Quote from ShoeshineBoy:
Johnny,
If you could take off your Rev Moon mask for just a minute and be JohnnyK again, I wouldn't mind dialoguing. But what happens now is I respond with one or two sentences and you write back forty three sentences of gnostic, New Age mantras.
If I wanted that, I could just go to Barnes and Noble and buy about any of a hundred books there...
Good news!
The following 42 lines of text can be found in the "Christianity" section at Barnes and Noble.
No need to read them here.
Quote from ShoeshineBoy:
Forgive me if this bores you, but I thought you might be the one person who would be interested in this. Again, if I'm wrong, forgive me for discussing at length something you are not even interested in.
There is a huge connection that is only of interest to Christians regarding the Old Testament. One of the themes emphasized in the Old Testament over and over and over and over - I'm sure you get the idea - again is the concept that the nations will be redeemed after the time of Babel. At Babel (Gen 11 I believe) God split up the earth into differing ethnolinguistic groups. The concept of these nations being restored to God was told to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob...and is followed up repeatedly in the prophets as well. You cannot get very far in the Old Testament w/o running into this theme.
Now the curious thing, of course, is that the Jews have never been particularly outwardly-focused. They are an incredibly strong people, but I don't think anyone would argue that they have tended, both before Christ or after, to "stick to themselves". How many great Jewish evangelists can you think of for example? Yet the Old Testament was clear that this was God's ultimate purpose. So why the dichotomy?
Of course, the answer came with Jesus' words in Matthew: "This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come." (Matt 24:14) Jesus had several other references to this same theme including the famous Great Commission verses. And, of course, the rest of the New Testament is all about the gospel spreading to the Gentiles.
And it is important to note early Christianity exploded through the Roman Empire. By the time of Constantine, secular scholars estimate that between 1/10th and 1/3rd of the Roman Empire was Christian. Some secular scholars have admitted that this often done through martydom and persecution. And one scholar even admitted that it was often done through the miraculous. What a contrast with the Judaism of the last millenium!
Since then martyrs and modern day apostles have paid dearly for taking the gospel to the nations and now the gospel has penetrated a high percentage of these ethnolinguistic groups.
This is the reason for the Old Testament. Remember that the Old Testament had a HUGE number of commandments. But Jesus told the Israelites that there was really only one: "Thou shall love the Lord Thy God with all Thy heart, soul, mind and strength." Think how astonishing this is: He distilled all the commands to really just one. And this is a common theme with Jesus, a sort of minimalism or essentialism.
Why all the verbiage in the Old Testment? I don't know. Why all the temple ceremonies? I don't know. But Jesus came so that we would have understanding and that is what counts. Remember that the New Testament is EXTREMELY clear: you are not bound nor do you even have to understand all the ceremonial law.
Jesus made it clear that these were drastically different times. He said, "Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way..." (Matt 19:8) Jesus clearly stated that many things were allowed in the Old Testament because the people simply were not ready.
Of course, no anti-Christian will believe that as they are always looking for a reason to rip God because that fits into their world view. But Jesus begged to differ with them. Again, He said clearly that things were allowed in the Old Testament that should never have been. And He went on to abolish polygamy and commanded people at the Sermon on the Mount to even get their thought life in control. Of course, He also attacked abuse of the poor at the hands of rich religious hypocrits.
And here's where I'm headed: you cannot understand the Old Testament unless you understand that 1) it's purpose was to redeem the nations and 2) many things were allowed by God that were not His ideal.
For that matter, almost anything anybody talks about can be found at Barnes and Nobles with the exception of proprietary information, or such things as how to dismantle an atomic bomb.
Now, although what I am explaining can be found at Barnes and Noble, you have yet to find it there, and would probably burn through 100 books before you really got what I am talking about.
If you go to the "New Age" section, you will find many books that have not much correspondence to what I am talking about. The label "New Age" is not an honest appraisal. You would do better to simply define what New Age thought means to you, so that some meaning can be given to what is otherwise a meaningless term. I'm sure that once you define what is New Age thought, we will find that you are the one who falls into that category, as I have already pointed out in another post.
I am here to clarify a few things. You are privileged to get information this way. Everyone here is wearing a mask. Even were you to use your birth name it would still be a mask. To dismiss communication based on such an excuse is itself a mask. What do you fear that needs such a mask?
Jesus
