Category: Ministry

The Book of Enoch

Enoch is not Scripture. It's not even Apocrypha. It seems kind of cultish, actually, like a Book of Mormon and Koran. I hope nobody {}lays it as [a] foundation, as it's not pure, but rather empty and kind of evil. I've known many people ruined by it. It's not good teaching, but is a cult text. If you want other books to study, try the Apostolic Fathers or the Old Testament Apocrypha. Or Martyr's Mirror by Thielman Van Braght. None of that is scripture, but it's better teaching than Enoch, which is completely void.

The White Rider

He came with God's perfect law
And left the whole world stunned.
He came, and dazzled, and grew to all
A man who was God's bastard son.

Beelzebub, a Satyr red, 
In hoofed haunches stormed
He, like Emperor of Rome, it seemed
Made play like he was stormed. 

Their two armies did collide
And piles were the bodies made.
One man with an old, old story
Was wise to them, and was a saint.

He saw the White Rider with his reel
Take his hordes through the country gate---
Two great bastions of that Roman World
Would do battle, and many men's a mortal fate.

For neither to the left or right
Is what Christ had told us that day.
Do not fall from the narrow road
And enter through the wicket gate.

1 =/= 2

1 can never equal 2. That's impossible. Except to say that 2 inches equals 5.08 centimeters, but there's a conversion formula for that. We need to relearn number theory, as a society. So we don't end up making 1=2, as it never will.

[If] you subtracted out a similar term, and unbalanced the equation, [or something like it] the equality has to be equal the whole time, for it to work. We used to know that... it was the whole premise of my High School Education. I think the Internet made people braindead.

[T]his is a qualm I have with the internet, that it's literally making people forget some of the most basic things.

{}Some people try to make that point, [like in common core math, or they call math a "Western Concept"] these days. It's a strange world we live in.

I don't know... I was taught the equation has to always be equal, hence the term equation. You see where you reduced it, it's no longer equal.

In fact, in language that's how we have knowledge, too, is when empirical facts start equating, or things in the real world start being described. Like Geometry. Not many people relate math back to geometry, but that's where our entire knowledge of number and algebra comes from, is studying shapes, and deriving axioms of logic around it. And in fact, the evidence for the Bible does this very well, in archeology, ethics and also psychology.

Tatian

[W]e have almost the entire corpus of the Gospels in the Diatesarron, and in them, from at the latest 180AD, we see statements of Christ's divinity. And he was a heretic who wrote it, but they're all quotations from the Gospels, directly. We can safely assume the Gospels are 100% perfect. He was trying to unify them, when we need them in those four separate sources, to account their witness, but it's all there, and early. And we know from that, the Gospels are highly established, as they're being referenced to, to compile the document. And Mark is the least quoted of all four.

Papias is clearly relating the “Elders” to the “Apostles” so when he qualifies “The Elder John” he can only mean the Apostle John, as why include that epithet otherwise, and not for Aristion, whom he calls both “Disciples”. Other Fragments relating Church History show that Papias may have dictated the Book of John from the very same. And Papias also authenticates the episode of the woman caught in adultery.

The Holy Bible

No Santa Clause dawns its pages
But a truth about life, without illusions.
People suffer, and especially the good.
There are very few happy portraits
In the holy scripture, but rather mourning
At every page, and war... even love is strife.
"Vanity vanity", thus let me mourn here
A little while, and hate my life.
So I may enter into a better Earth 
And better Heaven, where I can have
My sweet and fat; and holy laughter.

On Calvinism

We're nothing without Grace. We need God's power in order to do good. We can make distinctions about what "Choice" means, but God foreknew what our choices would be. He sealed us according to His predestined election of grace. That's not to say that man has no choice--in fact, pure free will and pure determinism both can exist in accordance with each other--God's divine knowledge is omniscience. He knows everything, and every choice we're going to make. So, He predestined us according to divine election. 

However, "Once saved always saved" is also not true. There's people who taste of Spiritual Fruits and fall away, and they can never be reconciled. There are those who are written into the book of life, and are then again blotted out. There's also lost sheep and prodigal sons, who being blotted out, can be written back into the Book of Life.

But, God knows who that is, already. It's just our desire, to ask and fear God enough to write our names, and seal us, and predestine us. And to him who knocks, it shall be answered.

Which gets to total depravity. We have no power to be good, in of ourselves. Only the situations God creates can keep us out of hell. We'd be steamrolled by Satan if God didn't restrain Him. So, all our righteousness proceeds from Grace, and nothing else. And through our understanding of Christ's teachings, we move closer to Him, but through loss of desire for fear, we lose our reward. But, God knows beforehand who those who walk with Him in truth are.

So... it's hard to say. It's beyond our own understanding, but truthfully, as light and shadow exist, so does free will and determinism.