So this brings up a couple of questions, if someone says Jesus is Lord and are saying this only because of the Holy Spirit in them then how are they not to be considered a brother and treated as such?

Secondly if the Holy Spirit is gone and I find no text in the Bible to back that up, how can we even say Jesus is Lord and not make 1 Cor 12:3 to be false?

This was a clear opertunity for him to teach her that she must return to her first husband but he did not.

So the question is why the hardline CoC teach something that apparently Jesus himself did not teach?!

Ezra 10 if you do not know involves the Jewish people sending the foreign wives and the children of those marriages away. It was done to maintain the religious purity and the racial purity of the Jewish people.

Because there is no clear answer to what to do with someone in a second marriage the hardline CoC have decided that Ezra 10 is the example we must follow and that all marriages except the first are unauthorized.

But consider this, Jesus called the woman’s 5 husbands by the name husband, he did not say that 4 of the 5 where not authorized.

So Jesus had the perfect chance to teach what the hardline CoC teach but he did not.

Could it be that the keeper of the perfect truth have a few warts after all and are simply a small splinter group?

It would seem so!

What I read shocked and surprised me but then again it should not have, lets take a look at the scriptures and how they put them together and see it from another view that is not driven by being the toughest pharisee on the block mindset:

Here is the link to the full text so that I can’t be accused of altering the text: http://roysecitycoc.org/divorce_remarriage.htm

First I agree marriage should only end of the other has committed adultery, however I also know that Jesus said if you think it, you have already done it so keep that in mind when you read conditions for something!

Mathew 5:28But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

While the greek word for adultery and fornication are different words, they mean the same basic thing, violation of the sexual side of the marriage. So does the partner have grounds for divorce in the case of a porn addiction? I would answer yes they do since God’s standard is the mind itself per Jesus comments.

Now to the crux of the issue, the CoC hypercons believe you must leave your current spouse and return to a prievious partner based on Ezra 10, here is Ezra 10 in total:

Ezra 10:1 While Ezra was praying and confessing, weeping and throwing himself down before the house of God, a large crowd of Israelites—men, women and children—gathered around him. They too wept bitterly. 2 Then Shecaniah son of Jehiel, one of the descendants of Elam, said to Ezra, “We have been unfaithful to our God by marrying foreign women from the peoples around us. But in spite of this, there is still hope for Israel. 3 Now let us make a covenant before our God to send away all these women and their children, in accordance with the counsel of my lord and of those who fear the commands of our God. Let it be done according to the Law. 4 Rise up; this matter is in your hands. We will support you, so take courage and do it.”

5 So Ezra rose up and put the leading priests and Levites and all Israel under oath to do what had been suggested. And they took the oath. 6 Then Ezra withdrew from before the house of God and went to the room of Jehohanan son of Eliashib. While he was there, he ate no food and drank no water, because he continued to mourn over the unfaithfulness of the exiles.

7 A proclamation was then issued throughout Judah and Jerusalem for all the exiles to assemble in Jerusalem. 8 Anyone who failed to appear within three days would forfeit all his property, in accordance with the decision of the officials and elders, and would himself be expelled from the assembly of the exiles.

9 Within the three days, all the men of Judah and Benjamin had gathered in Jerusalem. And on the twentieth day of the ninth month, all the people were sitting in the square before the house of God, greatly distressed by the occasion and because of the rain. 10 Then Ezra the priest stood up and said to them, “You have been unfaithful; you have married foreign women, adding to Israel’s guilt. 11 Now make confession to the LORD, the God of your fathers, and do his will. Separate yourselves from the peoples around you and from your foreign wives.”

12 The whole assembly responded with a loud voice: “You are right! We must do as you say. 13 But there are many people here and it is the rainy season; so we cannot stand outside. Besides, this matter cannot be taken care of in a day or two, because we have sinned greatly in this thing. 14 Let our officials act for the whole assembly. Then let everyone in our towns who has married a foreign woman come at a set time, along with the elders and judges of each town, until the fierce anger of our God in this matter is turned away from us.” 15 Only Jonathan son of Asahel and Jahzeiah son of Tikvah, supported by Meshullam and Shabbethai the Levite, opposed this.

16 So the exiles did as was proposed. Ezra the priest selected men who were family heads, one from each family division, and all of them designated by name. On the first day of the tenth month they sat down to investigate the cases, 17 and by the first day of the first month they finished dealing with all the men who had married foreign women.
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The bottom part of Chapter ten simply lists the guilty of the acts above, now does this apply to New Testament scripture? Frankly it absolutely does not! First let us consider the issues they were dealing with, purity of the race and religion:

Ezra 9:1 After these things had been done, the leaders came to me and said, “The people of Israel, including the priests and the Levites, have not kept themselves separate from the neighboring peoples with their detestable practices, like those of the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians and Amorites. 2 They have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and their sons, and have mingled the holy race with the peoples around them. And the leaders and officials have led the way in this unfaithfulness.”

In the above  the issues they were dealing with are purity of race and religion, note that it speaks of detestable practices when talking about the foreigners , thus we see they are in violation of the Jewish law, if not those people would not have been spoken of in that manner, thus we can conclude they are not praticing Jews!  We have a situation where the purity of the Jewish faith and the race itself are in danger. God told them not to do this and they have done it and decide they should return the foreign people to their former lands.

Ah you say see, there ya go, the hypercon CoC are right on the mark, but wait, if that is true then why are not all interracial marriages dissolved since the race of each would be polluted would it not? Acts 10 clearly shows that race is no longer a factor in God’s eyes since he accepts believers who are gentiles. So race is no longer an issue to us as believers. How about religious purity? Do CoC preachers tell their people to leave others who are not CoC? The Jews sent non-jews away, since the hypercon CoC see themselves as the only Christians should they not also do the same just as the Jews did? Well no scripture says we are to stay with people who are non-believers if they will stay, we do so in the hope of winning them to Christ according to 1 Cor .

So to restate, Ezra 10 is a result of racial and religious purity, it is shown in Ezra 10.  Clearly God accepts gentiles ie. non-Jews into the family per Acts 10, clearly we are told to stay with non-believers so that religous purity is no longer valid per 1 Cor 7:10-16, thus both reasons for sending away a spouse are gone!

Ah but what do we do about those second marriages? The answer is nothing, God does not say anything about a second marriage in scripture except in death, but Jesus clearly forgave an adulteress woman, so do we raise remarriage to the level of blasphemy against the Spirit and make it an unforgiveable sin when God does not? After all in the hypercon world you go to hell for staying with that second spouse because you are an adulterer. So in Hypercon CoC if you go and kill your spouse you can still go to Heaven if you don’t and die first you go to hell if the marriage disolved for non-adultry reasons!

I hope you see the two real reasons that the Jews sent their wives and offspring away, racial purity and religious purity, are canceled out in the New Testament. Thus to force people to return to former spouses are contradicting scripture in the new testament and applying Old Testament out of context, there is nothing about any of those people being a second marriage, so first marriages were also returned to their former lands!.  But this shows perfectly the pharisee mindset of the hypercon, what do we do about this second marriage it is not really covered in the New Testament to give a clear answer, wait lets take this example about race and religious purity and apply it to nulify the marriages and return to the original covenant. That will get us out of the bind we have and allow us to give an answer and continues our pharisical walk in front of others!

Jesus said that if you commit adultery you have given grounds for divorce, if one or both people have remarried they have had sexual relations with another person and thus have given the grounds for divorce. So how did they get here and connect these disconnected dots? My guess is the need to give an answer drove them to this, thus if I have built a doctrine that is focused on giving an answer to prove I am right then to not have a clear answer to something like divorce and a second marriage is clearly not going to cut it when you have a theology that is based in having all the answers directly from the original church. To simply say I do not know makes this theology nul and void, thus that is not an option, it is better to crush others then to admit you do not know for sure!

Contrast this:
Mathew 11:29Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
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Luke 11:46Jesus replied, “And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them.

Now go tell the wife of a man who just left because of hypercon coc teaching and explain to her children that light burden again! I am beginning to understand why Jesus cleared the temple with a whip!

2 Cor 4:1-6:¹Therefore, since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart. ²Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. ³And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. ⁴The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. ⁵For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. ⁶For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,”^[a]made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

Now how is it that an organization who uses hidden camera’s to record people for rebroadcast can claim to have renounced deceptive ways? Or would this fall under the category of righteous Judgment?

I’ve been real busy with a major project so my posts have been few, I hope to be a more frequent poster soon!

First what I agree with Mr. Robertson on, 2.6 million to teach a faith based state sponsored religion that was formed by science is just as wrong as us forcing Christ down the throats of the children without the parents consent.  Especially when other area’s of the state budget are being effected. The Museum is a want not a need and we need to be in need mode now.

I firmly believe that the holes in Darwinism and The Big Bang should be talked about openly.  We have no actual complete set of evolutionary evidence of a move of a species to another form, Ape to man for instance there is no clear link. Big Bang there is no firm explanation of where the stuff comes from that blew up. I have heard all kinds of theory’s and a theory is a guess in reality since none of it can actually be duplicated in a lab.

Secondly Mr. Robertson is correct, there is no separation of Church and State in the Constitution, anyone who has actually read the thing will know that, this shows you how many have believed the lie that has been taught by the atheists. Thomas Jefferson and all the founding father’s goal in regards to religion was to make sure that the State could not control and dictate to religion, that there would be no state sponsored religion. Evolution and the Big Bang are in fact the things that are unconstitutional. We have allowed theory or a guess to be taught as facts to the people in public schools. Both sides of the isle should have their day in the class to present their views and evidence as to what they believe and why. As it stands now the Science Religion has stopped all negative speech that would counter what they believe in their faith to be true, this is in fact a religion, not science! The bottom line is you have to have faith there is no God as much as you have to have faith there is a God. I know I was once an atheist!

Now to the parts I disagreed with. Johnny while chastising the caller who falsely claimed separation of church and state or shortly their after, once again blamed denominations as the root cause of atheism, but lets examine this.

He pointed to the Pope to say that others have fallen away from Christ because of him, and I will assume that if we all would only turn to CoC teachings that all atheism would die in his mind. However in another show this week he also told about losing 2/3s of his members who left for various reasons that he did not detail , and I know for a fact that one of his main people who used to be on TV left him and the faith totally and does not believe in the Bible as the truth!  Now how is it that he claims to have the answer when the evidence shows that he is in fact part of the problem it appears. If this were not true then would there not be such a high attrition rate? Yes I know some seed falls argument, but I also know that much of this came from Mr. Robertson’s my way or the hell way approach to theology.

The control issues are rooted in a childhood that was out of his control, when a child feels unsafe and worries they tend to grow up and try to control the environment around them, this I believe is part of what drives this my way is the only way approach when clearly there were differences in Paul’s teach and the council, they in fact were teaching differently on food issues. Go get yourself a good historical time line and follow the books as they were written instead of where they are placed in the Bible and you will see that after the council’s letter about not eating food served to idols that Paul is teaching that Idols are nothing and the food is fine except you be with someone who does believe it is important then you don’t eat it!

Also to claim that denominations are the root cause of atheism is a pointless comment, you can no more prove that someone is atheist because of denominations then you can prove man came from an ape. I know of someone who does not believe in God of the Bible because of the control issues that came from the environment she was raised in. It was not the church version that caused it, it was the graceless attitude of those who were in the building, who threatened them with the wrath of God etc. I believe that the hypercon  CoC would have the same effect on them if not more so. Since the attitude and actions would be the same, the letter of the law instead of the spirit of the law, they would have been in the same boat they are now and clearly some of the 200 who left the local CoC are also in that same boat. That’s because the letter kills and the spirit brings life!

Also he made a clear comment about how we need to take the Bible literally, however in some of his shows he himself has taken passages and placed different meanings on them based on figures of speech, now I am no bible scholar but isn’t calling for literal view of the Bible while teaching parts of it to be figurative speech hypicritical in nature? And since an Atheist would apply critical thinking would they not see this contradiction and be more confused or worse even more set in their thinking against the Bible?

Finaly a small matter, one called he knew named Mr. Carter called up to challenge him to a debate, he flatly refused because Mr. Carter does not have the credentials to debate him???? What PHD does Mr. Roberson have himself? And I really thought the process of debate was to show false teaching, could it be that unless the debate allows Mr. Robertson to attack another Church or religious group he is not interested.  So based on this information it would seem the debates are not about false teaching but simply a way to cause division in other bodies of religious people. And please note I consider Atheist to practice a form of faith thus they also are religious, believing themselves to be their only God.

But it was a funny show!

I find it interesting that this photo appears to show a rocket fired from inside the city and really near what appears to be appartment buildings. The Islamic groups have consistantly used civilians as targets in Israel, why is it that the press does not ask them the hard questions, like “Why do you place your military stores near population centers”, instead we here over and over how the Israelies have killed civilians etc.

This game has to be stopped once and for all and the press are really to blame for the deaths of civilians in this conflict. If Hamas and groups like that did not get great press from the deaths of their civilians while hiding their weapons near those civilians they would stop using them as shields at least for the good press.

This game that gets civilains used as political pawns is wrong and must be stopped once and for all!

I have not had time to go through all his video but after I followed a link from the Knight Shift post I found the 5th in the series, I listened long enough to hear him speak about Jesus not being real, and that Paul never talked about Jesus as human.

David Mills is either speaking falsely on purpose or he missed the book of Romans where Paul talks about Jesus resurrection, something you can’t do unless you have died, and you can’t do that unless you were alive. Paul also speaks about Jesus coming from the line of David, David was human also.

So it appears that Atheism itself is finally becoming a fully man made religion that is going to ignore facts to grow itself. And because public schools teach the atheist’s line of thinking in the area of the universe and creation they have in fact violated the constitution and have put in place a state sponsored religion of faith  Let them show us an experiment where they bring one element into existence from nothing purely through natural events.

They can not, but today the Big Bang as it was called originally is taught as fact even though they can not recreate it.

Our children are being taught a religion that is state sponsored and because scientist have a bitter root against the church they have done everything they can to silence intelligent design in schools.

First and what is very important is that churches of Christ does not capitalize Churches, this simple common sense fact rules out it being used as a name of a church or churches, I fully believe that God would know how to capitalize in English as any other language.

Secondly ekklhsiai is the word the passage uses for Churches in the greek, the following passages also use this version of the word:

Now what I find interesting is the usage of churches of the Gentiles! Along with the churches that meet in the homes of Aquila and Prisca, both passages do not list churches of Christ nor mention his name when talking about the church, thus based on this additional information from scripture is Romans 16:16 really the name of the church, the answer is no, but if you wish to answer yes that it is in fact the official name of The Church, then The Church of the Gentiles is also an official name, it does after all use the same form of the greek word for church. Or we can take the passage for what it really is a greeting from all those who belong to Christ who make up The Church. And of course there is that small matter of the Holy Kiss that somehow seems to not be an important command simply because we find it unmanly in our western version of Christianity, where does it say in the Bible we no longer are to do that greeting? Oh but I am nit picking to bring it up arn’t I, but who decides what is a nit that is picked and what is a command that if broken sends us to hell?

Finally I wish to point out a later passage Romans 16:17 I urge you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Keep away from them. 18For such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. By smooth talk and flattery they deceive the minds of naive people. 19Everyone has heard about your obedience, so I am full of joy over you; but I want you to be wise about what is good, and innocent about what is evil.
Now for those in the Church of Christ Denomination who think I am picking on them only, let me say the above is for all people to hear and heed, one only has to pick up a copy of church history and you will read over and over where splits take place and power is struggled over involving various issues. Did God really intend for this to be, I believe not, he did call for us to live in unity and this unity will not come from simply kicking out anyone who does not believe as we do but unity comes in living with each others faults and weakness and this is the matter that the church and it’s people have forgotten over time.

Imposing ones will and beliefs is something for the Islamic’s to do, not for Christians, we grow and concure not from opressing all those who oppose us but by loving each other in agape the same agape that hung on the cross and called for their sins to not be held against them because they did not k now what they were doing!

Where is Agape? And how is your Agape meter today? Do you love your enemies and pray for God to bless them, do you give them a drink of water in his name? Do you feed them? Or do you simply kick them out of your organizations and ignore them when passing them on the street?

I am asurred of unity in a church of one, but God called on us to live in relationship with love being the highest goal!

So my question is simply this, how is the KJV an inspired translation or for that matter any of the translations from the original languages since the Holy Spirit’s ability to guide us is gone and we are left to are own metality to desern the truth?

If the Holy Spirit’s involvment with people is finished then anyone can translate the Bible and it will be as accuate as what we currently have in the King’s English!

I personally read all the translations when I am researching passages and then go to the Greek meanings of key words to maximise the ability to know and understand the meaning and then allow the Holy Spirit to guide me towards the real truth.

Especially when we all know that Johnny was very happy to have someone to argue with!

I’ll go through the debate and comment as time permits this week.