re: Catholic/Protestant Debate

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The Early Christian Church was the Catholic Church.

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Can you imagine a group of Jews that would have rejected the Levitical priesthood of the Jewish faith before the coming of Christ?
They would have been in direct conflict with the will of God.

Question? What is a Protestant?
Answer. A modern day Christian that rejects the Christian priesthood established by Christ.

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You, in this very thread:

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Pointing out my ignorance doesn't clear you of your own.

My point stands.

Friend. I urge you to rid yourself and your household of all Bibles. Turn the Bibles over to the nearest Nursing Home. Tell them that you are doing this because you don't know how to behave yourself with a Bible.

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That would be like saying is there good in my house, does this also mean their is evil in my house? Is it not possible that good exists in my house, and that evil exists down the street in another house? While they both still exist, they do not have to reside together. On Earth they do reside together. That is the conflict we see on earth.

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In light of that logic, why can’t we have only good on earth like heaven, and if evil has to exist for good to exist, why can’t the evil just exist in hell?

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fall of Adam

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Isn’t what you think it is. According to 1 Enoch, the most numerous scroll kept at the Qumran community of Essenes, and the most referenced book by New Testament authors, Eden was in heaven, and Adam fell to the earth when he was kicked out. It was a literal fall.

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This is where free will comes into play

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The Pharaoh have free will when Yahweh hardened his heart? Did the inhabitants of Jericho have free will when Yahweh gave them into the hand of Joshua so that he could kill all their children and babies? Did the Sodomites have free will? Did Saul’s wives have free will when Yahweh handed them over to David?

Why doesn’t Yahweh stop rapists? Does he value the free will of the rapist over the free will of the innocent victim?

I thought Yahweh has a plan and knows everything and can do anything. You can’t have both of those things with free will without having a logical fallacy. But we know he doesn’t have a plan, at least not a good one, and he isn’t all powerful, else he wouldn’t have had to kick Adam out of Eden, and he wouldn’t have had to hit the reset button due to his evil running amuck on earth (Noah’s flood). If he was all powerful, he wouldn’t have enemies or adversaries, but he does, right? The devil would be pretty dumb to oppose the all powerful god if opposing him was pointless.

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You’re not seriously searching for logical, plausible, and rational reasons to believe in the Triune God

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Hey PS, hope all is well. Your statement is correct - I am not looking for plausible reasons to believe something that is evidently not true. Rather, I look for evenly true facts to further my understanding of history and nature. I don’t have an agenda on “what to believe”, but only to believe what is falsifiable, testable, and scientifically evidently shown to be factual. Whatever that turns out to be, I would have no choice but to accept the truth, even if I didn’t like it, else I would be in denial and suffering from delusions.

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override your free will decision to reject Him with incontrovertible evidence of His existence

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God overrides free will all the time in the Bible. There’s no reason he couldn’t do it now, other than that he doesn’t exist or doesn’t have the power or desire. The first part of establishing a relationship with a person is establishing existence to the person. Not only do we have no evidence of God’s existence, but we have an overwhelming mountain of evidence that the gods described in the Bible do not exist.

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Your parroting of internet atheist talking points

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Parroting implies I am repeating random points of unqualified people posting on Facebook or Reddit. I think you know how I operate. I don’t say much of anything until someone posts something totally wrong, then I step in to correct them or at least give them something to ponder. I’m not searching for lists of contradictions to post on here. Most of my “material” is through my own study over the years.

Let me reassure you of my truthfulness in the same way the apostle Paul would: In what I am writing to you, before Darwin, I do not lie!

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has led me to a wealth of knowledge that I otherwise would not possess; yielding a stronger faith, and a deeper understanding thereof. Thank you for your service

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Question? What is a Protestant?
Answer. A modern day Christian that rejects the Christian priesthood established by Christ.

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I see the priesthood of the believer in the New Testament and qualifications for the office of elder and deacon, but I don't see a continuation or reconstitution of the Levitical priesthood in the Bible. Jesus' death on the cross was the fulfillment of the priesthood, as He is our great high priest, and we go through Him alone now.

I see another thread that has been anchored

Happy solemnity of the annunciation. While we typically celebrate this March 25th or 9 months before Jesus was born, it was moved to today because March 25th was Monday of Holy Week.

I rejoice that Mary said yes to the will of God!

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The Book of Enoch is rejected by Christianity

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Not true. In fact it is the very foundation of Christianity. Christianity would have not existed if not for the book of Enoch (called 1 Enoch). It has these principles generally not found in the Old Testament but found throughout the New Testament:
- afterlife / resurrection of the dead
- righteous rewarded in afterlife, sinful punished
- God will judge the living and the dead
- the end of the world is coming soon
- complex angel theology
- explains the literal fall of Adam and Eve out of Eden in Heaven
- explains the Nephilim
- explains the reason for the flood
- the temple in Jerusalem and the religion of the Pharisees are corrupt
- the anointed king (the Christ) will return
- explains the position called the “Son of Man”
- explains the reason for sacrificing the goat to Azazel on the day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), but otherwise did not sacrifice animals
- the idea that people can become angels
- explains the coming kingdom of god on earth
-explained the relationship of the god most high, his son and great angel Yahweh (protector of Israel), and Yahweh’s mother the divine spirit

The book of Enoch, preserved by the Ethiopian church, as it is in their canon, is the same book found in Qumran that the Essenes preserved around 200BC, and archaeologists have found ancient copies in Ethiopic, Coptic, Slavonic, Greek, Latin, and Aramaic. This was the most important text for the Dead Sea Scroll community. For some reason, the Romans suppressed Enoch but Christianity outside of Roman control preserved it.

In the four gospels, who greeted Jesus’ followers at the tomb? Was it one or two men, or was it one or two angels? It depends on which gospel you are reading. But these are not contradictory, the men were angels - at least that is how the NT authors thought.

Compare the Old Testament and the Pharisees:
- no afterlife, all go to Sheol, the wicked with the righteous
- dead return to dust, and that is the end of existence
- the world is not ending soon
- there is no “son of man”
- they are not waiting for the return of the anointed king (messiah, Christ)
- sins are paid for by sacrificing animals regularly
- the temple is great! No need to destroy it and build it back in three days
- there is only one god, literally, and his name is Yahweh, but we can’t say his name because he might smite us, so we call him Adonai, and we ignore the Bible’s references to the many gods contained within it

The Roman church, in their ignorance, added the Old Testament in response to Marcion’s rejection of the Jewish Bible. The church added the then-current version of the Masoretic Text (circa 200AD) rather than the version the Christians used (Greek Septuagint plus Enoch). They just didn’t know any better. When they saw the obvious conflicts between Enoch and the OT, they rejected Enoch when they probably should’ve rejected the OT and kept Enoch.

And you can’t understand Paul’s epistles without understanding Enoch.

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I agree it is referenced, but nowhere as much as the Old Testament prophets.

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You haven’t studied hard enough.

The four Gospels are simply historicized fictional recreations of Enoch, another extra-biblical scripture known as the Ascension of Isaiah, and Paul’s epistles. El Elyon - Theos - god most high is Jesus’ father. Jesus is Yahweh, called “Lord”. Jesus is Lord, and the son of the most high god, or simply son or God or monogenes (one of a kind) son of God. In the NT you will not find a single reference to Jesus being son of the Lord. No, Jesus is Lord, never ever the son of the Lord. Matches up perfectly with Enoch, and with Deuteronomy 32:8-9.