Quote:
Originally Posted by The Revelator
I agree that they were appropriate for that time and that time alone. There is no some situations. That was the only situation. The Old Testament Isrealites. When Jesus came, much of the old law was changed by Jesus himself. (Jesus worked on the Sabath, declaring he was Lord of the sabath and over it/ Jesus said that an eye for an eye was no more).
Jesus even came up with 2 new commandments ( I know I'm sounding like a broken record but these are important and you guys seem to be missing it.)
Jesus's new commandment was to love one another as thyself, how are we supposed to do that with rape and genocide.
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Loving others as we love ourselves is not a new commandment from the NT.
Leviticus 19:18 Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD
Why did Jesus re-state an OT commandment like "love thy neighbour as thyself"? Because He and the Old Testament God are one. If God commanded rape and genocide, then so did Jesus. Do you suppose you could explain to an Amalekite woman exactly why her rape was a good thing, but the rape of a contemporary towelhead would be unacceptable?
The idea that Jesus came up with "love thy neighbour" and it was not featured in the Old Testament is an anti-semitic slur. Friend, are you some kind of an anti-semite?
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Revelator
Without trying to step on anyone's shoes here, I am stilled interested to hear your opinins on these verses. Once again they are:
1 John 4:7-21
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I found re-reading 1 John 4:7-21 slightly confusing. For instance, look at 1 John 4:12 No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.
That first sentence seems a bit weird. After all, God appeared quite a lot to the patriarchs, and Numbers 33:11 even specifically mentions Moses talking face-to-face with God. The statement in 4:18 about there being no fear in love confused me a little bit as well - I know you'll probably try and claim that Jesus' new covenant cancels out the dozens of exhortations to fear God in the Old Testament, but then why are we commanded to fear God in Matthew 10:28, Luke 12:5, Ephesians 5:21, and 1 Peter 2:17? Oh, and how do we reconcile the statement in 1 John 4:20 that we cannot love God and hate our brother with the statement in Luke 14:26 that we cannot be Christ's disciples without hating our brothers? Of course, the Bible is infallible, so I know these can't be real contradictions, there must just be a problem in the way I'm reading them, but I seriously can't work out where I'm going wrong. Can you help out at all?
O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it--for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.
God being truth, justice, goodness, beauty, power, and life, man is falsehood, iniquity, evil, ugliness, impotence, and death. God being master, man is the slave. Incapable of finding justice, truth, and eternal life by his own effort, he can attain them only through a divine revelation... he who desires to worship God must harbor no childish illusions about the matter, but bravely renounce his liberty and humanity.