Emergent Rob Bell *Merged*

[corby]

This is becoming too personal - when my motives and status start to become the issue it's obviously time to move on... I'll not attempt to refute your position of spiritual superiority over me...

Actually, it's got nothing to do with spiritual superiority, at least for me. I'm more concerned than anything else. I'm concerned that you have been sucked into this and are spreading it to others. I think you have been deceived like a Mormon or JW have been and I'm concerned. (And no, I'm not calling Bell a cult leader. At least not yet.)

My hope is that I have made a Biblically based argument and not one based on my opinion. My goal was to discuss the issue on a Biblical level and not a philosophical one. Look back on some of my posts and checking with others I think I have done so. If you have felt attacked by me I'm sorry for that. My concern is as one brother to another brother who is hanging out with the wrong crowd.

[Leialoha]

The "All truth is God's truth" is a pop culture phrase that clicks well with those who think that the evangelical church has been to tight and close-minded.

I agree with Harley that it means what he is saying it means. I say, what is the point in that little punch phrase that sounds so deep and philosophical?

Here is where it leads to:

My pastor and I had this very discussion (he loves Rob Bell and MClaren and sometimes I think he spends more time quoting them then having any original thoughts himself). He adheres to this thinking, even when it is very illogical. One gal in our church read from a book by New Age goddess Marriane Williamson which sounded to the biblically illiterate mind like that whole worldly sloppy truth that sounds like more of god's truth. When I opposed having a woman's book read from the pulpit that was basically written through her by her spirit guide, I was given this stuff about "all truth is God's truth".

Here is the quote that was read, which brought oooohs and aaahhs from the crowd of 300 people who saw God's truth in Williamson's new age spirit guide's words:


Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others

:puke [perfect situation for this disgusting smilie]

Can you see how distorted this is compared to the refreshing spring we could be drinking from?


1I waited patiently for the LORD;
And He inclined to me and heard my cry.
2He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay,
And He set my feet upon a rock (E)making my footsteps firm.
3He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God;
Many will see and fear
And will trust in the LORD.
4How blessed is the man who has made the LORD his trust,
And has not turned to the proud, nor to those who lapse into falsehood.
5Many, O LORD my God, are the wonders which You have done,
And Your thoughts toward us;
There is none to compare with You
If I would declare and speak of them,
They would be too numerous to count.
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=psalm%2040;&version=49;

Man-centered vs. God-centered. Without the working of the Holy Spirit, we all would choose the man-centered stuff -- everytime.

A buddhist monk can try to speak about love -- but without Jesus Christ he really only has a partial and incomplete sense of it. A Muslim can speak about the fear of God, but without Jesus Christ the fear he holds is a distortion of the truth -- not the truth itself.

The truth that the world and it's religions can present (speaking spiritual and philosophical here) is a damaged, soiled, demented version with only hints and glimpses of the pure truth of God.

[corby]

Man-centered vs. God-centered. Without the working of the Holy Spirit, we all would choose the man-centered stuff -- everytime.

A buddhist monk can try to speak about love -- but without Jesus Christ he really only has a partial and incomplete sense of it. A Muslim can speak about the fear of God, but without Jesus Christ the fear he holds is a distortion of the truth -- not the truth itself.

The truth that the world and it's religions can present (speaking spiritual and philosophical here) is a damaged, soiled, demented version with only hints and glimpses of the pure truth of God.

Will you marry me? Kidding.

That was beautifully amazing! :yeah That is exactly it! :thumb

I am speechless. I am without speech. In a good way. Just fabulous.

[Leialoha]

Will you marry me? Kidding.

That was beautifully amazing! :yeah That is exactly it! :thumb

I am speechless. I am without speech. In a good way. Just fabulous.

When I drank from the well of life and soaked in the Word -- I immediately lost all taste for the refuse I used to regard as a feast of wisdom. No more of that for me, I will not be going back to it.

[Leialoha]

This is becoming too personal Harley,
you let me know who's picking on you and I'll thump em for ya :wave

[corby]

When I drank from the well of life and soaked in the Word -- I immediately lost all taste for the refuse I used to regard as a feast of wisdom. No more of that for me, I will not be going back to it.

Do tell. Testify.

[grape on the vine]

I don't think I could disagree more. Reread my summary above. The Law does not simply say stuff about God. The Law (as Paul discusses in the various epistles, especially Romans and Galatians) show us man is fallen, can't meet God's standard, but that God will provide what is necessary in order to meet his requirements. Your response is confusing because what you say the point isn't has nothing to do with what the point is. The discussion of the literalness and provability of the text isn't directly conntected to the point of the text (it is indirectly).

"The point is, whether all the facts can be verified or not, what does It say about God? " So if a statement of fact fromthe Bible is disproven, we can just ignore that and stick to what it says about God because that's all that matters? This just floors me. I am without speech.

I'm going to respond to this and then bow out of the thread.

I never said that the Law "simply says stuff about God" as though that's all there is to it. I'm saying, this is the backbone. And all the examples you presented from the Epistles ultimately have to be looked at through the lens of, "what does that say about God?" And ultimately there are a lot of questions answered when one looks through this lens.




I have no problem with saying "I don't know." I say it all the time concerning certain aspects of the Bible. Does that mean we can just leave it at that when God gave us brains to use to try and find the answers? This notion that has surfaced among the EC movement that there is comfort in the unknown, that uncertainty is a good thing, that the discussion or the "conversation" or the "journey" is more important than the answers and destination, it's contrary to the whole purpose of God's word. We have God's word so that we have answers. We have God's word so that we have certainty. We have God's so that we know where we are going.
Then why so many things that can't be answered?


Where we have answers we need to stand on them. We know that the intent of Genesis is a literal understanding and that God wants us to understand that is was 6 days. There shouldn't even be any debate about it, especially amongst Christians.
You know that God wants us to understand 6 days (when through half of that there was not sun or moon, which is what we use to gauge days) is meant to be taken literally? Please tell your method of connect to God. I must be doing something wrong.


One of my favorite things is doing Q&A with other believers. I love to ask and I love to answer. Why? Because it's about the answers, not some psuedo-intellectual buzz we get from asking the heavy questions and not coming up with anything. I think that's the attraction. "We are asking the heavy questions. We are seeking the deeper things. What is the sound of one hand clapping?" It's just the opposite of everything the Word stands for. Take Proverbs for example? Wisdom calls to us to come and get more wisdom. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge, not questions for the sake of questions.
This is a pretty broad generalization. You may want to be careful about painting with so wide a brush.

[grape on the vine]

So when God says He did it in 6 days, thats not verifiable? Can you please show me another text where God gives specifics that He didn't really mean literally? Can you tell me why He would tell us something that was not true?
Whoops! One more quick thing...

None of the parables that Jesus used were true.


The whole point of the Bible IS that it is 100% accurate, even in the poetic books.
Wrong. There's a passage in the old testament that refers to the measuring of a basin. The measurement that the author comes up with is wrong. Sorry, what you claim is not true.

I believe this is found in 1 Kings 7:38

Anyway, I'm out (for real).

It's been fun.

[Iovan]

Wrong. There's a passage in the old testament that refers to the measuring of a basin. The measurement that the author comes up with is wrong. Sorry, what you claim is not true.

I believe this is found in 1 Kings 7:38

Anyway, I'm out (for real).

It's been fun.

I beg to differ that is a commonly used excuse that just isn't true.

Does the Bible say pi equals 3.0?

In 1 Kings 7:23 there is an intriguing statement: 'And he [Hiram on behalf of King Solomon] made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about.' A similar account is given in the parallel passage in 2 Chronicles 4:2.

From time to time sceptics have used these verses to ridicule the accuracy of the Bible by claiming that, if one uses the figures stated, the circumference of the vessel divided by its diameter gives 3.0, instead of the value pi (3.14159...).1

Closer examination shows there are at least two possible explanations.

1. The first concerns the meaning of the word cubit, and how it would have been used in measuring the vessel. A cubit was the length of a man's forearm from the elbow to the extended fingertips. The Hebrew cubit was about 45 centimetres (18 inches). It is obvious that a man's forearm does not readily lend itself to the measurement of fractions of a forearm. In the Bible half a cubit is mentioned several times, but there is no mention of a third part of a cubit or a fourth part of a cubit, even though these fractions of 'a third part' and 'a fourth part' were used in volume and weight measurements. 2It therefore seems highly probable that any measurement of more than half a cubit would have been counted as a full cubit, and any measurement of less than half a cubit would have been rounded down to the nearest full cubit.

From 1 Kings 7:23 ('a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about'), it appears that the circumference was measured with 'a line', i.e. a piece of string or cord on which the distance was marked, and this length would then have been measured off in cubits by the measurer, using his own or someone else's forearm, or possibly a cubit-long rod. Similarly the diameter would have been marked on a line and 'cubitized' in the same way.

If the actual diameter was 9.65 cubits, for example, this would have been reckoned as 10 cubits. The actual circumference would then have been 30.32 cubits. This would have been reckoned as 30 cubits (9.6 cubits diameter gives 30.14 circumference, and so on). The ratio of true circumference to true diameter would then have been 30.32 ÷ 9.65 = 3.14, the true value for pi, even though the measured value (i.e. to the nearest cubit) was 30 ÷ 10 = 3.

While the above seems reasonable, we have no way of knowing for certain whether the measurements were approximated in this way. However, even if it is assumed that the measurements given were precisely 10 and 30 cubits, the following appears to provide a definitive answer.

2. Verse 26 of 1 Kings 7 says that the vessel in question had a brim which 'was wrought like the brim of a cup, with flowers of lilies' (KJV), or a rim 'like the rim of a cup, like a lily blossom' (NIV), i.e. the brim or rim turned outward, suggesting the curvature of a lily.3 It is believed by Bible scholars to have looked like the drawing below.4

Article continues at link...

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v17/i2/pi.asp

[corby]

Whoops! One more quick thing...

None of the parables that Jesus used were true.


Wrong. There's a passage in the old testament that refers to the measuring of a basin. The measurement that the author comes up with is wrong. Sorry, what you claim is not true.

I believe this is found in 1 Kings 7:38

Anyway, I'm out (for real).

It's been fun.

Wow. Nice out. "I'm going to disprove the accurace of God's word in order to demonstrate that it is truth." :idunno I mean, duh.

Of course the parables themselves were not true stories (so far as we know). That is the nature of a parable. It is a story that illustrates a truth or a point. Jesus' hearers understood that. We understand that. It's called a figure of speech. There are over 200 different kinds of figures of speech in the Bible. Not different figures of speak, different kinds of figures of speech. So while the parables were not true, they were truth. Thank you for illustrating my point for me. :-)

As for the 6 days thing, that's easy. In it's context, the word "day" means a literal 24 hour day. We have evening, morning, and a number. Again, Hebrew schollars will verify that the intention is to communicate a 24 hour day. And then there's Exodus 20:11 "For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day." Again, 6 literal 24 hour days is the intention. Granted that the sun is one of the ways in which we measure days, and it wasn't created until Day 4. However, one could argue that since the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the deep, and that since God is light, that He was the source of light used for the evening and morning. Afterall, on Day 1 light was created before there was an evening and morning. So there was light coming from somewhere. You said you must be doing something wrong. I'm not being flippant or sarcastic when I say this, but you aren't letting the Bible speak for itself. You are looking at it through the filter of man's wisdom and interpreting it through that filter. It really is that simple.

The item mentioned in 1 Kings is easily answerd if one looks for it (as it is here http://www.khouse.org/articles/1998/158/). Here are some snippets from the article.

The huge cast bronze basin in 1 Kings 7:23 was 10 cubits in diameter and its circumference was 30 cubits, which is mathematically inaccurate. Almost any schoolboy knows that the circumference of a circle is not the diameter times 3, but rather, the diameter times a well-known constant called "pi".

The real value of pi is 3.14159265358979, but is commonly approximated by 22/7.

This is assumed, by many, to be an "error" in the Old Testament record, and is often presented as a skeptical rebuttal to the "inerrancy" of the Scripture. How can we say that the Bible is inerrant when it contains such an obvious geometrically incorrect statement? How do we deal with this?
(snip)
The common word for circumference is qav. Here, however, the spelling of the word for circumference, qaveh, adds a heh (h).

In the Hebrew Bible, the scribes did not alter any text which they felt had been copied incorrectly. Rather, they noted in the margin what they thought the written text should be. The written variation is called a kethiv; and the marginal annotation is called the qere.
(snip)
The Hebrew alphabet is alphanumeric: each Hebrew letter also has a numerical value and can be used as a number.

The q has a value of 100; the v has a value of 6; thus, the normal spelling would yield a numerical value of 106. The addition of the h, with a value of 5, increases the numerical value to 111. This indicates an adjustment of the ratio 111/106, or 31.41509433962 cubits. Assuming that a cubit was 1.5 ft., this 15-foot-wide bowl would have had a circumference of 47.12388980385 feet.

This Hebrew "code" results in 47.12264150943 feet, or an error of less than 15 thousandths of an inch! (This error is 15 times better than the 22/7 estimate that we were accustomed to using in school!)


So what I claim is true. It isn't even me who claims it, it is God Himself, I'm just repeating it. Read the word without any filters. Let God's Holy Spirit speak to you, teach you, and trust what it says at face value. Don't take it literally, don't take is figuratively. Take it seriously. (That's for all of us, not just grape).