Works and Grace

How is it possible that a Quadratic equation has two answers? There's multiple dimensions to these questions. I think Pilgrim's Progress does a good job at explaining the Calvinist tradition. You can be destroyed if you fall into sin. But, the seal is there to perfect your faith, and give you safe passage. Christ foreknew Judas Iscariot was the one who was going to betray [H]im. But Judas walked with [H]im the whole time, didn't he? But in that time he walked with Christ, Judas was counted among the number of Apostles.

The Letter Kills

What people fail to understand about scripture, is that if you take the Bible literally, it will grind you to dust. If you build theology around the Bible's prophecies, and make them literal prophecies, you'll be ground to dust. If you take the teachings of Christ, and work the prophecies in your life, seeing that you fulfill them, you'll be ground to dust.

The point of the Bible is to give a moral law, and to detail Christ's satisfaction of that Law, so we wouldn't have to. So we could have room for failure, and disappointment, and discouragement, while He did not. And while Christ walks through the Path, He is our salvation. He walks through the trials for us, and gives us our light yoke.

The Yoke is not light because we are allowed to sin, no my brethren. The "Saved by Faith and Not Works" does not mean we can live life as a sinner. And no protestant pastor had ever preached such a thing, except for blatant heretics at the fringes of the Church, who probably fill up congregations numbering in the Tens of Thousands but that is not the Gospel. You are not allowed to be a sinner. The yoke is light because our conscience can be unburdened from all sin, present, past and future, and we can walk unspotted and free in every action we do because of a good conscience.

You are also not allowed to neglect charitable giving. Or to visit the captive and unburden them, you are not to neglect. But, you are also not to neglect the Sabbath--resting on God's work and mercy. You are to enjoy the fruits of your labor, not force yourself to do good, but to do good because it is there.

A famous moral conundrum was brought up, that one is drowning far away, and it is your moral obligation to go find him. Heaven forbid it, let the one nearby, who has the work and by grace and rest finds this drowning person, save him. Not some far away heretic looking for good works. You are not to prowl around, looking for good to do like a Super Hero. None of us, even with superordinate powers of grace, can do such a thing. We are rather, there to in the moment do our passive good works, and cheer up the broken, give money to the homeless we find while upon our walk of rest, and visit the prisoner because they are in prison, and we know who they are.

Yes, some of us are called to deal directly with the Prisoner and the Homeless, because we have been given into those circles that allowed us. But, "I could do neither good nor evil." The person in the position of Grace, may be in a position of weakness where they can do no good. And such a person is saved. But, they do not do evil, either. But, furthermore, the same person with grace is a light unto others, and does great things of charitable love and kindness. They do not tempt you, they do not gossip or slander you, they do not try to knock over your progress or trample over your work. They are a blessing on those whom they meet, and an encouragement, and a divine sentence of grace upon all they meet, and not filled with slanders and cursers, but with encouragements and blessings. Not judging either, but encouraging one another in kind words.

But, if there is a sin, the brother reprimands it gently. Not with harsh words, or hatred, but with love and kindness. Because the true Christian it torments them that their enemies will end up in hell. It does not comfort them. And remember prophecies set brothers against one another. The letter of the Law tells you to hate your brother, and wish evil upon them. While the Spirit tells you to rest on God' s work alone, and not take the Bible as a literal story, but rather as an emblematic story, handed down with a tradition and apostolic ministry of succession of the Word of God, and right interpretation.

We are not to accomplish salvation for ourselves or anyone else. If a prophet, and someone scorns your words, they walk away. They shake the dust off their feet, not to make their enemies as a heap like Sodom and Gomorrah, but to bring them to repentance and truth and justice. For, if I smack my shoes before a pastor, it is not to destroy him or cause him fear, but to cause him to recognize that he is in error.

Though, it is never error to reprimand or caution of sin, as the heresy today is to enable man to sin, and to increase lawlessness. And this "Saved by grace and not works" enables the heretic to follow their vain lusts and passions, and walk in accordance to what is filthy and disgusting, rather than the truth. Surely, Paul says such a thing, but this is why you do not take the Bible literally. There is a tradition handed down in interpretation, which only the elect will find, and hold in their hearts, as the pearls would be trampled elsewhere. And then, the condemned, even hearing the truth, deny it for their hearts are pecked with the leaven of the world.

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.