Recent content by David Lamb

Here in the UK, the state requires strict background checks to be made for anybody intending to become involved with children or teens, not only church work with children and teens.

(Replying to my own post, because I am too late to edit it): I meant to type: " the field in which the wheat and the tares are growing in the parable represents the world, not the local church."

Yes, as I understand it, chapters were added in the 13th century, and verses in the 1550s. Chapters and verses certainly facilitate indicating which part of the bible is meant.

But surely the field in which the wheat and the tares are growing in the parable represents the word, not the local church: Mat 13:38 "The field is the world, the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one. " Jesus isn't encouraging churches to...

Just wondering - did you perhaps mean the "Chalcedonian Creed?" I haven't heard of a Caledonian Creed.

You seem rather confused with the commandments. The second of the Ten Commandments says: ““You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to...

Surely all Baptists, whether or not they are reformed, believe that baptism is for believers, not little babies.

Their purpose was to point forward to the one perfect sacrifice that actually takes away sins, that of the Lord Jesus Christ. As for your question as to whether, if I were still under the law, I would continue to sacrifice animals, it is not possible for me to put myself i such a hypothetical...

Yes, but the point is that the blood of the sacrificed animal did not actually take away sins, as the Hebrews verse I quoted makes clear.

Why would you expect that? Believers in penal substitutionary atonement don't believe that the sacrifice of animals actually atoned for them. They believe what is written in Hebrews: “For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins.” (Heb 10:4 NKJV)

I see salvation as unconditional insofar as we don't have to do things to earn it. For example, we are not told that if we read the bible from cover to cover once year, or spend an hour in prayer every day, or give a certain percentage of our income to missionary causes, we will be saved...

All I can say is that all the Christians I know who hold to the doctrines of grace fully believe in the necessity of faith/belief. If we look at the Calvinistic confessions of faith we find the same thing. For example, the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith comtains a chapter entitled...

I haven't come across the idea of translating the Greek into Aramaic. Most, if not all, languages have idioms, so I can understand how a knowledge of Aramaic idioms might help, but not translating all of the words of Jesus in the bible from Greek into Aramaic.

Yes, that is true. But Jesus said: ““No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day.” (Joh 6:44 NKJV) In the first 10 verses of Ephesians 2 Paul reminds his Christian readers how they had been granted new life. They had been dead in...

I am unsure what difference it would make if somebody could give a definitive answer to the question of whether Jesus spoke in Hebrew or in Aramaic (or both). How would it affect us as Christians?