Posted by fh on September 10, 2013 at 09:37:07
In Reply to: Re: Think about it. posted by consider the source on September 05, 2013 at 22:16:33:
Starting from the end of your post, I will briefly try to answer your questions here, or at least those that pertain or relate to me, the way I understand them. I apologize for the length. I tried to keep it short, but I think most of it is useless without some basic explanations. All I write here is my opinion, as based on Scripture or as from other sources.
Believing in and worshiping the God of the Bible is very different – in many ways an reversal of – believing and worshiping in “Zeus, hear, mars Aries et al” and “the Greek Gods” as you put it.
As narrated in the Bible, I believe 1) the woman was made from the rib of the man, 2) the world and all was made in 6 literal days, 3) that Lucifer was highly esteemed before his downfall.
Also that Lucifer with success put every effort into tempting the first two people into disobeying God’s commandment which both full well knew about, as well forewarned as to the result should they disobey.
Following that, Jesus (who also was there) of himself suggested a rescue plan to be put into place, where he would himself bear the brunt of it all, because the law demanded a flawless sacrifice, i.e. humans could not themselves offer anything in order to correct what they had messed up, other than the death penalty.
But Lucifer, also knowing the rescue plan mentioned above, made sure to imitate it before it happened, in order to discredit Jesus and say, see, he is just one of many. That is why in many of the pagan dogmas you have a nearly identical scenario, father, mother and son and all the rest.
In HP Blavatsky’s writings, like “the esoteric nature of the Gospels” she goes to great length to try to convince the reader how Christ was merely one of many teachers, how every god is a human who in time became a mythical godhood, and so on.
These theosophical and occult teachings of Blavatsky is pervasive nearly everywhere today, in some way and in some capacity, in other words, it is very popular.
I believe the Bible is divinely inspired, but not dictated. Which is the reason where the same stories are narrated, they differ, sometimes quite a bit. The narrators were not all present all the time, some things were passed on from others, or through others, etc. If they were dictated they would be identical. God does not dictate people, or to people, that is not his nature. Rather, He moves, or inspires.
So although I believe the Bible is divinely inspired, it is important to qualify that especially to the 1611 KJV of the Bible. (*) see below.
But when you ask about being a literalist, then I must very likely pass. Although I believe in the above mentioned, when you ask this: “how many are literalist that believe every word in the bible is accurate”, no, I do not believe every word in any Bible is accurate, or perfect. But again, it all depends on what you mean by ‘literal’ and by ‘accurate’.
Something else you have made a point of, that is that all who do not accept Jesus will have to swim and fry in the lake of fire for all eternity. And God and all the saved will maybe watch their suffering gleefully and with a ‘I told you so’, then turn around and laugh. Horrible stuff. No I don’t believe that. It is a very common belief, but as I said, it is very inconsistent with a loving saviour. The Catholic purgatory, which btw also Berg sometimes embraced, is very related, and was perfected at the Council of Trent in the mid 1500s. No, neither do I believe in purgatory, it is deep superstition, to keep people under the power of extreme ‘religious dogma’. Terrible stuff.
(*)
Now the 1611 AKJV was indeed the Bible we mostly used in TF in the old days, and today I use it as well, but not for the reasons Berg said.
Suffice it to say that it has to do with modern textual criticism and the change of the basic Greek and Hebrew texts from the Majority text (or received text) to the Alexandrian text family that more or less all subsequent bibles from then would be based on. The changes, and many deletions of as much as up to half a chapter, was quite profound, thousands of changes in the NT alone. Most people have little clue as to the extent of this ‘critical work’, and are thus effectively cut off from much of the biblical message.
The central drive in the critical texts was to reduce Jesus to something lesser than he was, to just one of many, to compromise his divinity, exactly as per Blavatskys doctrines. All these fragments makes sense in the bigger picture.