IgnatioDeLoyola

Pride is the original sin of Lucifer, which he then encouraged in Eve as her original sin. More, it is nonsensical to have "pride" in something that homosexuals claim they can neither help, or change, as it is apparently inborn in their telling of things. It's like me being "proud" for being white, or 6'2, or having dark brown hair. The reality is, all of these folks have been brought up to expect we will all celebrate and affirm them. They think it's their right for people to make them feel better about themselves. But people are getting fed up, and not just Christians. And as Christians, we know that no man can have pride, for all have sinned. The only difference is, some are justified in our Lord Jesus Christ, the spotless lamb.

Thanks again @RdJ for your prompt and interesting responses. Indeed, the reason I believe it must have been spoken (rather than heard) in different languages is that there is no need for interpretation of tongues (languages) if it's pre-interpreted for every listener by God as it reaches their ear. Having said that, that is because I believe the tongues described in Acts 2 is the same as the tongues described in 1Cor14 - that is, things spoken in a different language not yet acquired by the speaker - and therefore would need interpretation for those who don't speak that language. If God was doing the interpreting for people, why would you need a gift of interpretting for humans? Understood - they are different gifts - one is a matter of choice of the believer who can "turn it on" any time - the other is a God-given gift for evangelisation. How does interpretation of tongues work in that case then? This is also mentioned in 1Cor14 - I'm wondering whether you think this is still a gift, and how this is acquired by believers?

Hey @RdJ, Thanks for the reply. On question 1, how do you know they were speaking in other languages, and not merely heard in other languages? I don't disagree with you BTW - partly because of what it says in 1Cor about interpretation of tongues as a gift, just wondering what your reasoning is. On question 2, thank you for explaining your view. Therefore you ascribe to the view that the tongues of Acts 2 (languages) were fundamentally different to the tongues of 1Cor14, despite the wording (glōssa) used in the passages being similar?

Dear All, I have two questions on the gift of tongues given to the disciples in pentecost. One of these questions is for any Christian, and one is specifically for pentecostals and others who believe in a modern and more common "gift of tongues". First Question: The first question is: did the disciples actually speak other languages, or were they "heard" in other languages even though they were speaking their own? Acts 2:4: "All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues[a] as the Spirit enabled them." This seems to suggest that the disciples each spoke in a different language. However... Acts 2:5-8: "Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? So was it that a single disciple could speak and be heard in different languages by people (the Holy Spirit acting as a sort of Google Translate between the sound coming out of their mouths and the ears of the listener) - or was it that the disciples actually spoke other languages through the gift of the Holy Spirit. Second Question: As I understand it, Pentecostals and some other "charasmatic" Christians believe in a modern version of this gift of tongues - that any believer at any time can ask for the gift and speak in a "spirit language". My question here is: where is the biblical justification for this? Reading Acts 2, I have never understood it, for several reasons: 1. The disciples were given the gift for a reason: to preach to the many Jews who had gathered for their harvest festival in order to spread the gospel of the coming of the messiah. In other words, it was a gift of evangelism of the Holy Spirit. Why would pentecostal Christians interpret this as God will give you it whenever you like, just for your own personal gratification / a laugh / whatever reason? 2. The disciples were specifically given the gift of speaking / being heard in other languages, ones understandable to humans. This was necessary for the gift's purpose: to preach the gospel of Christ crucified and risen. There is no mention at all of a garbled "spirit language" at Pentecost. Indeed, part of the significance of this event is that it is a reversal of the Tower of Babel, where the languages of people were confused so that they would split and factionalise and be unable to communicate - such a significance would be completed erased were the language impossible for others to understand, or some obscure spirit narrative. I promise I'm not trying to "get at" any believer. I've just never heard anyone defend this belief or answer these questions, and I'm genuinely interested in why people have these beliefs. All the best, Nikolai

Dear @Charlie1988, I think the question is, what does that actually mean? After all, Satan believes in the Lord Jesus Christ. He knows who Jesus is, has met him, talked to him, is fully aware of his mission to save souls from hell, believes in all the miracles he worked in the Bible, etc etc. But Satan cannot be called a Christian. Best N

Dear @Retrobyter, You have made some very good and deep posts, but, let me be honest, I'm not sure what to make of them. There is much about trinitarian theology (but I've got to say, I can't see most people understanding the nuances or needing to believe these in order to be Christian). There is also discussion on the New Covenant, and whether this was made with the whole world of purely Israel (the House of Jacob). Again, I'm unsure as to the relevance of this - or whether the distinction is significant. The New Covenant effectively allowed people to be "grafted on" to Israel - it liberalised the root of Jesse beyond the boundaries of matrilineal descent. But again, I don't see how anyone would have to believe in such a detailed version of Jesus' work to be saved? Thank you for your reply though, I did read it with interest!

Hi @kwikphilly, Fantastic reply. The only thing I would disagree with here is "one must believe we are not worthy of what is beyond this life". I'm not sure you would have to believe in your moral unworthiness for heaven (although clearly, you absolutely must believe that you have sinned, and therefore are in need of salvation). Let me give you an example. Imagine I believed that sin was a metaphysical entity - like a stain on white clothing that I cannot see but am wearing. Imagine I further believed that God, being sinless by His very definition, and this stain of sin cannot possibly mix or be present together, and indeed that anything with this stain cannot possible survive in God's presence. The question of getting rid of sin then becomes a practical issue, not a moral one. It is not that I am not morally worthy of Heaven (though clearly I am less good than God!), it is that I cannot possibly survive in God's presence and home with the stain of sin still on me. Someone who believed this, and therefore committed their life to the care and love of Jesus in order to solve the problem of sin, would surely still be a Christian.

Hey @warrior12 - isn't this a (simpler) restatement of my points 3 - 5?

If I changed it to "3 seperate parts / manifestations" would that be okay? I think, for example, if you don't believe in any manifestation of God other than God the Father, you couldn't be a Christian. That is, that Jesus wasn't really God but was, say, of the same "substance" as God or in another way "divine", you couldn't be Christian.

Oh wow really? Could you link me into an explanation of the original Greek and explanation of that translation @other one?

Dear @RdJ Hmmm. Not sure I agree there. If someone, for example, believed that only God the father existed and had no son, I don't think they could be Christian. Jewish, sure, but not Christian. Agreed. I was sort of assuming we are dealing with an adult. Imagine, for example, that I didn't believe that Jesus was the lamb of God - that I specifically denied that. Would that still be Christian? I guess I was also thinking: are there other things, besides the 5 I wrote that people think are necessary? Dear @Rick-Parker, Obviously agreed. Dear @other one, Agreed. I think it "sounds" simple. But when you actually start asking hypotheticals, it's harder. For example, John 3:16 says that "whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish but have eternal life." But when you look at it, it can't just be intellectual belief. Satan believes in Jesus, knows exactly who Jesus is, met and tempted him to try to disrupt his ministry, and is absolutely convinced of His truthfulness, love and power of His name and blood. But Satan isn't saved or a Christian for sure.

Dear All, I've started this thread out of genuine interest in the response. The question is, what is absolutely mandatory to believe in to be called a "Christian"? Or, are there beliefs that, if you profess that you hold them or do not hold them, we can be certain that you are not in the Body of Christ (the Church)? There are some obvious answers to this for me: 1. That God exists. (yes, I know, this is really basic, but I've met atheists and agnostics who claim to be Christians) 2. That God is made up of 3 persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). 3. That man fell into sin and was seperated from God as a result, that God made a series of covenants with man to save him from sin, and the final covenant is the blood of Jesus Christ, God's son, the perfect and spotless Pesach lamb who died on a cross at Calvary for all of us. 4. That the only known path out of sin, and towards reconcilliation with God, is through uniting ourselves with the sacrifice of Jesus. 5. We do this through professing inwardly and outwardly that Jesus is our Lord and Saviour, and committing to listen to him and follow him, however imperfectly, in all we do. After that it gets hard. There are many other statements in the Nicene and Apostle's creed that add to this theologically. But would I say that, if you disagreed with one of those, you cannot be a Christian? There are epistemological statements you could add: do you believe the Bible? How much of it do you believe? What other sources of truth are there about God, in your opinion? There are statements on sacraments and salvation: have you been, or do you intend to be, baptised in water? Do you believe that baptism is necessary to belong to the Church? etc. There are many moral statements also that one might add to this also - could you be a Christian if you think murder is okay, for example? I would love your opinions on this, and to understand how other people see this question. Best I

I particularly love the "Queers for Palestine" people. I always think: "fancy a visit? You'll only need to buy a one-way ticket!"

Well, there is a "just so happens" there, isn't there? It "just so happens" that in a totally different set of physical laws, one in which radioactivity might not even occur at all, the reactions and things that do happen just so happen to look exactly like the product of millions and billions of years of radioactive decay when transposed to the new physics. That's a very big coincidence, because you really have to go some to look that way. It's not just one or two wee things. It's literally hundreds of, often independent, pieces of evidence that look for all the world like millions of years worth of radioactive decay. All produced, by complete coincidence, in a totally different physical universe for unconnected reasons - and then when the physics flip to our modern universe, perfectly in place to look like the earth is really old. Sounds a bit like someone wanting to make it look that way to me! I dunno man, it's fooled quite a few people eh! Well, it is a physical constant. I mean, no offense, but I read physics at Uni - I ought to know that time is part of physics... Actually, we can know how fast things are moving in space, and there are several ways of doing this, the most popular being measuring "redshift". And, we can measure distances in deep space too, and the measure is through pretty simple optical physics and geometry. Which was my original point exactly. God changed loads of physical constants and laws, and the result is a universe that just to happens to look like a really old one in the new set of laws, but in the old set (if only we knew!) it'd look really young. I know, I get it. And it just so happens, in the new physics, to look exactly like a decay chain, in exactly the same quantities and ratios we would expect, and it just so happens to agree in apparent age with other "so-called" radioactive decay (which never happened it was just some other kind of reaction in the old world that happened much faster). It's all a massive, massive coincidence - nothing to see here! Completely agree. Who knows whether there were even electrons in the old physics right? I'm just saying though, it now *looks* like radiogenic argon of exactly the type that is formed through radioactive decay. And it's now inert, so there's no reason for it to even be on earth other than radioactive decay (obviously unless you know your gnostic truths about the old physics - in which case it all makes sense and is just a huge coincidence what it looks like now). Who knows! All I know is that the zircons as they are now look awfully like they have billions of years worth of radiation tracks and damage. Clearly there was a process, completely unrelated to radiation, in the old physics that formed these in days. Who knows how? But all I need to know is that it's all a big coincidence that the result, in the new physics, looks like millions of years of radiation damage. To hell with my uniformitarian assumptions, o ye of little faith! Cratars form in the direction of the impact. But hey, that's only in the new physics. You never know back then right! It's all good though, there's little point discussing further. My points remain entirely valid.

Dear @RV_Wizard, Thank you for your interesting and well-thought-through reply. You are right, there is much we are not told. And it's almost impossible to say how uniform the tree rings would be in Eden. I suppose my point in bringing up river varves was to imagine whether several independent lines of evidence could point to a false conclusion about Eden. In the case of varves, as it happens, I don't believe there would be any in the rivers coming out of Eden. Varves are layers of annual or bi-annual sedimentary deposition - often noticed because they are different colours depending on the contents of sedimented layed down in Autumn or Winter vs Spring or Summer. Since there had been zero seasons prior, and no organic matter to change sedimentary deposition, there should not be varves in the rivers coming out of Eden. But if there were varves, and the tree rings in Eden were not uniform, there should be no correlation between them in terms of climatic analysis. Because this would point to a false history of climate that quite simply never existed or happened. As you see in my post above to Dad2, I have pointed out many different, and wholly independent, lines of evidence pointing to a very old earth with various events happening in that earth, and all of them agree. For me, there is so much evidence pointing to the self-same conclusion that I can draw only one of two conclusions: that the earth is very old, or that God has deliberately fabricated a lot of corresponding lines of evidence in this regard. Since God does not "fabricate" anything, the former must be true. Correct. Although a day to God can be rather longer than a day to us. But I do agree that God's own word is the basis for our week. Indeed, agreed. However, 24-hour periods (what we think of as days) are due to the earth's rotation and the relative position of the sun to earth. But the sun didn't exist until day 4. God may think of days in a very different way - or may simply be using days as a human analogy that has very different meaning for a divine being who does not live on a planet under a sun, but in Heaven, and is the source of eternal light. I only think that's the case if you take it fully literally, from a human point of view. Correct, exactly my point. Nor are we entitled to know everything from God. He can, essentially, do as he pleases. Indeed.