself to the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears in the study of bears. One could come to eroneous views limiting onseself to the story alone. Bears don't really talk and don't really eat soup and sleep in beds anymore than serpents talk or axe heads float. But if you confine yourself to the texts only, you could think snakes do talk, along with donkeys and unicorns exist.
Quest said:
ReplyDelete"Joe is making a point, taking what the bible is saying"
I totally undersand that. Discussing the story within the context and pages of the Bible will lead leaps from the OT God to the NT Jesus of course. I do have a much bigger view which does not limit me to such prooftexting as if one must find all the answers between Genesis and Revelation where one figures it all out.
That's like limiting oneself to the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears in the study of bears. One could come to eroneous views limiting onseself to the story alone. Bears don't really talk and don't really eat soup and sleep in beds anymore than serpents talk or axe heads float. But if you confine yourself to the texts only, you could think snakes do talk, along with donkeys and unicorns exist.
Wess
ReplyDeleted
Is it just me ? But I sense some
overtones ...
Sort of like Dave Pack with the positions reversed ??
Wess
Joe, at 11:01, What did Moses see?
ReplyDeleteWhat he may have seen was not the essence of God, but a visual representation of the glory of God. God can be seen partially, indirectly, not completely and directly. See When Critics Ask by Norman Geisler, page 82
LOL @ anything Moses "saw" !!!
ReplyDelete