Featured The common ground.

Perseverance of the saints my dear man.
The crown here is the garland placed upon the winner of the games. The church at Smyrna would understand the reference since Smyrna held games in its city. The city also had a hill with a flat top known as the "crown of Smyrna" so when Jesus tells the believers they will receive the winners crown, he is elevating their trials above any earthly games and thus elevating their importance to Him.

 

Read back all the messages to the churches and try to split unto the churches from each previous verse and see how that can't be done.

Also, Smyrna is one of the churches...so back to square 1.

 

Rev 2:10 the devil shall cast some of you

That's not just the angel of the church.

There is no escaping the text. If those guys (whoever they were or will be, or both) don't endure the 10 days suffering, they lose their salvation.
Of course, losing one's salvation is impossible during the church age.
Once again, only dispensational methodology remains true to the context and literality of the text.

How it all fits and works, I know not, but that's what it says.

 

I got you, but the "primarily" here applies to the multiple people in prison, not the angel, is what I'm saying.

 

Are you implying that letters on paper can do all those things? You do know that this is Logos, right? The same Logos that struck Saul down, that became a life-giving spirit.

 

A. You first connected me to people I never heard of.
B. If you want to talk Augustine, here's an actual quote from him:

No one will sat that "free-will" actually vanished from the human race because of the first man's sin. Yet it is true that sin robbed mankind of "liberty," the liberty that existed in Paradise - that is, the liberty we can define as "perfect righteousness with immortality."
That is why human nature stands in need of divine grace. So the Lord says, "If the Son sets you free, you will be really free" (John 8:36). free for a good and righteous life. Even so, free-will has not entirely perished from sinners; for fre-will is the power by which people commit sin! This is especially the case with all who delight in sinning and love their sin; they choose to do what pleases them. The apostle says, "When you were the slaves of sin, you were free from righteousness" (Romans 6:20). It is clear that people can only become "slaves of sin" because they are in fact free; for the thing that makes people "free from righteousness" is their own sinful free choice! By contrast, however, the only thing that makes people "free from sin" is the grace of the Saviour. The admirable teacher Paul makes this very distinction: free from righteousness - set free from sin (Romans 6:20-22). He says "free" from righteousness, but "set free" from it. He deliberately uses the phrase "set free" in harmony with the Lord's statement, "Iff the Son sets you free." For the children of mankind cannot live a good life unless God makes them into His children How then can Julian of Eclanum try to pretend that the power to live a good life comes from our free will? Only God's grace gives this power through Jesus Christ our Lord.
{Augustine of Hippo: 'Concerning Two Letters of Pelagius,' chapter 1, sec. 5]

You may disagree with this extract, but it is not Manichaism or Determinism or Gnosticism..

 

Before the fall there was no death, according to Paul because death entered by sin along with sickness, suffering, etc.

What else would you call never getting sick, never dying?

peace to you

 

The art of knowingly discussing a tangent subject to avoid the historical issue.

 

You mean actually quoting someone directly instead of posting what some third party says about him?
Wow! I didn't know I was so artful.

 

What was quoted was tangential, is the point, as you well know I meant. I'll source the material soon.