On Literally Believing the Bible

 I think it's physically His blood and body. I'm a firm believer in Transubstantiation. And I think many saved Christians were saved believing the Old Testament wasn't literal. Augustine wrote a chapter about that in his confessions. The same arguments have been circulating since the beginning, and there are legitimate expressions of the faith that don't include literally believing Genesis. In my personal opinion, I think God's omnipotent, so what of it? He formed Eve from Adam's rib and turned water into wine. Why can't God create the world in 6 days, and also 6,000,000,000,000 years? Like, a computer programmer will create their world onscreen differently than the player experiences it in a video game. Or a painter, too, creates the painting in a different order than we experience it. It's no different for God and Adam and Eve. And the Flood actually has a lot of evidence backing it up, that it actually happened.

Threefold Apologetic Argument for Christ

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Murder, Rape Robbery and Theft are not constant. [...]But, I think the argument for Christ’s ethics is a little more nuanced than “Morals must need God to exist.” It’s that God’s morals work, that’s the argument. Not that they need God. And then the fact that morals aren’t agreed upon, and many people suffer for it, that’s why there needs to be an ultimate judge.

Personally, I think morals are self evident, and I think they’ll be discovered to be so some day, based on objective metrics of how sound a society was.

But, with the argument from design, I was just musing on the geometry of Calculus the other day, how Sine reduces to Pi because it’s based on the radius of a circle—like radians—and the area underneath the shape can describe real things, which on an XY graph shows quadratic natures—and that the Rate of Change is used to describe the slight nuances of a curve. And the fact that all of this works, and number describes it exactly, down to the very slightest fraction or even imaginary number—as that has its uses in engineering too—it’s just obvious to me there is design. How does number exist? It’s a law, and the same law of ratios describes everything. Geometry relates to different things in the world, even Gravity can be described by Parabolas on a Quadratic graph.

I mean… to me it’s not about “Fine Tuning” but about the language of the universe. That things exist in real substance. And that’s what my faith is based on, is that substance. That there is real stuff beneath everything, and it allows us to understand our world in comprehensible ways. And I think that language proves there’s a designer. How I get to Christ, is His ethics, which seems to have been proven time and time again, and they seem more common sense to me than anyone else’s. Christ was wiser than 10 sages and that’s enough for me to believe in Him.

And then you add the fact that the Gospels can be established as witnesses, and you can see Christ actually did fulfill Messianic Prophecy. That’s too much evidence for me. Personally. But, my faith isn’t based in blindness, but rather the evidence of things unseen, and the substance of things hoped for.

The Protestant Position Explained Clearly and Unequivocally

Protestants are not saying we ought not do good works. You totally misunderstand the Protestant view. Christ is the Sabbath, and we're to rest on Him alone for our righteousness. Ultimately, that rest leads us into a pure conscience, that is passively enabled to do righteous works and charity. So, we'll desire to do good, rather than force ourselves into it. It's a passive hunger and thirst, not an active Hypocritical performance.

Heaven and Hell

 The restoration of our captivity is in heaven. The Bible places Heaven---and also Hell---on Earth's Cosmology to show that it's real. But all those verses in Ezekiel and Isaiah about our prosperity being restored fully are about heaven. You either are righteous, and are restored through Salvation, or are wicked, and destroyed. That's what the Prophecies mean. And our rebuilding--Nehemiah and Ezra--begin on Earth after the moment of Salvation starts, and our conversion.

A Sermon on my Righteousness

I've written copiously on my sin. This way people don't venerate me beyond what they should. They ought to resist me, and what I say. But, through power of persuasion--not coercion--be converted to not my word, but God's word.

Certainly, twice convicted on misdemeanors, some for flamboyantly rotten things, if one wishes to have my righteousness, I would wonder to what madness they possessed. Do they wish to spend six years on probation, ten years on a sex offender registry, and five months in prison? Rightly, I don't believe anyone could want my righteousness, therefore I ought not be venerated. And I've been known to cuss frequently as of late, and sleep too much. If you want my righteousness, you're a lunatic... but none can say I'm lawless either.

However, I'm a conduit to the Master. I point in His direction. I am not His mouthpiece, but a compass pointing to Him. I say the Bible must be accompanied by faith, and knowledge of the LORD. And of course I believe in the divine hierarchy of Teacher, Deacon, Elder, Pastor, Bishop, Prophet and Apostle. I think the apostolic faith is unique, and is starting to be understood these days once again, as the world falls deeper into sin.

I venerate no man on earth. But, rather, my Father in heaven. I venerate no Christ, save the Christ Who lived 2,000 years ago, died and was raised from the Dead. And in our resurrection we shall be just like Him. Not as corruptible man, but a new creature, with the full incapacity to commit any sin or trespass.

It is not my righteousness I elevate, but the man Christ's, who saved my soul, died upon a Roman Cross, was buried with sinners, born of the Virgin Mary, and when He returns, will return upon the clouds of heaven, and set His foot upon the Mount Olivet, and there it shall part and the gross abomination shall be tormented in the fires which proceed out of it.

That is my doctrine.

On the Rapture

1 Thessalonians 4:17 G726 "Harp" in "Harpazo" means to "away" or be carried away. "Harpazo" means to be taken up, or carried away up, and snatched up. Christ says He'll come like a thief in the night. And then it says "we shall forever be with Him in light." G2017 But the actual word in G726 is "harpagEsometha"αρπαγησομεθα  which literally means "we are raptured." So it does talk about the rapture in the Bible.

On Christian Law

I've never seen people righteous without faith. I see so much awful sin, and hear about it, I'm crawling with disgust and anger and restlessness. It's not even that people have good hearts; they're abominable without the LORD's righteousness. And history proves that, too. Even the religions such as Hinduism and Islam and Buddhism are saturated with Christ (As the colonists exported the religion's ethics to them), and that's why they can sometimes have something like righteousness. Without God's law, the whole world would suffer.

Science as the Cause for Mass Death

Mmm…. I don’t think so. About 600,000,000 people were killed by regimes that forbid the practice of religion, and their justification for it is that Religion contradicts science. Not to mention, the racism of the Nazis was founded on Evolution, and the cause of the first world war was probably due to the advances of technology we saw, as people were kind of not coping with it that well, and that frustration led to the outbreak of the war. And the Holocaust was due to Scientific racism, which I outlined, so the entire cause of World War II was due to Evolutionary Biology.

But certainly, you’d be right that Religious Dictatorships aren’t good. As religion has bad sides, as well. That’s well documented. But, in the grand scheme of things, more people were killed in the name or cause of science than any other.

On My Sin and Theology

I'm like a hybrid Protestant and Catholic. I get my Old Testament from Baptists, my New Testament from Lutherans, and my Creativity and Aesthetics from Catholics. My aunt was a Catholic, and she taught me the value of beauty (but so did my school, when they brought in paintings to look at). I [...] don't answer to a church authority. I'm kind of like a monk, that I detail a lot of interesting proof the Bible is true. I don't fit well into systems. I'm not a Rogue Priest, as my authority comes from Christ. But, I'm a friend to Catholics and Protestants, and would like the religion to be strong into the future, which I have a feeling if it takes certain directions that's not going to happen. I'm afraid the great falling away will be in my lifetime, and I'm called to preach against sin. Like Christ called Herod a fox, like you said in another sermon, we have to hold our governments accountable for the evil they do. But, we cannot accept LGBTQ as a church. We just cannot. We also have to understand Jesus wasn't necessarily someone who was fascinated with high ritual, or doing everything according to the book. And Christ liked to use insignificant losers like me. Paul was a murderer, so was Moses, David committed three unpardonable sins in the world's eyes, rape, adultery and murder. I mean, the whole world can be against me, but I know God is for me. I didn't do anything like that. But, in the world's eyes I did awful things. Like, I think if there's going to be a Bible verse written about me, it's that my sins were exposed, so the world rejected me, but they were none of them uncommon among men. It's just the flamboyant nature of some of them... it's like, I know what my sins are. I know I sinned. It's just, most people's sins nobody knows about. How much murder is in the average person's heart or adultery? It's just mine could not be hidden.

Why I Believe

For me belief in God is an acceptance of a proposition of descriptive facts. 1. The Moral Evidence that Jesus taught, 2. The Physical Evidence that proves the Bible, 3. The textual evidence within the Bible itself that predicts Jesus and 4. The natural conscience of man. And 5. The coherent nature of our universe--which is what Newton described, and when he discovered Gravity everyone thought was proof God exists, because the universe had actual laws that determined it. 6. The light that shines off of a person who has God, as that's called Shekinah Glory (וְשָׁכַנְתִּי) in the Bible. And 7. The fruits of the Spirit.

Morality just is. Like Thales' Theorem. Morality exists, it's on our consciences and obeying it produces the best quality life not only for you, but for everyone around you. However, there've been societies where rape and murder was perfectly legal, that lasted for at least a millennia. That's not why Rape and Murder are wrong.